News

On November 2, 1999, all was sweetness and light at the headquarters of the Regional Transportation District. After years of crushing defeats and internecine warfare among the agency’s elected board of directors, RTD finally managed to win strong voter approval for its plan to borrow $457 million to build a…

OverdueNext week, families of those who were murdered at Columbine High School last April will announce a $3 million fundraising drive to turn the site of the infamous school library into an atrium and build a new library on the school grounds. More than forty family members have been meeting…

It’s an inside joke, this thing about food, but in a way, it really did start with their guts. The Navy. Pearl Harbor. The USO. The billboard. Wal-Mart. For Dick and Doc Nash, poster boys from The Big One, it all came down to a full belly. “Hell, yeah,” says…

On October 15, Penny Parker, a former business writer for the Denver Post, took over as the gossip columnist for the Rocky Mountain News — and her bow was a rocky one indeed. Examples? A Parker-penned item about the Wynkoop Brewing Company’s annual “Running of the Pigs” had the event…

Frank Whitworth went down to the local gay bar. It was the usual Hide & Seek drinking crowd, and Whitworth knew everyone. A couple of men, still in suits and ties from their work day, teased the bartender boisterously. One guy, his name stitched on the patch of his blue…

These days, more and more people are getting their news from television — or at least they think they are. But while local TV newscasts cover the events of the day (a handful of them, anyway), they’re also sophisticated selling machines. And their target, dear friends, is you. That’s just…

KWGN-TV/Channel 2: Channel 2 is often overlooked in the late-news Olympics because its broadcast, which airs from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m., doesn’t directly compete with those produced by other local stations. But the newscast got a credibility boost when Ernie Bjorkman, who’d left Channel 2 years earlier in favor…

A newscast is made up of a lot of bits and pieces that go by so quickly, many viewers don’t even notice them. So we’ve slowed down a sample program — the November 8 broadcast on Channel 2 — to help you catch what you’ve been missing: the good, the…

Frank Whitworth went down to the local gay bar. It was the usual Hide & Seek drinking crowd, and Whitworth knew everyone. A couple of men, still in suits and ties from their work day, teased the bartender boisterously. One guy, his name stitched on the patch of his blue…

Inside Gary Haney’s office, in the basement of a building just off Broadway and 6th Avenue, there’s a knee-high stack of hardcore porn videos that don’t get much of a workout anymore. The covers are plastered with wide-open mouths, bare breasts and stuffed orifices, and frankly, Haney couldn’t care less…

At last! A true public service announcement from WestwordAfter you’ve packed away pounds of turkey, and stuffing, and gravy, and yams, and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and then settled your expanded self into a chair to watch a Thanksgiving football game and look through some long-neglected mail, do NOT…

Most award-winning radio programs have something in common: respectability. So imagine the surprise of local media pros when the Best Evening Show prize doled out at the 1999 A.I.R. (Achievements In Radio) Awards ceremony held November 16 at the Gothic Theatre went to RoverRadio, arguably one of the least respectable…

Perhaps the most wonderful thing, Cheryl Bailey thinks, is that phones are ringing all over the hotel, but none of the calls are for her. In the three resort kitchens, dishes are piling up, but they’re not her mess. She’s so far from that workaday life — the one in…

On the Internet, there’s no accounting for taste. That makes it easy to explain the existence of Web pages with names like www.buttsacrossamerica.com and www.donkeysex.com. But what about that goody-two-shoes bluemountain.com? The crudest thing this site offers is its graphic design, a throwback to the days of 14.4 modems and…

I. HOW TO WIN On the second Saturday in October, in a small park in southwest Denver, two groups of children come together to play a game of football. Each of the boys is hidden beneath his beefed-up shoulder pads and oversized helmet. At their age, most of the players…

On the Internet, there’s no accounting for taste. That makes it easy to explain the existence of Web pages with names like www.buttsacrossamerica.com and www.donkeysex.com. But what about that goody-two-shoes bluemountain.com? The crudest thing this site offers is its graphic design, a throwback to the days of 14.4 modems and…

Act I, Scene I. The Drama Teacher: Enter stage left. Stephen Nye doesn’t mind a little drama. In fact, he welcomes it. Nye, who has taught theater at the Denver School of the Arts for three years, didn’t think twice about producing two medieval-era plays with strong Christian themes and…

After eighteen months of fighting against a proposed gravel quarry in their neighborhood, Coal Creek Canyon homeowners finally blew a hole through Asphalt Paving Company’s plans. Their victory came November 9, on the sixth and final day of public hearings before the Jefferson County commissioners, who were considering whether to…

Tempest in a teepeeLast week the Senate Ethics Committee cleared Harley-riding, party-switching senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of conflict-of-interest charges filed by Phil Doe’s Citizens Progressive Alliance and two other environmental groups. The charges stemmed from Campbell’s involvement — as a local landowner — with the proposed sale of the Vallecito…

There is no simple way to explain what most people cannot understand. And after 135 years, there is no simple way to heal a wound that still bleeds. Yet on Thanksgiving weekend, Otto Braided Hair will try. If the good weather holds and plans proceed on schedule, he will spend…