Parole Call The hard cell: Thanks to Alan Prendergast for again exposing the doctrinal policies of Governor Bill Owens and the Republicans who are bleeding Colorado to death (“Over and Over Again,” April 6). Parole in Colorado is a thinly disguised system whose main mission is to keep as many…
Having been deep in it most of his life, John “Jake” Johnson can smell trouble coming. So last year, when the fifty-year-old inmate found out he would be paroling from a private prison in Trinidad to a homeless shelter in downtown Denver, the news smelled very bad indeed. “I told…
Larysa Maslenko was depressed when her first marriage failed after just six months, but instead of posting a profile on Match.com, the Ukrainian woman signed up for a free service that promised introductions to marriage-minded American men. “I didn’t know what to do. All the time I was crying,” says…
Instead of cake and candles on her 28th birthday, Baby Girl got khakis and handcuffs, courtesy of the Denver County jail. Just a couple of months after graduating from the Chrysalis Project, a twelve-month drug-treatment program for crack hos (“Lost and Found,” June 2, 2005), Baby Girl was already back…
Brian O’Connell’s past finally caught up with him on Monday, March 27. The 38-year-old naturopath was sentenced to thirteen years in prison after pleading guilty in February to multiple criminal charges, including criminally negligent homicide, practicing medicine without a license, assault and theft. Police learned that O’Connell might be practicing…
It’s springtime in the Rockies, and things are officially getting weird. For the third year in a row, Governor Owens and Mayor Hickenlooper engaged in their annual game of catch, and right when Owens was answering a reporter’s question, Hick up and fired the high heat, beaning the Guv square…
One argument for greater diversity in American newsrooms can be summed up as follows: Press types who have firsthand knowledge of minority issues are apt to produce more accurate, more meaningful reports about related topics than will those who don’t. Likewise, this line of reasoning suggests that even well-intentioned outsiders…
Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow Never on Sunday: Jessica Centers did a great job with “Last Call,” in the March 30 issue. Blake Harrison isn’t alone in wishing he could buy a six-pack of his favorite brew on Sunday. I can’t remember the last time my buddies and I tipped a…
Blake Harrison sips on an Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale as he talks about his two lifelong passions: public policy and finding the perfect beer. The Odell 5 is not his favorite — that place in his heart is reserved for Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale — but it’s…
I’ve always felt just as drunk after a day of drinking 3.2 as I do after a day of drinking any light beer. Yet friends and acquaintances claimed to despise 3.2. They’d go to great lengths to avoid it, even if they knew that 3.2 percent alcohol by weight is…
Russell Enloe first brought his aesthetic proclivities to South Broadway when he opened American Aces Vintage Clothing in 1991. Back then, the block of small storefronts was dilapidated and struggling with a high number of vacancies, but the cheap rent and off-the-grid locale made it a perfect place for fringe…
When Kendra and Brian Dehaven bought iMi Jimi two years ago, they took on an underground institution. Tom Hollar had opened the skateboard-and-clothing store at 609 East 13th Avenue in 1986, when the city was starved for urban cool; after Hollar’s much-publicized murder in 1993, his wife — who’d been…
You wouldn’t want to be What’s So Funny’s child. Sure, it might sound like a real choice deal: the good looks, the slice of the What’s So Funny fortune, the awe on people’s faces when they overhear you at some Tuscany villa dinner party saying, “That’s right — Funny, as…
In the nascent days of 5280, says editor and publisher Dan Brogan, the local dailies frequently publicized events pushed by the magazine he founded — but such cooperation has waned. Not long ago, he reveals, the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handles business operations for the Denver Post and the Rocky…
The Worst of the Best To have and have not: Though I found most of the Best of Denver 2006 to be witty and informative, I did run across some rigid opinions about people living without homes. Under Best New Hangout for Homeless Teens, you noted that in Civic Center…
Doug Donovan hadn’t been sleeping much lately. It was 3:30 a.m. on a day in early February — the darkest, coldest time of the night during the darkest, coldest time of the year. The ground was frozen, the air subzero, and his hands were snowballs with icicle fingers. He wondered…
For years, industrious snowboarders have built makeshift terrain parks at St. Mary’s Glacier. But if 24-year-old Michael Coors has his way, riders won’t have to make their own fun on that rock-filled ice flow in order to catch a little air. In December, Coors announced plans to reopen an old…
I’m dressed more discreetly than usual this evening. Instead of a Flying Dog tank or a Jameson baby-doll tee — clothes that make me a human billboard for whatever product I’m pushing — I am decked in head-to-toe black: black knee-length skirt, black hose, black heels and a black backless…
Tony Shane Francis had his share of breaks. He pulled off bank robberies in Oregon and Idaho, escaped from jail in Arizona, made the scene on America’s Most Wanted and the FBI’s list of top fugitives, and dodged the wrath of the Aryan Brotherhood and black gangs in one of…
A few final words on the most overblown Colorado story since Bob Dougherty got his butt stuck to a Home Depot toilet seat. Within hours of Jay Bennish’s post-State of the Union address getting airplay on Mike Rosen’s March 1 show, the Overland High School teacher was the focus of…
Is Ed Smith experiencing an identity crisis? Smith is the longtime entertainment editor of the Denver Post. However, a recent call to him from yours truly prompted the person who answered the phone at the paper’s features desk to ask, “Entertainment editor or radio and TV?” I chose the former,…
Every other week, we, the fine citizens of Denver, are afforded the rare opportunity to flex our sinewy, civic muscles, explore our carnal yearnings for environmental consciousness, fill our purple bins with waste of the bottle and newsprint variety, and scream to the heavens, “Recycle this, oh ye god of…
