Café Cafe, the cozy crepes and coffee shop at 2339 West 44th Avenue, is getting a new owner and a new name: La Crema Cafeteria. The cafe, a community gathering spot in the Sunnyside neighborhood that happens to offer some of the finest lox around, has been purchased by Ulises…
One of the most prominent and controversial aspects of Representative Tom Massey’s medical marijuana bill is that it would require state dispensaries to become nonprofit centers. While it’s hard to say whether this part of the legislation will stick around — even the bill’s co-sponsor isn’t sold on the concept…
Last week, we told you how prominent pot advocate Mason Tvert, head of Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), wanted the mayor-appointed Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel, on which he sits, to expel one of its members: Lieutenant Ernie Martinez, head of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA). Tvert called…
Lately, local DEA agents have been getting their hands on significant amounts of weed, whether it’s testing samples taken from inspections of marijuana-analysis labs or hundreds of live plants seized from a Highlands Ranch grow house last Friday, as well as from similar raids over the past month. So what…
In many ways the friction between Mason Tvert, head of Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) and Lieutenant Ernie Martinez, head of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA), personifies the ongoing clash between law enforcement and marijuana activists. While the two both sit on the mayor-appointed Denver Marijuana Policy Review…
Lately, dispensary owners and marijuana growers have been watching their back. Over the past few weeks, Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided two marijuana testing facilities, one in Denver and one in Colorado Springs, as well busting a Highland Ranch marijuana grow on Friday that its owner had bragged about on…
Friday, February 6, was a very big day in Denver transit. The feds announced $304 million in loans for Union Station, completing the funding necessary for the new transit hub, as well as essentially committing to a $1 billion injection over several years for several future FasTracks rail lines. That…
We recently wrote about how a DEA raid at Full Spectrum Laboratories, a Denver medical marijuana testing facility, was triggered by the lab applying for an analytical lab licensure through the DEA. Now DEA agents have hit another marijuana testing lab — Colorado Springs-based Genovations — not long after the…
Last Friday was a very big day in Denver transit. The feds announced $304 million in loans for Union Station, completing the funding necessary for the new transit hub, as well as essentially committing to a $1 billion injection over several years for several future FasTracks rail lines. That means…
Tension between medical-marijuana businesses and the feds ratcheted up two weeks ago when Drug Enforcement Administration agents rolled through Full Spectrum Laboratories, a Denver marijuana testing facility, seizing all pot samples they could find — all while the lab’s owners were at the Capitol testifying against a medical-marijuana bill. Betty…
The long, twisted tale of Operation Fortune Cookie — the state’s biggest indoor weed bust, which went to pot once a snitch spilled the beans to the drug ring about the investigation and the law-enforcement agencies that were involved imploded — was slated to wrap up this week. On Wednesday,…
Now that the controversial re-imagining of Writer Square is more or less complete (minus most of its especially controversial signage plan, since the Las Vegas-inspired spectacle was shot down in a boisterous planning board meeting in September), people seem to be stocking up on their rotten tomatoes. Over at the…
What are you going to do, shoot me?” It was around ten o’clock at night when Edward Lynch heard the strange shouting. He went to the utility room at the back of his house to investigate and saw a man standing in his neighbor’s yard, yelling into the night. Much…
Justin Carter sits in a shabby South Broadway bar, drinking a Budweiser. He knows he’s got to be careful with the booze; not too long ago, he was in jail for drunk driving. Still, he’s not too worried about it tonight. Soon he’ll start his night shift as the bar’s…
“Iraq veteran Nic Gray talks to Westword about the night he can’t remember.”This week’s cover story relates the tale of how Nic Gray, an Iraq war veteran, got caught up in the criminal justice system and eventually landed in an innovative new program called the El Paso County veterans treatment…
Is the media beating this whole Jersey Shore thing to death? Definitely. Are we here at Westword going to join in on beatin’ up the beat? Damn right. Being the thoughtful and responsible journalists that we are, we decided to use the “Jersey Shore Nickname Generator” to create Guido and…
Is it uncouth to boast that we here at Westword were among the first to sing the praises of Novo Coffee? We knew the stuff coming out of this family-owned roaster was so good that we tagged along when one of its founders went in search of a mythical bean…
Today, while law enforcement and bank honchos were meeting to discuss a recent upsurge in Denver-area bank robberies, a new bank was hit a little over a mile away. Score one for the robbers. In total, there were 208 robberies in Colorado and Wyoming in 2009, a 37 percent increase…
The Denver Post has labeled Tom Gorman, director of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a “drug-war soldier” who didn’t get the memo that the battle was over. Medical marijuana advocates are calling him the leader of a “war on patients,” since behind the scenes he’s helping…
It’s impossible to travel around our fair city without noticing all the dispensaries. They seem to be popping up on every street corner, sometimes right across the street from each other. So what does this mean from an urban-development perspective? There’s likely no one better equipped to answer that question…
As we noted in a November feature, Fort Collins entrepreneur Aaron Million plans to solve some of Colorado’s water woes courtesy of a 550-mile pipeline that would pump water from the Green River in Wyoming to thirsty water users along the Front Range. But the $2- to $3-billion proposal’s drawn…
Ever since Centennial’s dispensary ban was shot down in Arapahoe District Court a month ago, Colorado medical marijuana operations faced with similar moratoriums in other locales have refused to go quietly into the night. The latest dispute is brewing in Jefferson County. Last week, county commissioners there enacted a six-month…
