A Detoxing Situation On the behalf of every person who has ever had to deal with living institutionalized, I applaud Eric Dexheimer’s “Used and Abused,” in the July 23 issue. I was once inside our system of social services, whose greatest injustice has always been disorganization and a gross lack…
The camouflaged kids have taken up arms. They’re fighting to claim territory, weaving around old houses, wending their way through junked cars and trucks on this field in industrial north Denver. Phhht. A hit. The proprietor of the paintball battlefield is Floyd Samuel, and he knows all about war. He’s…
Dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved golf shirt, his face flushed with sun and wind, Dave Liniger roams his Denver Tech Center offices this sultry summer morning with more than the usual bounce in his step. When you own the company, you can wear whatever you want to work, and…
Once beaten: GOP political candidate John Gonce, whose campaign for the statehouse in Denver’s District 1 gets more gonzo with his every passing utterance, told the Denver Post this month that he’s running to “champion the cause” of men falsely accused of domestic violence. Gonce said his 1989 assault conviction…
It seemed like a good idea at the time. In May, when state senator Bob Martinez stood before the General Assembly and asked lawmakers to strike Sand Creek from a state capitol statue commemorating Colorado’s Civil War battles, he was commended. After all, what happened on the banks of Big…
Beat it. That’s what the City of Denver told a group of drummers who had been gathering on summer Sundays in Cheesman Park. With their shakers, rattles, bongos and congas, the loosely organized, spiritually oriented percussionists–anywhere from five to fifty of them–tapped out rhythms they hoped would bring them closer…
A new, expensive–and largely untested –heroin detoxification technique that promises addicts relief from withdrawal symptoms “while you sleep” is getting a cool reception among state regulators and Denver’s established substance-abuse professionals. In particular, an aggressive marketing campaign promising to cure people who are already being treated in methadone clinics is…
The New York Yankees lost three times last week. You could look it up. But the rest of the picture remained pretty grim. Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter was still hitting .320 and keeping company with singer Mariah Carey. David Wells, the huge, unkempt moose of a Yankees pitcher who paid…
A Schlong Time Coming I’m as enamored of the title of Harrison Fletcher’s July 23 “The Schlong Goodbye” as I am with the copyrighted, patented and trademarked “The Penisster System” being the name of the medical prosthesis developed by Henry Badgett. The article itself is another thing. Mr. Badgett is…
On November 10, 1996, Denise Marshall was the graveyard supervisor at Arapahoe House’s drug and alcohol detoxification facility in Wheat Ridge. When she’d arrived at 10 p.m. the night before, the facility already housed eighteen clients in various stages of intoxication. By the time Marshall’s shift ended, at 7:30 the…
The woman picked up the leg bone of Dr. Evgeny Botkin, the last physician for the last czar, and sniffed. Her Russian hosts couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d started gnawing on the royal femur of Czar Nicholas II, which lay near at hand. Noticing their expressions, Diane France…
Billy, don’t be a hero: Funny how GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Owens can’t seem to remember just what he was doing back when every other young man in America was sweating bullets about being sent to Vietnam. Funny, too, how Owens openly acknowledged to Westword in March that his being…
The trading floor starts filling up fifteen minutes before the opening bell. But these aren’t stockbrokers wearing three-piece suits and chomping on antacid tablets. They’re mostly middle-aged men in golf-casual clothes. Above them are four clocks: London, New York, Denver and Tokyo. They stare intently at stock charts and listen…
Last August, David Rocha, a 38-year-old immigrant from Mexico, went to work at a building in the Denver Technological Center, just like thousands of other people. But it was a day he’ll never forget. A janitor who worked for just over $5 an hour for Maintenance Unlimited Inc., the largest…
Another day at the office: Shelly Anderson slams her foot down and the ground shakes. The stench of tire smoke and the sting of burning nitromethane shoot into the crowd. Almost 6,000 horsepower–enough to drive an ocean liner–leaps into the rear wheels, and five G’s of force smash Shelly deep…
Field of Schemes Kudos to Stuart Steers for his July 16 “Cash and Carry,” on how the Colorado Rockies took taxpayers to the cleaners on the Coors Field lease. I guarantee you the Broncos are hoping for the same sweetheart deal for Pat (Bowlen)’s Profit Palace. I’ll also wager the…
Ideas come to Henry Badgett. While he’s watering flowers in his front yard. Taking a shower. Sleeping. Standing. Making meatloaf. Suddenly a lightbulb flashes over his head. A fairy taps his shoulder. A tree falls in the forest. A mushroom cloud blasts through the stratosphere. “It just happens, man,” he…
Kathi Williams and Neil Macey have spent a good part of their lives working in real estate, but their biggest deal, the one they’ll always be remembered for, still embarrasses them. They built Coors Field. Perhaps more than any other two people, Williams and Macey are responsible for bringing major-league…
There have been several recent John L. Morris sightings up in the Fryingpan Valley, a remote area northeast of Aspen in the wilds of Pitkin County. Locals have seen Morris driving his sport utility vehicle up the valley and hanging around his three-cabin compound just outside Basalt. But what everybody…
They met in an Internet chat room. She sent him a school picture so he would know what she looked like. After a couple of weeks, he told her that he loved her. They set up a date to meet at the Westminster Mall for a Coke. But there were…
Earthlaw, a tiny Denver-based public-interest group, has won some pretty big court battles on behalf of environmental groups in the West. It helped protect the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, the controversial inhabitant of Colorado’s Front Range (“Of Mice and Men,” November 27, 1997). It stopped logging in all of New…
Get stuffed: The price of the Coors Field Beanie Babies that sparked a feeding frenzy outside the All-Star Game last week continues to head skyward faster than a Mark McGwire batting-practice dinger. As of Monday, official All-Star Glory Beanie Babies were going for $649.95 on cable TV’s Beanie Babies Showroom,…
