News

Eyes on the Prize Best wishes: Regarding Kenny Be’s Worst-Case Scenario in the March 25 Best of Denver issue: Thanks for the look at Commerce City in “The Best of Commerce City.” It was great fun. Now others can appreciate some of the finer points of suburban Denver’s pride and…

It had been a long time since Dick Lamm last visited the Colorado Senate. Dressed in a dapper suit and tie, he glowed as he prepared to speak at a Senate event honoring the late Dr. Abe Kauvar, who created Denver’s public-clinic system. As Lamm entered the chamber, the senators…

From the outside, the small building in the back yard of 111 West Archer Place appears to be a simple sheet-metal shed. But inside is a DIYer’s paradise: the Denver Zine Library. The newest experiment in Denver’s tradition of upstart libraries — the city’s first was begun in a newsstand…

As the Colorado Avalanche wraps up another Tuesday-night home game at the Pepsi Center, Flash maneuvers his way through LoDo looking for fares. “This is such a dead-end job,” he says. “My back is killing me and my ass is numb.” Flash has been driving for Metro Taxi for just…

The first rule of publicity stunts is to deny everything, so that the masses and the media won’t know they’ve been played. No one understands this better than Bob Richards, a deadpan exec with the Denver division of Clear Channel, the nation’s largest owner of radio stations. When asked if…

Students who turned up for a journalism conference at Mesa State College earlier this month picked up some helpful hints, like not to become reporters unless they can deal with low pay, long hours and placement just below “Kobe Bryant defense attorney” on the list of most-respected careers. Yet many…

The Plot Sickens Let’s get reel: I cannot understand why all the movie deals about Rocky Flats have fallen through. From reading Patricia Calhoun’s “Toxic Shocker!” in March 11 issue, it seems like this story has everything, from government villains to ordinary citizens as heroes (one a cowboy, even) to…

For Albert Galvan, his dad was a model of what not to be. The man was a violent alcoholic who frequently kicked his son and hit him with a belt for playing too loudly. Then he would turn on Albert’s mother and beat her for the noise his children were…

No one knows what Rosa Avina wished for on February 19 when she blew out the five candles on her birthday cake. But her biological and foster parents each had their own wishes for her. Ever since Rosa was a baby, her identity has been in limbo: Is she an…

For parents like Albert Galvan, whose daughter was seized by social services as soon as she was born, Senate Bill 117 offers new hope. The bill — also known as the Sunshine Gates Act, for the little girl who inspired its creation — would require social workers or police officers…

Tran Wills is Colfax. Her T-shirt says so. Not the old hooked-out, cracked-up Colfax, but the new urban-hipster Colfax. The street that’s home to Mezcal and the Red Room, Hairspray salon and Wills’s store. The stretch of pavement that accepts streetwalkers and winos as part of its charm but asks…

Former Air Force Academy cadet DonCosta Seawell was returned to a military correctional facility on February 9 — just 42 days after his release. Seawell had been sent to the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in San Diego in 2002 after pleading guilty to forcibly sodomizing a disabled civilian woman. (Two…

Roses are red, violets are blue, if I’m really sorry later, can I rape you? The art of penning a good apology letter is certainly dying, if the note written by a University of Colorado football player to the woman who accused him of rape is any indication. As evidenced…

Colorado Avalanche announcer Mike Haynes may work on the radio, but he doesn’t use this fact as an excuse to dress down. He arrives at the Pepsi Center several hours before the Avs face the Calgary Flames clad in a well-tailored suit that would do any businessman proud. When asked…

Sexist Marks the Spot Musgrave reservations: Westword is a publication that I enjoy reading, and I will continue to do so. It functions much in the same way that Radio 1190 in Boulder does, providing a useful forum for viewpoints that otherwise would be ignored. In a letter in the…

Dena Melinn’s right foot has a nasty reddish look, barely bends at the ankle and is twice as big around as her left, as though the swelling from two years ago never really subsided. “I shattered my heel jumping a big, big gap,” she says. “I broke it in thirty…

In a belated effort to clear the air, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office offered up its souvenirs of a massacre last Thursday. It was quite a show — but not quite enough to dispel the stink that has clung to the biggest criminal investigation in Colorado history. For a few…

Thank the Supreme Deity of Sweets for Denver City Councilwoman Jeanne Raab. She always remembers the doughnuts, which is crucial, since a good sugar high is mandatory to get through public hearings. And that’s double-chocolatey true for Saturday-morning conclaves. Drawn in part by pastries, some thirty people met at the…

Despite all the technical advances in data retrieval that have come into common use over recent years, the primary venue for many periodicals remains the simple, time-tested news rack. No clicking, surfing or Googling is required. A reader need only walk up to a rack, lift its lid and grab…