Since 1974, the Denver Museum of Natural History has been letting a little popular culture seep into the facility on weekend nights, when it transforms Gates Planetarium into a laserium: Instead of gazing at simulated stars, audiences watch laser light shows set to music–rock music. But early next month, those…
The patriarch of East Colfax Avenue has finally made it off the street. On August 5, James “Chico” Hamilton–“Papa Colfax” to those on Denver’s seediest stretch–died from complications of a handful of illnesses eating at his 58-year-old frame. For more than fifteen years, Hamilton, a homeless junk dealer and artist…
Can DeGeezer still throw DeBomb? That’s the question coaches, players and fans are asking this simmering August in Atlanta, Georgia. At the age of 44, veteran NFL quarterback Steve DeBerg has returned from five long years of retirement (and two years of coaching) to become backup to the Falcons’ oft-injured…
Kerouac Shlepped Here According to the August 6 Off Limits, Woody Harrelson wanted to see places in Denver where Jack Kerouac had been. Sadly, most of those places are gone. But the real bad news was delivered in your August 13 issue, with Jack Boulware’s excellent article, “The Howls That…
On May 22, 1996, John Sheron put on his softball uniform and told his wife he was going to a game. He played for a while, then drove up to the Wal-Mart in Evergreen, where he bought a shotgun. He took the gun out to his car, got in and…
True glamour is something I achieved one night three years ago, when I accessorized a $15 silver evening gown from TJ Maxx with plaid Wile E. Coyote sneakers and a child’s toy tiara. Although I have not worn the dress since, the tiara has proved a remarkably useful hair ornament,…
Ida Mae Brueske has lived in her small, north Golden home since 1962. An affable 76-year-old grandmother who raised five boys in this house with her late husband, Brueske thought she’d spend the rest of her days on the quiet street of well-kept lawns and backyard barbecues that, appropriately enough,…
Info:Correction Date: 09/03/1998 Info: The Howls That Jack Built Gerald Nicosia has spent a decade challenging the disposition of Jack Kerouac’s $20 million literary estate. Along the way, he’s annoyed most of what remains of the beat generation. By Jack Boulware Short and stocky, sporting a colorful children’s Band-Aid wrapped…
Hot to trot: Yes, that was Congresswoman Diana DeGette you saw pressing the flesh last Tuesday on the 16th Street Mall, surrounded by a rugby scrum of political officials from 25 “developing” countries. The lucky foreigners, from as far away as Angola, El Salvador and the Democratic Republic of the…
The Denver Police Department has embarked on a plan to compile a high-tech database of information on kids who hang out on the 16th Street Mall, a move that civil libertarians and youth advocates warn has dangerous implications because it will open police files on kids who’ve done nothing illegal…
The afternoon of July 24, a squad of Denver SWAT cops stormed the Walker family’s home at 2639 Humboldt Street to serve warrants on Kenneth Walker and his cousin Alvin Young for possession of a controlled substance. On Walker, they say, they recovered six-hundredths of a gram of crack cocaine…
For a fellow who’s regarded as one of baseball’s old goats, commissioner Bud Selig has been remarkably flexible when it comes to certain innovations. While he was still “acting” commissioner–an impermanence that lasted six years–Selig pushed each league to split into three regional divisions and add a wild card team,…
See Bill Run Regarding Ward Harkavy’s “Making Book on Bill Owens,” in the August 6 issue: Okay, okay! I surrender! If I promise to vote for anyone other than Bill Owens, will you quit writing is-he-or-isn’t-he stories about Owens’s supposed ties to the religious right? The only thing more boring…
Moments after the cuffs clicked shut around his skinny little wrists, Lamont knew he was in trouble. The handcuffs were a gift from his dad, a Boulder County sheriff’s deputy, who’d finally relented after months of pestering. The set was cheap, made in Japan, with flimsy alloy keys, but perfect…
Bill Owens was a most confident man and, as always, a cordial host when a reporter entered the air space of his gubernatorial campaign headquarters at I-25 and Colorado Boulevard last week. “We’ve got cold water and some warm wine–some of that wine-in-a-box,” he offers. Jesus Christ. Wasn’t he the…
When the telephone was invented in 1876, the major telecommunications issue was most likely whether “hello” or “hoy-hoy” would be the appropriate way to answer the newfangled device. These days, the telephone industry is a touch more complex, as frustrated US West customer Anna Croteau discovered during the last week…
For the moment, Sergeant Attila Denes of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is a prisoner of his own department’s top-notch security. He waves gamely through the glass of the county jail’s medical center, trying to signal the deputies in an electronic control booth eight feet away to open the door…
Natural bored killer: It’s taken almost twenty years, but hit man Charles Harrelson finally had his day in court–again. Convicted of the 1979 Texas murder of federal judge John H. Wood Jr., and now serving life in the federal Supermax facility in Florence, Harrelson has been angling for a new…
The harassment, says Philip Moore, started soon after he became a janitor at the University of Denver. Gay-sex jokes. Racist comments. Sexual harassment. All of it, he contends, coming from his boss, Al Romero, who Moore and other former employees contend was a one-stop shop of crude behavior. Romero, says…
They’re old. Starting with the left guard, who’s undergone twenty surgeries since high school, they’ve got more dents than a demolition derby. The owner has painted lurid orange flames on their new unis, so they look less like Super Bowl champs than an arena-ball club on the make. After crying…
While real-estate values soar across Denver, one neighborhood–Overland Park–has been left in the dust. A few miles down the river, the Central Platte Valley is finally fulfilling its century-old promise, transforming its gritty past into the city’s future centerpiece: already home to Coors Field, an amusement park and a children’s…
There are no farm implements left at the Clatworthy Company, the Fort Morgan business that was once the oldest International Harvester distributor in the United States. They’ve all been auctioned off. In 1990 Clatworthy decided to concentrate on automobiles instead of farm machinery. But because of the GM strike, there…
