part 2 of 2 In the spring of 1991 Tony entered an Alamosa pawn shop carrying his television. The family had moved to the San Luis Valley almost a year before, and things weren’t going so well. He’d been reduced to selling his possessions in order to feed his children…
part 1 of 2 When the 100 or so members of the Graphic Communications International Union who staffed the production facilities at A.B. Hirschfeld Press decided to go out on strike two months ago, they would have been well advised to look up a fifteen-year-old lawsuit filed against the company’s…
In living color: If the new Rocky Mountain Magazine recalls the go-go early Eighties, the new Colorado magazine echoes the early Sixties–blocky type, “colorful” slogan, lace-up ski boots and all. But at least publisher Merrill Hastings is cribbing from himself: He founded the original Colorado in 1964, then went on…
The next time some genius with five or six Miller Lites in him spins around on his barstool and starts regaling you with that old business about how sports reflect the agony and ecstasy of life, tell him to go home and put his head in the sink. Sports reflect…
How secure is a prison with locks that don’t work? Only three and a half years after Colorado’s Limon prison opened, taxpayers are going to have to shell out $155,000 to replace its 712 cell-door locks. No matter, apparently, that the locks at the Limon Correctional Facility carried a warranty…
Red, White and Jew Regarding Ward Harkavy’s “Out of the Norm” in the June 15 issue: It is an outrage that Norm Resnick can say the things he does on the radio and still pretend that he upholds Jewish traditions. A man is known by the company he keeps. Resnick…
When the City of Denver hired the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton last year to deal with the national reporters who were filing stories about its new airport, it agreed to pay top dollar for the company’s expertise. But it took the chief researcher at the prominent Washington,…
part 1 of 2 As a professor of education for twenty years at the University of Northern Colorado, Norm Resnick specialized in training prospective teachers how to handle the emotionally disturbed. And in light of that, his new career as a radio talk-show host makes strange sense: His callers worry…
part 2 of 2 Norm Resnick may relish his combative reputation, but when it comes right down to it, his Dr. Norm routine is often meek. He usually cuts off callers rather than argue with them. Epperson’s conspiracy theory went “beyond my comfort level,” he says, and adds that one…
The Anheuser-Busch brewery rises from the agricultural flatlands north of Fort Collins like a beer lover’s Magic Kingdom. Rows of flowers line the sidewalks and the road leading to the main entrance, and visitors are invited by sunny collegiate greeters to take the brewery tour, a highlight of which is…
Don’t let the fax get in the way: Ears must still be ringing in the office of Lynn Graves, US West Communications staff manager in Denver. Last month Graves’s office sent a memo to phone company area managers in Colorado and Wyoming that noted the following: “The traditional summer service…
When baseball was the national pastime, the owners smoked two-dollar cigars and the players, even the underpaid ones, went to work with smiles on their faces. In the reserved grandstand (tickets three bucks), fans drank beer out of real bottles, and there was no need to cut them off in…
When Dale Pruce submitted a promotional idea to the Miller Brewing Company five years ago, the Milwaukee brewer’s rejection letter ended with the encouraging, “We look forward to hearing from you.” It got its wish. This February Pruce fired off another letter to the company, this time contending that Miller…
Dress for X-cess I thought Patricia Calhoun’s June 8 column, “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee,” kicked butt, to borrow a phrase from Jim Norris. I only hope that he and the workers from Sound Warehouse continue to show the courage of their convictions. As many of us from the…
In most places the disappearance of a low-level city panel would register barely a blip on people’s personal radar screens. But most places aren’t Colorado Springs, where every civic move seems to be invested with enough meaning and symbolism to provide work for a generation of laid-off Kremlinologists. The panel…
It’s hard to say precisely when things started falling apart for Denver lawyer David L. Smith. A good guess might be mid-July 1992, after he filed a request in federal court to take the deposition of a dead man. Smith, who was representing plaintiff Geana Dunkin in an employment-discrimination suit…
Jack Kern is in his customary spot: at the counter of the last White Spot restaurant. He has been one of the faithful for so long that he forgets when it all started. Eight years ago, maybe? At first he came in for a cup of coffee, but he soon…
Crook or Creek? Your ignorance is bliss to the Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District. Ten days ago the business association faxed information to local merchants alerting them to a couple of robberies and a car theft that had occurred in the chichi shopping district the week of May 22…
Soccer is the game nearly 83 Americans love. When the World Cup kicks off next week in nine far-flung U.S. cities, it might have trouble outpointing badminton, ice-fishing and furnace repair in the Nielsen ratings. Aside from a guy named Pele, who retired years ago, your average Yanqui imperialist cannot…
Old and lonely, Mabel Smith sat in her Denver apartment, looking forward to the telephone calls from her “friends”–those sweet young people who would inform her about the wonderful prizes coming her way. “You’ve won a car, Mabel!” “Mabel, you’re the winner of our $20,000 grand prize!” “You’ve been selected,…
Cliff Moers went to a boarding school in Colorado Springs, but in some ways it might as well have been on another planet: The teachers insisted on using one language while the students used another. Now Moers is trying to start a charter school in the Denver area that would…
The outgoing senior-class president of Denver’s Manual High School blames the principal for the fracas that marred the school’s centennial graduation ceremonies on May 29. The principal blames the kid and the kid’s mother. The media blames Kinshasa Sayers, the graduating senior who commandeered the microphone. And meanwhile, Sayers says,…
