Politics & Government

While most of Westword was stuck in the World’s Longest Line, photographer Kimberly Berky was inside, capturing the historic scene. See her slide show at https://www.westword.com/slideshow/view/134594…

Lauri Lynnx Murphy, Rodney Wallace and Brian Robertson go Boom. The key to grabbing a bit of the spotlight during the convention is to ride on the VIPs’ coattails, as anyone who’s crashed a party or two can attest. Turns out local contemporary artists are using the same strategy to…

How badly do you want to witness history in the making? Denver was having such a nice convention. We were so efficient, so nice. The traffic detours, the police conduct, the weather — so much cooperation, so few snags. But the grotesque logjam at Invesco Field, as folks spiral through…

By Friday morning, most of the big names from the DNC, Hollywood and the traveling press will have packed up their bags and headed for home (or the Twin Cities for the RNC). But for those of you who just aren’t quite ready to let it go, you’ve got one…

A quick haiku concerning the clusterfuck line outside the stadium this afternoon: Line snakes Invesco Like serpent baking in sun Delegates concede. — Alan Prendergast…

The 16th Street Mall today was the same mess it’s been for a week: ugly T-shirts, people selling ugly T-shirts, and bewildered delegates and staffers haggling over a final-day discount on said ugly T-shirts. I dropped in to see my buddy Biker Jim at Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs in Skyline…

Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. No, seriously, do it! Nada Surf, Cold War Kids, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Silversun Pickups Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008 Manifest Hope Art Gallery Better than: Hanging out in the industrial stretches of north Denver when the DNC is not in town. By 6…

Marilyn Blackelk stepped out on the front porch of her small, weathered house in North Denver when she saw a massive anti-war march plodding down Brighton Boulevard. Over 200 cops, 50 police vehicles, a helicopter and a gigantic crowd control tank known as the “BEAR” had the procession of mostly…

Spike Lee, with relish. In the few minutes before Bill Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, I was inching along the perimeter of the floor in the same type of delegate scrum I’d experienced the night before when the Pepsi Center started vomiting celebrities. Suddenly, I…

Bill Clinton makes a point. I made it onto the Pepsi Center floor on Wednesday in time to see Melissa Etheridge belt out a medley of “God Bless America,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Give Peace a Chance” and “Born in the U.S.A.” — for the latter, she left out…

Bloggers of the world, unite. The so-called “bloggers lounge” at the Pepsi Center during the Democratic National Convention, which I got a chance to eyeball on Wednesday, was a small room accessible through a door in the press room. The space was small, poorly lit, and had an ugly couch…

“Type faster, damn you.” The Democratic National Convention press room was located deep in the guts of the Pepsi Center, and when I stopped by on Wednesday afternoon, nearly every seat was occupied — and no one seemed to be having the slightest fun. It reminded me of the scene…

NBC’s David Gregory. During the Democratic National Convention, the back corridors of the Pepsi Center didn’t only serve as a staging area for carefully planned “spontaneous” demonstrations. They also led to green rooms and dressing rooms for assorted media organizations — and lucky thing. Over the past two days, I…

Smokin’ hot stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery in Mad Men and with Mayor John Hickenlooper at the Pepsi Center. I’d been getting kind of cranky about all the celebrity hype surrounding the Democratic National Convention. Where were the big parties? a radio producer wanted to know. The only party…

Look what they found. Upon entering the Pepsi Center on Wednesday, I tried to rendezvous with Westword cartoonist Kenny Be, who was working in the bloggers lounge, located in a part of the venue I hadn’t visited the day before. This attempt took me into the bowels of the building,…

Belly up to the bar. After getting through the security line outside the Pepsi Center on Wednesday afternoon with much more ease than had been the case the day before, I decided to try out the pass I’d obtained for the CNN Grill, located in the Brooklyn’s restaurant space. At…

The DNC is smashing. I first saw the remains of this unfortunate lil’ feller as I moved past the first security checkpoint outside the Pepsi Center early on Tuesday morning — and when I headed toward the arena on Wednesday after five p.m., he was still there. Way to go,…

“How do you spell ‘lunatic’?” The funniest thing about the scene from Wednesday captured here? Not the costume of the guy on the right. No, the most amusing part was that the reporter was seriously interviewing His Holiness as if he was an expert on church abuse. Then again, the…

Please give generously. Seen on Market Street en route to the Democratic National Convention festivities at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday. Hope everything worked out for this guy — because clearly, the people of the Big Easy have suffered enough. — Michael Roberts…

Elvis has left the building — the hard way. After Hillary Clinton moved that the delegates at the Democratic National Convention make Barack Obama the Dems’ presidential candidate by acclimation, the throng outside MSNBC’s headquarters behind Union Station erupted in applause. After watching them celebrate for a few minutes, I…

As you can see, the elephant is topless. Amid MSNBC’s coverage of the Wednesday roll call of votes at the Democratic National Convention, a truck affiliated with a conservative organization — I didn’t catch the name — rolled up to the curb opposite the net’s headquarters to deliver the message,…

The Rocky Mountain News’ front-page headline described the mobs that have descended on the 16th Street Mall as a “hundred-year flood of humanity,” and that’s about right. How packed with people is the area? Yesterday, I walked from Westword’s offices, at approximately 10th and Broadway, to the mall with the…