In early September 2001, Don Goede made an absent-minded choice that brought tragedy into his small Brooklyn apartment: He left his windows open before leaving town. As he sat with relatives in Colorado Springs a few days later and watched the World Trade Center implode, the debris of the disaster…
If you see Lynne Bruning, founder of local fashion label The Girl’s Gotta Have It, at the Burning Man festival in Nevada this week, be sure to tell her how fabulous her clothes are — and they just might become yours. “I’m going to use the clothes for barter,” says…
Last week, Boulder community radio station KGNU announced the purchase of Denver’s KJME/1390-AM for $4.1 million, plus an extra $100,000 fee for an operating agreement that allowed the new signal to begin broadcasting on August 29, just in time for the opening of the Republican National Convention. KGNU only had…
On a recent afternoon that threatens rain, Thomas and Anthony are already waiting when the black and yellow Compass truck rolls up to Argo Park. The two boys race their BMX-style bikes along 47th Street parallel to the truck, skidding to an impressive, rubber-laying halt as the big vehicle noses…
CU in September Fighting mad: Regarding Bill Gallo’s “Tough for Buffs,” in the August 26 issue: No surprise that Westword would hit a program when it’s already down. The big question is, will Gallo eat his words when the CU Buffs have a winning season? I’ll be out supporting our…
Back in the day, University of Colorado football players bonded with each other at pep rallies. They matched appetites at the training table. For awhile there, they went on raft trips and listened to their coach strum his guitar. Always, they exchanged fellow-feeling by kicking serious ass in the grim…
Like most girls born in the ’70s, Amanda Gagliardi grew up on roller skates, enraptured by Xanadu and the Amazonian Roller Derby girls. So when a friend from Seattle called her earlier this year with an “awful” story about local girls recruiting for a new skate league, Gagliardi was incredulous…
During my long, murky and still uncompleted career as a University of Colorado student, I worked and quit (i.e., my supervisor told me to quit before I was fired) many jobs on campus. The most memorable? Orientation leader. The two-day orientation program run by CU’s Office of Orientation is designed…
Visitors to the Denver Tech Center headquarters of Altitude Sports & Entertainment, a new network owned by millionaire investor Stan Kroenke, might expect it to resemble Athens a couple of weeks prior to the start of this year’s Summer Olympics. After all, Greek organizers were still desperately trying to complete…
A Rocky Road Raiders of the lost art: All those debating who was on the swift boat when it did what should look at Patricia Calhoun’s column about Jon Lipsky, the FBI agent who led the raid on Rocky Flats (“True Lies,” August 19). He is a true American hero…
Within minutes of my getting together with Jared Polis, he almost kills me. Twice. My near-death experiences take place toward the end of April, after Polis, an idiosyncratic Boulder businessman, politician and philanthropist just shy of his 29th birthday, picks me up at Westword’s offices on the way to Coors…
In Brazil, this skateboard is famous. Here, it’s locked up in a Denver Police Department evidence room. The board is chipped and dented and scuffed. On its underside is a hand-painted fire ant struggling beneath the weight of a pink rose petal twenty times its size, plus Bible verse Matthew…
Just when you thought the My Twinn dolls were dead, dead, dead, they’ve come back — Chucky-like! — for a return engagement. And for the sake of little girls everywhere, let’s hope that this sequel is more successful than Bride of Chucky. Earlier this year, the Greenwood Village-based company responsible…
Tony Dispense grew up small, which is how he gained the lifelong habit of trying harder than just about anyone else. This was especially true in sports. When he played tennis, he’d stay out late practicing his strokes. While mountain biking, he seemed to push just a little more than…
What a Circus! An elephant never forgets: The August 5 Worst-Case Scenario, “The Greatest Shun on Earth,” was really not funny and showed that Kenny Be missed the point. It also came at a time that was detrimental to Initiative 100 just prior to the primary election. I thought a…
Fletcher Stumph will drive a Greyhound bus between Steamboat Springs and Salt Lake City for six more days. After that, the route, along with 260 stops in thirteen northern states, will disappear. The price of gas is up and ridership is down — that’s what Greyhound management says, and Stumph…
Eighty-three-year-old icon Blinky the Clown, who was born Russell Scott, was all snoofly last week when Victor Bencomo found him at Blinky’s Antiques and Collectibles, his tiny shop on South Broadway. Bencomo had dropped by to beg the former star of Blinky’s Fun Club, which was canceled by Channel 2…
On a recent episode of HBO’s Real Time, comic Bill Maher suggested that the young woman who accuses basketballer Kobe Bryant of raping her last year is named “Looney McSlut.” Amid audience laughter, he added, “I think it is, actually. They weren’t supposed to release it, but…” Thanks to Maher…
The slightly crooked basketball hoop in his family’s Congress Park back yard holds many memories and meanings for Kevin Fletcher. Dribbling a ball under that basket one hot afternoon last week, Kevin thought about the times his driveway suddenly turned into the gleaming floor of the L.A. Forum. About the…
A Read-Letter Day Free love: These days, people are ungrateful for just about everything, and I’ve pretty much learned to accept it by now. But sometimes, like when there is blatant disrespect for a free newspaper (as in last week’s Letters column), I just have to say something. Westword may…
Mike Zinna is feeling giddy. After years of battling Jefferson County officials, whom he’s accused of everything from financial malfeasance and moral bankruptcy to bad hairdos, he figures he finally has the bastards nailed. What he has are surveillance videotapes unmasking the people who’ve been sending him anonymous faxes from…
When Hunter Weeks’s mom was in the Peace Corps, she traveled Africa by thumb, hitching across the Sahara Desert with just a girlfriend and a map. That was the mid-’60s, a decade before her son — and heir to her wanderlust — was born in Scottsdale, Arizona. “That was her…
