The Last Last Call

Long before midnight, Duffy’s Shamrock had run out of Guinness, that most traditional of Irish brews. And of Jagermeister, that not-so-traditional drink. But while cocktail choices grew more and more limited as Duffy’s last last call approached, the memories flowed freely. So did the advice. “You should put plaques up…

Closing Time

Duffy’s Shamrock Bar served the first beer of its last day at 6:10 a.m today. Technically, that was fifty minutes before it was legal to do so — but what’s the state going to do, shut down this 56-year-old institution a few hours early? And technically, Duffy’s doesn’t — didn’t…

Bush League

Where Tom Tancredo goes, trouble follows. Restoration Weekend drew a cadre of famous conservatives to South Florida this past weekend — but the Colorado congressman was the one who grabbed the headlines, after he referred to Miami as a “third-world country.” And President Bush has only himself to blame, Tancredo…

The Devil’s in the Details

The world doesn’t get more real than this: While last Wednesday’s premiere of The Real World: Denver featured, among other things, same-sex kissing in a LoDo hot tub, getting face time with Larry King a few channels away was Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, offering his first public take…

Her Meter’s Running

Parking got John Hickenlooper a lot of play when he was first running for mayor of Denver, and it’s doing the job again. NPR and MSNBC have both reported on Hizzoner’s promise to pay for any parking tickets acquired when voters got stuck in endless lines at Denver’s election centers…

Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow

The news spread faster than a beer spilling down the 72 foot (or 70.1 foot, depending on who’s measuring) bar at Duffy’s Shamrock on Court Place. The joint was closing — soon. Everyone had accepted that someday the owners, the Lombardi brothers, would sell the building that occupied a prime…

Full Circle

“I’m real optimistic about everything going on,” Eddie Maestas said, gazing out the window of Johnnie’s Market at the changing landscape of Larimer Street. “I see nothing but good for this area. I just hope God gives me enough time to see it through.” By then, in the fall of…

Hick’s Hiccup

Last Tuesday was not John Hickenlooper’s day. Had he caught all the woo pitched his way a year ago and made a run for governor, he probably would have been elected. Instead, his town was having trouble electing anyone, thanks to the disastrous performance of the Denver Election Commission…

On Call

I got fucked by a male escort. Was it good for you? At 5:05 a.m. last Wednesday, Peter Boyles was telling his KHOW audience about an e-mail he’d gotten from a man who would be on the air that morning, talking about a prominent religious figure who’d gone to him…

Buried Alive

Karl Rove’s Republican Party got wiped off the map yesterday. But the White House strategist has seen that before. Rove spent his early years in Kokomo, a town founded on the west side of Fremont Pass during the 1881 silver strike; the town boomed again during the glory years of…

All Aboard

Five minutes before the polls opened this morning, signs pushing Bill Ritter sprouted every few feet along Speer Boulevard. His name was everywhere — so omnipresent, in fact, that it was hard to remember that at this time last year, the Colorado Democratic Party was still on the Anyone But…

Party On

Denver will host the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Not because the Democratic Party will win big in this state on Tuesday — although it will. And not because Denver went through such contortions to guarantee a union hotel — although it did, with the Hyatt Regency recognizing UNITE-HERE in September…

Taking the Fifth

You know your candidacy is in trouble when you hope that Dick Cheney, that man of the people, might be able to bring some votes your way. Still, the veep will be in Colorado Springs tomorrow to help push Republican Doug Lamborn’s chances in the fifth congressional district. There’s only…

The Early Bird Feels Like a Worm

It felt traitorous to vote early. I’d never done so before, partly because it always seemed rather undignified to fill out a ballot at the same place I’d buy broccoli, but also because I was loyal to my old polling place, located in a rehab center where the residents considered…

Play Bawl!

As a kid growing up in Colorado, Andrew Lee loved the Denver Broncos. He discovered his love of politics a little later — when his mother, an immigrant from southern China, decided that her son, the only Chinese kid in his middle school, should learn more about their culture…and rented…

Keeping Up With the Jones

She fought the urge. She really did. But finally, she surrendered. “Someone’s gotta do it,” Lisa Jones says, and sighs. Or, as her new website, VoterJones: The Fix Is In (www.voterjones.com), puts it: “Many voters suspect that the Denver Election Commission is messed up somehow. The purpose of this is…

Following a Leak to its Source

At 11:15 this morning, Bob Beauprez will hold a press conference to discuss “the source of information regarding Bill Ritter’s plea bargains for criminal aliens.” That someone leaked info isn’t really the story, though — or it shouldn’t be. Journalists depend on leaks, and someone clearly leaked much of the…

Single Minded

It’s tough to end an interview with this question: “Oh, by the way, were you ever a neo-Nazi?” It’s tough, but it’s tougher to suffer through what can happen if you don’t ask that question. We learned that the hard way a few months ago, when we ran a light-hearted…

Tabloid Nation

On Monday night, John Mark Karr faced the camera, wearing only slightly less eye makeup than JonBenét in full pageant regalia, and told Larry King that he was a “very private person.” What a difference a decade makes. Back in early January 1997, a week after the lifeless body of…

Everyone’s a Winner in Menver

It was an ugly Sunday morning at the Las Vegas airport, with lines stretching for hours and a flood of overbookings after Saturday’s torrential downpour had washed away flights. The fellow at the far bar on the D concourse was holding his head and his wallet, having just shelled out…

A Nobel Calling

Up in Arvada, there’s an intense interest in who will win the Nobel Peace Prize each year. That’s because PeaceJam, the international organization dedicated to linking Nobel Peace Prize winners with kids to teach them how to improve their communities, their countries, the world, is based in that ‘burb. In…

The Cold, Hard Facts

Two weeks later than originally promised, Beauprez for Governor finally unsealed its Cold Case files critical of Bill Ritter’s performance as Denver District Attorney. But in the days between the initial announcement and the actual delivery of those files, their contents took a hard turn to the right. At first,…