Don DeFiore is an early riser, and the way he figures it, if he’s up, he might as well go to work. He often arrives at the City of Denver’s wastewater building a good ninety minutes before the start of his 7 a.m. shift, using the extra time to relax…
The Denver City Council chambers, resplendent in white and gold, are nearly empty the night of May 15 as the seven members of the Public Safety Review Commission file in, businesslike, for their monthly meeting. There is the feeling that the commission, which reviews citizen complaints of police misconduct, is…
That hits the G-spot: The most unfortunate timing of the week belongs to Denver mayor Wellington Webb, who scheduled his announcement of G-8-related downtown beautification projects at 1:30 p.m. Monday–the exact moment the Oklahoma City bombing-trial verdict was read. But, hey–at least the return of the verdict means that all…
You’ve got to hand it to Charles E. Blair. Thousands of people did, to their everlasting regret. This Sunday, June 8, Blair will celebrate fifty years as the pastor and guiding light of Calvary Temple, which, under his stewardship, has become one of the largest and most successful non-denominational churches…
A neighborhood feud over the proposed rezoning of East Colfax Avenue has wound up in court, with two of Colfax’s best-known businesspeople trading accusations of slander and suppression of free speech. While that dispute plays out in Denver District Court, the larger question of the future of one of Denver’s…
Three days before this year’s Kentucky Derby, a TV crew and members of the sporting press visited the witty California trainer Bob Baffert and his dark-gray colt, Silver Charm, at the Churchill Downs stakes barn. When the mob arrived, they found the horse standing backward in his stall, head to…
When the world last heard from Robert Eaton Jr., he was being bundled into the back of a Denver squad car by a handful of uniformed officers. His crime? Mentioning Waco outside the federal courthouse Monday, just as the coverage of Tim McVeigh’s conviction kicked into high gear. The media…
Wolf Pack Regarding the treatment of Letty Milstein (Steve Jackson’s “Mommy Dearest,” May 22), it seems to me that the problem is not sibling rivalry, or the courts, or the judge, or the guardians, or the lawyers, but rather that this woman did not die before the sharks got to…
Lumpy Ridge, in the northeast section of vast Rocky Mountain National Park, is home to a wall of rocks that was just too inviting for a pair of climbers in the unpredictable weather this past March. Hayner Brooks, a 44-year-old Loveland electrician, and Ken Miller, a 35-year-old electrical engineer from…
Inside Ed Dwight’s hangar-like studio, the 63-year-old sculptor rushes between welding sparks and tables laden with his work, talking angrily about the troubles he’s having with some of his ex-employees. He almost yells in order to be heard above the din of heavy equipment used to make his art. “These…
When Irish guys are smiling: You may think you’ve heard everything that’s been going on in Judge Richard Matsch’s courtroom. You may think that, but you’d be wrong. Even with the endless coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing trial, some testimony goes unreported by the local media. For instance, an…
As far as Michelle Valdez is concerned, the crowd waiting to take Elitch Gardens’ newest thrill ride may have already had their minds erased. A fight that erupted Sunday, May 18, while people stood in a three-hour-long line for the Mind Eraser roller coaster left Valdez’s eleven-year-old daughter Savannah lying…
At the small Colorado Springs offices of Bereavement: A Magazine of Hope and Healing, the excitement started last year, when a writer for the prime-time show Promised Land placed a call to publisher Andrea Gambill. The television drama is a spinoff of the surprise CBS hit Touched by an Angel…
At age 37 but looking younger, Michael Garcia, a former schoolboy baseball and football player, keeps in shape by working out four days a week. Two of those days he trains at a nearby dojo, where he refines his skills in tae kwon do, a Korean martial art he has…
The peculiarities of the national pastime are, at the present time, running amok, like drunks loose in the outfield. Rupert Murdoch, the Aussie media glutton who swallows newspapers, TV networks and movie studios the way fans at the ballpark eat peanuts, now proposes to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers and…
Memorial Day once marked the start of the summer tourist season at the Lace House. But on this Memorial Day, it was difficult to remember what the historic landmark looked like back in the olden days. Back, say, in the olden days of six years ago, when the renovated Victorian…
Through a Glass, Dorkly Regarding Tony Perez-Giese’s “Look Out, Sin City!” in the May 22 issue: What are people in Commerce City thinking? (If, in fact, people in Commerce City can think.) Putting strippers behind Plexiglas? What’s the fun in that? Why don’t they just cover the gals with Teflon?…
Bill Potts gets along with just about everybody. Still, there was a woman at an art show in Boulder who managed to curl his lip. A sculptor who carves vivid, exaggerated figures and tableaux out of wood–athletes, jazz musicians, street scenes, historic events, dinosaurs, you name it–Potts isn’t entirely comfortable…
On Mother’s Day, families across the country gathered together to thank Mom for all her love and sacrifices. In Denver, flamboyant socialite Judi Wolf drove over to her mother’s house in order to take the elderly woman back to “a party” at Judi’s expansive digs in Cherry Hills. But Letty…
Westword writers and editors took home fourteen writing awards at the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists banquet last week at the Brown Palace Hotel. The newspaper received three top prizes in the competition, in which Westword competes against the state’s largest dailies. Staff writer Steve Jackson won in business features…
Years of promoting an air-cargo development at Denver International Airport are about to bear freight for Denver millionaire L.C. “Cal” Fulenwider III. And the public is helping carry the bags. The Denver real estate baron and his family already own an estimated 7,500 acres in the area surrounding DIA. Now…
Oh, shut up, already: Apparently mistaking The Hill for Kent State–and the People’s Republic of Boulder for Tiananmen Square–Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby suggested to the Boulder Planet last week that his officers “would have been justified in killing some of these young people” who rioted for the right to…
