In its August 3 edition, the Rocky Mountain News published “Sol’s Goodbye Kiss,” an article that seemed to offer up new information about a gag-inducing corporate giveaway. Reporter Jeff Smith’s first paragraph read, “Qwest Communications agreed to pay then-US West CEO Sol Trujillo a $72 million golden parachute a day…
Despite the smoking ban, patrons are still happily smoking away inside Paris on the Platte at 15th and Platte streets. The venerable coffee shop is holding firm that it is exempt from the state’s new Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act because it derives more than 5 percent of total gross…
The day I cried was months later, when I went to my mailbox for his weekly letters and poems. The box was empty no letter, no poems. I was so alone. Lost. Confused. The stanza from “The First Time” by Trinidad Sanchez Jr. carries a new layer of meaning now…
Rocky Mountain News sportswriter Tracy Ringolsby’s July 30 induction into the writer’s wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame was a big deal — and the Rocky made damn sure everyone knew it. The July 29 edition included an appreciation of the Colorado Rockies beat reporter by editor/publisher/president John Temple,…
There are dry spells: a week, maybe two, when no cases of energy drinks arrive at his door. But Dan Mayer doesn’t sweat it. He knows that another energy-drink manufacturer will soon get in touch with him, ask for his address in Uptown, and then send a crate of its…
As I sit down to write, I pop open a glistening blue-and-silver can of Red Bull and sip in the sweet, sweet nectar. It’s delicious, like liquid Smarties, only crackier. As the magic elixir forces energy down my esophagus and settles warmly into my belly, I’m overcome by nostalgia –…
Last week, a discrimination trial in federal court between Kroenke Sports Enterprises and a former employee offered a behind-the-scenes look at how the shadowy, sometimes shady ticket-brokerage business works, with scalpers often going straight to the source. Plaintiff Deborah Steele’s lawsuit hinged on proving that she was fired from Kroenke…
Nothing says summer like the mobile ice-cream man. But what about the methamphetamine man? On July 23, Denver police pulled over a car in the Cherry Creek area only to discover that the vehicle housed a mobile meth lab — a “rolling lab,” in law-enforcement jargon. (So, do addicts chase…
The East Colfax Avenue land grab has spilled off the strip and onto the web. Six months ago, ColfaxAvenue.com (not to be confused with www.colfaxave.com, the Colfax Business Improvement District’s site) launched as a portal to all things Colfax, from its easternmost point to the spot outside Golden where it…
There are things that I’ll miss about my apartment. Riding my bike around City Park in the early evenings, studying the birds. The way the moon drifted across the eastern set of windows like a lunar clock tracking the progress of the night. Then again, there are things I won’t…
Bitchin’ Article! Tit for tat: I love women who bitch about the word “bitch.” They’re so naively earnest, like Becky Due (“Bitch, Bitch, Bitch,” July 27). And like Leon, who left that groveling male apologia on Becky’s blog. I like to jerk their chains! Becky should be flattered by all…
Founded in 1992 on the basic model of Anarchism — i.e. no hierarchical leadership — Critical Mass is a group that one expects to be disorganized. The relatively new Denver-based installment of the monthly bike phenomenon is no exception. The oftentimes chaotic debate that moshes within their online Yahoo message…
At first blush, the classified ad recently posted on the Denver area of Craigslist.com seems pretty unexceptional. The main copy, which appears under the slug “Get Paid to Blog,” reads: “Examiner.com, a progressive news and information website, is hiring professional bloggers. If you have an edgy, unique writing style that…
In the August 3 edition of Westword, the lion’s share of the letter below is slated to be published. Its author? Consumer advocate and self-proclaimed “troubleshooter” Tom Martino, whose local duties include hosting a weekday talk show on KHOW and reporting regularly for Channel 31, Denver’s Fox-TV affiliate. The letter…
The bands on the July 29 Red Rocks bill don’t qualify as the newest and hottest combos on the planet. Ween, the show’s headliner, actually formed way back in 1984, although its first long-player wasn’t released until 1990. The Flaming Lips, which played in the second slot, are even older,…
The announcement that the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD, will soon be moving most of its personnel out of its not-so-secret headquarters inside Cheyenne Mountain stirred some distant memories of my wayward youth covering the national security beat. Two details stand out from a visit in…
On July 29, after five months of testimony and two weeks of deliberation, a California jury finally reached a verdict in one of the most complex capital cases ever brought to trial. Aryan Brotherhood leaders Tyler “The Hulk” Bingham (pictured) and Barry “The Baron” Mills were convicted of racketeering and…
Sure, the Cyclone rollercoaster stalled on its tracks last Sunday, but that won’t keep me from going back to Lakeside Amusement Park this summer. As soon as it’s green-lighted, I’ll be back on the beast that has been scaring me since I was a kid. My grandfather took me to…
Doug Ishii watches his wife, Wendy, from across the room as she mingles with her guests. He’s traded in his lab coat for a collared shirt, and peppered silver hair is the only indication that the Japanese man grinning toward the hostess could be a day over sixty. Wendy wears…
The first person Becky Due ever called a bitch was her mother. She caught a whuppin’ for it, and since then, Due says, she’s never called anyone a bitch again. Almost thirty years later, Due was on an airplane and heard a grown man call a young girl a bitch…
Jim Narcy could have warned Matt Lawrence to be careful in the 1900 block of Market Street. Two months ago, when the Westword photographer ventured out to take a picture of the building at 1920 that was being transformed into The Real World Denver headquarters, someone called the cops on…
It’s hard to find the time to hallucinate these days. Used to be, my only real priority was ingesting some sort of mind-altering substance and hallucinating — if only to discourse at length with Huckleberry Finn. “Huck, listen, dog, there’s no way I’m painting this fence,” I would say to…
