U.S. Representative Diana DeGette didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. She’s been concerned about food safety throughout her tenure in Congress, and yesterday, she and California Representative Henry Waxman sent a letter demanding a full investigation into the listeria contamination that’s already killed fifteen people…
Dear Mexican: I learned Spanish in school as a teen. Then, it seems, because I was young, everybody was an usted. I would like to practice speaking it, but am now an adult and don’t know who gets to be a tú. I’m scared of getting it wrong and unwittingly…
Hold your horses! Cowboys only have to stay on a buckin’ bronc for eight seconds, but the debate over the proposed National Western Stock Show relocation continues to bump along. Five weeks ago, Mayor Michael Hancock gave NWSS officials until October 1 to come up with an explanation of why…
At tonight’s inaugural Pen and Sword open house at the Denver Press Club, a turn-of-the-century treasure at 1330 Glenarm Place, thirteen club member-authors will offer “the stories behind the books” from 6 to 9 p.m. But the stories, and the night, won’t end there. Stories rarely end that neatly…
The listeria outbreak that’s killed at least thirteen people has been traced to cantaloupe from Jensen Farms in Holly. While the FDA has been looking for the cause of the contamination there, the feds have never suggested that the problem was sick workers. But that hasn’t stopped the Yes on…
In the fall of 2009, local officials looked around and suddenly discovered that the medical marijuana business was booming in Denver. In fact, it might have been the city’s only growth industry at the time. The national media discovered the story, too — and when Westword advertised for a medical…
Last week, Anderson Cooper interviewed Willow the Cat. On Monday, he featured two more Coloradans on his new show, Anderson — but the story of Kristen and Will Stillman, which first appeared on the cover of Westword a year ago, isn’t nearly as warm and fuzzy…
Dear Mexican: I hear that at the last Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors hearing about redistricting, some lady accused Supervisor Gloria Molina of Reconquista. What is that — and what on earth is going on over there? I don’t get what all the fuss is about. The U.S. Census…
Just one more day until President Barack Obama comes to town, and the conspiracy theories are really taking off. Denver International Airport managed to survive Operation Mountain Guardian (OMG!), the Homeland Security exercise that included DIA as one of its locations on Friday. But will it survive the onslaught of…
And the verdict is in: Justice may occasionally be blind, but it is not deaf. Called up for jury duty this week at Denver District Court, I got a quick canned lesson — via a video narrated by Ed Sardella — of our civic duty, backed by a real lesson…
Conspiracy or coincidence? President Barack Obama will be returning to Denver on Tuesday, September 27 — just four days after a major Homeland Security terrorism-emergency exercise in this city. And already, the web is running wild with conspiracy theories that Obama is coming here to 1) avoid Comet Elenin, or…
Lori Midson is off on a mouth-watering mission: She’s winging her way to New York City, where she’ll attend tonight’s dinner at the James Beard House being prepared by the Five — which now comprises ten local chefs. The Five concept got its start in 2008, when Leigh Sullivan decided…
Talk about a veiled threat! On Saturday, a bride emerged from a LoDo salon hours before her scheduled nuptials in the mountains, only to find a Denver boot on the Range Rover that a friend had borrowed so that they could arrive at the ceremony in style. Now we’ve got…
Dear Mexican: I am a half-breed, as they say (Mexican father, Anglo mother), and recently I’ve been reading a lot about the drug violence in Mexico. I’ve become increasingly disturbed by the way in which we Americans are directly contributing to this war by supplying the demand for drugs while…
Last September, I told the story of Kristen Stillman. She’d survived incredible horrors while imprisoned in a home in northwest Denver, where her mother had left Kristen and Will, her twin, when they were just eight. Eric Torrez, the head of that household, tortured the twins, raping Kristen and fathering…
Does the City of Denver boot vehicles on weekends? For years, scofflaw drivers felt safe parking their too-many-ticket cars all over town on Saturday and Sunday. But we recently learned from the Department of Public Works that the city will indeed boot cars on Saturdays. And this weekend, a booted…
Last year, billionaire William Koch bought Buckskin Joe for $3.1 million, and moved the buildings to his private ranch outside Gunnison. But now you’ve got another chance to buy an old-timey Colorado town… if Koch, who also dropped $2 million on a Billy the Kid tintype, isn’t there with his…
Decades of this city’s history gathered last night in the stunning Gates Reading Room at the Denver Public Library to honor historian Tom Noel, aka Dr. Colorado, who received this year’s Eleanor Gehres Award. And the fact that Noel had served on the Eleanor Gehres Award Committee for 2011 was…
Denver restaurateurs are some of the most generous people in town, donating food, labor and cash to all the good causes forever hitting them up. But while the idea of a generous paid time-off policy for employees sounds good in theory, restaurant owners — and former restaurant owners, like Governor…
Dear Mexican: I live in upstate New York (that’s any part of the state north of the city, for you West Coasters), and while we have a relatively small Mexican population, we have a large number of Puerto Ricans, especially in the community where I live. A number of times,…
Now that the scaffolding that masked Mountain Mirage is gone, and the defective fountain that was supposed to create a silhouette of the Rockies but instead leaked down into the trains has been removed and replaced by open space, you can see the bones of the Jeppeson Terminal at Denver…
I’m back in the town where I grew up, the town where my father grew up, the town where his father moved 130 years ago, the town that started out as an Illinois farm community but is now a pricey suburb of Chicago whose water is tied for second-best in…
