Sandy Carson Gallery Sold

Sandy Carson announced this morning that she has sold her namesake gallery, building and all. It would be an understatement to call this a surprise since it’s actually more of a shock. “It’s time,” Carson explains. “I’m 68 years old, and I’ve been in the art business for 33 years.”…

Facing the Changes

For nearly thirty years, Denver Art Museum curator Dianne Vanderlip had complete control of the Modern and Contemporary department, but she retired right after the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building was opened in 2006. It was a sad irony because, after begging for space for decades, she finally got it…

Carol Chambers Seeks Cheaper Executions

Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers wasted no time responding to our February 28 feature examining her unusual cost-shifting approach to three death-penalty cases. Within hours after our article appeared online, she fired off the memo below to her prosecution team, blaming the high cost of such cases on defense…

Q&A With Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart is not just any observer of the 2008 election campaign. He sees strong parallels between the contest pitting Democrats Barack Obama (who he supports) against Hillary Clinton and his own 1984 run for the White House. Back then, Walter Mondale, the former Vice President and…

Letters to the Editor

“Stupor Delegate,” Adam Cayton-Holland, February 21 Loose Change Regarding Adam Cayton-Holland’s surprise at having locals in Tanzania being knowledgeable about the candidacy of Barack Obama, I would posit that almost certainly the main reason is that in their eyes, Obama is the first American Muslim presidential candidate (Wikipedia reports that…

Thirst Fridays

It’s not that Jack Pappalardo means to be a party pooper, but a year ago, a river of booze was running through the monthly First Friday celebration at Denver’s ArtDistrict on Santa Fe, and the district’s 55 members finally stopped serving free drinks in order to reverse what had become…

Con Artist Gives Funny Cause for Pregnant Pause

White guilt is a funny thing. On the one hand, it can inspire you to altruistic heights as you plant bulbs in the community garden, tutor bilingual elementary-school children or, at the very least, tone down your hurling of racial slurs. But on the other hand, it can be used…

Baristas Abuzz With Caffeinated Competition

The Mountain Regional Barista Competition champion will be someone who is a master of their coffee,” says Mike Strumpf. He’s standing authoritatively on a stack of empty wooden pallets in Solé Roasters’ cavernous coffee-roasting facility in Boulder as roughly two dozen local baristas and other coffee professionals listen in. The…

CU Hires Three Pulitzer Winners

I never really had any intention of leaving,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jim Sheeler, who recently resigned from the Rocky Mountain News in order to take a position at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “The Rocky’s been a great place for me, and the staff is incredibly friendly.” After…

Arapahoe County DA Charges Death-Penalty Fees to the State

The State of Colorado has managed to execute one murderer in the past forty years. Its death row, current population one, is among the smallest in the country. For four years after a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision threw out the state’s system of having three judges decide whether an…

Inmates Waitin’ Around to Die

Technically speaking, Colorado hasn’t had a death row for several years — not since officials at the Colorado State Penitentiary stopped housing the prisoners awaiting execution all in one place and reassigned them to different tiers. The notion became even more elusive after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juries,…

The Worst Possible ’80s TV Comebacks

Slide Show So, Knight Rider is back. Which is one of those sentences that most people don’t want to hear, like “Your check engine light is on,” or “Hey, look, circus clowns!” But honestly, KITT and company aren’t the worst things that could come back from ’80s TV…

Avalanche Get the Band Back Together

The Avalanche have been very good to us. When the team arrived from Quebec in 1996, they showed up with a pair of first ballot hall-of-famers, almost immediately traded for another, won us our first major sports championship and galvanized a latent hockey base that has since become one of…

Barfly Taxonomy: The Unnecessary Tail-Shaker

View larger specimen In order to make more sense of the world around us, illustrator and public house naturalist Nate Stone is compiling here a taxonomy of different barflies. While you’re out and about in Denver, if you spot any of these specimens please add your observations about their habitat…

The Latest Max Karson Brouhaha Keeps Building

CU student and inveterate controversy magnet Max Karson has made plenty of headlines in recent years for his satirical writings and attention-getting stunts, as this February 21 More Messages blog outlines. However, his latest contretemps, spurred by a piece entitled “If It’s War the Asians Want…” that ran in CU’s…

TV Breaking News Goes to the Dogs

Back in the dark ages of television (i.e., the mid-20th century), the term “breaking news” was typically reserved for the biggest stories — incidents so important that viewers needed to be informed about them immediately, regardless of the regular newscast schedule. In recent years, innovations like the bottom-of-the-screen video crawl…

Crepe Nuts

Crepes ‘n Crepes is uncompromisingly, unabashedly and unstintingly French. The cooks are French. Owners Kathy Knight and Alain Veratti have imported all their iron crepe griddles from France. The ingredients and preparations — the Camembert and Chambord, ratatouille and sauce aux champignons — are French. And the space itself –…

Dear Scammers: Check Your Fax Number

The letter, received by fax last week, read like countless others before it. “ATTENTION: Director/CEO,” it began. “I write, asking for your indulgence in re-profiling funds to the tune of Twelve Million, Eight Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (US$12.8m) which we want to keep safely overseas under your supervision.” The…

Get Your Kickball On, Denver

After a winter of hibernating, the Denver Kickball Coalition (DKBC) is rinsing up with mouthwash, wiping that crusty green shit from its eyes and slicking back its unwashed hair with a fresh coat of pomade in anticipation of its eighth season as the Front Range’s most dynamic coed kickball league…

An Update on Denver Police Department Media Releases

The February 14 Message column examined the problems local media types have had of late getting their hands on Denver Police Department reports, as well as a new high-tech system designed to address the difficulties. Since then, the DPD has done a decent job of e-mailing lists of offenses to…

We’ll Toast to That

The state Senate approved a bill last week that would finally allow liquor sales on Sundays, and the measure will now move to the House. But that might not be the biggest change for one of the Denver area’s largest spirits superstores. Applejack Wine & Spirits in Wheat Ridge is…