Smart Bombs

On September 3, you can learn whether you’re on the city’s most exclusive list: a roster of people and organizations in the Denver Police Department’s intelligence files. Some of those on Denver’s second most exclusive list — the cast of characters considering a run for Denver mayor in 2003 –…

Take a Memo

Last month, State Farm sent a memo to its Colorado agents and employees. The subject was Alan Prendergast’s June 27 Westword story, “Hidden Damage,” which followed the insurance travails of Sunserea McClelland — and the trial that resulted in her winning a $1.8 million jury verdict against State Farm in…

Dude!

“You’re from Denver,” the white-hatted cowboy said as he started searching our bags. “You’re used to this.” Well, not this: “You got a gun in there?” he asked hopefully. At Denver International Airport, answering yes to that kind of question would get a traveler grounded for life. But we were…

Minor Irritants

Around the Fourth of July, Alison “Sunny” Maynard opened a letter from the Independence Institute. “Congratulations on your candidacy!” think tank president Jon Caldara told the Green Party candidate for Colorado attorney general. “To assist you in learning about the many issues facing Colorado, you are invited to a ‘Candidates’…

Conspiracy Nuts

The biggest danger we face this July Fourth is not illegal fireworks, not the terrorist threat, but a menace even now confronting us at picnics and in parks across this sweltering city. The lost boys. Those elusive private parts intent on escaping the confines of men’s shorts and going so…

Our Fair City

“In the name of Allah,” begins the handwritten pleading filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on April 26, “I, slave of Allah, Zacarias Moussaoui, by self representation for every rational vital reasons set in the memorandum accompanying this motion, move for immediate order directing that…

Steaking a Claim

Barry Fey has braved the LoDo crowds still celebrating Colorado’s victory over the Yankees — “I hate Coors Field because of what the scores have done to baseball,” says the concert promoter and sports fan — to try the town’s latest steakhouse. Self-professed steakhouse, that is. “This is not a…

The Bite

Telluride may have more publications per capita than any other place on Earth. It may also have more tender egos. And when the magazine 8750 (named for the town’s altitude) entered the crowded market back in January, it immediately carved out a niche for itself by running restaurant reviews that…

The Big Cheese

Last year, Rick Ashton, the director of the Denver Public Library, strongly suggested that all 500 DPL employees read Who Moved My Cheese?, the still-chart-topping, still completely inane business book that describes how two littlepeople, Hem and Haw, follow mice in their hunt for cheese, and in the process learn…

Photo Finish

As you waited in supermarket checkout lines with your hotdogs and chips this past Memorial Day weekend, you could have picked up the Globe and found out how Frank Gifford was banned from his bedroom by Kathie Lee; you could have studied J. Lo’s barely clad backside; you could even…

Deliverance

Plutonium lasts forever…or close enough. Certainly the stories surrounding Rocky Flats, the now-defunct nuclear-weapons plant sixteen miles northwest (and that means upwind) of Denver, are never-ending. The most controversial current chapter involves the six tons of weapons-grade plutonium scheduled for transport to South Carolina, so that the last phase of…

The Bite

By the end of an evening of margarita-testing, our teeth tasted like SweeTarts. Gritty, sour and vaguely fruity — a sad reminder of the apple, orange and pineapple juices we’d found bartenders around town inexplicably adding to the standard lime-tequila concoction. Despite the resurgent martini’s amazing staying power and all…

Last Writes

They speak from the bookshelves. “What’s going on?” murmurs Greg Lopez, the Rocky Mountain News columnist killed in a hit-and-run six years ago, when he was just 35. Some of his best columns — and there are many — are collected in a volume whose name echoes Lopez’s trademark greeting,…

The Bite

Impressive as its thirty-year run may be, the Bull & Bush (see story above) isn’t Glendale’s oldest saloon. That honor would have to go to the Four Mile House Bar (4590 Leetsdale Drive), which started life as a barn back in the days when what’s now Glendale was filled with…

The Bite

All decks on hand: Now that spring is here, patios and decks are springing up at eateries all over town. Pearl Street Grill (1477 South Pearl Street) has been serving on its backyard patio for weeks — and when a pair of restaurateurs on a scouting mission dropped by recently…

The Usual Suspects

Denver remains the Sally Field of cities. “You like us, you really like us!” we cry out in gratitude whenever anyone pays us the slightest bit of attention. Best city for pets? We’re there. Best city for bikes? Ditto. Biggest laundromat? Then-congresswoman Pat Schroeder offered that sop back in the…

Secret Agents

Jefferson County just doesn’t get the message. When confronted with bad news, Jeffco inevitably decides to kill the messenger rather than contemplate the message. Which, almost as inevitably, is this: Someone screwed up. Again. The most recent screwup involves more leaked documents coming out of the Columbine investigation (the grand-champion…

The Paper Chase

The people have a right to know — but public officials have a slippery grasp on that basic tenet of democracy. On Monday, Attorney General Ken Salazar and Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas convened the first meeting of a task force designed to clear the air around Columbine –…

Schuss!

Somewhere down the slope was my father, happily unaware that I’d wrapped myself around one of Winter Park’s historic trail signs. We were carving out our own piece of history. Forty years before, my father had introduced me to Colorado, and skiing (not that the two can be separated), on…

Boot Hill

The new year was barely a day old when a city truck appeared out of the pre-dawn murk on my northwest Denver street. Minutes later, it had left a calling card for one of my neighbors: a Denver boot, clamped to the left front wheel of the car. It was…

The Peter Principle

According to the Peter Principle, a business theory formulated by Canadian Lawrence Peters back in 1968, in a hierarchy, people tend to rise to the level of their incompetence. But in Boulder, that earnest, non-hierarchical community in the shadow of the Flatirons, people rise far higher than that. Like so…

Follow That Story

Feelings, nothing more than feelings. It’s almost time to say so long to Argenbright Security, the screeners at Denver International Airport who put such enthusiasm into their work (“Busted!” October 11, 2001). Last month, the Department of Transportation announced that the federal government would no longer be doing business with…