Every weeknight during the fall term, at 5 p.m. sharp, just after the boys’ wrestling team has finished stinking up the small gymnasium at Aurora’s Eaglecrest High, members of the school’s varsity competitive cheerleading squad can enter the room and start practicing. Eaglecrest’s cheerleaders have accomplished the school’s greatest athletic…
October 1893, Los Angeles Major John Wesley Powell looked out over the upraised faces of the people who’d come to listen to his vision of the future, a vision they thought mirrored their own. The general public knew him as the heroic, one-armed Civil War veteran who in 1869 had…
As the bus full of candidates for Centennial’s first city council meanders along the jagged eastern boundary of the city, many of the would-be elected officials inside are starting to feel nauseated. Who can blame them? The vagaries of politics and the mysterious ways of suburban real estate developers have…
Rick Bragg plans to shut down the National Western Stock Show. All it would take to prevent thousands of cowboys and cowgirls from moseying up to the January event, he says, is a gang of friends, co-workers and acquaintances willing to “stall” their vehicles in the middle of streets at…
Lieurance and Shirley Sullivan are not looking forward to Christmas. On December 25, 1998, their daughter Polly was stabbed and beaten to death in her east Denver apartment. Two years later, her killer still walks the streets. “We’re going to do the best we can, but it will be hard,”…
Just in time for holiday stocking stuffing, Alvertis Simmons — local rabble-rouser, black activist, disgraced former city employee and local Million Man March organizer — has written a book about his adventures in Denver. Although it’s titled Hold Your Position: Denver’s Version of the Million Man March, the 119-page self-published…
During the now blessedly concluded period between election day and Al Gore’s belated admission last week that he won’t be joyriding in Air Force One anytime soon, it seemed as if every journalist in the country was yammering about the ridiculous spectacle. So imagine the confusion of the Denver Post’s…
Not even Alice saw it coming. Eighteen years ago, when her husband went into his workshop with some bicycle parts, Christmas lights, teddy bears and Barbie dolls, she thought Richard was doing what Richard always does: tinkering. But now, whenever the holidays arrive, tour buses pull up outside the Kloewers’…
Insensitivity Training A matter of principal: I’ve been reading Westword for years, and I believe it’s a wonderfully informative paper. As I was looking through the pages of the December 7 issue, however, I came across a comic — Kenny’s Be’s “Holiday Cards From Local Celebrities” — that wasn’t very…
When Don Shank was a child, his father regularly took his family on summer trips from California to Colorado. The elder Shank loved the history of railroading in the Rockies, and he shared with his son tales of narrow-gauge lines weaving precariously at the edge of 1,000-foot cliffs, tunnels being…
Launching a tourist railroad is not for the faint of heart. Just ask anyone who’s been involved with the Georgetown Loop Railroad, a breathtaking route between Georgetown and Silver Plume that transports passengers up dizzying spirals in the rugged terrain between the two old mining towns. The route had been…
Terry Akers feels like death warmed over. His back throbs. His testicles ache. His gut — dude, don’t even ask. It’s like he’s living in an old Road Runner cartoon, and someone just shoved a keg of nails down his swollen throat. He’s got a bad case of cottonmouth and…
All teachers dream of having smaller classes so that they can give more attention to their students, and in Denver, at least, average class sizes have remained fairly steady for the last four years, at 24 to 26 kids per teacher. But that’s only because Denver Public Schools has been…
It’s December. The malls are crowded, there’s ice on the streets and, as always, the Denver City and County Building is lit up like a mosquito caught in an electric bug trap. In other words, according to lawyer and local Freedom From Religion Foundation activist Bob Tiernan, “‘Tis the season…
Somewhere between the anecdote about wiring the Christmas tree to the wall when her son was a baby (“And he still knocked that hummer down!”) and the advice about properly styling a perm (“You can comb it through a dozen times and still find a snarl part”), Joni Chester has…
The joint operating agreement between the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post still isn’t official: The Justice Department has been busy with something or other — a presidential election fiasco, I think — and hasn’t gotten around to sealing the pact with its kiss. But thus far, the lead-up…
First, the good news. This was the year Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open, the British Open, the PGA and seven other tournaments with the ease of a golfing god, then graciously praised the efforts of his merely mortal opponents. It was the year that Rulon Gardner, an unknown Greco-Roman…
A Winning Card The greening of Denver: Justin Berton’s “Card Sharps,” his story in the December 7 issue on fake green cards, is another in a long history of Westword’s honest-to-God reporting that will eventually wake up the hacks over at the Denver dailies. After all, it’s easier to make…
On Thanksgiving morning, the White Spot parking lot holds nine cars — two of them ancient Pinto station wagons — and one bright-yellow cafe racer of a motorcycle. A well-dressed man and woman, not old enough to be grandparents but much too dignified to ever go sledding, sit on the…
A man who says his name is Alejandro promises he can make you “American” for $170. Alejandro works outside the coin laundromat in the Zuni Plaza, at West 30th Avenue and Zuni Street. He’s about 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a stocky build, and today he’s wearing a blue…
Friday, May 5, started out cloudless and hot. By 8:30 a.m., Ron Ruhr’s girlfriend had left for work and her ten-year-old daughter had gone to school. But Ruhr, a self-employed carpenter, had set aside this day to have some fun. Bill, a man he had taken goose hunting, was so…
Colorado will lose one of only two black-studies majors next spring when the African American Studies (AAS) degree at Denver’s Metropolitan State College is eliminated. The move is a blow to the school, which prides itself on its commitment to diversity, as well as to the faculty and students involved…
