At twenty minutes past noon on the last day of July, a man wearing a “Licensed to Speed” T-shirt backed into the Grand Dining Hall (read: food court) at Park Meadows Town Center (read: mall), tugging a mover’s dolly with a large item strapped to it. At first glance, the…
Now that the Stanley Cup’s in the trophy case and the Rockies are in the toilet, local sports junkies can return to their first love in good conscience. All eyes are fixed on Greeley, a grim backwater drenched in brutal heat and stockyards perfume, where the Denver Broncos and their…
Lost and Found Department The joy of Saxonia: I found “Smelter Skelter,” Stuart Steers’s July 26 story about the lost town of Saxonia, very interesting. Richard Boulware did a fine job researching Saxonia. My only hope is that vandals will stay out of the area until a Colorado historian or…
For the truest of Christian believers, Good Friday is among the most sacred dates on the calendar. In America, though, very few receive time off to commemorate it. Employers who would never dream of asking people on their payrolls to toil away on Christmas typically don’t think twice about requiring…
It’s just after 7 a.m. in late July, but at 9,500 feet the early morning air already has an autumn slap. Aaron Brill, chief executive officer of Core Mountain Enterprises, the first company to build a new ski area in Colorado in twenty years, skids into work in his 1974…
In the days since Boulder activist John Sherwood jumped off Flagstaff Mountain to his death on July 16, his stunned friends, fellow activists and a local journalist have remembered him as a town hero. The suicide note he left for his family explained that he didn’t want to face the…
It looks like Denver can duck its goose dilemma no longer. The Colorado Division of Wildlife announced last week that it won’t be rounding up Canada geese this year — or in future years — from parks, golf courses and ponds and deporting them, as it has done in previous…
Drive-by, He Said Outrageous impression: Ed Thomas’s statements in David Holthouse’s story about the new skate park (“Big Air,” July 19) are truly outrageous. He is totally out of touch with reality. Skateboarding is a mainstream sport (whether you like it or not) with hardcore roots. Thomas’s impressions of thuggish…
Shortly before nine in the evening, with just a trace of light left in the sky, several Adarand Constructors trucks stand in the left lane of Interstate 25 north of Monument Hill. A dozen workers — evenly split between whites and Hispanics, and all wearing safety vests, goggles, hardhats and…
The first clue was an 1880 train ticket for the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad. The ticket listed the railroad’s stops, beginning with Denver and ending with Buena Vista (the railroad never made it to the Pacific, but the nineteenth century wasn’t big on truth in advertising). The conductor…
Defense lawyer Harvey Steinberg wants a copy of the alleged child pornography his client is accused of possessing and distributing. Arapahoe County prosecutors say Steinberg can look at it, but he can’t have a copy, because it’s illegal for anyone — including a defense lawyer — to possess child porn…
The Denver Botanic Gardens is trying to be a better neighbor to residents who have long complained about noise from summer concerts, the high volume of traffic and street parking during DBG events. An apologetic Brinsley Burbidge, the organization’s executive director, made the initial peace offering on July 18, during…
While Colorado’s Ocean Journey is awash in financial woes, its founders are doing swimmingly. Back in February, William Fleming and Judy Petersen-Fleming, who created the aquarium and now serve, respectively, as its director of life sciences and its vice president for creative and strategic planning (at a reported salary of…
At first glance, the $7,000 fine the Federal Communications Commission levied on May 31 against Colorado Springs-based KKMG, known as Magic FM, seems inconsequential. But because the station, which is appealing the decision, was punished for playing a so-called radio edit of “The Real Slim Shady,” a hit by Eminem…
The crooks, whores and liars who run the Olympic Games have a weakness for symbolism almost as powerful as their taste for cash. They love their flag-raising ceremonies and their five-ring logos almost as much as they love bribery, and they go ape for big pots of fire. Most of…
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Ed Concrete dreams: I was glad to read David Holthouse’s “A Tough Grind,” in the July 19 issue — an honest article addressing the new public skate park. Thank you, Westword, and thank you, Joyce Foster, for giving our subculture the respect we…
Fifteen-year-old Denver School of the Arts sophomore Charly Lewis refers to his most recent bust for illegal skateboarding as “the alleged trespassing incident.” It happened last month. Summer vacation had just begun. “It was a beautiful day,” Lewis recalls. “It was the kind of day where I didn’t care what…
Nobody knows what’s going on inside Colorado’s nursing homes better than Virginia Fraser. One recent morning, Fraser spent several hours visiting the Cherrelyn nursing home in Littleton, introducing herself to residents as their ombudsman. “I’m here to advocate for the people who live here,” she told an elderly woman with…
Bill Coleman is a hardworking man. He’s reliable and responsible, and he shows up on time. In fact, his previous employers have nothing but good things to say about him. “He’s definitely a people person,” says Merilyn Lyons, special events coordinator for Conoco in Colorado. “I would recommend him to…
Alan Prendergast is on a roll. The veteran Westword staff writer has just racked up two more journalism wins — and the contest season isn’t over. Last week, Prendergast’s “Lessons From the Third Grade,” published in the January 27, 2000, issue, was named winner of the Paul L. Myhre Single…
John Denver died in the water — he crashed his experimental plane into California’s Monterey Bay in 1997 — but he lived in, and for, the mountains. So it’s fitting that a group of climbers is now trying to reach, and then scale, the northernmost — and never-before-climbed — mountain…
On May 25, Erik Weihenmayer was sitting on top of the world. Well, technically speaking, he was lying near the top of the world. With his stomach convulsing. He’d just yanked himself over the 39-foot rock face called the Hillary Step, the last technical hurdle on the way to the…
