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Eight days after Danny’s funeral service, his parents and sister gathered in front of the Nativity scene at the Denver City and County Building. The weather was turning colder and snow was in the forecast as they waited for a few reporters to gather with their cameras and notepads. Their…

An inmate at the Denver County Jail wants something to drink to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and he wants something with a little more punch than Kool-Aid. First he swipes a plastic trash bag while he’s on cleanup duty by folding the bag flat and slipping it into the heel…

For the record, Douglas Bruce is not a socialist. You don’t have to be one, he says, to despise the regressive tax structure in the state of Colorado, which heaps an unjust load of the state and local tax burden on the backs of the poor. “This is really a…

A rocky weekAfter taking heat for its failure to throw a New Year’s Eve party and criticism for instituting “martial law” downtown on what was elsewhere the world’s most festive night, the office of Mayor Wellington Webb defended itself last week by circulating an editorial published in the January 4…

Begin with the tattoo and Leonard’s big, bald head, because the tattoo that screams from atop Leonard’s big, bald head says it all. On Wednesday, September 1, Leonard Carlo had just returned from a trip to Alamosa when the manager of his Colorado Springs bar delivered the bad news: Two…

Appearances are important at Channel 31, Denver’s Fox affiliate. For example, while a request for an interview with news director Bill Dallman, who is putting together a 9-to-10 p.m. newscast tentatively scheduled to debut in late spring or summer, is happily granted, there’s a string attached: Promotion and marketing manager…

It takes someone with a bit of a culinary wild side to try the appetizer of sliced buffalo tongue with caper sauce at The Fort in Morrison. Even the bay-leaf-and-black-pepper seasoning doesn’t change the fact that you are about to bite into, well, the tongue of a buffalo. But, hell,…

When the lights dim over the crowd, a child clad in African robes ascends the stage and in a slightly nervous voice introduces The Black Nativity. The cast gathers on stage one by one until one becomes forty, and for the next two hours, one powerful voice after another belts…

Here’s a lesson for young CEO wannabes looking for negotiating tips: When you agree to become a chief executive officer of, say, a local phone company, make sure that your contract has a clause in it that ensures that if you lose your job through a merger, your landing will…

A veteran official of the Colorado Department of Corrections resigned last week in the wake of controversy surrounding two sexual-harassment lawsuits that have cost the state more than a million dollars. The departure of Joe Paolino, associate warden of the Territorial Correctional Facility, came three weeks after a $287,500 settlement…

Future shlockOnce upon a time, Denver was so trendy that the think tank that would go on to name Colorado a “bellwether” state was actually based here. But when John Naisbitt’s Megatrends made the bigtime in the early ’80s, he moved his office to Telluride (with a satellite in D.C.),…

Heaven, December 31, 1999 Once again, it’s time for the millennial survey of all that is my dominion. And as I look out over the heavens and Earth, one thing troubles me greatly: the state of Colorado. Those people live in the closest thing left to Eden, but I haven’t…

John Stone As chaos reigned inside Columbine High School on April 20, Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone told reporters that as many as 25 people could be dead as a result of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s rampage. Eight months later he defended those erroneous statements, telling the Rocky Mountain…

Welcome to Colorado — Now Go Home At the beginning of 1999, the state began replacing its fading purple-and-orange “Welcome to Colorado: Mountains and Much More!” border signs, which had been criticized as “too California.” For $133,000, the signs were replaced with brand-new “nostalgic” brown highway signs with jagged edges…

Beer Wolf (not his real name) steps from his bedroom into his basement studio, a large glass jar in his hand. As he unscrews the lid and presents the jar to a visitor, a musty aroma wafts up from the leafy green resinous material within. “You can’t buy this around…

It’s a cold Friday evening in Denver, and 100 people have gathered at the Catholic Worker Soup Kitchen for a free meal. Steamy bowls of cream of chicken soup sit next to servings of tossed salad and slices of apple pie; a friendly volunteer walks around the room, pouring coffee…

Warning: The language in this story may be considered inappropriate for children and quite possibly revolting by any adult not employed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. Whatever else you might say about Joe Paolino, he’s not shy about handing out compliments. One woman who worked for him says he…

Coloradans have watched in despair the past few years as ticky-tacky subdivisions and ugly big-box retail stores have sprung up in once-bucolic landscapes. Growth now routinely tops the list of issues residents are most upset about, and the coming year will be a pivotal one for those who want to…

In 1989, Denver voters approved a $2.5 million bond for what would have been the city’s eighth golf course on an empty chunk of land close to the area where Denver International Airport would be built. Throughout the 1990s, the city talked a good game about building the course at…