Longmont’s Main Street still reflects its farm-town roots, with mom-and-pop diners serving homemade pie and realtors posting notices for “horse property” in storefront windows. But like so much of Colorado, Longmont is changing. An influx of high-tech firms has sparked an economic boom. Subdivisions are going up on all sides…
Welton Street isn’t the only maintenance district facing problems. But while Welton Street’s battles are internal, the major threat to other districts is coming from the outside. Specifically, from the Denver Water Board, which is contemplating charging a retroactive “tap fee” for water lines that were installed years ago. Those…
Crayton Jones surveys Welton Street, the spine of Five Points. Outside his C&B Cleaners at 2748 Welton, he spots four barren trees. “The trees are dead,” he says. “He’s supposed to maintain ’em all.” He’s talking about James Parker, former American Legion commander and longtime Points activist. Over the past…
“Seinfeld”/Sinatra Death Link Exclusive! “TV shows don’t kill people . . . but final episodes sure do!” That’s the shocking claim from experts who insist that legendary entertainer Frank Sinatra’s fatal heart attack was actually a result of the Final Episode Curse–a bizarre jinx that strikes a death blow whenever…
Let’s say you earn a decent salary–on paper, at least. But each payday, your employer deducts a couple hundred bucks to tip your secretary, the payroll director and the guy who cleans your office. After all, your employer explains, those people are your support staff–you couldn’t get your job done…
Mildred Bennett won’t get her home back, or anything close to the full market value of the two-story Victorian in the Baker neighborhood from which she was evicted eighteen months ago. But under a settlement agreement reached late on Friday, May 22, the 72-year-old blind and mentally disabled woman will…
Blade runners: The battle of the TV news choppers continues down at Speer Boulevard and Logan Street, where KUSA-TV/Channel 9 is finally poised to begin flying in and out of its inner-city digs sometime in mid-July. The station, which backed away from the use of copters after suffering six Sky9…
Last Wednesday night, Michael Jordan threw a little outside fake, stopped short and rose from the floor of the United Center like an ascending saint. The soft jumper hit dead center, of course, and just like that, His Airness had the 34,999th and 35,000th points of his storied career. Even…
Underground Railroad After reading Patricia Calhoun’s “Up From the Underground,” in the May 21 issue, I wonder if anywhere in this city is safe–above ground or below. Thanks for the alert. Mae Powers via the Internet “Up From the Underground” was a great article with the inclusion of some Colorado…
There is one point of fact upon which Ron Siegfried and the City of Lakewood agree. Here it is: When code-enforcement officer John Holmes came to tell Siegfried that his grass was too long and neighbors had complained, Siegfried was indignant and unrepentant. “I’m an American,” both parties agree he…
Chivington, Colorado: The air is restless here, always stirring, rustling the stalks of dried buffalo grass and sage, whistling endlessly through miles of rusted barbed wire. For many years, this was a dead place. Cheyenne and Arapaho stayed away. But each November for over a decade now, Laird Cometsevah has…
It’s the beginning of summer for many high-school kids, but a group of gangly teenage girls files into a Thornton school gymnasium one May evening for a different type of summer school. Each of them carries athletic bags and half-gallon Thermoses full of ice water. Once inside the gym, some…
De train, boss, de train!: It must have come as a relief to departing Denver aviation director Jim DeLong that the latest malfunction of the underground railroad at Denver International Airport occurred off his watch. This past Monday, as thousands of travelers streamed home from the Memorial Day weekend, one…
Sheila Black was fired from her job as a Jefferson County court clerk in November 1996 after her employers accused her of stealing $79 of public money. But the Jeffco District Attorney’s Office didn’t charge her with a crime–felony embezzlement–until a full eight months later. And last month, after the…
A small publisher outside Boulder has placed itself in a heap of trouble by publishing a controversial book no one in the United Kingdom wanted to touch. And even as British journalist Sean McPhilemy’s The Committee has become the talk of the editorial pages in Great Britain, it can’t be…
How about those catcalls raining down from the cheap seats–okay, the $15 seats–every time Pedro Astacio blows another lead or Mike Lansing takes a called third strike with the bases loaded? Strange sounds, no? The public mood, once mild and appreciative, is getting understandably nasty up there. And neither Mike…
Petty Is As Petty Does Trust Westword to mock the Denver Post’s Snapshots of Colorado. Ward Harkavy’s “They Came from Denver!” in the May 21 issue was a sorry excuse for journalism. At least the Post is trying to make this state a better place. What is Westword doing? Larry…
I diddled the Denver Post. If I were Governor Roy Romer, maybe I would explain that nothing more than “deep affection” made me want to go undercover to the Post’s Snapshots of Colorado town meeting last week in Colorado Springs. But there was no affection. Just diddling. Find ’em, fool…
Late last year, Hortense Ross finally moved out of her house. It was a long time coming. For the past several years it had become increasingly apparent that Ross was having trouble taking care of herself. Her family helped out for a while, and the Denver Department of Social Services…
Look out below: Hey, radio listeners, have you noticed how the traffic reports on KOA, KHOW and all the other Jacor-owned stations in the metro area seem to have that…not-so-fresh feeling lately? Perhaps it’s because the airborne spotters who deliver the latest word on rollovers, bottlenecks and runaway septic-tankers have…
Westword staff writer Alan Prendergast won six individual awards in the Society of Professional Journalists’ “Best of Colorado” awards banquet last week. Prendergast received more writing awards than any other journalist in the contest’s top division, which pits Colorado’s wire services and newspapers with circulations of more than 100,000–the Associated…
In those places that tourists come from–Dubuque, Topeka, Lincoln, Rapid City–they’re already gassing up the Winnebagos and planning that Memorial Day weekend trip to the Colorado high country. Some will consult road maps and dining guides, but for a certain breed of summer visitor, there’s no better research source than…
