Anne Landman is addicted to cigarettes. She’s never actually smoked a whole one, but she can’t stop thinking about them: how they’re made, how they’re marketed, what’s in them, who buys them, who makes sure they’ll always be for sale. “People think I’m obsessed, a one-issue person,” Landman says. “It’s…
Mike Walker recently got bumped by the cops — again. This time it went down on a Friday afternoon as he was heading home from school with his boy Brandon. The eighteen-year-old northeast Denver natives were treading steady down tree-lined 29th Avenue toward Williams Street when a District 2 Gang…
Although the space at 2200 Champa Street was empty for seven years, there was always hope that somehow, someday, someone would bring back Muddy’s Java Cafe, the coffeehouse that helped two generations of Denver youth define themselves. But now that hope’s dried up. The building was purchased last year by…
Plenty of info consumers believe that the press regularly slants the news in one direction or the other, but definitively proving this thesis isn’t easy. Left-wing readers of the Bernard Goldberg tome Bias, which contends that most outlets are liberal, may find the author’s arguments to be merely anecdotal. Likewise,…
Dreamers live in a fantasy world. So what do you call a person who dreams of impossible things and then does them? Tom “Chico” Chicovsky. When Chico and his twin brother were nineteen, they and a friend decided to sail across the ocean after their freshman year of college –…
Town Without Pretty Code read: Westword used to be the newspaper for those of us who didn’t necessarily take on the values of mainstream society — who have chosen to live life “in the slower lane.” Then I see Kenny Be’s September 9 Worst-Case Scenario, “Erie, But True,” depicting Old…
Death came for Sonja DeVries with a red blur in her rearview mirror. At 7:20 p.m. on Sunday, July 18, nineteen-year-old Sonja was driving eastbound on Alameda Avenue in her 1983 Toyota Corolla. The light at Holly Street turned red, and DeVries came to a full stop. The speed limit…
When Marvin Heemeyer and his D9 dozer blazed through Granby on a mission from God, he ignited the passions of a nation — or at least a lot of how-many-crazies-are-there-living-in-Colorado questions. Websites such as www.killdozer.us celebrated the man with a plan, and entrepreneurial types duped the unsuspecting public into buying…
Boulder high school teacher Ramsey Brookhart remembers the night Michael Jackson unveiled the moonwalk for a television audience in 1983. “I was at my grandma’s house in Littleton,” he says. Jackson’s stunt held the then-seven-year-old spellbound. “It’s the perfect attention-grabber,” he explains. “That’s why Michael Jackson did it.” And that’s…
In 2002, Steve Cyphers, who’d spent the previous dozen years as a high-profile correspondent for ESPN, left broadcasting in favor of a teaching job at Holy Family Catholic School in Grand Junction that paid 13 percent of his former salary (“Trading Places,” November 14, 2002). This month, Cyphers returns as…
Since going dark-blue-with-white-horse from the neck up, the Denver Broncos no longer sport that big orange “D” on their helmets. But if Mike Shanahan wins big in the biggest gamble of his coaching career, it is “D” that will be inside his players’ heads this year. It will be “D”…
An Unhealthy Interest Physician, heal thyself: Bravo! Alan Prendergast’s “dissection” of the finances of the new University of Colorado Health Sciences Center at Fitzsimons (“Throwing Fitz,” September 2) was exactly the sort of story I rely on Westword and, in particular, Mr. Prendergast, to deliver. While everyone else is wringing…
When Robert “Chip” Schooley arrived in Denver from Harvard fourteen years ago, the rate of survival among Colorado’s AIDS patients was grim. The people in his waiting room had a one-in-six chance of dying within a year. “At the time, there wasn’t much of an AIDS program anywhere between St…
In early September 2001, Don Goede made an absent-minded choice that brought tragedy into his small Brooklyn apartment: He left his windows open before leaving town. As he sat with relatives in Colorado Springs a few days later and watched the World Trade Center implode, the debris of the disaster…
If you see Lynne Bruning, founder of local fashion label The Girl’s Gotta Have It, at the Burning Man festival in Nevada this week, be sure to tell her how fabulous her clothes are — and they just might become yours. “I’m going to use the clothes for barter,” says…
Last week, Boulder community radio station KGNU announced the purchase of Denver’s KJME/1390-AM for $4.1 million, plus an extra $100,000 fee for an operating agreement that allowed the new signal to begin broadcasting on August 29, just in time for the opening of the Republican National Convention. KGNU only had…
On a recent afternoon that threatens rain, Thomas and Anthony are already waiting when the black and yellow Compass truck rolls up to Argo Park. The two boys race their BMX-style bikes along 47th Street parallel to the truck, skidding to an impressive, rubber-laying halt as the big vehicle noses…
CU in September Fighting mad: Regarding Bill Gallo’s “Tough for Buffs,” in the August 26 issue: No surprise that Westword would hit a program when it’s already down. The big question is, will Gallo eat his words when the CU Buffs have a winning season? I’ll be out supporting our…
Back in the day, University of Colorado football players bonded with each other at pep rallies. They matched appetites at the training table. For awhile there, they went on raft trips and listened to their coach strum his guitar. Always, they exchanged fellow-feeling by kicking serious ass in the grim…
Like most girls born in the ’70s, Amanda Gagliardi grew up on roller skates, enraptured by Xanadu and the Amazonian Roller Derby girls. So when a friend from Seattle called her earlier this year with an “awful” story about local girls recruiting for a new skate league, Gagliardi was incredulous…
During my long, murky and still uncompleted career as a University of Colorado student, I worked and quit (i.e., my supervisor told me to quit before I was fired) many jobs on campus. The most memorable? Orientation leader. The two-day orientation program run by CU’s Office of Orientation is designed…
Visitors to the Denver Tech Center headquarters of Altitude Sports & Entertainment, a new network owned by millionaire investor Stan Kroenke, might expect it to resemble Athens a couple of weeks prior to the start of this year’s Summer Olympics. After all, Greek organizers were still desperately trying to complete…
