In April, Derek Empey, vice president of development in the San Diego office of the Morgan Group, released an intriguing memo to his co-workers. A sort of Sun Tzu’s Art of War for hawkish developers, it’s titled “How to Play the Game: 10 Lessons Learned From Infill Developments.” Lesson number…
Losing a queen isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a chess player. “My friend told me about this big guy, Gary, who was playing speed chess on the 16th Street Mall,” says Carey Jenkins, a math major at Metro State and last year’s chess club president at the…
Last week, President George W. Bush fired off the latest shot in an eleven-year-long court battle that could determine the scope of federal affirmative-action programs for years to come. But, surprisingly, he supported current programs and urged them to continue, going against previous statements to the contrary. The case involves…
The five most important words in Denver newspapering this past week were not “who, what, why, where and when,” as they should be, but “Invesco Field at Mile High.” That’s because the city’s broadsheet, a paper originally known as the Denver Evening Post, has decided to call the place the…
For a talk-show host working at a station with ratings more anemic than one of Dracula’s victims, KNUS’s Jimmy Lakey has plenty of both defenders and detractors — and the best place to catch up with the very different things they say about him is DenverRadio.net. The site, created five…
So, kid, you want to be a ballplayer, play a part in the Show? Then step out here onto the real field of dreams. Oh, not what you expected? A diamond of green velvet, sure — but next to a highway heading south out of Parker to nowhere? Probably only…
Down the Drain Bowled over: Patricia Calhoun’s “Flush With Success,” in the August 9 issue, was a sad commentary on the state of the news business in this town. True, it was ludicrous that the Giant Flush at the new stadium — whatever anyone chooses to call our Bowlen Bailout…
Two weeks ago, John Meyer came across a man with a clipboard outside Toddy’s, a grocery store in a busy strip mall on the edge of downtown Berthoud. The man was collecting signatures of registered voters. Petitions are nothing new in Berthoud; lately, the town seems awash in them. Last…
Tim Seastedt is at war. His enemy is a drifter, voracious and cruel, striking fast and furiously. By 1997, it had already ravaged more than three million acres of rangeland in the West and fought off assaults by ravenous goats, chemical agents and flamethrowers. Then Seastedt arrived on the scene,…
Two years ago, Russell Johnson ventured into a meadow in Cherry Creek State Park and was swallowed by one of Colorado’s worst weeds: leafy spurge. “It was everywhere,” he says. “Waist high.” The other day, Johnson, an Arapahoe County weed specialist, returned to the same spot. This time the weed…
Colorado’s Ocean Journey will find out this week whether its request for taxpayer support will sink or swim when the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District announces its decision on the aquarium’s eligibility. Whatever the outcome, SCFD boardmembers can safely say they didn’t bow to political pressure — from Ocean Journey…
Colorado congressman Scott McInnis has made quite a splash recently, jumping headfirst into the media frenzy over Representative Gary Condit and missing intern Chandra Levy. As anyone with a pulse knows, the married Condit had apparently been playing House with Levy before her disappearance, then lied to the police about…
At twenty minutes past noon on the last day of July, a man wearing a “Licensed to Speed” T-shirt backed into the Grand Dining Hall (read: food court) at Park Meadows Town Center (read: mall), tugging a mover’s dolly with a large item strapped to it. At first glance, the…
Now that the Stanley Cup’s in the trophy case and the Rockies are in the toilet, local sports junkies can return to their first love in good conscience. All eyes are fixed on Greeley, a grim backwater drenched in brutal heat and stockyards perfume, where the Denver Broncos and their…
Lost and Found Department The joy of Saxonia: I found “Smelter Skelter,” Stuart Steers’s July 26 story about the lost town of Saxonia, very interesting. Richard Boulware did a fine job researching Saxonia. My only hope is that vandals will stay out of the area until a Colorado historian or…
For the truest of Christian believers, Good Friday is among the most sacred dates on the calendar. In America, though, very few receive time off to commemorate it. Employers who would never dream of asking people on their payrolls to toil away on Christmas typically don’t think twice about requiring…
It’s just after 7 a.m. in late July, but at 9,500 feet the early morning air already has an autumn slap. Aaron Brill, chief executive officer of Core Mountain Enterprises, the first company to build a new ski area in Colorado in twenty years, skids into work in his 1974…
In the days since Boulder activist John Sherwood jumped off Flagstaff Mountain to his death on July 16, his stunned friends, fellow activists and a local journalist have remembered him as a town hero. The suicide note he left for his family explained that he didn’t want to face the…
It looks like Denver can duck its goose dilemma no longer. The Colorado Division of Wildlife announced last week that it won’t be rounding up Canada geese this year — or in future years — from parks, golf courses and ponds and deporting them, as it has done in previous…
Drive-by, He Said Outrageous impression: Ed Thomas’s statements in David Holthouse’s story about the new skate park (“Big Air,” July 19) are truly outrageous. He is totally out of touch with reality. Skateboarding is a mainstream sport (whether you like it or not) with hardcore roots. Thomas’s impressions of thuggish…
Shortly before nine in the evening, with just a trace of light left in the sky, several Adarand Constructors trucks stand in the left lane of Interstate 25 north of Monument Hill. A dozen workers — evenly split between whites and Hispanics, and all wearing safety vests, goggles, hardhats and…
The first clue was an 1880 train ticket for the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad. The ticket listed the railroad’s stops, beginning with Denver and ending with Buena Vista (the railroad never made it to the Pacific, but the nineteenth century wasn’t big on truth in advertising). The conductor…
