Kurt Warner may not know it, but Some Things Never Change. With six weeks left in the National Football League season, the perennially miserable Cincinnati Bengals are 1-10 and eager to clean out their lockers. The flightless Philadelphia Eagles are once more lolling in the NFC East basement with a…
On the Internet, there’s no accounting for taste. That makes it easy to explain the existence of Web pages with names like www.buttsacrossamerica.com and www.donkeysex.com. But what about that goody-two-shoes bluemountain.com? The crudest thing this site offers is its graphic design, a throwback to the days of 14.4 modems and…
I. HOW TO WIN On the second Saturday in October, in a small park in southwest Denver, two groups of children come together to play a game of football. Each of the boys is hidden beneath his beefed-up shoulder pads and oversized helmet. At their age, most of the players…
On the Internet, there’s no accounting for taste. That makes it easy to explain the existence of Web pages with names like www.buttsacrossamerica.com and www.donkeysex.com. But what about that goody-two-shoes bluemountain.com? The crudest thing this site offers is its graphic design, a throwback to the days of 14.4 modems and…
Act I, Scene I. The Drama Teacher: Enter stage left. Stephen Nye doesn’t mind a little drama. In fact, he welcomes it. Nye, who has taught theater at the Denver School of the Arts for three years, didn’t think twice about producing two medieval-era plays with strong Christian themes and…
After eighteen months of fighting against a proposed gravel quarry in their neighborhood, Coal Creek Canyon homeowners finally blew a hole through Asphalt Paving Company’s plans. Their victory came November 9, on the sixth and final day of public hearings before the Jefferson County commissioners, who were considering whether to…
Tempest in a teepeeLast week the Senate Ethics Committee cleared Harley-riding, party-switching senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of conflict-of-interest charges filed by Phil Doe’s Citizens Progressive Alliance and two other environmental groups. The charges stemmed from Campbell’s involvement — as a local landowner — with the proposed sale of the Vallecito…
There is no simple way to explain what most people cannot understand. And after 135 years, there is no simple way to heal a wound that still bleeds. Yet on Thanksgiving weekend, Otto Braided Hair will try. If the good weather holds and plans proceed on schedule, he will spend…
Here’s a startling statement: It’s entirely possible that more people in this nation are familiar with Ken Hamblin than any other Denver-based media figure. After all, his radio program, which airs from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays, is heard on more than a hundred stations in the U.S., his newspaper…
As midnight draws near for the decade, the century and the millennium, humankind’s most powerful, most undeniable impulse is to make lists. By now, of course, most of the good lists are already taken. Chiseled in stone. Scotch-taped to David Letterman’s ego. Posted on the Internet. Magnetized to the refrigerator…
For years, Coloradans have been wondering: What exactly is the problem with US West? As thousands of customers from Fort Collins to Parker waited for months to get new phone lines, neighbors asked each other why a regulated monopoly with guaranteed profit margins couldn’t seem to get its act together…
Maybe it’s the political message of Johnny Cash’s Man in Black blaring from a back room that keeps blood pumping through the veins of the college students answering phones and pecking at their keyboards inside the Westside Outreach Center. Maybe it’s the sharp chill in the building, where the furnace…
It’s been a bad few months in Broncoland. Things head south from jump street. The two-time defending Super Bowl champions limp through a pre-season memorable mainly for a quarterback controversy (Bubby Brister out, Brian Griese in) that most local media outlets inflate to gargantuan proportions. A number of them broadcast…
Denver’s booming economy this decade has been made possible in large part by bonds. In 1990, voters approved bonds — which pay dividends to the people who buy them and are often tax-free — to fund a new central library. Bonds paid for Denver International Airport. And just last week,…
A group of people who live near the Cherry Creek Shopping Center are holding up the construction of a Nordstrom department store because they believe that the mall’s owner has a history of making false promises to them, and they’ve had enough. The Taubman Company plans to build Nordstrom on…
Mission unprofitableNinety-three bucks will get you a room at the YMCA’s central branch for a week. It won’t get you a bathroom; for that, you have to go down the hall to a public facility or, as one former Y boarder says, you could just piss in the sink. But…
Item: As the millennium approaches, a local exterminator shares an observation: “My phone has been ringing off the hook,” he says. “Yeah. Squirrels.” Confrontation (Part One): “Honey, come in here.” “What?” “There’s a squirrel.” “Where?” “On the fence. Just outside the kitchen window.” “Really? What’s it doing?” “Just standing there…
Today would seem to be the best of times for female journalists interested in covering sports. Networks like ABC and cable-sports channels such as ESPN employ a swelling stable of women anchors and correspondents — and even though too many of them are stuck doing sideline reports while the dudes…
Richard “Buzz” Geller was born in a house on the corner of Colfax Avenue and Adams Street in 1945. He remembers East Colfax as a friendly neighborhood retail strip, the kind of place where grandmothers shopped for fresh vegetables and children walked to the pet store to look at goldfish…
Above Jim Hannifin’s cluttered desk is an award, inked in amateur calligraphy and framed in fake wood. Hannifin tacked the prize to his wall in February 1995, shortly after he moved his business, Ready Temporary Services, to 1915 East Colfax Avenue. Leaders of the local business group Colfax on the…
As a patrol officer working the area south of Colfax Avenue and east of York Street, Larry Carr became frustrated by the number of repeat visits he made to the same crime-filled apartment buildings. Every night, it seemed, the same jerks were causing the same problems over and over, from…
