On his thirtieth day in office, Mayor Michael Hancock really got down to business yesterday, outlining a better, faster, stronger city government in a speech at the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce’s State of the City Luncheon that included his opposition to Initiative 300, the paid sick leave proposal on…
With four communications staffers in Michael Hancock’s office and director Wil Alston focusing on raising the Denver mayor’s national profile, couldn’t one of them have returned a call to the L.A. Times about the potential move of the National Western Stock Show? Last time we looked, the Times had a…
Turns out that William Koch, the Florida billionaire who bought the tintype of Billy the Kid for more than two million bucks at a Denver auction in June, isn’t just interested in photos of the Old West. He’s interested in Old West towns, too. And he just bought himself a…
Dear Readers: Your faithful Mexican is busy putting the final touches on his coming magnum opus, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (out April 2012) and is thus at the rancho, getting handmade tortillas made by his chica in pigtails while he works on rewrites. But instead of a…
Molly Midyette was sentenced to sixteen years in prison for the death of her infant son — a son who’d taken ill while she was at work, and her then-husband, Alex, was at home with the boy. This spring, she finally told her side, the side that insists Alex and…
It was a made-for-the-media story: a trio of on-the-lam siblings — one a stripper, one a sex offender — flee Florida and land in Colorado, where the Dougherty Gang was caught yesterday morning near Walsenburg. Caught on one of the less telegenic stretches of I-25, which means this Bonnie and…
Just as a few entrepreneurs have put their food trucks in park, permanently, Applebee’s has rolled one out right here in Denver. Is this a sign that this trend has jumped the shark? “Trend. Over,” says Kafromet. ‘Damn you Applebee’s!!! Damn you! Frickin’ chain’s have to ruin everything……,” says Henry…
“The Clear Creek Ranger District invites you to drive the highest road in North America!” says the U.S. Forest Service web page on Mount Evans. The drive offers views of “the Continental Divide, mountain goat and bighorn sheep herds, wildflowers and Bristlecone Pine trees.” But stopping to look isn’t free…
Boulder may have a reputation for being the most liberal spot in Colorado. But it turns out that Denver takes a much more liberal approach to licensing medical marijuana businesses, the state’s biggest — only? — growth industry over the last few years…
Dear Mexican: Here is my problem: I was raised in a typical gabacho family. My siblings and I all enjoyed a typical gabacho relationship. We are close as cats. I phoned my brother year before last, and was gratified to learn that he was still alive. That call went so…
Driving through Montana last week, I saw worrisome splotches of red in the thick stands of trees on some hillsides — not the fires of dry summers past, but the first signs that the pine beetles that have plagued Colorado are moving north. Heading south through Wyoming into Colorado, those…
Commerce City is no longer going to the dogs. A few years ago, the industry-heavy town north of Denver thought it was in such need of a new image that it considered changing its name. Instead, it’s now aggressively working on a physical makeover — and has just purchased the…
Most restaurant closings are not good news. But when City, O’ City closed its doors on Sunday night, it was a cause for celebration. “In a mescal-induced dance-party frenzy, we knocked the wall down between the existing space and the new space,” reports Dan Landes, president of City, O’ City…
Representative Doug Lamborn has learned the very hard way that using a too-colorful term can put a politician in a very sticky situation. And now I’ve gotten pulled into the tar baby mess, too…
Dear Mexican: A few years back, when I was in high school, my social studies teacher and the leader of our high school M.E.Ch.A. club had deep resentment toward the Spaniards/conquistadors who killed hundreds — probably thousands — of Aztecs. He went so far as to deny that his own…
On Colorado Day, it seemed very appropriate to run into one of the creative entrepreneurs who are as much a part of this state’s landscape as the Rockies: Denver designer and hair stylist Fallene Wells, one of our 2010 MasterMind winners and a contestant on this season’s Project Runway…
I made a marathon drive back to Colorado yesterday, arriving on the eve of this state’s birthday — just in time to watch a Coloradan make a splash on America’s Got Talent, where the self-proclaimed Professor Splash executed a record-breaking belly flop into twelve inches of water, at about the…
Sixty years ago, metro boosters celebrated the feds’ decision to put a factory that would manufacture plutonium triggers for bombs sixteen miles upwind from Denver. Today, the government is still wrestling with what to do with the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, now slated to become a wildlife refuge…
Charley Garcia is gone from the Denver Manager of Safety’s office almost as quickly as he came in. In March, then-mayor Bill Vidal had appointed Garcia, a former state public defender, to the post, making him the fourth person to hold it in a year. He replaced interim manager Mary…
With many Denver streets undergoing repairs these days, traffic around town can be stop and start. On13th Avenue last Thursday morning, it came to a full stop for me. I was heading west in the left lane shortly before 9 a.m. when the already fitful traffic flow ahead of me…
A week after his inauguration, Mayor Michael Hancock really takes the reins today. This morning, he’ll hold his first Mayor-City Council meeting (five of the reps are complete newbies — unlike Hancock, who was on council for eight years). That’ll be followed by the initial gathering of Hancock’s National Western…
Dear Mexican: A few years ago, my girlfriend and I visited the beautiful city of Merida in the Yucatán. We were surprised to see a sentence in our guidebook warning us to be on the lookout for Mennonites peddling queso in the mercado. Sure enough, we bumped into a bearded,…
