Doom With a View School daze: Is it really a wonder? In regard to Alan Prendergast’s “Back to School,” the shockingly tragic, but stunningly true, article on the Columbine massacre published in the October 25 issue, I have but a few things to say. I may be young, but I…
The 69-year-old woman shuffled into the courtroom slowly, towing an oxygen tank behind her. She’d made the trip to the Chancery building at 1120 Lincoln Street to defend herself, to explain to an administrative-law judge that, no, she hadn’t given her two-year-old grandson a blow job, as her former daughter-in-law…
In 200 words or less, do you dream of owning a restaurant in the Colorado mountains? Taking inspiration from The Spitfire Grill, a 1996 film in which an ex-con convinces an aging cafe owner to give away her small-town Maine restaurant to whoever sends in the most convincing essay and…
For as long as anyone in Golden can remember, there have been some surefire ways of knowing you are at a Colorado School of Mines football game. One: You pay six bucks and sit almost by yourself at 5,000-seat Brooks Field. Two: There are mules grazing in the corral beyond…
For years, activist Adrienne Anderson has been a thorn in the side of bureaucrats who would rather bury the garbage of Colorado’s past than make it public. But this fall, that thorn came out smelling like a rose. In May 1997, less than a year after Anderson had been officially…
Columnist and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu came to town to speak at the University of Denver last month — but it was his trip back to New Orleans that made headlines. “I waited two and a half hours to go through security at the Denver airport. The people…
On October 7, the Denver Post published a pair of articles commemorating the six-month anniversary of its joint operating agreement with the Rocky Mountain News — and predictably, the pact, which combined the longtime rivals’ business operations, was portrayed as a timely compromise. Staffer Kelly Pate’s main report acknowledged that…
Swingtime in the Rockies Bonds on the run: Regarding Bill Gallo’s “A Swing and a Myth,” in the October 18 issue — I have a short list of grievances. “Barry bin Ladin” is right. Shame on you for trying to defend a human being as detestable as Barry Bonds. It…
It was back in July 2000 when Pat Dobiash, who watched the herd for the Henrys, first noticed that one of the alpacas was missing. A full month passed before Dobiash found the animal, a young female: On August 26, he stumbled across its decomposing remains on a small island…
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch There goes the neighborhood: I just read the October 18 “Home Sweet Clone” piece by James Hibberd. I don’t live directly in Highlands Ranch, but am close enough to it that I might as well. I can only surmise by the tone of the story,…
The Fire Last Time They dreamed of fire. It would be a cleansing fire, fueled by propane, gasoline, gunpowder, homemade napalm — and their own savage hatred. Explosion after explosion, building to a conflagration that would settle all arguments and consume hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. At first, when the…
For the past eighteen months, ever since Columbine families filed nine lawsuits against him and his agency, Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone has refused to talk to reporters about the school massacre. When other county officials deign to comment on the police response to the attack, they invariably parrot the…
Last April, Melissa Smith paid $300,000 for a condo in Denver’s booming Uptown neighborhood. She wishes she hadn’t. The garage of the just-finished building at 1767 Pearl Street is already leaking, the hardwood floors inside her condo are a mess, and she can’t take showers in the morning because there’s…
Ocean Journey is like a ghost town these days. The aquarium just suffered the slowest month ever, and what’s even spookier is that attendance isn’t expected to pick up until March. Just 40,440 people visited Ocean Journey in September, compared to 65,775 last September and 98,324 during the same month…
Even in these troubled times, respect for the law sometimes depends on who’s wearing the badge. Last week, voters in rural Costilla County ousted controversial sheriff John Mestas in a special recall election by a count of 664 to 608. Vowing to clean up the county, Mestas was elected three…
She’s ba-a-ack. Not even six years in the joint could keep Ruth Chiffon von Seeburg-Schausten Prager from returning to the restaurant business, even though she did her time because the evidence against her involved years of bad money deals for eateries she either worked in or ran (“Would You Buy…
The accomplishments of two Boulder-based researchers were all over the news earlier this month after the men, University of Colorado physics professor Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Less heralded was the award another Coloradan recently…
On a sparkling fall morning, the grand entrance of Denver’s City Hall is festooned with giant ribbons commemorating breast cancer awareness month and hung with a banner reading “Denver Celebrates Diversity.” But visitors wanting a closer look at this display are out of luck, because the entire area is isolated…
First comes the Wells Fargo Wagon. Then bulldozers and John Deere tractors. Then the Centennial sanitation trucks. And then a gaggle of industrial lawn mowers, doing spins. A semi-truck from Albertson’s. The Douglas County Republican wagon. And row upon row of marching elementary students. Creeping up the street on a…
In 1891, a Denver rancher named John W. Springer built a mansion on the 22,000 acres that would later become Highlands Ranch. He called the mansion Castle Isabel, after his young wife. Publications by the Highlands Ranch Community Association claim that Springer is a descendant of a Russian czar, though…
There’s a reason that soup kitchens feed the poor with their namesake dish. “Soup is satisfying,” says Michael Mack, a volunteer cook with Denver’s Catholic Worker soup kitchen. “And it’s the easiest way to stretch things. If you’ve got a stone, a couple carrots, some celery and some water, you…
An already incipient recession fueled by the September 11 terrorist attacks may have closed most people’s pocketbooks to purchases of anything other than guns, flags and shares of defense-industry stocks, but apparently it hasn’t affected those who pay top dollar to attend the theee-ater, particularly when the highbrow evening is…
