News

A crucial deal to redevelop now-abandoned Stapleton International Airport has crashed and burned. After months of delays, King Soopers has checked out of a much-touted city plan to make the grocery chain the anchor tenant at the old airport. Generating economic activity at the 4,700-acre Stapleton site is critical, because…

Lakota Indian who billed himself as a spiritual leader has been found guilty in Larimer County of raping a Boulder woman who helped him perform Native American ceremonies for a largely white clientele. The Colorado case comes at a time when Lakota tribal elders are expressing increased concern about the…

The Sound and the Furry Robin Chotzinoff is a national treasure–the Studs Terkel of our time. Her ability to burrow into a person’s life and extract its essential juices is uncanny. She helps make Westword by far the most intelligent newspaper in Denver. Please renew my lifetime subscription! Albert A…

Mable Mauser is sitting at her antique desk with the spindly legs when the phone rings. The man on the line is not one of the Denver society people with whom she’s worked for more than forty years. Nor is he a New York fur designer, or a rancher somewhere…

part 2 of 2 Something has gone awry– How many poets have hocked their books for junk money, waiting on the poem? Curse you Burroughs! for being an exception to rules every junkie/artist’d liketa break simultaneously reminding us just how ugly the whole life gig can go down… Don’t haveta…

part 1 of 2 The rain-slick road whispered beneath the car, the windshield wipers keeping the beat as he drove south into Chicago through the gray evening. Bill Harper felt drained. Empty as a chapel. There hadn’t been much rest in the four days since the telephone call. Chris is…

End of the line: Now that Brian Propp’s resigned–by fax from Kiev–as Regional Transportation District chairman, he would have you believe he was driven out of public service by the nasty ol’ press that portrayed him as an AWOL, radical anti-RTDer whose strings were being pulled by the Independence Institute’s…

The recent death of local millionaire Chuck Stevinson had an effect on many people. But perhaps no one outside his family will feel the loss more than a controversial South Carolina physician who also operates a cancer clinic in Denver. Indeed, the death of the Golden automobile and real estate…

We Are Not A-Mused Regarding Arthur Hodges’s “Down by Law,” in the February 22 issue: Thank you for the very informative story on Denver city attorney Dan Muse. Although I have seen his name for years, I had never before read such a complete article about his background and his…

Over the past few years, M&N Electrical Supply Corp. has been a big beneficiary of Denver’s program to promote the use of “minority business enterprises” on public-works projects. Records show the Hispanic-owned company has won contracts worth more than $12 million from the city since 1989, most of them as…

Here comes Mayor Wellington Webb. Look! He’s got four empty suitcases–three soft-sided vinyl, one American Tourister–and a very short pair of skis. No poles or boots. “Look’s like we’re all ready to take a trip,” he says. Then one of his aides rushes up with another, longer pair of skis…

With Denver’s city elections less than three months away, Mayor Wellington Webb may be unhappy to find Dan Muse, the man he named city attorney back in 1991, buffeted by accusations of wrongdoing and ineptitude. But he shouldn’t be surprised. Twelve years ago, during his first, unsuccessful bid for the…

I’m a hugger,” confesses voice-over artist and teacher Dick Terry. He draws nearer, his smile exuding a blinding white glow. “Did you know that your voice changes when you smile?” he asks. With each elongated, oddly cadenced syllable, he broadens his already enormous grin until his face is all but…

Up a creek with a paddling: It seems like just yesterday that loudmouth homophobe Bob Enyart was your average divorced, lonely talk-show host, packing a gun to work at his gig for KHNC, the “patriot” radio station way out there in tiny Johnstown. Now he’s married and a convicted spanker…

Three months ago, when the Aronson family of Evergreen filed a lawsuit against their neighbors the Quigleys, charging them with anti-Semitism, it set off a barrage of criticism against the Quigleys and inspired a slew of soul-searching editorials about how Jew-haters still roam Colorado. Following a round of outraged newspaper…

Hey, CSU! You’ve just hit the ranks of big-time football! You’ve got a conference championship, a national audience, TV contracts and a big bowl game! Whaddaya gonna do next? Forget Disneyland. It’s time to fire up the cash registers. The real test of whether you’ve found the college-football limelight is…

The state chapter of the Democratic Leadership Council is about to announce that it’s forming its own public-policy think tank. Not surprisingly, politics already is intruding. Gleeful members of the right-thinking Independence Institute, a Golden-based tank that has enjoyed a recent flurry of publicity, are touting the Democrats’ action as…

The City of Denver’s Winter Park ski area made a mostly smooth run through the state legislature last week, winning preliminary approval for a bill abolishing its rivals at the Moffat Tunnel Commission. But the Winter Park Recreational Association is headed for a few moguls–including a Denver city councilman who…

Fill in the Blanks After reading Patricia Calhoun’s “Blank You Very Much,” in the February 15 issue, I’m ready to apply to the city for a job. We paid $116 an hour for someone to copy documents and put a “confidential” stamp on them? Hell, I’d do the same thing…

part 1 of 2 It took less than 24 hours for Galen Travis to go from feeling like a very lucky man to someone whose luck had run out. Last fall, Travis, a beefy-faced man who grows alfalfa and wheat outside of Burlington, thirty miles from the Kansas border in…