Three Lakewood police cars and a K-9 unit responded to a call from the Cherry Bomb Lounge at around 1 a.m. on February 8. The cops were tipped off by someone at the West Sixth Avenue bar who said there was a wanted woman inside. She had been eluding Arapahoe…
Colorado attorney general Gale Norton is investigating one of the most controversial charges yet against tobacco companies: that the firms encourage kids to shoplift cigarettes as part of an effort to hook them on smoking. But even as Norton is turning up the heat in her lawsuit against big tobacco,…
When Jannette Mayhew popped open the trunk of her car and discovered the bullet-pierced body of her son, she probably thought things couldn’t get much worse. But that was before her husband reached into a box he’d been told contained his son’s personal effects–but which actually contained the boy’s internal…
That confidence wafting up from Tucson, Arizona, that unmistakable whiff of spring hope, might be real this year. A lot of baseball folk believe the Colorado Rockies improved their roster in the off-season more than any other team in the National League, and it’s hard to argue with them. I…
The art of the deal: In the face of encroaching development, the Robischon Gallery is holding down the artistic fort at 18th and Wazee streets–a stand that earned founder Jim Robischon an award of appreciation from the Lower Downtown District Inc. at last week’s annual meeting. And Robischon won’t be…
While the Broncos prepare for the second half of their big playoff game in the Colorado Legislature, why don’t we just sit back and enjoy the halftime show? The high-priced entertainment, of course, is reserved for the VIPs–the Very Important Politicians who will be voting on SB 171 (read: the…
Better Read Than Dead Regarding Harrison Fletcher’s “Seeing Red,” in the February 19 issue: Has Westword ever met a Communist it didn’t like? Forgive me if I don’t break out the crying towels over Pat Blawis’s passing. In the early part of World War II, the Nazis and the Communists…
Even after five months, he can feel the chill. “There’s definitely something about the place,” Doug Gradisar says, looking up the side of an abandoned flour mill northwest of Coors Field. “It gives you the creeps.” Gradisar is an outreach worker for homeless teens. The last time he was here,…
The first volley of bullets smacked into police chief Kris Monson’s parked squad car at 1:30 a.m., while he was sitting behind the wheel in downtown Olathe, doing paperwork. The windshield shattered into a spider web, and the young Western Slope lawman hit the floor. He felt a sharp pain…
Denver drunk-driving lawyer Brent M. Martin is on a collision course with justice. Make that with a judge. Attorney Martin, who regularly defends people accused of driving under the influence, is scheduled to appear in Denver County Court February 26 to face charges that he got liquored up last summer…
Belly up to the barbecue: Three years after local uranium magnate turned po’ boy Oren Benton first filed for bankruptcy, lawyers and accountants still have their snouts buried in his estate. And, man, is the eatin’ good. Featuring hundreds of millions of dollars in debts and an international cast of…
A three-acre plot of land along Leetsdale Drive has become a major headache for nonprofit KRMA-TV Channel 6, which has been battling neighbors over its proposed profit-making commercial projects on the property it’s owned for the past decade. A recent proposal to build a 24-hour Amoco station and a Grease…
Somewhere in there, in the dense limbo of the classified section, somewhere between “Beautiful Russian Ladies Want to Meet YOU!” and “Improve Your Sex Life With Penile Enlargement” and “Wendelstedt Umpire School,” you’ll almost always find the shimmering promise that you, too, can feel like a real major-leaguer. Or feel…
Take one: When the curtain goes up at the Academy Awards next month, Denver filmmaker Donna Dewey will be there–nominated for her documentary A Story of Healing. The 28-minute film–which follows a California medical team, Interplast, on a volunteer mission through Vietnam in January 1997–has gotten raves since it premiered…
The Team knows how to tantalize a twelve-year-old. “Don’t be trying any of this at home, kids. What you are about to see is very, very dangerous. We don’t even do what Trey Tally does–breaking concrete and ice with his head! So don’t you try it!” Trey Tally’s nickname is…
Babes in Royland Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Strange Bedfellows,” in the February 19 issue: Roy Romer proved himself a serial liar and a man without honor. Making a total ass of himself and exposing his wife to the cruelest kind of public humiliation, he cast off the last rags of any…
A year ago, Boulder police chief Tom Koby faced the cameras and promised that “our guy won’t walk.” Since then, of course, the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation has limped along. Thus far, the only arrests remotely related to the case have been that of a friend of the Ramseys who…
There are peaceful uses for atomic energy, and then there’s the Steen family, blown apart by the biggest uranium bonanza in American history. Shreds of memories and court documents now litter the landscape of what started out as one of the century’s most inspiring success stories. Charlie was the indomitable…
Better homes and stadiums: Since Pat Bowlen wants taxpayers to build him a $320 million home for the Broncos (see story at left), we’re sure he won’t mind if we take a peek at his own crash pad, a three-story brick beauty (latest assessed value: $1,971,580) that overlooks the tenth…
Following the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl win last month, Denver’s movers and shakers tripped over themselves in a rush to endorse a new taxpayer-financed stadium for the team. Mayor Wellington Webb, Governor Roy Romer and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce all gave high-profile endorsements to the stadium proposal, even…
Last Christmas wasn’t merry for Arlee Martin and her daughter Rose Warren. A teenage employee of Foley’s Cherry Creek department store not only refused to wait on the pair but allegedly spewed racial slurs at them and attacked Warren. The two black women were so shaken by the encounter that…
You know those moments when all your senses open like a flower? Picture this: West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium in mid-March, a tidy little ballpark, swept and green and balmy. Nolan Ryan is on the hill wearing that gruesome blaze of Astro orange and yellow across his chest, and he’s…
