Opinion & Commentary

Now that the scaffolding that masked Mountain Mirage is gone, and the defective fountain that was supposed to create a silhouette of the Rockies but instead leaked down into the trains has been removed and replaced by open space, you can see the bones of the Jeppeson Terminal at Denver…

I’m back in the town where I grew up, the town where my father grew up, the town where his father moved 130 years ago, the town that started out as an Illinois farm community but is now a pricey suburb of Chicago whose water is tied for second-best in…

Let’s hope Mayor Michael Hancock has Curt Fentress’s number on speed dial. The Denver architect was brought in to fix Denver International Airport before it ever got off the ground decades ago, and the expansion plans he crafted back then could be looking very good now that starchitect Santiago Calatrava…

The house has stood on the edge of downtown Denver for 120 years. For 88 of those years, it was the home of Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Colorado’s first poet laureate; his words line the rotunda of the State Capitol and mark the spot where Denver got its start at Confluence…

Mayor Michael Hancock defined his concept of a “win” for Denver in any “win-win-win” solution for the National Western Stock Show during a speech before the venerable City Club of Denver yesterday: “Folks, we have got to find a way to keep the National Western Stock Show in Denver,” he…

Kristen and Will Stillman survived unimaginable horrors during the dozen years they were prisoners of Eric Torrez. The twins were just eight when their mother, Karen, got kicked out of a fourth homeless shelter and took her children to a tiny house on Irving Street where Torrez lived with his…

When I equated the One Book, One Denver program with a McDonald’s Happy Meal — people-pleasing and easy to digest — I didn’t know that McDonald’s had signed on to sponsor this year’s celebration of reading, which will focus on The Art of Racing in the Rain. But hey, at…

When Elitch Gardens Amusement Park first moved downtown, it planned daily fireworks displays — until neighbors complained. Now, after sixteen years, Elitch Gardens finally has those nightly shows, and though it’s had to scale back the pyrotechnics, it will end the summer season with a bang on Sunday night…

Mayor Michael Hancock will reveal the eighth selection in the One Book, One Denver program today outside of the new Denver Municipal Animal Shelter, where a giant sculpture of a dog stands guard outside. “Sunspot” is a stunning reminder of how much the arts can enrich our lives… and our…

Sometimes the simple answer is the right answer. Simple, stupid even, but the right one. In a comment on Lisa Jones’s blog about the coverage of the Troy Lowrie bust — which fueled Peter Boyles’s radio show yesterday, and is again today — a commenter suggested that Westword’s Latest Word…

On Sunday, the world got to see amazing feats of athleticism as the USA Pro Cycling Challenge wound its way through stunning Colorado scenery to the finish line by the State Capitol. Tonight, the world gets to see another amazing feat of Colorado athleticism: Professor Splash has made it to…

You didn’t know you came to make a city, Nobody knows when a city’s going to happen… That’s the start of “Elegant Dust,” one of the poems in which Thomas Hornsby Ferril, named Colorado’s Poet Laureate in 1979, 83 years after he was born, captures the city he always called…

On September 1, Mayor Michael Hancock will announce the selection for the eighth annual One Book, One Denver program. I know it will not be a book by Thomas Hornsby Ferril. I know this because the program has never picked a book rooted in Denver, or even Colorado. (The closest…

Sean McAllister, the attorney who’s co-chairing the state’s DUID-marijuana working group, has a lot of suggestions for what we should do with medical marijuana coverage on this blog — including banning certain commenters and, above all, keeping a closer eye on our dispensary reviewer, William Breathes…

When civic-minded — and eagle-eyed — Coloradans noticed that their summons for jury duty was coming from Albuquerque, they were prepared to indict Colorado officials for sending yet another contract out of state. Was no local company capable of licking and sticking those forms? But now the verdict is in,…

What happens in Vegas is not going to stay in Vegas. Not if it involves Steve Horner. The anti-ladies night crusader who was giving Denver bars fits a few years ago has now taken his crusade to Sin City, where he’s been fighting the ladies-only offers at big casino pool…

Despite yesterday’s earthquake that hit the Trinidad region, “Colorado is considered a region of minor earthquake activity,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey. But forty years ago, a series of quakes rocked the Denver area — quakes caused not by Mother Nature, but by Uncle Sam…

It was five years ago that Steve Horner went to Proof of the Pudding one hot August night and asked to get in free — just as women were on ladies’ night. When the doorman refused, Horner filed a complaint against the club, which soon spiraled into dozens of cases…

Denver is renowned around the world for its weather, its scenery and its local institutions — most notably the Broncos, MMJ dispensaries and the Denver boot. But was displaying one of those car-immobilizing clamps at Sunday’s big tourism party really the best way to promote the city?…