This morning the Colorado Economic Development Commission will hear an update on the Regional Tourism Act award made to Aurora last May, two weeks before Gaylord Entertainment pulled the plug on an $800 million convention/hotel complex, sending the city scrambling for a replacement that’s yet to appear. But Pueblo, the…
Dear Mexican: I’m 39. My stepdad — who raised me — just died. This freed my mother to tell me (Stepdad always forbade it) that the man I thought was my biological father all this time was not. The man who IS my biological father is Mexican…totally (i.e., both of…
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Beyond the Barrel Man costumes, beyond the zombies that end the Denver A to Z show (what, no Zebulon Pike?), a sign warns that Collision: The Sand Creek Massacre, 1860s-Today may not be suitable for children, despite the fact…
Even before Denver International Airport opened in 1995, conspiracy theories were taking off — and they show no sign of coming down to earth today. “You know there are dormitories under Denver International Airport to house all the world leaders in case of catastrophe?” After an hour of funeral-reception chit-chat…
“Mustang,” the art you love to hate, is all grown up. Five years ago today, Luis Jiminez’s 32-foot-high fiberglass sculpture of a wild horse was installed outside Denver International Airport — a dozen years late. In the intervening years, its cost had doubled from the original $300,000 commission, and its…
We won’t be pressing charges against Scott Gessler for taking more than five copies of Westword — although there have certainly been hints that we should call the Denver District Attorney’s office to see if Colorado’s controversial Secretary of State could be prosecuted for violating the state’s newspaper-theft statute. But…
Dear Mexican: The pinche Republicans are making a gigante ruido about their “Hispanic” senators in Congress. ¡Wachale! Lets call a pendejo a pendejo. Please discuss with tu audienca what Mexicans really think about Cubans in these Estados Unidos. El Güero Tejano (no Cubano) Dear Mexican: As a recent transplant from…
As if Scott Gessler didn’t have enough trouble. The Secretary of State is already being investigated by theIndependent Ethics Commission to determine whether he violated the law by using office funds on a trip to Florida. (Gessler has sued the commission; a hearing is set for Thursday). Meanwhile, the Denver…
Twenty years ago, a new member of the Arvada City Council was making waves in the normally sleepy suburb. Joanne Conte, who’d been elected in 1991, was shaking things up so much that then-Westword staff writer Karen Bowers started working on a political story about the situation. But she got…
Raise a glass to the death of this year’s dopiest bill — so far. Senator Greg Brophy had proposed that parents be able to buy grown-up beverages at Colorado bars and restaurants for children over seventeen. But yesterday a Senate committee decided that Brophy’s “Drinks With Dad” proposal was all…
Dear Mexican: Grammar question/rant. If Spanglish is a legitimate dialect/language, why do you feel the need to italicize every instance of code switching? I seriously doubt that when you speak you emphasize every puta palabra (emphasis intended here), but that’s what your article reads like. We all know that you…
The truth, like plutonium, has a way of leaking out. After two years of deliberations, the Rocky Flats grand jury wanted to charge eight individuals for environmental crimes at the nuclear weapons plant — but the Justice Department declined to indict, and instead sent the jurors home in the spring…
The 107th National Western Stock Show rode out of town yesterday, leaving behind a passel of questions about how the Stock Show complex and concept can be rebranded for the future. One innovation this year was free parking, but overall attendance was also down to its lowest level since 2004…
Westword was only a few years old when a housewife who lived in a mobile home in Commerce City told us she wanted to write a humor column for the paper. We declined the offer: She wasn’t funny, we said. That housewife soon became known around the world as Roseanne,…
One mystery of the legendary Lost Dutchman gold mine has been solved. The remains found in late November in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix have been identified as those of Jesse Capen, “the gentle giant” who’d worked as a night bellman at the downtown Sheraton for almost a dozen…
“No convention to be held here this year will exceed in importance the gathering of this week,” the Rocky Mountain News pronounced in January 1906, the year the National Western Stock Show got its start, as an adjunct of the annual Colorado Cattle and Horse Growers Association convention by the…
Dear Mexican: In 1983 or 1984, I was walking home down Haight Street in San Francisco one evening and stopped into Watusi Records to look through the dollar cutout bin. I flipped through it for a bit and then stopped dead when I saw the Jonny Chingas Pachuco LP. I…
How to put profit back in the non-profit National Western Stock Show — enough to keep it corralled in its current location? That’s the question a group of NWSS officials, business types and city representatives are studying, and their mission includes the possibility of establishing a Western heritage center. They…
Editor’s note: Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday that got its start here in Colorado. The Westword office is closed, but Latest Word will be posting occasional updates. Watch for our full roster of stories to return tomorrow. The country’s largest parade in honor of Martin…
Suffering from the flu? As soon as you can hold a book or tablet without your hand shaking, find a copy of Katherine Ann Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” and remember this: It could be much, much worse. And in Denver in 1918, it was…
Governor John Hickenlooper is scheduled to speak at today’s reopening of the Aurora Century 16, where “an evening of remembrance” will honor the victims of the shootings on July 20 during a screen of The Dark Knight Rises. Let’s hope the event works as well as Hickenlooper’s subsequent talk about…
Dear Mexican: Can you please tell me something? How do you think it’s fair that all the people who come to our country and stay get treated far better than some of the people who have busted their butt all their lives here? Tell me, how is that fair?! You…
