“The West is not a place,” Jack A. Weil would say. “It’s a state of mind.” Jack A. entered that state for good in 1928, when the then-27-year-old salesman for Paris Garters drove his brand-new Chrysler Roadster across the plains to Denver. Born in Evansville, Indiana, the son of a…
Back in 1908, when Jack A. Weil was just seven and Denver was less than fifty years old, this city hosted its first Democratic National Convention. Town boosters brought snow down from the mountains for a snowball fight, other enterprising businessmen printed a booklet outlining the city’s more risqué enterprises,…
Dear Mexican: I am the proud uncle of five Mexican-redneck kids who recently moved to Wisconsin with their mamá wisconsiana after living in la Capirucha all their lives. I’ve talked to them on the phone several times a week since they left for la tierra de los sueños materializados, and…
Marilee Utter. Although Denver would seem to be all DNC, all the time, it appears that the city will carry on after August 28. Evidence of this came in an August 19 Rocky Mountain News story, which reported that the Urban Land Institute has recommended the DPS facility in the…
John Hickenlooper finally reveals his secret identity at DIA. Finally! That mysterious, third voice on the DIA trains — the one that doesn’t belong to blustery Alan Roach (now the voice of the Broncos rather than the Rockies) or sultry Adele Arakawa — has been officially identified. Mayor John Hickenlooper…
Land here, Dems. I just made a fast trip out of DIA, which has been spruced up in anticipation of the hordes of politicos and pundits heading to town this weekend. Acres of carpet have been replaced (and recycled in the greenest way possible), the gift stores are stocked with…
Jack A. Weil One of Jack A. Weil’s favorite lines: “Where were you when I was your age?” This year, for the first time, when Jack A. asked me that question, I could honestly say this: “Well, at least I’d been born.” At the age of 107, Jack A. Weil,…
Dear Mexican: As a Mexican, I’m always ashamed of the fact that a lot of Mexican women just come to the United States to have babies and to utilize this country’s welfare. I know a lot of them who just keep having children, and they do not pay a dollar…
Still up in the air. Frontier Airlines, which is fighting to stay aloft, yesterday floated two telling communiques. The first announced that the Denver-based airline had received a $30 million installment of the $75 million loan from Republic Airways Holdings that was approved by a bankruptcy judge on August 5…
David Carr. I do not remember when I first met David Carr, who makes three local appearances on August 13. At some point, he just appears in my memories of the annual meetings of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the trade association for papers like Westword, where editors and publishers…
In full bloom. Here’s how you insure that your Denver Daisy is in blooming good health: You get it from professionals, already fully grown (or close enough). Earlier this summer, I reported on how my attempts to grow a Denver Daisy — the special species designed to honor Denver’s 150th…
Sounds like the author of “36 Hours in Denver,” published in the New York Times on August 10 and geared to the upcoming Democratic National Convention, wasn’t completely thrilled with the assignment — or with doing much fact-checking, either. The only two restaurants mentioned as potential stops during those 36…
Hurry, voters, hurry. A friend who’s not exactly a man-of-the-people and thus would like to avoid crowds at the voting booths Tuesday was confused by a recent Denver Votes! mailing from the Denver Elections Division. He’s smart, if not social, but he was still puzzled by these instructions: Note! 1…
We were back at the Buckhorn Exchange, sitting under that two-headed calf (“really two-faced,” said one of my dining companions), trying to decide between the alligator and rattlesnake appetizers (we went with alligator — which really does taste like chicken once it’s battered and fried) and debating whether it’s possible…
Politics makes strange bedfellows — even when one of those fellows plans to go nowhere near his bed during the Democratic National Convention. Developer Stan Kroenke is married to Ann Walton Kroenke, number 336 on Forbes.com’s most recent list of billionaires; her uncle, Sam Walton, founded Wal-Mart. And Ann helped…
Dear Mexican: Where I recently started working, Latinos make up about 95 percent of the work force. We are, however, prohibited from speaking Spanish. Our supervisor tells us that if we can speak so much as one word of English, we cannot speak in Spanish. We are constantly being threatened…
The first body was found on June 25, the morning of Bike to Work day, stalling — and stunning — many bikers pedaling along the Platte, who wound up taking a detour as the body was fished out of the river.. Then on Sunday, July 27, a jogger running in…
On Friday, August 1, the Rocky Mountain News published its fourth piece in a week on the wind turbine in Wray that’s part of the DNC’s carbon offsets program. An op-ed essay from Russell Simon, the communications manager for the Carbonfund.org foundation in Washington, D.C., it was also the third…
Forget about the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Breakfast at Racines this morning was the real DPC — Denver Power Convention. Chew on this! Over a single hour, our spy spotted the following lineup (not necessarily together): Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce honcho Joe Blake; Dem power-broker Howard Gelt; uber developer…
Looking out my back window, I can see the Pepsi Center, where all the Dippin’ Dots carts and pretzel stands and private suites have been banished while the facility is transformed into the site of next month’s Democratic National Convention — or at least the three days leading up to…
The DNC rumors keep flying. Protesters are going to fling feces at the cops (for more on that, see page 13). Some delegations will be staying as far away as Wyoming. And in the city that wants to host the greenest convention ever, you can’t even recycle a Gatorade bottle…
Dear Mexican: What’s with calling yourselves “La Raza”? Being Mexicans, Chicanos or whatever isn’t enough — now you’re the race? Sounds pretty racist to me.The Race Is On Dear Gabacho: Few things annoy the Mexican more than the Know Nothing Nation’s deliberate ignorance of this most nebulous of Mexican idioms…
