The black-tar heroin inside the party balloons inside the pockets of Enoc’s baggy cargo pants came a long way to get to the corner of 18th and Larimer streets. So did Enoc. The heroin he’s selling most likely originated in Afghanistan, where the more bombs fall and bullets fly, the…
Not all downtown smack dealers are Mexican or Central American. Some are white, with most of those falling in the category of gutter punk. They are homeless, semi-homeless or formerly homeless, red-blooded American youths in their teens and early twenties. Many of them are runaways. Unlike their foreign counterparts, who…
Al Gore may have fathered it and Google may be its master, but Drew Massey hopes to be the Internet’s newest pop-culture icon, thanks to his online television station, ManiaTV! “Smash your TV,” the 34-year-old says. “This is a new generation. TV is dead.” Instead, he wants everyone watching Maniatv.com,…
As you head north up I-25 from the border to Colorado Springs, you know you’re approaching conservative country. After all, this stretch of pavement is known as Ronald Reagan Highway, and there’s even an official exit for Focus on the Family. Still, the “Welcome to Colorado” sign, complete with state…
Scott Patrick and Denise Plante, who co-host Colorado & Co. , a daily talk program recently launched by Channel 9, were awfully upbeat about the lineup on tap for the September 27 edition. “Direct from New York City, the editor-in-chief of every girl’s bridal bible, Modern Bride magazine, is here,”…
October 5 marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Dwain Weston. Weston was known in extreme-sports circles as a star BASE jumper; the abbreviation stands for building, antenna, span and earth — which participants leap from with parachutes. Last year at this time, Weston was a featured performer in…
Where the Columbine Scandals Grow Hide and seek: Regarding Alan Prendergast’s “Anatomy of a Cover-up,” in the September 30 issue: Yup, Jefferson County intentionally buried the evidence before Columbine buried our dead. And although Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas (now running for Congress) has been mentioned in some “major…
Here’s some of what you learn during your first half-dozen years as an animal-cruelty investigator: That if enough animals are kept for an extended time in a house, the sheer amount of urine and feces can collapse a floor; That the smell of concentrated ammonia contained in animal urine, confined…
It took five years, a state grand jury and key evidence from a reluctant witness, but families who lost children in the attack on Columbine High School finally had their worst suspicions confirmed: Top Jefferson County leaders knew something awful about prior police investigations of killers Eric Harris and Dylan…
A half-dozen local 7-Eleven franchises aren’t thanking heaven for a recent rash of “snatch and dash” heists, which have resulted in no arrests — but a lot of head-scratching over the culprits’ peculiar shopping lists. According to police reports, they started at 2:45 a.m. Thursday, September 16, when a Hispanic…
Newspapers are generally good at reporting about lawsuits involving major businesses within their circulation area, but they can be notably less thorough when they or their affiliates are in the judicial crosshairs. The Denver Post deserves credit, then, for running a September 15 report about an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission…
Before it’s over, maybe they could match him up against a ’58 Edsel. Or the Hindenburg. Or Michael Dukakis. Something. Because Zippy Chippy, whose papers say he is a thoroughbred racehorse, has never won versus his own kind. In eleven long years of trying (and sometimes not trying), the thirteen-year-old…
Butt Seriously, Folks Gasping at straws: I want to thank Laura Bond for “Smoke Detector,” in the September 16 issue, and especially thank Anne Landman for dedicating her life to stamping out smoking. As someone who finally stopped — after thirty years! — I know what a hard habit it…
The girls are twenty feet off the road, climbing stealthily up an embankment to get a better look at grazing elk. Their woodcraft isn’t sneaky enough, though, to evade the iron gaze of Gregg Burgess, who pulls his four-wheeler to the side of the road, steps out and beckons to…
Memo to Denver’s aspiring megalomaniac masterminds: Your ideal lair is currently on the market for a cool $1.4 million. “Massive 45,000+ sq. ft. of underground floor-space; high chain-link fence around central complex; 2 high capacity deep wells in power dome,” reads the listing on broker 20th Century Castles’ website. Mountain…
In the City and County of Denver, apparently waste can be cost-effective. Of the $132.4 million spent on the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building, $10.7 million went to furniture. Walking through the shrine to our former mayor, it’s abundantly clear how some of that money was spent. The airy…
According to Wayne Laugesen, a columnist for the Boulder Weekly, there are times when members of the press need to stop observing and start participating. “Let’s say you have a child who’s standing, panicked, frightened and crying, on railroad tracks,” he allows. “There’s a train coming down the tracks, and…
Next time you’re in the market for a pair of guinea pigs, a Ford pickup or a bag of jalapeño peppers, tune in to radio station KFKA in Greeley for Saturday morning’s Swap Shop show. You might even wind up buying something on a whim — like the black faux-fur…
Profiles in Discourage Cadillac jack: Regarding Jared Jacang Maher’s “Catch and Release,” in the September 16 issue: We purchased a Cadillac Escalade EXT truck for our son back in May 2002. Between then and this July, he was stopped by Colorado police agencies — Denver, Commerce City, Thornton, Adams County…
Anne Landman is addicted to cigarettes. She’s never actually smoked a whole one, but she can’t stop thinking about them: how they’re made, how they’re marketed, what’s in them, who buys them, who makes sure they’ll always be for sale. “People think I’m obsessed, a one-issue person,” Landman says. “It’s…
Mike Walker recently got bumped by the cops — again. This time it went down on a Friday afternoon as he was heading home from school with his boy Brandon. The eighteen-year-old northeast Denver natives were treading steady down tree-lined 29th Avenue toward Williams Street when a District 2 Gang…
Although the space at 2200 Champa Street was empty for seven years, there was always hope that somehow, someday, someone would bring back Muddy’s Java Cafe, the coffeehouse that helped two generations of Denver youth define themselves. But now that hope’s dried up. The building was purchased last year by…
