They arrive before the sun, traveling from Longmont and beyond to the corner of Champa Street and Park Avenue West. The small man carrying two plastic grocery sacks stuffed with clothes. The adolescent boy wearing a pressed white shirt and perfectly parted hair. The old woman huddling inside a plaid…
As an aspiring 26-year-old writer with a dark past, Mark Jordan figures he has plenty to tell the world. He has stories about bank robberies, for instance, and the many episodes of violence he’s seen in eight years of prison life. And how federal authorities have been trying to coerce…
On the last day of August, in a vast, white wasteland, beneath a blazing, bone-bleaching sun, Jesus did combat with Satan, kung-fu style. The battle began by chance, at the 2002 Burning Man festival, when a twenty-something man costumed as Jesus crossed paths with a stranger in a Satan suit…
One of the displays at this year’s Colorado State Fair was a jaw-dropping “H” removed from the usual 4H fare. “Hippie Homie House,” the runner-up in the domestic arts, dollhouse division, offered a psychedelic commentary on both the flower-power children of the ’60s and the hip-hop generation of today. “The…
Two modest houses are for sale on University Boulevard between Third and Fourth avenues — an area so rife with upscaling that these rundown dwellings may be the last of an endangered species. Driving south toward Cherry Creek — on your way, say, to Saks or Whole Foods — you…
Darlene Cypser, chief executive officer for Go-Go Media, which publishes Go-Go, an entertainment biweekly, is very unhappy about the Denver ordinance governing news racks, and many of her peers feel the same. But instead of expressing her displeasure via angry words, Cypser, who has a background as an attorney, has…
Here’s how you go about getting an interview with the nationally respected coach of the University of Colorado’s best hope for a national title this fall: Walk into his windowless ground-floor office, sit down on the only chair and say, “Hey, coach. What’s new?” Don’t be ridiculous: This isn’t the…
Domestic Quarrels Bench them: Thanks for Alan Prendergast’s excellent “System Failure,” in the August 29 issue. Our moronic judges should be horsewhipped, then kicked off the bench. It makes one recall Dickens’s character Mr. Buymble and his terse statement: “If the law says that, then the law is an ass,…
The dope man never saw it coming. Long-haired, pale-skinned and heavily tattooed, he sat in the champagne-colored leather back seat of his silver luxury sedan, watching his driver trot across the 2700 block of Downing Street to deliver a package to a crackhouse. Ten feet away, Mary calmly leveled her…
The national Prohibition Party likens itself to an oasis, “a refreshing place to be,” as one member calls it. But these days, the tiny group’s disputed turf seems about as hospitable as Baghdad. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the party’s emblem, a camel (chosen for its ability to travel long…
No, killer bees didn’t overtake the city this past weekend. That nonstop drone was the sound of the Denver Grand Prix — that, and the ka-ching of certain downtown cash registers. Still, the 32 trees along Auraria Parkway that obscured the view from the high-priced seats — until they were…
The towers are not quite twin: The south building, with 29 stories, has one more floor than the building to the north. They look like office buildings in any big-league city: black-glass monoliths with a plaza between them; a mini-bank, E-trade station and convenience store within reach; orderly rows of…
When the history of 21st-century journalism is compiled, the days and weeks immediately following the September 11 terrorist assaults may well be seen as the era’s golden moment. During that brief period, reporters and the like — folks who are usually held in subterranean esteem by the general public –…
For true believers like Simon Hanley, the sting of burning methanol in the nostrils is akin to holy incense and the deafening screech of 800-horsepower engines is the music of the spheres. With the possible exception of bullfighting and warfare, no sport intoxicates its fans like big-time auto racing, and…
Fuelish Behavior Do you need a hug? I generally flip through Westword to see how much it can annoy me. The need for bad puns in 80 percent of the headlines and the uncanny and self-serving ability to stretch minimally interesting topics into novelette lengths (topics that often could be…
She tried to tell them about Michael Garrett. But nobody listened. She tried to tell them how it was, the threats and the cocaine and all that. How he broke into her house one night after she’d kicked him out for good. How she’d lived in fear ever since, wondering…
John is a 36-year-old homeless man who has lived on and off the streets for years. Like many of Denver’s homeless people, he knows that one of the biggest daily battles is simply proving that he exists. Yet the most-accepted means of validation — a Colorado driver’s license or state…
It’s easier to get out of United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum — ADX, as the maximum-security prison in Florence is known — than it is to get inside. If you’re a publication, at least. As recently as this summer, Westword was banned in accordance with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’…
The current U.S. advertising climate is widely considered to be the chilliest in years — maybe even decades. So it’s just this side of startling to discover a businessman whose recent attempts to buy commercial time from Denver radio conglomerates that gladly took his cash in the past have been…
On a recent morning, Bill and two of his buddies make the drive from Littleton to Evergreen to do a little game harvesting — buffalo, to be specific. The shooter, Bill, arrives last. He walks down to the pen and peers inside the chain-link fence to scope out the quarry…
The Grass Is Always Greener Space case: Regarding Stuart Steers’s “Park Place,” in the August 15 issue: What makes Denver special for so many of us who can only visit occasionally are the parks, boulevards and leafy streetscapes. By contrast, a city like Phoenix, a mecca of libertarian know-nothingism, has…
Five-year-old Alex looks like the happiest kid in the world. His smiles, captured forever in photos proudly displayed around his mother’s cubicle, aren’t forced for the camera. But Alex’s smiles might not have been so genuine had his mom continued to cling to her mistrust of his dad. Until a…
