Look out below! On Monday, as officials of Colorado Ski Country USA proclaimed their neutrality on the issue of helmets on the slopes (last week the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommended that skiers and snowboarders use that pesky protective headgear), the state racked up its third skiing death of…
Have you heard? The Denver Nuggets are serious about winning. About winning games and winning back the hearts of the fans. Of course, Napoleon was serious about winning at Waterloo. The Germans probably liked their chances in Stalingrad. And the Miami Dolphins rolled into Mile High Stadium Saturday afternoon filled…
Here’s my tortured premise. Just after 11:59 p.m. December 31, 1999, the Y2K disaster occurs, all right, but not exactly as foreseen. Instead of moving into the year 2000, not only do our computers roll back to 1900, but so does our computer-driven society. And so do we. At first…
For Adults Only It upsets me that your recent covers–the December 31 Year in Review and the January 7 issue–have been so vile. You have a right to print whatever you like, but surely parents have a right to go out to dinner with their kids without this stuff at…
A couple of years ago, Art Greer developed an interest in local history and began working to revive the decrepit neighborhood just northeast of LoDo. The area is one of the few that hasn’t been goosed by the proximity of Coors Field, but convincing the government bureaucrats to sign on…
Jerry Ritchie is dying. He has emphysema, and as he moves around his small Arvada apartment, he carefully steps over the plastic tubes that link him to an oxygen tank. For the last several years, Ritchie has been in and out of hospitals and nursing homes, recovering from surgery and…
The Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center is a place where people expect to get healed, not hurt. But one center employee says he was in serious pain after the hospital’s chief of police confronted him about $80 worth of unpaid parking tickets he’d racked up in the hospital lot. William…
Be afraid. Be very afraid: Bill Owens has yet to take office, and already people are raining on his parade. For starters, there’s Tracy Rogers, former office manager for his brother, lieutenant governor-elect and student-loan scofflaw Joe Rogers, who this week announced that he’d officially severed all political and professional…
The Colorado Xplosion finally rated a front-page story in the Denver Post’s December 23 sports section. The team’s accomplishment? Going out of business. The demise of the American Basketball League didn’t come as a complete surprise, however, since the startup had been on tenuous footing since its first tipoff in…
It is still the holiday season on the windy, treeless plain that is Dove Valley, and the man who’s overseen the Denver Broncos media machine for 21 seasons is in a mood for parables. “Say your car is stalled on the railroad track,” Jim Saccomano begins, “and the train is…
Dan Savage has been writing “Savage Love,” a nationally syndicated sex-advice column, for seven years–enough time to become an expert on everything from women’s orgasms to safe sex to abusive boyfriends to Hollywood blockbusters to gerbils. Have a question for him? Write: Savage Love, c/o Westword, P.O. Box 5970, Denver,…
For drama, it didn’t come close to a young man tortured and strung up like a scarecrow on a fence beside a lonely strip of Wyoming asphalt. Which meant that for the media, it barely rated a mention. On November 1, 1993, a battered body was found by the side…
Airheads The symbol of a blow-up doll on your December 31 Year in Review issue was particularly appropriate, since Westword is so often full of hot air. Jayne Riley Denver It has been refreshing to move to a new city and discover original literary instincts in Westword. Just wanted to…
Bryan Scheferkort left behind a hundred bad memories on the streets of Denver, but he can’t shake one image that will always remind him of the year he spent without a home. One night last spring, at about 2 a.m., he and three friends were smoking pot under the 20th…
Colorado truly was an altered state in 1998. A Boulder manufacturer of Halloween “Dracula Fangs” sued a competitor for selling allegedly identical devices known as “Fangtastics.” A fourteen-year-old sexual assault suspect was arrested in Boulder after he crashed his bicycle while attempting to grab a passing woman cyclist’s breast. Police…
Since the moment Michael Kennedy made unfortunate contact with a tree on an Aspen ski slope on New Year’s Eve 1997, it’s all been downhill for Colorado. If 1997 had been a peak year for the state–which attracted international attention with its flawless handling of the two Oklahoma City bombing…
Pat and Annabel Bowlen Corporate Welfare King and Queen Years ago, when Canadian millionaire Pat Bowlen started angling for a new stadium, one with deep revenue streams and luxury boxes that he hadn’t already sold off, image consultants warned that he’d have to ditch the fur coat if he wanted…
It was the year of Hurricane Mitch and Typhoon Monica, of Governor Ventura and King Viagra. It was the year they finally played college football at Mile High Stadium (Colorado 42, Colorado State 14), the year Harry Caray and his “Holy Cow!” died. It was the year that boxer Bobby…
Green Acres I loved Stuart Steers’s December 17 article, “The Village People,” on the Greenwood Village annexation. Having taught at Cherry Creek High School for over 25 years, I have some experience with what Greenwood Village considers “solutions” to the constantly growing traffic problems. For instance, a favorite solution is…
The examiner tells you to sit down in an old, creaky chair with high, worn-down armrests. If the chair had straps to secure your legs, it would look like the one they use to fry people at the pen. Even though the examiner has gone over the questions with you…
As the singing Christmas tree next to the cash register slogs through its third rendition of “Jingle Bells,” Robbin O’Donley stops pouring coffee long enough to gleefully pull the plug. “That thing’s starting to drive me crazy,” she says, then pauses. “Oops, too late,” the 34-year-old cackles. “I’m already crazy!”…
Maverick Elbert County commissioner’s concern over thousands of tons of waste from Denver’s sewer system being used as fertilizer has spawned an unprecedented $1.4 million agreement to monitor soil and water on an eastern Colorado farm. Since taking office in 1996, John Dunn has butted heads with oil companies, developers…
