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This much is certain: On the morning of November 27, 1989, Avianca Airlines Flight 203 took off from Bogotá, Colombia, headed for the city of Cali. The Cali run is a journey of a few hundred miles over mountainous terrain, requiring less than an hour in the air. Flight 203…

In the late 1970s, when June Turner’s son, Ron Mays, first told her that he wanted to dedicate his life to art, two words flashed through this loving mother’s brain: “Starving artist,” she says. If Mays’s subsequent career hasn’t quite lived up to Turner’s darkest fears, neither has it obliterated…

For more than fifty years, the Plains Conservation Center has been trying to preserve a remnant of the eastern Colorado high plains. Unfortunately, the organization succeeded — and now a remnant is all that’s left. The center, which once owned more than 1,600 acres of shortgrass prairie near Hampden Avenue…

For the past month, Westword Music Showcase ballots have been pouring into our offices. Like Cabbage Patch Kids and good mullet haircuts, each is unique in its own special way: Some are neatly written out with a careful hand, others are scribbled in a doctor-like scrawl. All, however, convey strong…

Back in 1972, when Louisville and Broomfield were just sleepy little burgs that broke up the empty space between Denver and Fort Collins, no one much cared how a local business drew attention to itself. Why, an enterprising entrepreneur could fasten a life-sized fiberglass giraffe to his roof if he…

It’s been over a month since the official deployment of the Denver dailies’ joint-operating agreement, and the chaos has hardly calmed, particularly in a business sense. Publicly, the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handles all non-editorial functions of the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, insists that plummeting circulation and…

Sucker Punchline Troubleshoot first, ask questions later: Regarding Michael Roberts’s “OutFoxed,” in the May 10 issue: Tom Martino is well-known for scolding consumers who put money into risky investments without doing proper due diligence. But now, when he finds himself on the losing end of a dubious $50,000 investment with…

In the beginning, there were no BushMaster 2000s, no Redz Comfort Gear, no 32 Degrees Defender Goggle systems, but rather loggers and ranchers, rough men of the forests and the plains, and they needed a modern tool to identify their interests from inside a pickup or astride a horse. So…

It’s a Friday afternoon at the Renaissance Children’s Center in Lakewood, and six-year-old Demetrey Fulks is out of control again. First he hit a boy over the head with a plush Pokémon toy. Then he ordered another student to bring him his Game Boy. Now he’s play-fighting with some other…

The members of the Denver Board of Education were so unimpressed by the superintendent candidates that a search firm produced almost two years ago when Chip Zullinger was named to lead Denver Public Schools that they decided to use a different company when it came time to replace him. But…

This all started over twenty-five bucks. Maybe if his jailers had let him keep his money five years ago, Robert Wirtz Jr. wouldn’t have embarked on his seemingly endless campaign against the powers that be in Grand County. But they took his money, and Wirtz wants his payback. Over the…

In 1895, playwright Oscar Wilde took the Marquess of Queensbury to court in London, claiming the marquess had libeled him by calling him a sodomite. A trial was held; the judge decided the marquess had been correct. Since homosexuality was a crime in nineteenth-century England, Wilde himself was soon in…

Easter was last month, so the bunny sighted at Argonaut Wine & Liquor on May 5 must have been another animal altogether. Indeed. Playboy’s Miss May, Crista Nicole, was at the giant liquor store on East Colfax Avenue preening, penning autographs and promoting Pete’s Wicked Ale — which has paired…

For most of their lives, they had only each other. Constance Rolon was orphaned at age fifteen. She married, then lost her husband in World War II. Another man abandoned her while she was carrying his child. After Paul was born, Constance raised him on her own, working as a…

On April 20, a number of people in the broadcast and public-relations fields received a succinct e-mail from Scott McDonald, managing editor of news for Channel 31: “I wanted to let you all know that I had made the decision to resign my position at KDVR Fox 31 in Denver…

Tiers for Fears Big deal: After reading Julie Jargon’s “Culture Clash,” in the April 26 issue, I think it is high time we revisit the concept of how SCFD funds are divided. The Big Four in the top tier just keep getting bigger and greedier. (Haven’t Denver residents also approved…

Diane Veaseys dream rested on a windswept, 36-acre piece of land with a view of Pikes Peak. She calls it her ranch, though only someone who was raised in the confines of a city would think to describe it in those terms. She and her husband, Earl, moved to the…

So, Fred Pasternack is standing behind the counter on his first day at work — this must be back in 1962 — when a guy walks into the pawnshop. “I need a loan.” “Okay,” Fred says. “Whaddya got to hock?” The guy reaches inside his jacket, fumbles around a minute,…

Talk about greasing the wheels! At last Saturday’s Carousel of Wishes Ball (not to be confused with the Carousel Ball hosted in the early ’80s by Barbara and Twentieth Century-Foxy Marvin Davis, before they took off for La-La Land), sweeter-and-lighter-than-a-Krispy-Kreme Bob Goen, the Entertainment Tonight anchor who emceed the benefit…

Because it was spring, I was craving the sort of home-improvement supplies you need at this time of renewal, when outdoor projects seem not only possible, but inevitable. I was considering scraping and sanding decks, cobbling together outdoor furniture, laying down swaths of concrete, maybe even wielding a tube of…