Roy Phillips has run Texaco stations in Denver since the Seventies, and in that time he’s learned a painful lesson. As a black man, he says, “you can operate stations as long as they’re inside the black community.” Over the years Phillips made a half-dozen attempts to acquire stations in…
Here’s to you, Mister Robinson. Down in Ruston, Louisiana, the administration of Grambling State University and the same contingent of sour, win-crazy alumni you find at any losing school want to get rid of the head football coach. The coach wants one more year. One more chance to put an…
A Dunn Deal I found Stuart Steers’s December 5 article, “All Fired Up,” very interesting but a little over-Dunn. Yes, John took a strong anti-pipeline stand–but he seemed to drop the ball at the southern end of the county. We in Simla are uninformed as to the battles to the…
When last we heard from Marshall Kaplan, the embattled dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver was hinting that the public might not have him to kick around for much longer. No more big community confabs, no more big community controversies fueled…
The biggest pay-phone scam yet uncovered involved a San Diego-based company called AmTel. But Colorado has had its share, too. By 1994, eight years after it was founded, AmTel was the third-largest private pay-phone company in the country, with 8,500 phones installed–hundreds of them in Colorado–and plans for another 10,000…
In the mountain town of Frisco, Bobby Gene Kelley was known as a drinker of great persistence. Soon after receiving one too many citations for driving under the influence of alcohol, he purchased a Lincoln Towncar limousine. When he felt like having a drink, he would call his driver, who…
Denver police officer Tyrone Campbell is a familiar face in north Denver’s Cole neighborhood. He’s one of the few Denver cops who carries a personal pager for calls from residents and has a souped-up, bass-thumping CD player wired into his cruiser. As he makes his rounds through the neighborhood, kids…
Motorola ad campaign for its new high-tech Sport Radio walkie-talkie that pokes fun at the supposedly high cost of wilderness rescues has inflamed Colorado’s search-and-rescue squads. “You can’t find a decent rescue for under $100,000 these days,” reads a version of the ad in the December issue of Popular Science…
Six months ago the Colorado state legislature passed a bill allowing people to make voluntary contributions to the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) anti-drug program on their income-tax returns. It may be one more victory for one of the country’s most visible weapons in the nebulous war on drugs, but…
First things first: The winning slogan that pushed through the city’s 1989 bond sale? “Vote for Elitch’s–It’s Denver.” Not anymore. First, new owner Premier Parks, out of Oklahoma City, dumped the century-old amusement park’s local advertising agency. And then First Night Colorado, the alcohol-free, family-fun New Year’s bash that’s become…
Charlie Papazian likes to say that he is just a regular pie guy, but his vision for the future is well worth heeding. Twenty years ago he had an intuition about beer. At the time, he recalls, Bud and Coors were the reigning brews. So Papazian, who thought beer should…
Just like that, Bill Musgrave is crushed in the backfield by a blitzing linebacker and the fans erupt in joy. Tom Rouen scuffs a punt toward the near sideline and the guy with the little Brett Favre doll on a string around his neck happily yells for another round of…
There’s No Place Like Homeless I wish to write in response to Patricia Calhoun’s December 5 column, “Homeless for the Holidays.” What an artful job of pitting the homeless against such unpopular icons as lawyers and developers. Too bad the question of whether citizens should be able to enjoy the…
Ask Sam Haigler how things are going and he’ll give you that perplexed look, the one that seems to ask: What planet are you from, pal? Twenty years of battling chronic mental illness, just how well could things be? “That’s kind of a hard question for me to answer,” he…
The wild West is making a last stand in bucolic Elbert County, where the new county motto may be “Make My Day.” Ranked as the second-fastest growing county in the country–it trails only neighboring Douglas County–Elbert County has been embroiled in constant battles over growth during the past few years…
During the frigid days of winter, 23-year-old Matthew John Cole can’t help thinking about summer nights spent with his friends and family at the venerable Nor-West Drive-In in Broomfield. Unfortunately for Cole, many of his neighbors in that part of the Front Range are thinking of something newer and slicker,…
One of the most notable restrictions on the Oklahoma City bombing case, which has also been applied to the current civil case against O.J. Simpson, is the ban on live coverage inside the courtroom. But the indomitable spirit of capitalism, combined with the insatiable appetite of the press, has proved…
One might suppose that Jacob Stone is the king of klutz, the big kahuna of bad luck. That would explain how, back in March 1991, he happened to drop his keys in a Denver Safeway parking lot and, while retrieving them, was struck by a car backing out of a…
Enquiring minds want to know: What was Senator-elect Wayne Allard doing in the National Enquirer, sandwiched between Oprah’s latest woes and sure-fire diet tips? Well, he wasn’t joining in the Demi Moore lesbian love triangle touted on the cover of the November 26 issue, that’s for sure. No, the Colorado…
If you haven’t been to a Denver Nuggets game this season–and there’s no reason to go unless the warden’s offering a choice between that and lethal injection–here’s a report from the front. Let’s begin at the beginning. This year everybody on the team stands up for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Even…
Fortysomething Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Reject Your Elders,” in the November 28 issue: The only thing more horrifying than the scenario Calhoun laid out was my realization that, having just turned forty, I’m old enough to officially be considered an endangered species! Other than that, it was a great piece–and I…
As homeless go, the folks living along the banks of the South Platte River just west of downtown were never going to be poster children inspiring donations of holiday turkeys. They were hardly the stuff of weepy newspaper columns or wrenching TV news footage, far from the sad families trotted…
