As Mindy Sink discovered, it’s not easy being a tourist in your own town — especially when you’re writing a guidebook with a deadline months ahead of when the book actually hits the streets. The Colorado native worked for six months last year on Denver, a Moon Handbooks guide that…
The name “Commerce City” may not be the most marketable. Still, two years ago residents voted two-to-one to keep the business-boosterish name. But that doesn’t mean Commerce City can’t work on its tarnished image — and, in fact, it’s paying a consultant $80,000 to help bring high-end projects to the…
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the “Rush to the Rockies.” As rumors of the May 1859 gold find echoed back east, hordes of fortune-hunters started the arduous trek across the plains to the confluence of the Platte and Cherry Creek. Many never made it to what was then…
Here’s the great thing about a book. Once you have it in your hands, it never goes offline. The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs hasn’t been so lucky with the web site where the city’s residents are invited to help choose the next One Book, One Denver selection. Voting allegedly…
Now that we won’t be spending the week buying our Birdman hair gel and getting our support-the-Nuggets tats, it’s time to get back to reality. And there’s plenty of that. Today marks the start of Denver’s “Home Renovation Bonanza,” a two-week period in which homeowners and licensed contractors can get…
The U.S. Department of Education is eliminating several regional director jobs, disappointing Coloradans hoping for an appointment, the Denver Post reports today. According to a notice outlining the job eliminations,”These political appointees have not had substantial policy or administrative functions.” Maybe not while they were in the office — but…
John Hickenlooper’s political career was launched when the then-barkeep campaigned to keep the name “Mile High Stadium” at the new football palace the taxpayers were building for Pat Bowlen and the Denver Broncos. Hick didn’t win that one: The stadium district overseeing the project sold the naming rights to Invesco,…
Former Westword staffer and Denver native Julie Jargon is now a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, on the restaurant beat, and proving with every story just how interesting the restaurant industry can be. Last week’s front-page story, “A Fan Hits a Roadblock on a Drive to See Every Starbucks,”…
Yes, we know the class of 2009 is graduating into a world that does not give extra credit for spelling skills, or fact-checking. As proof, Boulder Valley School District handed out 395 diplomas to Monarch High grads with the wrong town listed for the school — it’s in Louisville, not…
Farewell, Diamond Shamrock: Tony’s has opened at 950 Broadway, and we may have eaten our last convenience-store burrito. That’s because Tony’s stocks homemade breakfast burritos, as well as dozens of other ready-to-go food items — and, of course, many more prepared dishes and packaged ingredients that just need a little…
It wasn’t just the decisive win that made last night’s Nuggets victory so gratifying. And it wasn’t the fact that Denver looked so good — if very, very wet — on national TV. What was particularly sweet about this chapter in the Cinderella story is that the Nuggets were never…
Argyll might bill itself as “a gastroPub,” but it doesn’t see itself as a neighborhood pub — not unless you consider all of Denver just one big neighborhood. I live several miles and fifteen minutes from Cherry Creek (and that’s if the lights on Speer are synchronized), and last night…
“Do you believe in waterboarding?” The question was not from President Barack Obama or former vice president Dick Cheney, who are all over the news today for their comments on torture and terrorism yesterday. It was posed by former senator Gary Hart, who long before 9/11 was warning of the…
“Denver Stories” is a genius marketing move: Every May, Curious Theatre Company picks four local celebs (or what passes for a celeb in this town), has a local playwright create a short play about them, and then produces all four on one evening that turns into a giant fundraising event…
Steve Horner, please go back to your corner. Or at least give the besieged Colorado Civil Rights Commission a break and concentrate on alleged injustices in Minnesota, where you’re now living. You know where to file in that state: Back in 1993, you made your first complaint to the Minnesota…
John Hickenlooper didn’t even know he had a cousin named George until one day in 1991, when a fellow in town for the Denver International Film Festival went over to the Wynkoop Brewing Company for a beer. Hickenlooper isn’t a very common name, and those who carry it tend to…
The tipster poured her story into my ear, a long, involved tale of bureaucrats behaving badly. “I’ll talk to the writers and see if we can get that in the paper,” I told her. “Oh, I don’t care about the paper,” she said. “I want it on TV.” Since I…
George Hickenlooper has spent the last several months with Jack Abramoff, the jailed influence-peddler who’ll be the focus of his next film, which stars Kevin Spacey. For his last effort, the filmmaker used a much less experienced crew of actors: the staff of Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, who just happens…
I’m looking over the Platte Valley at the sliver of the “Travel by Train” sign I can still on Union Station through pricy lofts and office buildings constructed over the last few years. And some day there will be a lot more of them, if current plans for the revelopment…
This morning, the 2009 class of North High School will rehearse for tomorrow’s graduation ceremonies at the Colorado Convention Center. The entire graduating class. That’s because on Tuesday, Denver Public Schools put a halt to North principal Ed Salem’s plan to prohibit about 50 out of 180 graduating seniors from…
Ken Gordon was term-limited out of the Colorado Senate in 2008 — but he’s not going quietly. In fact, he’s started a new blog, where he offers this thesis: “I believe that the American people fundamentally misunderstand their form of government and their place in it.” As proof, he offers…
School Daze Against all odds, Michael Ballez will be graduating from North High School this year. Those odds include: the classmates who’ve dropped out, one by one, until only a handful of the kids he started with as a freshman remain in school. The pressures he’s faced — and fought…
