News

Plans recently unveiled by Westminster and Arvada to build a major link in a new beltway along metro Denver’s west side have alarmed Golden officials, who fear thousands of cars will be funneled into their city on Highway 93. But the din of oncoming traffic is nothing compared to the…

Shea Davis and two friends, Katie Koshka and Allie Grenier, were headed home after shooting pool last August 24 when they stopped at the King Soopers store at 88th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard to return a page from Davis’s mother. That 35-cent phone call wound up costing the family over…

Is there such a thing as a pornography recycling center? I just got a new girlfriend and she wants me to get rid of my collection of porno videos (about thirty). I also have some hardcore het print magazines I want to get rid of (they remind me of a…

The Master Builder Regarding Stuart Steers’s “Building for the Future,” in the February 18 issue: David Tryba’s dream of a walkable city means the recovery of something wonderful and tangible. Americans are so inured to the convenience of driving that we’ve lost the very thing that makes life really wonderful:…

At 81, Ted Alexander has every right to be picky about what sort of piano student he accepts. He is down to five now, and most will stay with him for the foreseeable future. Over the years, though, nearly 800 musical hopefuls have taken instruction from him in the room…

It’s the workplace, stupid. I do not care if Bill Clinton wants to cavort with Hollywood cuties, light fires with torch singers or be a close personal buddy to Buddy. That’s between Hillary and Bill and whoever he might be lavishing his attentions on in what had better be a…

It’s swing night at a Denver dance club. Sweating couples are whirling around a crowded dance floor. Decked out in glorious fashions from days gone by, the revelers juke and jive through a dizzying array of footwork as a combo blazes through a set of vintage jazz. The frenetic gathering…

Three days after Christmas 1998, there are few reminders of the holidays in Theresa Swinton’s Denver apartment. Although her faith remains strong, she doesn’t feel like celebrating. Her son Danny is sitting in a Jefferson County jail cell, awaiting trial for the gang rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl…

Beat the press: When the Colorado Press Association announces its contest winners at the close of the annual CPA confab Saturday, the Denver Post’s name will be among the missing. That’s because the paper resigned from the group in a snit fit two years ago, leaving the Rocky Mountain News…

In the peculiar economics of farming, this year’s Colorado apple crop was the best of times–right up until it became the worst of times. Last fall, the size and quality of the state’s harvest was the healthiest in nearly a decade. Unfortunately, growers across the country enjoyed the same luck…

Stan Bracclon’s office, on the third floor of a well-worn brick-and-concrete building at 1245 East Colfax, smells only faintly of cigarette smoke and homelessness. Bracclon is executive director of the Emergency Assistance Grant & Referral Project Inc. , an agency that provides homeless gays and lesbians with general assistance–a hundred…

After building more than 120 houses for low-income area families, Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver is suddenly facing a tough lot: No lots. The group is being out-run, out-bid and out-maneuvered by private developers whooping it up in one of the biggest residential booms ever seen on the Front…

Out of Left Field I decided to grab a copy of the February 18 Westword since I hadn’t read one in a couple of years. The first article I read was Harrison Fletcher’s “Arrested Development.” Next, it was Julie Jargon’s “King of the Dump.” That was enough for me! Let’s…

Jim Stone has waited for this day a long time. Thirteen years, if you start counting from back when the engineer was terminated by Rockwell International in March 1986. Close to ten years, if you start from July 1989, when Stone first filed suit against his former employer, charging that…

Sue LaBella lives in a two-level home in Westminster, with white siding, a wooden fence, and two Labradors playing in the yard out back. It’s the classic picture of the suburbs. Inside the house, however, you won’t find the typical nuclear family. Six-year-old Ray, a boy with thick black hair…

A map of downtown Denver covers the entire wall behind David Owen Tryba’s desk. Squiggly lines and arrows fill in blank spaces; historic churches and commercial buildings are highlighted in red. Jumping out of his chair, Tryba paces in front of the map, sweeping his hands over the triangle of…

Only two out of eight glass-recycling bins remain standing outside the King Soopers store at Ninth Avenue and Downing Street. The mouths of the other six are turned toward the store wall–a sign, perhaps, of the chain’s decision to wean its customers of their glass-recycling habits. The air inside the…

The offal truth: Legal pleadings usually pile it on, but things get really deep in the ACLU’s February 10 filing on behalf of Broadway Brewing against David C. Reitz, director of the Liquor Enforcement Division of the Colorado Department of Revenue. In October 1995, Reitz’s department banned the brewery’s proposed…

For the past year, a local animal-rights group has been badgering scientists at Denver’s University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in hopes of getting them to publicly debate the merits of their monkey research. Despite the group’s verbal challenges, letters and even the release of the CU animal-lab director’s phone…

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8–Boy, am I pooped. Nothing like impeaching a president to take it out of a man, except maybe for that breech birth in Eads back in ’83–fourteen hours on a two-headed piglet, as I recall. Funny water they got in that town. Some of my Democratic colleagues must…