To the lone, white-faced Polack proudly waving a red-and-white Polish flag at Monday’s immigration rally at the Capitol: You were noticed. In fact, it was hard not to notice your creepily intense expression as you swayed to a tune only you could hear, back and forth, back and forth, sticking…
In much of our society, the young and vital get preferential treatment over the graying and saggy. But cheer up, wrinkled ones: These days, radio types here and elsewhere care much more about you than they do about those damn whippersnappers. As evidence, consider the music-oriented stations or formats that…
In 1997, Internet surfers looking for a good time on sites like www.sexygirls.com, www.erotic2000.com and www.1adult.com learned that they could access “MORE SEX for FREE” and “ALL NUDE ALL FREE PICTURES” simply by downloading special image-viewer software identified as “david.exe.” But while the porn seekers were getting “FREE XXX IMAGES,”…
Hot Debate Over Hot Dogs Fighting like cats and dogs: I have been an avid, if not unreasonably loyal, fan of Westword for years, but Jason Sheehan’s April 20 Bite Me column has gotten me angrier than a long-tailed cat in a rocking-chair factory. Shortly after you hired Jason, you…
Most reporters and editors don’t really care for corrections, and for good reason: Who likes to have their screw-ups paraded in front of the public? But they’re an absolute necessity if publications are to maintain credibility, which helps explain why there’s so much debate within the journalistic community about the…
Mainstream Denver media operations generally gave appropriate play to the May 1 “A Day Without Immigrants” rally — but several of them had difficulty putting protests of the protesters into context. A Westword reporter who attended the rally estimated that by mid-afternoon, an assemblage of perhaps a hundred folks in…
People who remained on the job but wanted to check on the progress of “A Day Without Immigrants,” the May 1 march and rally at the State Capitol, had what appeared to be an excellent way to do so. Channels 4, 7 and 9 each offered live streaming coverage of…
The price of a particular, peculiar piece of Colorado real estate is dropping through the floor. Back on September 23, 2004, in Home Security, we told you of an unusual home-ownership opportunity: a circa 1960, 50,000 square-foot missile-silo complex out on the former Lowry Bombing Range, as well as the…
A day without legislators: Every window of the State Capitol, where thousands upon thousands of marchers congregated, was occupied by representatives, aides or other government employees taking pictures of the huddled masses with cheap-looking digital cameras or cell phones. Besuited politicians also lined the balcony directly over the Capitol’s main…
Maybe the City of Denver isn’t as backward as Marc Ecko and his attorney, David Lane, thought it was. The pair threatened to sue the city for First Amendment infringements if officials didn’t overturn the anti-graffiti ordinances in time for a proposed graffiti festival. Maybe Lane got busy with all…
In the April 27 Message column, Channel 9 news director Patti Dennis explained why her station didn’t offer any advance coverage of an April 19 student walkout to protest immigration policies; approximately 2,500 young people left school to participate. According to her, she feared that “we would become part of…
The afternoon of April 26, MediaNews Group head Dean Singleton made official a secret almost as poorly kept as Tony Snow ‘s appointment as White House press secretary. MediaNews, with financial backing from the Hearst Corporation, had purchased three newspapers based in the California Bay Area — the San Jose…
“And another thing,” La Liga Latina de Béisbol president Jose Acosta tells the sixty or so team representatives assembled in a small room at the Bladium on a Saturday evening in early April. “If anyone sees or knows Rolando Castillo, tell him that he is suspended for eight games.” Last…
Looking like something out of a light-beer commercial, the two white thirty-something men spend their lunch break getting in some practice swings before their fast-pitch softball league starts up for the season. After smacking standard yellow, dimpled batting-cage balls all over the place, one decides to up the ante. “Hey,…
The better part of a week ahead of time, editorial employees at the Denver Post were informed that their presence was required at one of two meetings scheduled for April 18 — but they weren’t told why. The mystery at the heart of this invite generated dire speculation, and those…
On Monday, the state Senate approved House Bill 1201, which would put close to $20 million annually into Colorado’s tourism-promotion budget. But while the Senate and House versions of the measure must be reconciled before the bill moves to Bill Owens for his signature, the governor and fellow business boosters…
Hip-hop fashion mogul Marc Ecko has enraged Denver’s political establishment, drop-kicked the beehive of ornery neighborhood groups, and flipped the bird to Denver Partners Against Graffiti. But Denver City Council president Rosemary Rodriquez and her gaggle of property owners — who hoisted pickets reading things like “No tagging, no graffiti,…
On a folding chair along the sidelines is where soft-spoken Denver Nugget DerMarr Johnson spent most of his season. But with the playoffs under way, Johnson, who can surprise with explosive off-the-bench performances when it matters most, says he’s hoping for some big minutes against the Clippers. The road from…
Of the many types of vandals in the world — the blackout-drunk-smashy-smashy vandal, the politico-Gandhi-graffiti-be-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world vandal, the pump-don’t-work-’cause-the-vandals-took-the-handles vandal — perhaps the oddest is the street-sign-interior-design vandal. While most people eye an octagonal red sign at an intersection as a helpful warning to come to a stop and possibly avoid…
No Walk in the Park Food for thought: I usually look forward to Adam Cayton-Holland’s column for quirky humor, damning critique and guaranteed laughter. But the April 20 What’s So Funny actually had a different effect: It got me off my butt and down to the Gathering Place with $200…
“I didn’t start out to do what I’m doing,” says John Scherer, CEO and founder of Video Professor Inc., one of Colorado’s most incongruous success stories. He insists that he wound up starring in the commercials and infomercials that have made him a familiar figure among the nation’s insomniacs “because…
“Chief Hosa Lodge, the handsome stone pavilion built by the city in Genesee Mountain Park, has opened its doors this summer under a new management,” announced the June-July 1921 issue of Municipal Facts, an informative, if slightly propagandistic, publication once put out by the City and County of Denver. In…
