News

It’ll be at least another year before Fredrick Abram sees freedom. The 31-year-old Denver native grew up gangsta. He was one of the first Tre Tre Crips back in the 1990s and is now serving his second stint in prison for putting in work. Abram’s older brother was Crips (before…

The ever-thinning Rocky Mountain News and CBS 4 News are going into hype overdrive over “What If? Colorado,” the ghastly, state-funded reality show being staged here (http://www.whatifcolorado.com) in an effort to boost our general awareness of disaster preparedness issues. The campaign, launched by the Colorado Office of Emergency Preparedness, also…

Tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Tattered Cover at 2526 East Colfax Avenue, Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank will read from Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich, a economic deconstruction, travelogue and tell-all on the wealth boom currently hitting the…

Day One: New Socks Day Two: White Elephants A woman with brown stains on her teeth stands behind an electronic cash register in her navy blue regalia, a “have it your way” pin buttoned on her left breast. I tell her that there are nine of us together and I…

For the past several months, Archie comics, which can be traced all the way back to 1941, have been undergoing a new millennium remodel that makes their late ’60s incarnation as “Sugar Sugar” warbling bubble-gummers seem minor in comparison. As demonstrated by Bad Boy Trouble! Part 4, the concluding chapter…

Imagine it’s the year 2020, and the city of Denver is beginning to rebuild from a cataclysm that all but leveled it. Eight years earlier, as the story goes, one woman emerged from the wreckage and guided twenty survivors to the abandoned Denver Art Museum, where they settled, living on…

I’ve heard one former press secretary at another agency say they’d rather die than have this job,” says Dana Perino, the new White House press secretary. “And I know there’s not a lot of people lining up to take the position, because they see what it’s like on TV every…

In this town, everyone seems to know Mary Louise Starkey, head of the Starkey International Institute of Household Management. She often invites local luminaries to her Logan Street mansion, one of the preeminent butler schools in the country, for formal dinners served in grand style by her Jeeveses-in-training. These social…

Off Limits, September 13 The Light Stuff It appears that you neglected to Ask a Mexican about the word güera for your little commentary on the Budweiser billboard. Güero and güera don’t necessarily refer to gringos. They actually mean “light-skinned,” or having light hair and eyes. For example, there are Mexican…

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy, a ringleader for Denver’s underground art scene, knows real-estate upheaval almost as well as she knows mixed-media installations. “I’ve had to move my home or studio every two years,” says Murphy, who found out this summer that the building housing her current space along artsy Santa Fe…

After every Broncos game, my roommate and bitter, bitter enemy Monty and I sit in the living room and discuss what transpired with our beloved Denver Broncos in that day’s gridiron competition. It’s a ritual as predictable as the turning of the leaves, with Monty generally becoming so frustrated by…

The day that Michael Tate was found guilty, sentenced to life in prison for a murder committed before his eighteenth birthday, 45 inmates were already serving life sentences in Colorado for crimes they’d done as juveniles (“Headed for Trouble,” July 7, 2005). But after Tate, only two more defendants could…

By the third week, the flower arrangements spread throughout the Jefferson County courtroom were in varying states of decay. It had been a long trial, and a long time coming. Almost three years had passed since the body of Steve Fitzgerald was found in his Westminster garage. In that time,…

Before 2006, juveniles charged as adults and convicted of first degree murder in Colorado faced one sentence: Mandatory life without parole. Last summer, the state legislature showed some mercy by changing the law to allow “juvie lifers” to at least be eligible for parole after forty years. But the law…

In the two years since Westword first profiled Nate Ybanez, top, and Erik Jensen (“Headed for Trouble,” July 7, 2005), their story has gone national with pieces on Frontline and in Rolling Stone that inspired support from around the globe. But the two remain locked up in Colorado state prisons,…

Here’s a brief look at some of the items Americans are desparate to learn about today: Don’t tase me, bro This story has been all over for days. A guy asks a screwball question to John Kerry at a speech and gets arrested and tasered for it. Ask a weird…

Winston Churchill had a saying: “Arguing over the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics – even if you win, you’re still retarded.” Well, maybe it wasn’t Churchill who said it, but any web surfer who’s suddenly found themselves spending hours crafting witty cyber comebacks over topics such as…

Day One: New Socks Two weeks into the three-week summer program, I get a call from one of my creative writing students. She’s running late and she needs directions. “I just got off the train at Colfax, which way do I go?” I instruct her to walk southeast. She doesn’t…

On Friday, September 21, at Shove Chapel, on the Colorado College campus, a memorial will be held to remember Mario Valdes, the man largely responsible for turning Colorado Springs’ KRCC-FM into the city’s foremost public radio station. He died of lung cancer on September 14. He was just 54. As…

Jonathan can’t fold his socks into pairs. He can match one with its partner, but he physically can’t unite the sock mates into a ball of cotton. “Will you show me that again?” I pick up two white crew socks, one in each hand, line then up straight and tuck…

Everyone complains that the Emmy Awards—heck, most Award shows—are staid, over-long affairs that just don’t earn their three-plus hour block of prime time anymore. Viewers (not to mention reviewers) look for anything that’s remarkable—whose dress sucked (Hayden Panettiere), who made the best unscripted quip (Elaine Stritch), and who brought the…