Calhoun: Wake-up Call

Elvis Presley died thirty years ago today, but he left behind many reasons for Denverites to remember him. Cadillacs, for starters…

Yes, Ivan Suvanjieff has been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. But he has a bigger concern right now. “I’m going to miss the White Stripes on this tour,” he laments. The artist/musician/former Ford factory-worker/current peace-pusher had tickets for Jack White’s New Mexico show in October, but it was…

This is not only something I can do as a United States citizen, this is something I believe I must do,” Steve Horner told Judge Brian Campbell. “This is Rosa Parksish. This is Martin Luther Kingish.” This is ludicrousish. On its surface, the concept of ladies’ nights might seem unfair…

Logging onto my computer, it almost hurt to type my password. For now, it is the name of a small town fifteen miles away from the Montana cabin where my family has spent every summer since 1970. The experts tell you not to choose a password that people might be…

Steve Horner will have his day in court today, when his complaint filed against Westword for advertising ladies’ night deals goes before Judge Brian Campbell. The action is in Denver County Court,(courtroom 4 in the Adams Mark annex off Cleveland Place) but Horner has been all over the media –…

Yes, on the DIA train that’s now the voice of Denver mayor John Hickenlooper welcoming you to Denver. Pete Smythe and Reynelda Muse have also left the station, replaced by Alan Roach and Adele Arakawa. And sound artist Jim Green, who installed the original recordings fifteen years ago, didn’t stop…

Big Beef. Tiny Tim. First Lady. Early Girl. Better Boy. Kenny Vetting laughs at the notion of “heirloom” tomatoes that are only fifty years old. But then, the seed business that his grandfather started is 87 years young. And sometime in early August, the Rocky Mountain Seed Company will finally…

The Micky Manor is back. That’s Micky, without an “e.” In 1932, when the old firehouse first became an eatery, Walt Disney didn’t look too favorably on a joint being named after his star cartoon character. But dropping a letter seemed to do the trademark-respecting trick, and no one ever…

Is that glass half-empty or half-full? Just in time for the next First Friday — the gaggle of gallery openings around town tomorrow, July 6 — Colorado Lawyers for the Arts has posted a summary of liquor laws compiled by the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses and the Office…

After years of being studiously – insultingly – ignored, I was finally called up for jury duty in Denver District Court a few years ago. I was eager to do my civic duty, particularly since the courtroom where I was sent along with dozens of other potential jurors was set…

Mayor John Hickenlooper has found a replacement for Stephanie O’Malley, the former director of the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses who now has her hands full as the newly elected Clerk & Recorder. Yesterday Awilda R. Marquez was named to head the department – and she’s going to have…

I’m beginning to feel like Carrie Nation, that busybody Prohibitionist who came from Kansas to Denver “because it was the nearest big city,” surmises local historian Tom Noel, “and it was filled with vice.” And not only did Carrie swing her hatchet at liquor bottles in local saloons, but she’d…

Steve Horner did not attend the monthly meeting of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission on Monday. I knew this without even talking to Horner, because the meeting actually concluded — and if he’d been there, the seven appointed commissioners would still be stuck in their conference room, listening to Horner…

Mike Jones’s fifteen minutes of fame just got extended. He knows all about billing by the hour. In the days before last fall’s election, the male escort’s revelation that Ted Haggard had been a longtime client exploded in Colorado, and the fallout spread across the country. On November 1, Jones…

By the time I squeezed through the closing doors, I was ready to punch the walls if I heard that same bossy voice telling me that I was “delaying the departure of this train.” I was delaying the departure?…

Patricia Calhoun of Twin Falls, Idaho, is a very generous woman. Particularly with my phone number. Last Wednesday, my direct line at Westword started ringing before eight in the morning, and it didn’t stop all day. “Why did you send me this money?” asked a woman in Kentucky. “What am…

I have a date with Steve Horner. In court. Horner was already spurned there last month, when Denver County Court Judge Ray Satter tossed one of his complaints against the Proof nightclub and sent the other back to square one. But Horner does not take no for an answer. He…

Talking to Steve Horner, you can see that he has a slight — very slight — point about ladies’ nights, although he’d be wise to stop his complaint at the disparate drink prices rather than use them as the start of an explosive screed like the one he delivered the…

Order in the court! It took less than a month to try and convict Joe Nacchio in U.S. District Court. But meanwhile, another case involving his former boss, Phil Anschutz, drags on…and on…in a Los Angeles courtroom, where opening arguments were made weeks before the freshly toupeed Nacchio stepped into…

Did you know there’s a swingers club in the basement of a gallery up by Pirate?” a Westword writer asked one day in early 2006. “No way,” I replied. “We would have heard. But I’ll call Chandler Romeo. If anything is happening in that neighborhood, she’ll know.” That’s because in…

The 3600 block of Navajo Street was dry last Friday night. Very dry. Because liquor had come up in her case against Scottie Ewing — who’d produced photos of Pirate’s Day of the Dead donation-for-beer box — Chandler Romeo sent a note to her art-gallery tenants alerting them to the…

The few. The proud. The desperate. After four years of slogging through the quagmire of Iraq, the United States military is desperate to find a few hundred thousand good men — and women. But does a fifteen-year-old qualify? In the spring of 2005, when the war was just two years…