Opinion & Commentary

To get a feel for the changing face of Denver, drive the twenty blocks of Larimer Street — which is now two-way northeast of Broadway — down to Larimer Square, and take note of all the businesses popping up along the way, all the people on the streets that were…

When the Colorado Gaming Commission heads to Central City for its monthly meeting next week, it will be greeted by a new casino. Or at least, a casino with a new name: Fortune Valley, which got its start as Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino, then became Harrah’s, will next be Reserve…

Occupy Denver is the first of the Occupy Wall Street camps across the country to elect a leader: Shelby, a Border Collie mix seen here, who was anointed after a long meeting Sunday night, and has already requested a meeting with Governor John Hickenlooper. Beyond that, Shelby doesn’t have much…

H&M opens at noon tomorrow in the Denver Pavilions, and eager shoppers who’ve already been waiting years to see this store are getting ready to get in line. While Occupy Denver has discovered that you cannot camp overnight in the city, tonight you can camp near the store. Occupy Denver…

Denizens of lower downtown thought their ship had come in that day in 1986 when McCormick’s Fish House & Bar opened in the Oxford Hotel, bringing fresh seafood and an incredible happy hour — known to all as “cheap time” — to an area that was pretty high and dry…

The passing of Republican powerhouse Freda Poundstone has us thinking about how this city might look if she’d never had her considerable career as a legislator/lobbyist. For starters, Denver might sprawl the way that Phoenix and other Western cities do — but instead, the Poundstone Amendment, passed by Colorado voters…

Sadly, it’s too late to block the border. By now the professional picketers from Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps’s “god-hates-fags” group, have likely made their way from Kansas to Colorado, where they’ve announced plans to picket two Jewish General Assembly meetings downtown today. They’re also threatening to show up at…

Steve Horner, the anti-ladies night crusader, gave Denver bars fits a few years ago, then took his campaign back on the road — most recently to Las Vegas. The slew of complaints he’s filed in Sin City against resort/casinos over special deals for bikini-clad babes are about to be featured…

Although the fancy architect is gone and the ownership of Santiago Calatrava’s DIA expansion design is still up in the air, plans for construction of the South Terminal, including a light-rail station and a public plaza, are moving forward. That means Denver could soon commission another $3 million in public…

Initiative 300, the paid sick-leave proposal on yesterday’s ballot, would have affected just about every business in Denver — but restaurants became the real poster child of the campaign, on both the pro and con sides. The Yes on 300 campaign used scare tactics — including pictures of cantaloupes on…

Harold Camping has predicted the end of the world three times — and each time, the ninetysomething Boulder native has struck out. Most recently, Doomsday did not arrive on October 21. Five months earlier, the Rapture did not occur on May 21. And there were earlier botched Camping forecasts, which…

A week after Snobama buried the Front Range in hype and hope, we’re still shoveling out — and just dug up this fun fact: The Brown Palace has hosted every U.S. president since Teddy Roosevelt first visited in 1905, thirteen years after the hotel opened, except for two: Calvin Coolidge…

Mayor Michael Hancock’s choice for Denver’s new police chief, Robert White, was introduced at a hastily convened press conference at City Hall on Saturday. The announcement of Hancock’s pick for this most-watched post had been moved up several days because the news of White’s appointment had already leaked out in…

No sooner had husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Pete Marczyk and Barbara Macfarlane opened Marczyk Fine Foods at 770 East 17th Avenue than people started asking when they would open a second store — usually begging them to open one in their neighborhood. Nine years later, the couple (now joined by Pete’s brother,…

“Mustang,” Luis Jimenez’s killer horse at Denver International Airport, just placed third in a recent survey of the country’s most bizarre public art. But it definitely ranks first in the hearts and minds of Denver residents, who either really love or really, really hate the sculpture…

“What is that thing at the end of your block?” For the last year, that’s been a regular query from people heading to Highland — from I-25, from Speer Boulevard, from 15th Street — who inevitably catch sight of the imposing structure that now stands at the edge of the…

Michael Hancock has good timing. He was in the right place, right time when Denver voters were looking for someone, anyone but Chris Romer to be mayor, and managed to edge out James Mejia, the other leading someone. And even as Snobama was descending on the city, Mayor Hancock managed…

Mayor Michael Hancock celebrates his first hundred days in office today. Compared to the controversy that marked the last few days before the June mayoral runoff — when the web and talk shows were full of never-proven rumors that Hancock had been a client of Denver Players, a prostitution business…

Obama! Snow! A flurry of announcements started coming in yesterday, all indicating that Denver is on a collision course with a made-for-TV disaster. President Barack Obama is coming to town for two fundraisers tonight, as well as one public appearance tomorrow, inspiring a number of official and unofficial political activities…