OFF LIMITS

Suit yourself: Last week the Justice Department announced that the number of hate crimes reported to police had dropped across the country, including in Colorado. In 1993 the state reported 166 incidents, according to FBI figures; in 1994 there were 98. But one of those had already fallen from being…

JOY IN MUDVILLE

It is 7 p.m., tail end of the rush hour, and a cold, hard rain is falling on Atlanta, Georgia. All along Peachtree Street you can make out fugitive figures with umbrellas unfurled and wind-bent, ducking into doorways, dodging out of the paths of their fellows in the nick of…

LETTERS

And Snow It Goes If I may be irreverent and politically incorrect, I have just one comment in regard to Patricia Calhoun’s “Klondike and Snow Job” column in the November 15 issue: You go, girl! After all, we are talking about polar bears–not toys, not cartoon characters, and certainly not…

SORRY, WRONG NUMBERS

Even after state legislators passed a bill last March meant to open Colorado’s telecommunications market, one small Lakewood company is accusing the Public Utilities Commission of helping US West enforce a monopolistic stronghold. Three and a half years ago, Lynn Langford and Jeff Smith founded Mountain Solutions Ltd. Inc., a…

SOUTHWESTERN FLYER

Spurred by a recent double-digit drop in traffic at Denver International Airport, city officials are exploring the use of a controversial carrot to lure discount carrier Southwest Airlines: a subsidy funded by the state aviation fuel tax. Mayor Wellington Webb and aviation director Jim DeLong will travel to Southwest’s Texas…

SEX AND THE SINGLE BIRD

After 63 years in the turkey business, Don Peterson isn’t squeamish about much. But when it comes to grabbing a turkey chick and squeezing it until its rectum pops out, he’d just as soon call in the experts. “I can do it, but it sure isn’t easy,” says Peterson. Unfortunately,…

SET IN STONE

In the beginning, there was beer. “About three hundred beers,” remembers Bill Jones, who owns and manages Reiver’s restaurant on Old South Gaylord. “We got to chatting over at least that many drinks. I don’t drink anymore and neither does Neal, but that was then.” Then was a culmination of…

I’M ED! FLY ME!

Late last month a smiling Edward Beauvais appeared at the Colorado Springs Airport in a wizard’s costume to announce his Western Pacific Airline’s new $59 “mystery trip” fares. To Beauvais’s many Colorado Springs admirers, the sorcerer’s garb was appropriate. For civic boosters in Colorado Springs, after all, the last seven…

HEAD GAMES

Not to be outdone by Ladies’ Home Journal, Westword concocted the following therapeutic scenario to put the Schnarch crucible theory to the test: Consider the case of Carlos and Helga, who say they have been happily married for seven years. Both say they enjoy pleasant sex but that something is…

OFF LIMITS

Out of the mouths of babes: Channel 9 has emerged the lucky winner with its network affiliation switch to NBC, but the good ratings news hasn’t translated into more news. Unless, of course, you count the stunning comparison of lipstick shapes offered up by Adele Arakawa on last Thursday’s ten…

40,000 YARDS–BUT MILES TO GO

In the dead of winters to come, you can bet that John Elway’s long-battered knees will ache and that Dan Marino’s torn Achilles tendon–an injury some ironic classicist must have picked out for him–will start to act up. In winters to come, Warren Moon’s shoulder will surely pain him again…

BAD REVIEWS

The civilian watchdogs entrusted with investigating complaints about Denver police have become so discouraged by a lack of support from the city administration that resignations appear imminent. And that would suit the police–and some city officials–just fine. “If they were to go away,” city councilman Ed Thomas, an ex-cop, says…

LETTERS

On Her Toes After reading Patricia Calhoun’s “The Art of the Deal” November 8, I agree with half of it. True, Adam’s Mark should not have taken down the sculpture without talking to the artist first. But it’s also true that bronze ballerinas would be a big improvement over the…

CONJUGAL BLITZ

For decades, faithful readers of Ladies’ Home Journal have turned to “Can This Marriage Be Saved?,” a monthly column billed as “the most popular, most enduring women’s magazine feature in the world,” in which troubled spouses tell all, then are counseled by a wise, real-life therapist. In the November issue,…

NO DOG HAS HIS DAY

Denver Post columnist Chuck Green recently reported that he’s raised $39,000 from his readers to, as he puts it, “sue the creep” who poisoned two Wheat Ridge dogs last month. There’s just one problem. He doesn’t have a case. Four columns into his crusade, the cash keeps flowing into the…

JOUST FRIENDS

Schroeder And McInnis Prove That Chivalry’s Dead. Housekeeping can get pretty messy, particularly when Congress is down to the wire debating budget bills. During last Thursday’s discussion of debt limits, two Colorado representatives got unusually down and dirty. The fight started after a Democrat from Ohio yielded two minutes of…

INCOMPLETE ASSIGNMENT

Mayor Wellington Webb threw around a lot of promises during his campaign for re-election last spring. But few have turned sour as quickly as the one he made to the schoolchildren of Denver: to appoint a cabinet-level “education czar” for the city. Five months after the election and more than…

ROGUE YOGURT

The weekend was warm, the type of weather that puts a jingle in the cash register of anyone with something sweet and cold to peddle. Customers lined up out the door of Doug Gunn’s I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt shop in Boulder. The frozen-yogurt racket had proved a tough go…

OFF LIMITS

Flynn spin: The Rocky Mountain News wasted no time in announcing the good news at Denver International Airport. “DIA Bags Rolling at Last: United Finally Using All of Automated System,” screamed the front-page headline October 28. Inside, a breathless story by Kevin Flynn claimed BAE’s notorious automated baggage system–you know,…

KING SHOULD BE CROWNED

Oh, what a beautiful morning. Mike Tyson’s thumb is busted, and Don King is on trial for wire fraud. But don’t ice down the champagne just yet, fight fans. The injury cancellation last week of the Saturday Night Charade that was to pit Tyson against Buster Mathis Jr., a second-generation…

GETTING IN HIS LICKS

Sixty-nine-year-old John Hickey would rather gamble on a prison term than admit to wrongdoing for breaking the nose of his wife’s lover moments after discovering the two flagrante delicto. “Put one man on the jury,” Hickey has said, “and there’s no way they’ll convict me.” He’ll get a chance to…

BURIED TREASURE

When Anne McGill Gorsuch married Robert Burford back in 1983, it seemed like a match made in Republican heaven: the Ice Queen and the Marlboro Man, the steely-eyed darling of corporate polluters and the squinty-eyed sagebrush rebel. Burford, a Western Slope rancher and former speaker of the Colorado House of…