Jeff Peckman, who spoke to Westword last week about a rash of recent UFO sightings, waited a long time to get his proposal for Denver to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission on the ballot — but the time might finally be right for Initiative 300. Because in this crazy Colorado…
Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Hickenlooper has kept to his vow to keep his campaign positive. Had he decided to go negative on Tom Tancredo, though, he would have found no shortage of material on the American Constitution Party candidate: Google “Tancredo” and “controversy” and your computer starts smoking…
The battle between My Brother’s Bar and Brothers Bar & Grill is over. Attorneys for the two restaurants — one the oldest continually operating saloon in the city, the other a link in a Wisconsin-based chain — met with a magistrate last Friday and arrived at a deal…
Dear Mexican: I was a history major at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which I believe was part of the Gadsden Purchase, the last piece of old Mexico the U.S. “acquired.” That got me thinking: What was the citizenship status of all Mexicans/gringos who lived in parts of Mexico…
The scene last Friday was off-the-planet crazy — appropriate enough for a city considering a proposal to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. But Initiative 300 is far from the wackiest item on next week’s ballot. After all, there’s also the election of the next governor of Colorado. The Denver Botanic…
Politics makes strange truck-bed fellows. Four years ago, Helen Thorpe, a veteran Texas political reporter who’d married John Hickenlooper and moved to Denver in 2002, was a passenger in Tom Tancredo’s tan Chevrolet pickup, touring the part of northwest Denver he called Tancredoland, where he’d grown up — and where…
After a six-month battle to place its McCruelty statue — a giant maimed chicken — near the McDonald’s on the 16th Street Mall, a fight that involved plenty of legal squawking and wing-flapping, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has given up on Denver. The city should be lovin’…
The truck stops here: The mediation session last Thursday was supposed to calm tensions around the 5300 block of East Colfax Avenue, a stretch of asphalt that’s only improved since Erich Roorda and Jill Warner opened Mod Livin’ nine years ago. But that was before the Little Orange Rocket threw…
The horrors that Kristen Stillman has endured in her short life are beyond imagining: abandoned at the age of eight by her mother, raped repeatedly by the man she was left with, bearing four children fathered by her rapist before she was twenty. And then the final injury, one far…
Another day, another appearance by Tom Tancredo on Fox News — which now has a page devoted to the American Constitution Party’s candidate for Colorado governor. Last night, Tancredo explained his eleventh-hour run to Bill O’Reilly. Watch the clip below…
Was Dan Maes offered a deal, maybe even a govement job, to drop out of the governor’s race? The blogosphere was abuzz after the Post’s Lynn Bartels broke the Maes story, wondering who might have made the offer. The bigger question: What job could you possibly give Dan Maes? Here…
Against all odds, Denver has a vibrant downtown that weds the present with the past — and today, it celebrates both something old and something new, starting with a ribbon-cutting at the Four Seasons Hotel Denver at 1111 14th Street…
Dear Mexican: I’m not the type to let things slide when I see something that strikes me as ignorant, no matter who it is. When my friend’s mom posted jokes on Facebook about Mexicans and her friends popped up with comments I felt were racist, I just had to step…
This summer, the complaint calls started coming with irritating regularity to the Denver Police Department District 2 substation, to the Denver Department of Environmental Health, to the office of Denver City Councilwoman Carla Madison. There were problems at Mod Livin’, the hip retro store at 5327 East Colfax Avenue, the…
When Jim Karagas, owner of My Brother’s Bar, Denver’s oldest continually operating saloon and a joint he’s run for forty of its 130-odd years, heard that Brothers Bar & Grill, a Wisconsin-based chain, planned to open an outpost in town, he was concerned that it might cause some confusion. So…
Early voting starts today, which means you can stop by any voting center (find them here) and choose a gubernatorial candidate from a lineup that no one would have thought possible a year ago: Denver mayor and Democratic John Hickenlooper, Republican candidate Dan Maes and third-party candidate Tom Tancredo, who’s…
First, gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper sports a Western shirt by North Carolina-based Wrangler rather than one by hometown hero Rockmount Ranch Wear in a campaign commercial. Then, he shows up for a fundraiser at Brothers Bar — the Wisconsin import, not My Brother’s Bar, the Denver original. Always boot Colorado?…
Yesterday, the American Planning Association officially named LoDo as one of its 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2010 — even if the Washington, D.C.- and Chicago-based nonprofit has a rather unusual view of the history of that neighborhood: “Founded by General William Larimer, Jr., in 1858, LoDo was originally the birthplace…
“We need more oversized condos,” reads the message scrawled on a hearing notice posted outside a historic home in the 2900 block of Umatilla Street at the edge of Highland. “Thanks, developers.” But save some gratitude for the Denver Landmark Preservation Commission, which last week turned down the request to…
Dear Mexican: What is it with the Mexican hangup on body parts? When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was struck by a cannonball at the knee in one of his 8,000 wars, his right leg was removed from the knee down. When he returned to Mexico City, he ordered…
If the Republican Party slips to minor-party status in Colorado, which will happen if Dan Maes fails to get 10 percent of the gubernatorial vote, it could face a major problem. No, not the fundraising limitations that have already been reported, but a sudden flood of would-be Republican candidates that…
Move over, medical marijuana. The big new business boom is mobile food trucks, as evidenced by the success of Civic Center Eats in Civic Center Park every Tuesday this summer, giving Denver a taste of this increasingly vibrant area. And today, Civic Center Park will start seeing a roster of…
