When Joanne and Manny Salzman moved into their 3,500-square-foot loft on Wynkoop Street in 1980, no one had heard of LoDo. The area was filled with empty warehouses and broken windows, and the couple’s former neighbors in Hilltop worried about them walking the deserted streets at night. But the opportunity…
Gwen Compton Ternes has been living with pain since she fell to the floor in 1987 when the wheels of her office chair came off. The injury to the former office manager led to a series of health problems, and by 1999, three doctors agreed that Ternes required replacement surgery…
Jeff Campbell begins his class at George Washington High School by grabbing a dictionary — a big red Webster’s. He looks up the word “respect,” whose definition yields other words, like “consideration” and “regard.” A couple of teens then head to the blackboard, and in a few minutes, the class…
In an important victory for the mentally ill in Denver, a local judge found this week that the state is in contempt of court for failing to provide care and shelter to those with chronic mental illnesses. Denver District Judge Morris Hoffman fined Colorado $1.4 million and ordered the state…
Of the nine candidates running for the District 6 city council spot recently vacated by Susan Casey, Charlie Brown probably has the best name recognition. Unlike the browbeaten cartoon character, however, this Charlie Brown is no blockhead: A former teacher, he served for two years in the mid-1980s in the…
The Russian thistle is the worst of weeds. Brought over in the trouser cuff of a clueless immigrant, it buried its evil seed in the Nebraska sand more than a century ago and soon took over. Today the Russian thistle’s empire stretches well into the Rocky Mountains. Although the thistle’s…
The March 30 press conference near the federal courthouse downtown didn’t contain many surprises. For instance, it wasn’t shocking that Jake Jabs, tiger-hugging owner of American Furniture Warehouse, would be heading up a cadre of people upset about rising ad rates in the wake of the joint-operating agreement between the…
In this era of obscene player salaries and disposable loyalties, assembling a baseball team is an agony of constant reinvention, incessant tinkering and, when the occasion calls for it, vain hope. Unless, of course, you’re the New York Yankees, who have no need for the usual wishful thinking, so inflated…
Carrying a Torch Love everlasting: I just read Steve Jackson’s incredible “The Racer’s Edge” series, including “The Bounce-Back Kid,” in the March 8 issue, and “The Kid Bounces Back,” in the March 15 issue, for the fifth time. I wanted to write to tell you how moved I am, and…
Wendy is the birthday girl for the second time in six months. On her first “birthday,” in September, she got $20,000. And she’s hoping to receive another generous gift soon. The money couldn’t have come at a better time. Wendy, a 51-year-old single mom, lives in a mobile home in…
The concept behind the Original Dinner Party isn’t original. Ever since 1886, when the first Avon Lady in Winchester, New Hampshire, started peddling cosmetics to her friends, women have understood the importance of networking to make it in a man’s world. And businesses have understood that women are usually the…
The politicians assembled in a conference room inside Denver’s City and County Building are on edge. A routine meeting of the city council’s parks and recreation committee is suddenly at the center of the hottest political story in town. Charles Robertson, a high-level manager with the parks department, has been…
Andrew Hartman is only in his second year of teaching, and already he’s out of a job. The teacher’s problems began last November, when students in the Thornton High School chapter of Students 4 Justice began distributing anti-military literature during a visit from armed-forces recruiters. It was the students’ idea…
Writer Neal Pollack is not to be trusted. In his first book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, the former Chicago Reader columnist takes on the persona of a man with the same name — one who has led a startlingly full life as a globe-trotting journalist and whose…
It’s February 26, and the Denver Nuggets are preparing to play what is arguably their most important game of the year. The 2000-2001 campaign had started out promisingly, with the Nuggets running their record to eight games over .500 by late January — heady territory for a team that the…
You want the love? Here is the love. On Monday and Wednesday nights, the forty or so players of the Gentlemen of Aspen Rugby Football Club show up at the Cory Point Riding Arena, a few miles down the Roaring Fork Valley. They wait while the horses are led away…
Weird Science What a doll! Kudos to Patricia Calhoun for her March 8 column, “Blinded by Science,” showing how low the high-and-mighty Boulder can sink. The black-and-white-Barbie saga was embarrassing enough for a supposedly sophisticated city. But unless the box those two Hispanic gentlemen were carrying to their car contained…
Harry and Linda Weber stand in their Loveland basement, gazing down at several dozen reluctant houseplants. “If they don’t start blooming more,” she says, “they won’t make it.” “No, they won’t.” Harry, a buzz-cut Vietnam vet, doesn’t look like someone who would fret over a crop of dainty flowers. Linda,…
Chris Klug stepped out of the elevator onto Floor 7West at University Hospital. This was the transplant floor, the walls near the waiting room adorned with plaques from organ recipients and their families thanking the doctors and nurses for “the gift of life.” The staff greeted him immediately. Everybody seemed…
The scrubby hills between East Sand Creek and East Drennan Road in Colorado Springs are a perfect spot for coyotes. There are rabbits and mice to chase, crevices to hide in and sunny spots to snooze in. The only drawback is that the coyotes must share the place with the…
The $500-an-hour man, lawyer Steve Farber, was roasted Tuesday at a luncheon benefiting the I Have a Dream Foundation. And how appropriate was that? Farber apparently believes so strongly in the concept of sponsoring kids’ education that every year, he adopts the entire freshmen class of the Colorado Legislature, then…
At first he pissed me off. Then he worried me. Then he fascinated me. So imagine how I felt when I found out he was only nineteen! “We’re just calling to okay the purchase of the motherboard,” said the man on the phone. “We’re gonna charge your account the $600…
