“Bill becomes law if governor sins.” –typo in the 1998 Colorado Legislature’s pamphlet How a Bill Becomes a Law Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder? If so, then the folks calling for Roy Romer’s head should be anointing it instead. The alleged personalities at KNUS radio, chief among them…
It was a small thing, really, just a signature on the back of a plain manila application card. At the time she endorsed it, in 1942, she had no way of knowing it would get her fired, arrested, thrown in jail and forced into hiding. But on the day she…
An Affair to Dismember Patricia Calhoun’s “Sealed With a Kiss,” in the February 12 issue, was superb–simply wonderful! It was the ultimate Calhounism. She hit the proverbial nail on the head at every turn. She drove the nails through Governor Romeo’s glib talk and feckless conduct. Romer does not realize…
What’s your sign? The Denver Performing Arts Complex has some snappy new signage, part of a $1.5 million improvement project now under way. By June the area should have two more electronic marquees (the first three were installed in December), as well as banners on 14th and Arapahoe streets, new…
When Andy Parks was growing up, once or twice a year his family would leave their home in Parker and fly to California or Florida or New York or Germany. Parks’s father, James, a busy obstetrician and gynecologist, was flexible on these vacation destinations. Anywhere was fine with him–with one…
The first time Russell Welty heard about the Year 2000 Problem–also known as the Millennium Bug or, in programmer jargon, Y2K–it sounded simple. Too simple. The problem, stripped down to its essentials, is this: Most computers on the planet are programmed to calculate dates in a two-digit format–for example, 02/14/98…
Denver may soon be the last city in the metropolitan area where you can legally buy a one-on-one table dance from a stripper and hand a tip directly to her. With the help of a religious-right legal foundation based in Arizona, virtually all of Denver’s neighboring cities have adopted ordinances…
Rocky mountain hype: Little could Fort Collins fourth-grader Kari Neuman have known when she proposed making John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” the official state song that she was putting a match to a powderkeg of positive karma just waiting to explode all over Colorado. In recent days, the Denver Musicians…
The decisions of a Denver Probate Court judge that deprived 83-year-old Letty Milstein of her rights and her money were slapped down late last week by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The case of Letty Milstein, mother of Denver socialite Judi Wolf, was sent back to the probate court by…
For months, someone had been tagging the city-owned west Denver boxing gym that Mike Quintana runs with his father. So when Quintana heard some kids rattling their spray cans out back one night last October, he grabbed them and called the cops. And just as the kids were about to…
She’s loud. She’s brash. In the past, some of her teammates couldn’t stand her. While growing up poor in Triumph, Idaho, population fifty, she learned to scrap for the last pork chop on the platter. When the boys in town teased the freckle-faced girl with the funny name, her older…
There Auto Be a Law I read with high moral indignation, considerable irritation and an extremely jaundiced eye Tony Perez-Giese’s “Take It for a Ride,” in the February 5 issue, about the need for regulation in the car business. I was one of “them” for three months in 1995, and…
Governor Roy Romer lied. You can read his lips in a six-minute smooch that catches Romer in the middle of a close, personal consultation with B.J. Thornberry, his former deputy chief of staff, in the front seat of a car parked outside Dulles Airport. The kiss was captured in 1995,…
What’s cooking? Artist Martha Keating has already made northwest Denver look better, with projects like the 20th Street Viaduct mosaics that she created with Bob Luna and a host of neighborhood children. Now she’s preparing to inject more good taste into the area–in the form of a bakery she wants…
Even before the accident, Mike Grainger wasn’t quite right. “We called him ‘Mike Grainger, Mike Grainger, Mike Grainger,'” remembers Barb Thomsen, one of his former co-workers at the Burlington Northern railyards in Alliance, Nebraska. “He always repeated everything. He was kind of slow in the head.” But everybody liked Mike…
The hearing has dragged on for two days of testimony from police officers, a special-education teacher and Division of Motor Vehicles investigators. Now it’s time for yet another expert witness: a forensic document examiner who’s been trained by the FBI. He explains how to use infrared lasers to analyze handwriting,…
Pull out! Pull out!: Gosh, is Western Pacific Airlines, that beacon of fiscal brilliance that was supposed to save Denver from big, bad United, really crashing and burning in bankruptcy court? Who could have predicted it? Just because the airline was already losing money hand over fist by the time…
Public Service Company of Colorado wants state lawmakers to approve its self-styled proposal for cleaning up Denver’s air. But the $200 million-plus plan may make consumers gag. Though it’s been wrapped in a green bow for legislators–several environmental groups have even given it their blessing–the bill violates Public Service’s recent…
It’s been nearly four years since a young woman sent by Local 7 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to help organize grocery workers in Alamosa was sexually assaulted by her boss in a room at the Holiday Inn. Two weeks ago the woman, now 24 years old,…
Make no mistake about it, the inmates in the Colorado Department of Corrections are paying dearly for their crimes. So are their families. Just look at their phone bills. One of the privileges prisoners lose when they go to the slammer is their choice of long-distance carriers; their calls to…
When millionaire NHL celebrities like Adam Deadmarsh, Brett Hull and John Vanbiesbrouck take the ice this week wearing the colors of the United States, the media glare will be hot and the cheers deafening. But no U.S. Olympic hockey player will be prouder than an unknown, unpaid defenseman named Merz…
Paper Trained Patricia Calhoun’s “Birth of a Notion,” in the January 29 issue, gave me chills. I didn’t live in Denver in the Seventies, or even the Eighties, so I appreciated learning how far we’ve come and also what we’ve lost. Congratulations, Westword. Larry Smythe Denver I just wanted to…
