Come and listen to my story about a man named Bill A poor mountain guv barely filling his state’s till And then one day he was gunning for some cash When up from the ground came a grinning jackass… Tourist, that is… pure gold Texas twee How does this sound…
“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Einstein said that, but Peter Barton lived it. And exactly a year ago, the legendary entrepreneur, sports enthusiast, rock-and-roll fan, husband and father of three escaped the boundaries of time altogether, dying…
“Denver is open for business,” Mayor John Hickenlooper announced at his inauguration, between hugs and feather blessings. Open for business — if there’s any business to be had, that is. In these dog days of summer, the economy bites. And when President George Bush breezed through town earlier this month…
FRI, 8/8 Loveland: the vortex of internationally acclaimed sculpture. Who knew that the unassuming town happens to be a hotbed of artistic expression? Lots of folks. And art aficionados will have a unique chance to get up close and personal with all manner of three-dimensional works at not one but…
FRI, 8/1 The lowly limerick is “the Rodney Dangerfield of poetry,” according to the Limerick o’ the Day Web page. “Limericks proudly broke into what had been the one unbroachable frontier in proper English society: smut.” Smut is in the ear of the beholder, of course — and there was…
Next month, Boulder will try to break the Guinness World Record for the largest group hug — as if that town wasn’t locked in an eternal clinch. But this week, Denver has Boulder beat. The changing of the city’s political guard was such a touchy-feely event that Happy Haynes, the…
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was…
MON, 7/21 Hold on to your helmets, because tonight Mr. Pacman, those intergalactic video-game playboys and local Atari rockers, unleash the PacFashion show on Panopticon, 60 South Broadway. Like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome meets Tron, PacFashion is a full-contact show of primitive punk-entangled astrowear, with the models engaging the Mr…
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Or eat it. A hundred years ago, radium was a miracle cure, a wonder drug, the turn-of-the-century equivalent of Viagra — and Colorado was playing doctor to the world. Marie Curie herself came out West, prospecting for uranium; Denver turned…
The last time Richard Florida came to town, to speak to a ballroom full of business types about his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, John Hickenlooper seemed like just another one of those business types — although not quite as well dressed. And while he’d rubbed ill-clad elbows…
SAT, 6/21 The recent news that the last of the old-style Volkswagen Beetles will trundle off the assembly line this summer at VolkswagenMexico in Puebla, Mexico, may be just a blip on the radar of Gens X and Y as they whiz by with daisies in their dashboard vases. But…
This is not the story I intended to write. The notes for that story have been lost in luggage limbo for 45 hours and counting. Then again, I never thought I’d get stuck in a flying sardine can with thirty Slurpee-slurping fellow travelers — and no bathroom. But let me…
Clara Brown is not your typical operatic heroine. She’s no done-wrong courtesan, dying of consumption. She’s no callow teen, dying of a broken heart. She’s no Jezebel, no Valkyrie. She’s a washerwoman, an ex-slave who came to the gold camps of Colorado when she was about sixty years old (birth…
In New York City, they’re throwing chump change at a $4 billion budget gap by fining 86-year-old men for illegally feeding pigeons, and teenagers for sitting on unauthorized milk crates. In Denver, where next year’s budget deficit is projected at $50 million, they nailed Larry Barnhart for trying to sell…
Hanging in my office is a black-and-white-plaid suit jacket with big pearl buttons. It’s the sort of jacket a suburban matron might wear to an opera matinee — or a newspaper editor might wear to court. That was the first and last time I’d worn the jacket until this past…
Mayor Wellington Webb will soon be gone, but he won’t be forgotten. Not when he’s left his size-thirteen footprints all over this city. Webb’s name will live on at the $130 million Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building, a stunning new structure draped around the old International-style Civic Center Annex…
My next-door neighbor, a caring, creative and very patient man, ran for Denver City Council. On garbage day last week, his recycling bin held a tidy stack of now-obsolete campaign signs. Years of hopes and dreams, going out with the trash. But a political bid doesn’t always end with such…
SUN, 5/18 As part of the third annual City Park Festival of the Arts today, Denver mayoral hopefuls John Hickenlooper and Don Mares will be the main attraction at a mayoral runoff forum. But their lovefest, at 11 a.m. in the City Park pavilion, could be overshadowed by a stealth…
Lying flat and helpless — as flat and helpless as Denver’s economy — alongside Speer Boulevard is a giant steel-and-fiberglass sculpture created by Jonathan Borofsky. But by the end of the month, and surely by the time the U.S. Conference of Mayors convenes here in early June to salute outgoing…
TUES, 5/13 If you’re dating, you’re obviously mentally deranged or soon will be, but still, we date as much as possible. Why? Guys date because we are on a never-ending quest to see naked breasts. For women, I’m not sure. They find the “perfect man” and immediately begin changing all…
The devil got down at the Regency one Saturday night. By Monday morning, Maruca Salazar’s entire eighth-grade class was talking about it. “I arrived at school and found all my students with their eyes big and wide, all shuddering and totally talkative. ‘Did you hear what happened? Did you hear…
THURS 5/1 This week, Denver debuts the first festival ever held in this country devoted to British movies — or so say the organizers of the British Film Festival. “Apparently, there has never been a British film festival in the whole of the United States, which is quite amazing to…
