A couple of doors down from a packed bingo hall and past the recliner store in an Arvada strip mall, a line of teenagers dressed in black braves the pouring rain while waiting to enter the Rising Phoenix. The air inside is choked with smoke from clove cigarettes. Girls strut…
The Denver Tennis Club’s 4.5 men’s team was marching inexorably toward a second straight national championship, when suddenly, in the middle of the Colorado district championship tournament last month… “It’s the revenge of the nerds,” snarls Larry Gabler, the team’s coach. “It had everything to do with them wanting me…
Editor’s note: Last Friday, legendary Denver Rocky Mountain News gossip columnist Norm! Clarke announced his departure from this toddling town for the neon jungle of Las Vegas. The next day, several notes on cocktail napkins, allegedly scribbled by Norm! himself, were brought to our office by a Sing!Sing washroom attendant…
Snitch nationIt’s easy to rat someone out these days — hotlines abound for reporting everything from drunk driving to drug dealers. In fact, two hotlines inspired by the Columbine killings made their debut on the same day (with more to come). The first, backed by Mayor Wellington Webb, is the…
Previous Westword article
“The Heat Is On,”
October 22, 1998
These chile sellers have fire in their souls.
Bob Visotcky, who was recently profiled in this space (“The Man You Hate to Love,” August 26), continues to be among the hottest topics on the Denver radio rumor mill, in part because of the many hirings and firings at six local stations he oversees for Dallas-based AMFM Inc. Keeping…
The pictures, descriptions and accounts of Saturday evening’s debacle at Mile High Stadium are not pretty. But here goes. By the end of the fourth quarter, Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Mike Moschetti had thrown three interceptions, been sacked nine times and earned himself a bloody nose. Meanwhile, his team endured a…
Bruce Chopnik drinks Coors beer. Under normal circumstances, that’s not a big deal — hell, lots of men drink Coors — but Bruce Chopnik is also International Mr. Leather. He earned his title fair and square at a pageant in Chicago earlier this year by scoring high on the question-and-answer…
Martin Ramirez stands behind a counter at the Botanica y Yerberia Caridad del Cobre, beneath six rattlesnake skins and beside a display case filled with nearly 300 oils and even more perfumes and colognes, all neatly organized by category: potions, lotions, baths, washes, herbs and oils. Eight-ounce bottles of “Quita…
The Colfax Center Deli enjoyed a brisk business during its three years at 1245 East Colfax. Located just south of Columbia Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital and across the street from the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC), the deli and its owners, Michael Roberts and Daniel Dufresne, got…
Lieutenant Kurt Williams likes the way things used to be. As a career narc for the Denver Police Department, he used to be a member of the unofficial drug-cop association known as the Kilo Club. The club was the cops’ way to identify drug-enforcement superstars. If an officer could make…
Wedding bells may ring again at the Redstone Castle, thanks to a group of investors who kept the historic mansion from being sold at an August 29 auction and saved its legacy as a hotel and bed-and-breakfast. Colorado Summit Partners, a Denver company that designs and builds custom mountain homes,…
When your professional title is “lactation consultant,” things are tough enough. But for Laraine Lockhart Borman, director of the Mother’s Milk Bank in Denver, the names get worse. “We’ve been called ‘lactitions’ and ‘lactaters’ — every variation of those words,” Lockhart Borman says. But there’s one more title that really…
No-tell hotelTo keep up with its trendy downtown neighbors, the posh but dated Warwick Hotel is undergoing a major renovation. By next spring, the Warwick, at 1776 Grant Street, is increasing the number of its guest rooms to more than 200; it’s also adding meeting space, a fitness center, Internet…
Kent Olson is driving through his neighborhood with a notepad in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, and it’s all he can do to keep on course as he surveys row after row of modest brick-and-frame homes. He checks the mirror, flicks his turn signal, slows at…
Viewers tuning in to KMGH-TV/Channel 7 around 5:30 p.m. on August 23 expecting to see World News Tonight with Peter Jennings soon discovered that the station’s five o’clock newscast had been expanded as the result of a pre-season football game featuring the Denver Broncos, around whom so much in this…
Here’s to you, Mark McGwire. Thank you very much for thrilling us from the tips of our toes to the tops of our heads last summer with your home-run prowess. Thanks also for shining much-needed light on a game that’s threatened in recent seasons to wither in the darkness. That…
She climbed up into the back of the pickup and looked down at dozens of anxious faces. They could hear the sirens screaming several blocks away, where dust still hung in the air above the shattered building. That’s where these doctors, nurses and medical workers needed to be right now…
John Cominsky wants people to know that the Tranzport Hood is easy to use. He demonstrates this by putting one on. The change in his appearance is remarkable. In seconds, Cominsky no longer resembles an inventor and enterprising businessman. Instead, he looks like a dangerous maniac. A maniac with a…
Downtown developer Bruce Berger is giving Denver a lesson in real estate speculation, and it will only cost the public $45.8 million. Fourteen months ago, Berger bought the square block between California and Welton streets and 14th and 15th for the bargain-basement price of $3.3 million. He spent an additional…
he ten-year-old girl came home from school one day and told her parents that a boy was teasing her. He was pulling her ponytail and calling her names. It was her first year at Stedman Elementary School; in fact, it was her first year at any public school. Until the…
he southeast corner of Pearl Street and Louisiana Avenue appeared to be a prime location for Mr. Jay’s newest endeavor. With the Margarita Bay Club next door, the funky Stella’s Coffee House down the street and the University of Denver nearby, Mr. Jay — Leonard — figured his store, Highway…
