If Books Could Kill…

The families of three Maryland murder victims lost the first round in a wrongful-death suit against Boulder’s Paladin Press, but their attorneys vow to keep their teeth in Paladin’s nether regions for years to come. “We will continue to litigate this case until we reach the last court and the…

Tune In and Turn On

Let’s face it. When Denver’s suppertime TV news junkies think of Channel 4’s Aimee Sporer, the station’s hard-hitting “Mall Watch” segment probably doesn’t leap to mind. Instead, viewers are reminded of the regional Emmy award-winner’s less journalistic attributes: her flaxen hair, her milky skin and, of course, those luminescent baby…

Park and Parcel

A dispute over the future of a valuable piece of city-owned real estate across the street from Larimer Square has forced Denver officials to back down from plans to sell the property to developers. If downtown residents have their way, Denver will have a new park and history center instead…

Looking for a Minor Miracle

Salt this name away, Rockies fans: Scott Randall. As the club’s fourth season winds down with an ineffectual bang (four Bombers with a hundred RBIs each–first time in the National League since 1929) and a resounding whimper (8 million bucks’ worth of Saberhagen and Swift still on the shelf), you…

Letters

The Rockies May Crumble… After reading Patricia Calhoun’s “Stealing Home,” in the September 5 issue, I have to ask: What’s next? Will the Colorado Rockies try to seize a certain mountain range because its name is too close to that of the team? I’m a lot more worried about what…

Nip It in the Bud

A gentleman entered a busy florist shop that displayed a large sign that read, “Say it with flowers.” “Wrap up one rose,” he told the florist. “Only one?” asked the florist. “Just one,” the customer replied. “I’m a man of few words.” The laughs are few and far between these…

Conventional Wisdom

When the Colorado Convention Center was dedicated on a spring day in 1990, the promises flew as fast and furious as a March snowstorm. Politicians who had spent years campaigning for the new center didn’t disguise their delight with the opening of the tenth largest convention center in the United…

Life in a Fog

The day was chilly, Teri Ralya recalls, when she returned to her Arvada apartment in March 1994 to air out the pesticides that had been sprayed there that morning. As she opened up all the windows in her third-story unit and switched on the stove’s exhaust fan, she hoped that…

Off Limits

The thigh’s the limit: Toe-sucking Dick Morris, the just-deposed Bill Clinton campaign strategist whose extracurricular efforts with a prostitute are splashed across the Star this week, once displayed his fancy footwork here in Denver. Back in 1983, when six candidates were challenging longtime mayor Bill McNichols (including then-state bureaucrat Wellington…

Dreaming of a Higher Power

If you walk along the quaint quarter-mile stretch of Main Street in downtown Lyons, you can find a florist, a handful of antique dealers, Germanic knickknacks, a hearty omelet at the Gateway Cafe and the prototype for a radical new internal-combustion engine. Vern Newbold invented it; engineers from around the…

Knock-Knock

One Saturday last month, Sharon Storlie answered a knock at her apartment door. It was a young salesman, about thirteen years old, hawking the Boulder Daily Camera. No, thanks, Storlie told him. But that wasn’t enough. “Are you sure you don’t want to buy the paper?” he whined. Yes. “But…

No Wine Before Its Time

One hundred bottles of wine on the wall, one hundred bottles of wine, you take them down, pass them around, and…you’ve got one hell of a headache if you’re Denver bankruptcy trustee David S. Cohen. The 100 bottles in question once resided in the wine cellar of the Stanley Hotel…

Seeing Red Once Again

Beyond the Gainesville city limits, cocky Steve Spurrier may be the least popular head coach in big-time college football. But even those who’d like to see the man vanish in the Everglades may have sympathized last January when his high-octane Florida Gators were blown out of the Fiesta Bowl, 62-24…

Stealing Home

The Colorado Rockies protect their turf–both on and off the field. When fans trying to avoid opening-day traffic bicycled to Coors Field, the team called the cops, and the bikes–which had been chained to the stadium built with taxpayer money–were impounded. When vendors outside Coors Field began cutting into the…

Letters

The Blackboard Bungle Kudos to Eric Dexheimer for his story on the plight of John Hart, recently canned part-time faculty teacher at Aurora Community College (“Teacher’s Fret,” August 29). The article revealed not just a personal story but the workings of a whole system run with an iron hand by…

Visit to a Mall Planet

Southwest Plaza has, like, fifteen entrances, and that’s not counting the downstairs at Sears where you go in next to the Die-Hard batteries and radial tires. As if. As if you would ever go to the mall to buy a tire. The fourteen-year-old girls who live in my neighborhood will…

Teacher’s Fret

John Hart is a fine writing teacher; his student evaluations are nearly unanimous on that. Last year his students nominated him as Teacher of the Year at the Community College of Aurora, where he also served as co-chair of the faculty senate. He has a graduate degree in fine arts,…

Wheels of Fortune

Down at the Regional Transportation District’s lofty LoDo headquarters, good help has never been hard to find. The pay at the troubled transit agency is competitive, the benefits are excellent–and in some cases, there’s even a bonus for quitting. Paying employees to leave isn’t yet common practice at RTD, but…

Off Limits

Social climbers: On Friday, gossipmonger Bill Husted told the Rocky Mountain News he was entertaining an offer from the Denver Post. Apparently the News wasn’t interested in countering: When Husted showed up for work Monday, he got the boot instead of a boutonniere and was escorted from the building with…

Feeling No Pain

Former Fort Morgan pharmacist and self-confessed morphine addict Andrew Komesu was lucky to get out of Colorado with little more than a slap on the wrist. Now, however, he just might be forced to make a return visit–a possibility that both satisfies and frustrates drug-enforcement officers. In 1995, Komesu served…

Shaft’s Big Score!

At Ted Nugent’s Kamp for Kids in the Michigan woods last week, you had two choices. You could get a bow and arrow and hunt deer, elk, bear or what Nugent called “a great big Commie Russian hog.” You could gut it out, haul it home and help feed your…

The City’s Slippery Slope

As officials of the Winter Park ski area prepare to raise the curtain on what’s supposed to be a new era of accountability, questions continue to swirl about the finances of the city-owned resort. The Winter Park Recreational Association, the secretive private board that runs the lucrative resort for the…