This is not a pretty picture. In a matter of weeks Denver City Council members, whose average aesthetic tastes tend to John Denver songs and paintings of big-eyed little girls, will suddenly find themselves in charge of handing out three-quarters of a million dollars to arts groups–every year. Suddenly it’s…
In Quebec, home of our soon-to-be NHL team, the soon-to-be-renamed Nordiques, it’s considered bad taste to call someone a “pepsi.” In Denver, it’s only considered bad taste to be caught cutting deals for Pepsi. But even before the clock struck 12 at the very end of May 8, the legislature’s…
From the halls of Montezuma County, the outraged cries carried all the way to Denver: Six years of hard work, soon to be undone by one stroke of Governor Roy Romer’s pen. For over half a decade, Montezuma County had fought–three times all the way up to the Colorado Supreme…
At daybreak on the Comanche National Grassland, the air is so sweet and the endless, empty vistas so breathtaking that it is impossible to imagine anyone going out of his way to screw this world up. This rough, beautiful country was the backdrop when Wes McKinley left his ranch in…
Oh, grow up. Last week New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp hailed Denver as a new playground for adults, “a consumer product, recast as an escape from grown-up care,” its skyline a “sudden outburst of innocence.” Make that “gullibility.” Because we’re certainly paying to play. On Monday the Colorado…
Denver is becoming a very cheap date. This city rolls over for anyone who shows the slightest interest in scratching its economically soft underbelly. And the result, seen in the light of day, is rarely pretty. Witness the Platte Valley: The confluence of two rivers that gave birth to Denver…
Martin Scheriff did not need to introduce himself to the judge. By now, Denver District Court Judge Edward Simons knows Scheriff all too well. So do several other judges through whose courtrooms his case has passed. Over the past year and a half, Scheriff has become a familiar figure in…
By last week, Denver’s four mayoral candidates could finish each other’s sentences. This wasn’t because they were in such great accord–far from it, in fact: Consensus is not a word you’d use in connection with this campaign. Crotchety, maybe, even cantankerous on a particularly good day when the venomous juices…
Before Theresa Andress took her job with the Planned Parenthood clinic in La Junta, she managed a convenience store. “At the Loaf `n’ Jug, there was this kid, about sixteen, so sweet, always coming in to my store,” she recalled. “A few weeks after I came over here, he came…
“I know how Jesus felt,” said David VanderMolen. “This was a witch hunt.” But no witch ever cast a spell as successfully as VanderMolen, the longtime Longmont High School wrestling coach and physical education teacher as well as Amway salesman and PromiseKeeper. Early last month, while VanderMolen compared himself to…
Beneath his judicial robes Andrew Armatas has been stripped bare, right down to the 35 shirts (dress and casual), 8 pairs of slacks, “misc. socks, undergarments, etc.” and single tuxedo he lists among his worldly possessions. Augmenting these is $50 in cash, nothing in the bank and an inventory of…
There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Denver International Airport actually opened Tuesday, on its fifth debut date, after such a drawn-out, stop-and-start ordeal that everyone had almost forgotten that’s what DIA was supposed to do: open. A city does not build a $5 billion airport merely to create jobs,…
At the moment, Westword may be responsible for the only positive revenue stream at Denver’s $5 billion new airport. That’s because we pay the city’s Airport Revenue Fund $1.25 for each piece of paper we are allowed to see regarding the fees paid to private legal firms retained by the…
Ironically, it took a legal threat to convince Denver city attorney Dan Muse to release the legal bills of Debevoise & Plimpton, the high-priced spread that’s rung up a $1 million tab representing Denver’s interests against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “informal inquiry” into DIA bond sales. If an “informal”…
This won’t hurt a bit. You’ve already suffered the injury, although you may not know that yet. Because by the end of January, the City of Denver had racked up $15 million in bills from all the outside attorneys it had hired over the past three and a half years…
Douglas Bruce, victim. Let it roll over the tongue a few times. Let it vibrate in the most sensitive part of the brain, the one usually reserved for trampled flowers and kicked puppies. Hold that thought. Douglas Bruce says he’s a victim. He claims that he’s the focus of a…
Since Bill McCartney announced on November 19 that he was resigning as coach of the University of Colorado football team, we’ve been subjected to an endless stream of the gospel according to Coach Mac, recounted by a number of media disciples. We’ve heard that he didn’t intend to steal Rashaan…
There Newt Gingrich sat, innocent as a choirboy who’s just ditched a cancer-ridden first wife, meeting the press. If truth is stranger than fiction, it doesn’t get much stranger than this. The Washington pundits were asking Gingrich, the next Speaker of the House, about Hillary Clinton’s derisive denunciation of his…
At five o’clock last Tuesday morning, Michael Reagan’s voice came in loud and clear–even if his message was a mess. Reagan has parlayed his position as son–albeit estranged, adopted son–of the former president into a slot as a conservative talk-radio host; his show airs twice daily in Denver on KTLK-AM…
The press won’t have Bruce Benson to kick around anymore. But he sure gave journalists something to remember him by. The Republican gubernatorial candidate waited until almost ten o’clock last Tuesday night to concede that he’d lost the election. Lost despite the fact that as late as September, polls actually…
Has a Colorado campaign season ever been less inspired? Less inspirational? After being fed a daily diet of Benson divorce drivel and troopersuperduper details, it’s hard not to have fantasies of being chased out of state by a mysterious red Chevy until sometime after November 8. That failing, however, here’s…
Bruce Benson turned his back on the governor’s race last week. In one of the most stunning about-faces in Colorado campaign history, the Republican gubernatorial candidate turned the other cheek–literally–for a television ad that shows him strolling away from the camera through the scenic shrubbery while he confesses, again, to…
