Robert Duran was lying face down, his hands tied behind his back, when his life as a gangbanger came to a violent, terrifying end. A group of men who said they were cops had busted into the apartment the eighteen-year-old Duran shared with his girlfriend. Now she was next to…
In 1987, the Colorado General Assembly authorized the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to collect and track intelligence information on gang members and their associates. At the same time, metro police departments began compiling their own databases — and a person didn’t have to commit any crime in order to make…
“That corner was the sorriest-looking mess you’ve ever seen,” Michael Beckley says, referring to a small curbside plot of earth along 11th Avenue between Downing and Corona. So two months ago he cleaned it up, spending roughly thirty bucks and three hours — including a trip to Home Depot –…
By the numbers, Modern Drunkard’s first convention in Las Vegas May 14-16 was a hit, with over 500 participants, four weddings, three proposals, six Denver punk bands, seven burlesque girls, zero arrests and at least one stomach-pumping. “There were some other hospitalizations,” says Frank Rich, chief editor of the Denver-based…
According to Westword’s Best of Denver 2004, the “Best Thing to Come Out of the JOA” — the joint operating agreement linking business operations at the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News — was the comics section in the Sunday Post. Each week, the colorful spread covered a whopping…
John Servis couldn’t believe it. At 5 a.m., he says, a couple hundred bleary-eyed fans were already lined up along the rail at Philadelphia Park, awaiting their hero. By mid-morning, the crowd had swelled to more than 8,500 — hard-core gamblers with unlit cigar stubs in their teeth, students wearing…
Arrested Development Since Westword published David Holthouse’s “Stalking the Bogeyman,” in our May 13 issue, we’ve been inundated with letters about the story — and all too many of those letters have come from readers who, like David, were sexually assaulted when they were children. On Monday, when news of…
At a few minutes past midnight on May 18, after more than half a day of uninterrupted radio listening, I felt my will to live gradually slipping away. Which was good news, actually, since I thought I’d lost it entirely during the late afternoon. I had no one to blame…
Once upon a time, plenty of radio stations practiced the fine art of eclecticism. Now most stick to narrowly defined formats. Tune in such purveyors at any time and you’ll almost certainly get an earful of the same stuff you heard the previous day, week, month or maybe even decade…
Dear President Bush, Your appearance at the Air Force Academy’s Falcon Stadium on Wednesday will be an unexpected honor for the Class of 2004. You weren’t scheduled to address this group of future servicemen and women; you were supposed to come for last year’s graduation, but you canceled. And, really,…
A man stands in a black robe and hood, arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. The image is newly infamous, emblematic of the rapidly escalating Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq. But in this case, the hooded man is not an Iraqi prisoner, and he is not terrified. He’s hanging…
Last week’s auction was supposed to resolve the conundrum of who owns Barnum, a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex with a fascinating and troubled past. But the rancor and intrigue surrounding the much-contested fossil has only deepened, leaving a group of battered Denver investors crying foul — again. Discovered in 1995 in…
The wisenheimers at Mighty Fudge Studios have released their latest assault on the Bush administration — just in time for George W’s fly-by visit to Colorado next week for a major Republican fundraiser and graduation speech at the Air Force Academy the next day (see “It Won’t Fly” ). The…
The biggest news in men’s professional tennis recently occurred over a two-week span and involved a single player. Andre Agassi, whose bald head, startled expression and thick brows make him the world’s most recognizable American men’s player, lost in the first round of the Grand Prix Hassan II, a minor…
Leader of the Pack Soar losers: Regarding “The War Within,” Julie Jargon’s first story on the Air Force Academy: I was watching 7 News last night when they announced that they had received the Peabody Award for investigative reporting on the Air Force Academy scandal. Well, I remember when I…
Bill Masters is looking for a meth lab. In the big city, the search would take him down mean streets, to a ratty duplex or a motel bathroom or some tweaker’s garage. But the resort town of Telluride has no mean streets, and the rest of San Miguel County, where…
When Andrew McDonald started as a freshman at South High School, he thought politics were dumb, boring and totally irrelevant to his teenage life. Four years later, he spends weekends volunteering for the John Kerry presidential campaign and writes and performs politically charged poetry in local slam events. “I didn’t…
Student actors at North High School learned a lot from Zoot Suit Riots, the musical that took over their school — and their lives — this spring (“The Next Stage,” April 22). They learned, for example, how to be better performers and how to pull off an ambitious group project…
Democrat John Kerry may have been born at Fitzsimons Army Hospital, but another presidential candidate really lost his head over Colorado. Mike the Headless Chicken’s campaign for U.S. President officially kicked off last weekend, when the fifth annual Mike the Headless Chicken Festival drew hundreds of supporters to Fruita for…
Heath Urie says that for as long as he’s been with the Mirror, the University of Northern Colorado’s student newspaper, of which he is currently editor, “I have seen nothing but the utmost integrity in journalism ethics from our editors and our reporting staff. All of our stories have been…
George Washington played a couple of seasons with the Chicago White Sox. He hit a respectable .268, with nine homers, 24 doubles and 52 runs batted in. The braided waistcoat and buckle shoes must have slowed him down, though. In his 128-game big-league career, George stole just one base. None…
The Killer Inside Him A life in the balance: I just finished reading “Stalking the Bogeyman,” in the May 13 issue, and have been in tears ever since. I can completely empathize with David Holthouse. When I was twelve, I was raped by a man in his late twenties. He…
