It’s not easy finding green

While some people count out-of-state license plates on their road trips, we look for out-of-place green chile offerings. It’s not hard to find Denver’s favorite dish if you’re staying in-state; just about every town in Colorado has a Mexican restaurant that offers its own version of green chile. And if…

This spud’s for you at the DPL

Chris Loffelmacher serves up plenty of food for thought at Fresh City Life, his cultural/social series that’s turned the Denver Public Library into the hottest ticket in town. Now, in celebration of summer and this hot, hot weather, Fresh City Life is teaming up with Whole Foods Market, Dazzle Restaurant…

Wake-Up Call: Denver doesn’t suck!

“You put me out in Denver because I wouldn’t suck your dick.” That’s what Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, a lobbyist hired last year by former D.C. mayor and current councilmember Marion Barry to be his driver and personal assistant, shouted at Barry in June — shortly before he was arrested and jailed…

A Rosita by any other name…

Dear Mexican: Why is it that ever since the U.S./California let you people immigrate, tunnel, weasel or whatever into this country, nothing good has happened and/or come from it? California’s welfare program is burdened with low-life Hispanics. The prison system is 70 percent Hispanic, 45 percent gang-based. Real-estate values have…

Pleased to meat you at the Buckhorn Exchange

My nephew Johnny loves meat — despite the fact (or maybe partly because of the fact) that his parents don’t eat red meat. “I don’t exactly get that,” the eleven-year-old says. “It has a lot of flavor and it can come from many different animals for many different tastes.” And…

Wake-Up Call: The end of the Ward?

Denver District Judge Larry Naves’s ruling yesterday that Ward Churchill should not get his job back at the University of Colorado — and, in fact, should not get any more compensation than the dollar a jury awarded him back in March — should be the last word on Ward. It…

Wake-Up Call: Disorder in the court

The fireworks started early for the 4th. Early last week, we got a call from a reporter in Mankato, Minnesota, researching a story about Steve Horner, the anti-ladies night crusader who started his fight in that state (where he wound up in jail for harassing the head of Minnesota’s civil…

Wake-Up Call: Forward into the past

It’s 1959 all over again tonight on KBDI, the public television station that airs Colorado Inside Out, a roundtable devoted to covering current events every week — except the week of July 4. That’s when the talented crew moves the show to a historic period and then prays the panelists…

Wake-Up Call: Smoke ’em if you got ’em

As reported here — a lot — Westword restaurant critic Jason Sheehan had a book-signing at Katie Mullen’s last evening. And that just happened to be the bar where Ward Churchill and attorney David Lane went after their day in court, where they’d told Judge Larry Naves why Churchill deserves…

Why do so many Mexicans love black culture?

Dear Mexican: Looking back recently on my distant youth in northwest Ohio, I came to the realization that the sweetest, most beautiful girl this gabacho ever went out with (indeed, in my entire senior class) was the pure-blooded daughter of Mexican immigrants. Am I under the sway of 1) simple…

Wake-Up Call: Ward without end

Colorado’s longest-running reality show could be drawing to a close. Today, Ward Churchill will get another day in court, when Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves considers whether he should get his job back at the University of Colorado — or be paid to go away. Naves presided over the…

Wake-Up Call: And the rest is history

Architect Ed White changed the way the world looks at Denver — not just through his architectural designs, but through his friendship with Jack Kerouac. That friendship is documented in the form of Tim Gray, a White-like character in On The Road, as well as in the structure of the…

A real mob scene at Gaetano’s

Dick Kreck will be reading from his book Smaldone: The Untold Story of an American Crime Family tonight at the Tattered Cover in LoDo, with Chuck and Gene, the sons of Clyde Smaldone, on hand to answer questions about their infamous relatives. But for a real taste of what the…

Wake-Up Call: Pitch, pitch, pitch

A moment of silence for the passing of a pop-culture icon, gone so young at the age of fifty. Yes, that’s right: Billy Mays, star of Pitchmen on the Discovery Channel, has died, silencing that big voice that had become ubiquitous on late-night infomercials. Mays got his start on the…

Wake-Up Call: Boo!

Read between the lines: The rationale behind the city’s vote for the next One Book, One Denver selection became clear yesterday, when the Department of Cultural Affairs revealed that the city had received a $20,000 Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. That NEA program is designed…

Por que do you deny your Mexican heritage, Senor Disney?

Dear Mexican: You once asked why Mexican bands don’t hit it big in the good old U.S. of A. I think the simple answer is that there are no Mexican Mouseketeers. You don’t get to be Justin Timberlake by picking a guitarrón. Slater from Saved by the Bell doesn’t count…

Wake-Up Call: The final Frontier

I’m about to head to Denver International Airport, which is suddenly in the shadows. Not because of the storm cloud that dumped a record amount of rain on DIA last evening — but because Republic Airways’ $109 million bid to buy Frontier out of bankruptcy could mean that Denver will…

Wake-Up Call: Get in line

Get in line, suckers. Clear, the private program that let pre-registered (and pre-paid, at $199 a year) customers use special fast lanes to get through airport security once their iris scans were on file, has closed down, its parent company “unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to…

Wake-Up Call: Shooting from the lip

Independence Institute chief John Caldara lost the battle of the sexes shoot-off at the organization’s annual ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — but not in that order) event at the Kiowa Shooting Club on Saturday, but he’s still a master at shooting from the lip. “I always aim for the…

Wake-Up Call: Same old song

Governor Bill Ritter took a break from his budget-busting business last week to pop by the Paramount Theater, where he presented Loretta Lynn with a plaque commemorating her induction into the Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame. The Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame? Yeah, I hadn’t heard of it,…

Wake-Up Call: Juneteenth, round two

For decades, Denver could boast the largest Juneteenth festival in the country, an annual commemoration of the day that slaves in Texas finally learned they’d been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation — celebrated in Five Points, the heart of the city’s African-American community. But over the years, Juneteenth in Denver…

A look at those who’ve crossed over

Dear Mexican: I write to you with a doubt similar to the one that Incensed in Chicago felt a couple of weeks ago, when her friend couldn’t believe that Mexicans worked in professional, white-collar jobs. I live in Tijuana, and of the gabachos who put roots here, you can’t find…