It’s my party, and I’ll die if I want to: Colorado was the center of the universe in 1997 and proved it by ending the year with Michael Kennedy’s death in Aspen–an anti-advertisement for skiing that could set Colorado Ski Country back years. It didn’t help that skiing snagged another…
Boulder law enforcement agencies neglected to take care of their Christmas shopping early last year, and rampaging students at the University of Colorado made them pay for it. When riots broke out last May in the area known as The Hill in Boulder, local cops felt they didn’t have enough…
There was a day when working men in America carried hod or baked bread or laid bricks or descended into the hell of the mines to blacken their lungs and die young. In scant off time, such as it was, working men visited houses of worship and toted blocks of…
Was it good for you? A year ago, Colorado was barely a blip on the political map, a handy way station where national candidates could drop in to stuff their pockets on cross-country junkets, a state more notable for Monkey Business than real money business. But that was before Colorado…
I Am Furious, Yellow The January 1 Year in Review cover may have been intended as a parody, but with it, Westword showed its true colors: yellow, for yellow journalism. You people are as trashy as any of the tabloids you mock. Ginger Foster Denver Hello, Denver. As a former…
Colorado was all the rage in 1997. We had road rage. We had Ramsey rage. We had ragin’ Caucasians. We raged against the injustice of it all when John Denver splashed into one more drink off the California coast. We were frazzled, irked, incensed, piqued, miffed and generally ticked off…
It was a sad state of affairs. Their Mother, “Butt Breath,” Could Not Be Reached for Comment “Dumb Face,” a female grizzly bear at the Denver Zoo, died of cancer at age 26. She was survived by her brother, “Fat Mouth.” The Lost World For the third year in a…
They may be fools, but they’re our fools. BILL McCARTNEY Occupation: Hot-for-Jesus love machine Coach Mac wasn’t content to have other guys get together in big, sweaty masses and talk about how bad they’d been to their women. He had a deep need to punish himself, too–and he gave himself…
First and last, 1997 marked the golden anniversary of Jackie Robinson, hero. Otherwise, the sublime and the ridiculous kept bumping into each other. Tiger Woods, age 21, chewed up the Masters field by a record twelve strokes, while Mike Tyson chewed on Evander Holyfield’s ear. Jeff Gordon dominated the Winston…
That Was Zen, This Is Now If I lived in Boulder, I wouldn’t worry so much about what’s being built on the land as what might be in the water. Judging from everything from the Ramsey case to Eric Dexheimer’s “Karma Crash” (great article!), in the December 18 issue, something…
It’s 10 p.m. and two weeks from Christmas, and a father and his two young boys are standing before the monster-sized gumball machines at the front of the store. “No, you can’t get any of that crap, goddammit,” the man says through his teeth. “You haven’t even bought your presents…
There are no moments of luxury in the life of a horse-abuse investigator. It’s a world of hiding in bushes with video cameras, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes while staking out some lonely pasture, looking for signs of animal mistreatment. Danger? How about escaping from a rake-wielding horse owner or…
A group of Highlands Ranch homeowners is not exactly thrilled with the hum of progress and has filed suit against Public Service Company of Colorado, saying that the company should bury its noisy power lines. The lines were recently upgraded to provide added juice to Park Meadows mall and the…
Dem bones: Henry Solano, Colorado’s U.S. Attorney and a former Roy Romer cabinet member, may be headed for Washington. He’s been nominated as the Department of Labor’s next solicitor general, the agency’s No. 3 job, which would put him in charge of hundreds of lawyers. If his nomination is confirmed…
A lawsuit filed by a Colorado state agency against the U.S. Department of Defense to try to force removal of unexploded munitions from the former Lowry Bombing Range could send shock waves throughout the West. Officials of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment say they were forced to…
The millions of working stiffs who fork over their hard-earned dollars for tickets to football, baseball, hockey and (in some cities) real, live NBA basketball games are justifiably fed up with the sour culture of American sports–in which spoiled athletes and high-handed owners pretend they’re rulers of some tinpot dictatorship…
The Hard Cell Although I had heard of the paranoia that corporations are taking over corrections institutions, it was actually only a fleeting thought in my consciousness until I read Alan Prendergast’s “Just Hop on the Van, Man,” in the December 18 issue. I didn’t realize how far this had…
In some guardianship cases, the court can be overly intrusive, interfering in natural relationships while guardians rake in the money. And as a recent case in Arapahoe County demonstrates, not all problems lie within the Denver system. Ginny Rogliano and her sister, Joan, were appointed their mother’s guardians in 1995…
Letty Milstein didn’t believe she needed a guardian to look out for her best interests. All the feisty, opinionated 82-year-old widow really wanted in the spring of 1996 was to spend her remaining years in the home she’d occupied with her husband, Jules, for more than three decades, in the…
Betty Gibbs carefully aims her Isuzu Trooper down a steep dirt road carved out of the side of Fourmile Canyon. It is snowing, and the narrow path has become slippery; with hair-raising dropoffs to the south, drivers must cooperate to negotiate the route safely. But as an oncoming Volkswagen van…
When William Minnix was arrested in Ohio last summer, he thought he knew what to expect. He knew he would be extradited to Colorado to face a charge of violating his parole on a felony theft conviction. He also knew that the 1,000-mile trip back to prison, shackled in a…
The following are excerpts from a diary kept by William Minnix, a convicted felon transported from Ohio to Colorado last July by Transcor America to face a charge of parole violation. Minnix claims the trip covered twenty states in twenty days. May 27: Arrested in Cincinnati, OH. June 20: Extradition…
