Dear Mexican: How can a formerly proud Latina like myself feel proud to be Mexican again after my beloved relative was murdered in Mexico by narcos while visiting? I still have love for my heritage, and I understand that many Mexican people live in desperate situations because they have no…
Paul Weissman has the best resume of anyone at the State Capitol: He’s a manager at the Blue Parrot Restaurant, the Italian joint in Louisville where he also bartends. And this isn’t just any Italian joint: The Blue Parrot has been open since 1919, and is owned by the Colacci…
Daniel Junge is an accomplished filmmaker who just netted an Academy Award nomination for his short documentary The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner — and he manages to make his movies from a home base of Denver. Junge, who traveled to the Amazonian jungle to film They Killed Sister…
No sooner had we published our January roll call of restaurant openings and closings than we got word of a new watering hole that opened last night at 3090 Downing Street. That’s the former home of Blackberries Grill, the Kiva and the legendary Tosh’s Hacienda (whose southeast Denver offshoot recently…
“I don’t think any of us who were here a year ago thought we would be here debating a new industry in our state, but the truth is, it’s here,” said state senator Chris Romer, after his much-pared down medical marijuana bill was passed by the full Colorado Senate yesterday…
The medical marijuana industry in Denver has already been compared to the wild, wild West — but those land offices where miners and homesteaders competed to file claims may look mild compared to the Wellington E. Webb building next week, when the city starts accepting medical marijuana dispensary licenses on…
Jason Bosch is a MasterMind, one of those artistic adventurers not just exploring the political/cultural landscape of this town, but changing it. For his efforts, he was honored with a 2009 MasterMind award. And soon the founder of ArgusFest will be taking his show on the road, working with the…
“You’re my favorite,” the TSA worker told me earlier this morning as I presented my carefully sorted bins — computer in its own container, liquids tucked into the appropriate size bag (no big, but my almost empty, toothpaste tube, was confiscated last trip), shoes and coat — and watched them…
Dear Mexican: Why do so many Mexicans work for Taco Bell and El Pollo Loco? Don’t they know they only add a false credence to the belief that this is Mexican cuisine? The bastardizing of the truly great and diverse food of Mexico by the money-hungry corporations of the U.S.,…
From the moment it opened at 1644 East Evans Avenue, close by the University of Denver, Chipotle Mexican Grill a hip storefront joint that served giant burritos, was a giant hit. Three years later, the homegrown chain had three Denver locations — and a notion of going national, as Westword…
Toyota has recalled 2.3 million vehicles and halted production on eight of its models, including the Camry and Corolla. But Toyota’s “stop sale” order does not involve the Prius. And that could be a problem, since numerous owners of that model have complained about mysterious — and sometimes deadly– acceleration,…
“You should have filled Jason’s spot before letting him go to Seattle,” one disgruntled reader wrote in the comments section after “Pot Luck,” William Breathes’s piece on 8 Rivers. “This review was not worth reading. What a disappointment.” First things first: Like Juliet Wittman’s article on The Kitchen, the 8…
Last night, for the first time in eight weeks, the garish holiday lighting of the Denver City and County Building was not my night-light. That’s because the city had finally flicked the switch, turning off the display at City Hall and packing up everything on the steps: Rudolph and his…
Governor Bill Ritter will celebrate Colorado Tourism Day this afternoon at the State Capitol, and there’s real reason to celebrate: The embarrassingly awful, Joan Rivers-ish “Let’s Talk Colorado” campaign has disappeared almost entirely, with just a few “Let’s Talk Colorado with the Locals Who Love It” videos buried on the…
“Have a voice,” urges the web site for Denver’s new zoning code, which has just been given its first major overhaul in 53 years. “Attend a meeting.” And that’s a good idea — because nowhere on the very elaborate, informative site can Denverites actually voice their thoughts about the code…
The Colorado Legislature officially went to pot yesterday, when Senator Chris Romer finally introduced what remains of his medical-marijuana proposal: Senate Bill 109, which would put a strict lid on the relationship between a doctor and a would-be medical marijuana patient. The Colorado health department was at the Capitol, too,…
Dear Readers: Siempre, the wisest words that appear in this column come from ustedes, y the following two cartas prove this maxim. The first one addresses my year-end column, in which a working-class gabacho insisted his people apapachan a Mexicans mucho: Dear Mexican: Half-Mexican here. I was fortunate enough to…
“We don’t want to become another Los Angeles,” Denver city councilman Charlie Brown said after touring that city’s pot dispensaries, which outnumbered L.A.’s Starbucks outlets, in urging his fellow councilmembers to come up with some regulations for Denver’s booming medical marijuana industry. Mission accomplished. Although L.A.’s city council had been…
The horrors of Haiti hit close to home for Mary Nguyen, owner of Parallel 17: Her husband, Raphael Jouvenat, is from there. “Haiti has always been a poor country; a country with political turmoil and limited resources neglected by most of the world,” she writes. “However, it is the place…
Dan Jeune chose the most unlikely place to look for people who wanted to help Haiti: the bars of LoDo. Luke Turf watched Jeune, a native of Haiti whose father is a minister, recruit among the hat boys and frat boys, and then followed Jeune and the group he’d gathered…
One day back in 1985, one of the Westword artists who lived at the edge of Highland — we called it Barbaria then — called with a tip about a great storefront burrito at this new place, Rosa Linda’s. He was right, and we quickly became lifetime fans of the…
The country’s largest parade in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. will kick off this morning in Denver, Colorado, a mid-sized city with a small black population, but a big record of fighting for equality. Wilma Webb, then a state legislator, was instrumental in pushing to make MLK Day a…
