The drive-thru outside the McDonald’s on Colorado Boulevard just south of Bruce Randolph Avenue is a typical fast-food express lane in every way but one: Planted next to the squawking speaker box, in the shadow of the Golden Arches, is a strange green sign. “Welcome to Our Backyard Habitat,” it…
Four Aprils ago, as investigators strung yellow crime-scene tape and boarded up bullet-riddled windows around Columbine High School, snow began to fall — a wet, heavy spring storm that masked the carnage in merciful white. But the snow couldn’t quite obscure the spontaneous memorials that were already surfacing on and…
1. Denver once manufactured its own weapons of mass destruction: plutonium triggers made at Rocky Flats. How long does it take for plutonium to lose just half of its radioactivity? A. A while. B. 24,000 years. C. 500 years, give or take. D. 100,000 years. 2. Speaking of toxic, the…
Colorado Institute of Art student Adam Diaz is a real Playboy. Last month he won the magazine’s national College Nude Photography Contest and earned a trip to the company’s Chicago headquarters, where he shot a bunny. Next week, his images of a playboy.com intern splayed on a background of gray…
The Rocky Mountain News’s Charlie Brennan has always considered himself to be lucky. So when one military spokesman predicted that a journalist would die covering the war in Iraq, he tried to keep this prophecy in perspective despite the knowledge that, as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army’s V…
As is the case with so many sports stories, the end of this one is the least interesting part. Two months ago, Susan Yemm, who had managed the books for the Boulder Volleyball Club for the past couple of years, was arrested by Lafayette police and charged with embezzling from…
The Tea & A Party Tough titty: Reading Alan Prendergast’s brief history of the Tea Party (“From Locusts to Limos,” April 10) brought back many memories for me. I was once a member of the Tea Party. Living in Glendale as a 23-year-old in 1999-2000 meant you were excellent Tea…
Looking back, Sharon Kratze says, she should have asked more questions. When she decided to run for the board of the Cedar Pointe Condominium Association, she thought she was simply campaigning for “constructive change” in the way her community was managed and maintained. Nobody told her that she was also…
By Alan Prendergast
When the Tea Party first burst on the scene in Glendale five years ago — in response to Mayor Joe Rice’s effort to impose new restrictions on strip clubs — the group was hailed in some quarters as a libertarian, grass-roots (yet well-financed) movement to keep government in its place…
Kathleen Gomendi is preparing for the last supper. For the past ten years, she’s run Grant Avenue Street Reach, which hosts an every-Monday spaghetti meal for the city’s homeless and impoverished. Held in the basement of the First Baptist Church of Denver, right across from the State Capitol at the…
Cable-fortune heir Kim Magness lived and died very publicly. But the show must go on — posthumously — since a Denver judge ruled that the trial involving him, his brother, Gary, and the Mardi Gras Casino will go forward this fall despite his death. The brothers — two of Colorado’s…
1. Conifer native Trey Parker met future South Park partner Matt Stone: A. Attending Evergreen High’s homecoming dance. Both were wearing green dresses. B. Working as a roadie for Big Head Todd and the Monsters. C. Avoiding assignments at the University of Colorado at Boulder. D. During a stint as…
While the rest of the city celebrated seventy years of post-Prohibition carousing on Monday — the Pub at Rockies Brewing sold over a hundred 33-cent pints in honor of that great day in 1933 when alcohol again flowed freely — the Denver-based Prohibition Party was silent on April 7. Rather…
A report about the contract status of Channel 9 anchor Jim Benemann didn’t wind up in Rocky Mountain News gossip specialist Penny Parker’s February 27 column by accident. Negotiations had obviously hit a bump the size of Mt. Evans, and one party or another saw an advantage in letting the…
Bobby DeGeorge saw his first Opening Day in 1954, at the age of nine, when his father took him and his brother to New York’s fabled Polo Grounds to watch the Giants play Pittsburgh. DeGeorge doesn’t remember who won. He doesn’t remember what his hero, Willie Mays, just back from…
This Is Sick! Taking the owe out of Owens: Regarding Stuart Steers’s “In Sickness and in Wealth,” in the April 3 issue: The Owens administration’s approach to the loss of Medicaid benefits makes it the poster child of the Bush administration’s approach nationally — eliminate all entitlement programs by starving…
The Oborsh family doesn’t fit the Medicaid-recipient stereotype. The family lives on a comfortable suburban street not far from the Southwest Plaza mall. Their home is nestled next to a creekside park; large pine trees and a wooden fence give it a bucolic air. Inside, Paula Oborsh watches over her…
Jeanne Robb has no problem taking crap if it gets her elected. Early one morning, the District 10 Denver City Council candidate patrols Cheesman Park with her plastic bag and gloves. Yes, Robb has a dog, but she’s not picking up after Lily; the mixed mutt isn’t even at Cheesman…
Jean Murrell is skeptical about the changes in store at the United States Air Force Academy. She hopes they’ll be successful, but she doesn’t think they address the core problem: a culture in which upperclassmen have almost complete control over underclassmen. As a public-health officer at the academy, Murrell made…
1. With the off-season departure of broadcaster Wayne Hagin, the Colorado Rockies lost the only man: A. Who could sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in Latin. B. Credited with successfully suggesting both a mascot (Dino) and a mascot name (“Dinger”) in Major League Baseball. C. Known to have…
When asked in November 2000 to comment about the entertainment bi-weekly Go-Go, John Reidy, the man behind the landmark Denver zine known as The Hooligan, said, “If Go-Go is around for seven years, I’ll eat a turd.” The bet turned out to be a safe one: The publication shut its…
Traditionally, media companies with news organizations have shied away from taking sides on specific issues in order to project an aura of objectivity. Yet for several radio stations owned by Clear Channel, maintaining such an appearance may not be a terribly high priority. During the past several weeks, Clear Channel…
