The Message

A couple of weeks ago, Stephen Meade, who’s known to listeners of hard-rocking KBPI-FM as Willie B. , received a complaint call about afternoon jock Greg “Uncle Nasty” Stone. “This lady said, ‘Let me speak to the program director,’ and I said, ‘This is Willie,'” he recalls. “She said, ‘Willie…

Loopers in the Loop

Chunk Foster graduated more than a decade ago from the University of Wyoming with a degree in communications, and when a friend jokingly recommended that they head to Florida to caddy for a season, he signed on without a second thought. It was just the sort of half-work, half-goof gig…

Letters to the Editor

Girl, Interrupted Society’s child: I’m not a big fan of Westword, and I’m not a big fan of stories that are written about people who are down and out for the exclusive purpose of advancing a political agenda. That said, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading…

Lost and Found

Baby Girl got deep into the game. She calls the women who bought crack from her “mommies”; the homeless men on the corners are “uncles.” Everyone on the lookout for crack along Colfax knows Baby G, everyone from the dope man to the hustlers, the hookers, the crackheads and the…

Tricks or Treatment

The Chrysalis Project is the latest in a long line of innovative city programs designed to deal more effectively with miscreants, and at the same time de-clutter courtrooms and free up jail space. Denver was the first jurisdiction in the country to devote a courtroom to domestic-violence restraining orders, and…

Off Limits

Perky right-wing pinup Ann Coulter – seen on the cover of Time the same week the mag named John Hickenlooper one of the country’s top five mayors — is now pushing Jon Caldara. A recent pitch letter from the Independence Institute came with a return envelope boasting a Ronald Reagan…

What’s So Funny

For the most part, What’s So Funny is content to leave the reporting to the reporters. While seasoned journalists here like to go out on “assignment,” track down “leads” and “avoid plagiarism,” What’s So Funny is content to just hang around the office, popping painkillers and teasing the kids at…

The Message

While the media’s rules of engagement aren’t set in stone, there is general agreement among journalists that story subjects shouldn’t be allowed to see any portion of an article prior to publication. But with “Early Exit: Denver’s Graduation Gap,” a sprawling series that ran from May 16 to 20, the…

Little Big Men

It had to compete for face time with the Indy 500, a Cubs-Rockies slugfest at Wrigley Field and the Memorial Day cookout in Uncle Elmer’s back yard. But the Colorado Crush’s first-ever home playoff game, against the San Jose SaberCats, drew a big enough (and loud enough) crowd Sunday afternoon…

Letters to the Editor

Dream Team Face it: I am very grateful to Patricia Calhoun for bringing some sanity to the controversy over illegal immigration with “Names and Faces,” her column in the May 26 issue. Pablo is just the sort of person we should want in this country. He may not be an…

What’s the Beef?

Mike first began experiencing symptoms within months of returning from the first Gulf War in 1992. They started with the headaches, then muscle cramps and diarrhea — each one debilitating, together pure hell. As an athlete and health nut, he wasn’t used to feeling so sick, so depleted. After all,…

Flexing His Muscle

In Legal Muscle, his self-published book about steroids and the law, attorney Rick Collins points out that one sign of law enforcement’s ignorance of steroids can be found in the text of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act, which misspells several anabolic compounds in places and lists others twice under different…

A Bulky Blue Line

You’d have to have been blind and deaf over the past year to miss what is clearly an epidemic of anabolic steroid use among a certain elite segment of this country’s population. Steroids make their users faster, stronger and bigger — all clear advantages in a line of work that…

Ticket to Ride

As the three skaters crested the hill behind the rec center at 104th Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard, they caught their first view of the newly completed Westminster Skate Park. Immediately they sensed that something was amiss. “Goddamn it,” one sighed. “Aw, man,” lamented another, throwing his board in the dirt…

Off Limits

Joseph Richardson, an investigator with Denver’s parking management division, was patrolling 25th Street in Curtis Park last month when he noticed a green 1993 Suburu Impreza with Texas license plates that he’d immobilized with a parking boot two days earlier. Only now the vehicle was parked five spaces up the…

What’s So Funny

Look, Melo, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. That’s obvious. You made that painfully clear at the last Nuggets game I attended when, despite the fact that I shrieked “Melo, Melo, Melo!” for the better part of three quarters, you didn’t so much as acknowledge my presence…

The Message

Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family has long been a media magnet, for obvious reasons: Any organization willing to take on an enemy as wily as SpongeBob Squarepants is bound to receive attention. But lately, another Christian institution in the area — New Life Church — has joined Focus in…

Rough Ride

Here’s a brainteaser for you and your mountain-biking buds to ponder over a bottle of Fat Tire after your latest single-track adventure: Is a mountain bike a machine? It’s not exactly the riddle of the Sphinx. But like many seemingly inane sports ponderables (how, exactly, did Carmelo get into bars…

Letters to the Editor

A Little Behind in His Work No kidding: My favorite part of “Spanks for the Memories,” Jared Jacang Maher’s May 19 cover story, was when Michael “Masterson” said, “My kids do not even know what spanking is. Spanking sucks as a way to raise your child.” I’m sure that when…

Working Out the Kinks

“I’m a fetishist,” announces Christiaan Howard. “I love women’s feet.” As creative director and CEO of Afterdarkkmedia, the 34-year-old Howard is the force behind Erotik-a, an annual fetish-themed gala designed to “to try to get people of all shapes and sizes to express themselves sensually without fucking each other.” The…

Food, Glorious Food

The action began in the walled courtyard of the James Beard House, a bastion of good taste and stuff that tastes good in the tony West Village. Young waiters darted among black-clad diners who sucked down tray after tray of hors d’oeuvre like a school of barracuda — hors d’oeuvre…

Unhappy Together

On May 10, representatives of Infinity Radio, a New York-based company that owns Denver stations KOOL 105, Jammin’ 92.5 and KIMN, handed market manager Drew Hilles his head. At this point, the motivations behind the firing are unclear; neither Hilles nor Infinity vice president/programming Keith Abrams could be reached for…