Is Everybody Happy? The rat patrol: Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “The Smile High City,” in the February 20 issue: I’ll be in my “happy zone” when Wellington Webb is finally out of office. Now that the time’s coming close, it’s getting easier and easier to see how the wheels have come…
Let’s say you’re the proprietor of a popular LoDo brewpub, or a onetime Cherry Creek gallery owner, or the former chief of police. You decide the time has come to do something really big and really different with your life. You dream of making the city you live in a…
The eight major candidates for mayor each have a strategy to break out of the pack in the May 6 election and make it into the anticipated June runoff. Of course, there’s often a difference between what they’ll publicly claim is their strategy and what’s going on behind the scenes…
I’ve come to the 16th Street Mall with no other plan than to walk it, at noon and at night, to see how the mile-long stretch feels after a couple of difficult months. On February 17, the mall logged its first murder of the year when 21-year-old Stan Leachman was…
1. We’re da bomb! Some of the nation’s top guns now call the federal maximum-security prison in Florence home. Who is not part of Colorado’s pinstripe set? A. Prose-happy Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. B. Ramzi Yousef, one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing-conspiracy convicts. C. Richard Reid, the shoe-bomb terrorist…
More sexual-assault victims currently and formerly enrolled at the United States Air Force Academy have come forward since Jessica Brakey, Lisa Ballas and Justine Parks spoke publicly about being either punished or pushed out after reporting being raped by fellow cadets (“The War Within,” January 30). In late December, a…
You know Rocky and Dinger and Thunder and Howler. But do you know Denver’s most famous mascot? Neither did we until we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Bones, the Museum of Nature & Science’s bag o’ bones, and his handler, puppeteer Tim Seeber, when they ushered in the Metro…
Picture a successful salesman, and odds are good the image will look a lot like Kirk MacDonald. The head of the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handles business operations for the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, is florid and large of frame, with broad features, thinning hair and a…
A couple of weekends ago, with war in Iraq looming on the not-so-distant horizon, France, seen as a troublesome impediment to European unity, was isolated by her traditional allies and left to fend for herself. Still, in an eleventh-hour effort to gain a diplomatic foothold, she pleaded with England. Ambassadors…
Smile, Suckers Fair and foul: The thing I love about Westword is reading about the city I love being talked about in a manner that is not always objective, but inspires passion because the words themselves are written with passion. Being the son of a political family and being politically…
A nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong its weapons. — Cheyenne proverb The rain was cold and hard, and it beat down upon Marlene Roulliard like a thousand fists…
Shaking a plastic cup for change on the 16th Street Mall is so 2002. Cyberbegging is a much less time-consuming — and warmer — method of making dough. At least for those needy souls with an Internet connection, a little HTML savvy and a PayPal account. Michael Palmer, his girlfriend,…
1. Holy Homeland Insecurity! Coloradans have been stocking up on duct tape even though: A. Their actions have caused critical shortages in certain key industries such as muffler-repair and snowboard shops. B. The sticky line of defense against bioterror is permeable. C. According to reliable statistics, one in ten people…
We feel for those unsuspecting tourists stranded at Denver International Airport while they wait for the East to dig itself out. After all, there are only so many “Layover” or “Flyby” massages you can get in a day — even if DIA’s rubdown room has been cited by both Lucky…
Let’s say you want to stage a terrorist attack on Parks College in Thornton. Unfortunately for the students inside, it wouldn’t be tough to lurk around the perimeter, waiting to strike. You could conceal yourself in the dense mat of junipers planted as innocent landscaping. You could practically walk onto…
Throughout her years in Denver television, Channel 7’s Julie Hayden has specialized in being where the action is. She’s been to more crime scenes than she can count, reporting about JonBenét Ramsey and innumerable lesser-known casualties, and has provided viewers with close-up views of just about every natural disaster to…
Andy Pruitt first tended to the aches and pains of athletes in 1965, when he was fifteen years old. He hadn’t intended to be on the wrapping side of Ace bandages. The previous fall, Pruitt was still playing on the school’s football team; in fact, a football injury was the…
The Slime of His Life Mile hype: Great article by Stuart Steers on Mile High Telecom (“Con Air,” February 6). I was a manager there and quit due to all of the lies and misrepresentations. I worked on Wall Street for ten years, but never encountered the slime that I…
He had the camera, the studio and the guns. She had the tribal tattoos, the icy blue eyes and the desire. They met on the Internet in May 2000 in a chat room for Colorado singles. They volleyed flirtatious notes. She told him her name was Katica, pronounced “Kah-tee-kah.” It’s…
The Baker neighborhood is one of the most diverse in the city, sprawling from West Sixth Avenue to Mississippi and from Broadway to the South Platte River. It encompasses hundreds of nineteenth-century houses, a thriving retail strip along Broadway and large industrial tracts along the river. When a group of…
Students raised their CSAP scores, and all their teachers got was a lousy banner. Two years ago, public schools rated “unsatisfactory” on the state’s accountability reports were promised recognition and cash incentives if they showed significant improvement on the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests — the sole measure for each…
As state legislators grapple with the meteor-sized budget hole that’s swallowing so many programs, their eyes have fallen on the Colorado Film Commission — the first such state agency in the country when it opened in 1969 — and its $320,000 annual tab. Under one measure now being considered by…
