Meth America

“Our data indicates that the rate of methamphetamine use has doubled in the last five years,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said at the release of the first Methamphetamine Task Force Report yesterday. And for the gay community, that estimate could be low. While meth use is soaring everywhere, it’s…

Watch Your Step

It’s a cold, cold world out there for people on foot. While Mayor Hick had his scraping fleets quadruple-plowing the main drags during and after the second blast of holiday snow, as if to prove a point (I imagine him riding atop the biggest plow in town, waving his biggest…

The Commerce of Converse

There’s no business like shoe business for the 400. When the designer sneaker store opened at 1010 Bannock Street in September 2005, it was the first of its kind in the state, and some wondered whether there were enough mile-high sneakerheads to foot the bills. But since then, several similar…

No Longer-High Tech

“I write my life as it progresses, as it gets worse, whatever,” says Aaron Yates, also known as Tech N9ne, who headlines at the Fillmore Auditorium on Saturday, January 6. “I’m like a fan inside this cat called Tech N9ne, who writes this crazy stuff. I’m just waiting to see…

More Messages: Digging Out

For the past decade-plus, I’ve used vacation time during the Christmas season, and prior to 2006, I’ve missed precious few significant news developements. The reason is simple. Newsmakers (and plenty of those covering them) tend to lay low during the last half of December and the first few days of…

Shelter from the Storm

There are some restaurants where the world does not intrude — rooms where time does not pass, weather does not change, current events go unnoted. Often inadvertently, these restaurants have successfully stopped time — a trick that mad scientists and evil super-geniuses have been attempting since forever with dark matter…

Hip Hop Chocolate Launch Party Cancelled

The Original Hip Hop Chocolate Launch Party has been cancelled due to inclement weather. But don’t worry, you’ll get your chocolate fix next Thursday, January 4, when the party has been rescheduled. It’s still taking place at 9 p.m. at Blue Ice Martini Bar. Visit www.myspace.com/hiphopchocolate for the latest…

Surviving Episode Seven

Ever since last week, we’ve known that Brooke was going to have a freak-out party in Episode 7. But that didn’t make it any less painful to watch last night. In most seasons of The Real World, the producers tend to include one person who is relatively normal and relatively…

Year in Review: Were Sorry, So Sorry

Okay, we could have done better. We admit that. We lied about our age. We faked our memoirs. We called ourselves Art or Daxis and told the escort we were from Kansas City. We stole other people’s identities, maxed out the credit cards and blamed the illegals. And yes, we…

Year in Review: The Great Pretenders

In Colorado, 2006 will be remembered as the Year of the Great Pretender. Many of the most notorious newsmakers were people masquerading as someone or something they weren’t — leading secret lives, conning the public, boasting of a competency they didn’t possess or taking credit for achievements and even crimes…

Letters to the Editor

“Ten Years After,” Alan Prendergast, December 21 The Usual Suspects Once again, a voice of sanity and reason regarding the case of JonBenét Ramsey. Sadly, it is ten years later, and many innocent people have gone through hell just for stating the obvious: The Ramseys are the true suspects in…

Jenn: I Drink, Therefore I Am

After six episodes of The Real World: Denver, we still haven’t seen anyone do any work — which makes me wonder if having them employed by Outward Bound was more of a liability than it was worth. This could also explain why the cast members have that nasty habit of…

Ramsey Week

Media types are suckers for anniversary stories. Even if it’s the anniversary of a homicide, which just sounds so…wrong. What are we celebrating, exactly? On Tuesday it will be ten years since the death of JonBenet Ramsey. There have already been a couple of prime-time recaps of the crime, and…

Ten Years After

She would have been sixteen now. A boy-crazy cheerleader, maybe, or the dorky president of the debate team. A wobbly-voiced contestant on America’s Got Talent. Or just another girl in narrow-legged jeans at the mall — diamond stud in nostril, cell phone clamped to ear. Who can say? Instead, she’s…

Life of the Party

The door of the bus opens, belching a stale blast of vomit-scented air into the night. Inside, empty plastic bottles that once held rum and coke, whiskey and coke, gin and tonic, you name it, are scattered everywhere: on the floor, on the plush chairs, in the pockets of the…

Mouthing Off

Sometimes you feel like a nut. Tom Tancredo, Colorado’s most notorious export, was at his office in Centennial last Wednesday, about to head for Denver International Airport, when he got word that his speaking engagement before the Miami Rotary Club — the official topic was “Renewing America: The Need for…

A Cutler Above

Sometimes I’m amazed by how much of a man I am. I’ll be at the gym, 35-pound plates on both sides of the bar, just ill bench-pressing, and I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror — muscles taut, beads of sweat cascading down my forehead, iPod blazing Eminem…

Beyond Bias

In late November, Broomfield-based Noodles & Co. announced that it had signed with FEED Tribes, a Boulder outfit that’s developed a system allowing members to pay for products using their cell phones. Both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News ran business stories about this agreement — but neither…

Letters to the Editor

“Pot of Gold,” Joel Warner, December 14 Memoirs of the Geisha I am originally from Denver, and from time to time I try to catch up on all things “home” and scan Westword online. “Pot of Gold” was brilliant, in-depth and wonderfully interesting. It was so well composed, it did…

Melo Out!

In the white squall of media coverage surrounding the Denver Nuggets of late — and I do mean “white” — the criticism has been flying like a Southern pilot on the Concorde: fast and racist. Take the latest Carmelo Anthony smack-my-bitch-up incident against the Knicks this Saturday in New York,…

More Messages: The Wrong Forecast

Not quite cynical enough about weather forecasting? Then here’s an item that should make you feel even more jaded. As he watched the snow falling this morning, a sharp-eyed reader thought of this article in the December 6 Denver Post. Headlined “Arrival of El Ni�o May Mean Dry Winter for…

More Messages: Snow Job

Yeah, it’s snowing — and if predictions are even close to accurate, it’ll continue to do so for quite some time. But unless I’m very much mistaken, this is Colorado, where snow is a part of life. So why are the local stations reacting to this slow-moving weather system as…