Pei to play: Now that the pesky, if historic, I.M. Pei-inspired hyperbolic paraboloid is out of the way and the Denver Urban Renewal Authority subsidy safely pocketed, phase two of the $130 million renovation of Fred Kummer’s Adam’s Mark Hotel is going full-bore. And speaking of bore, Kummer’s company has…
In one of the stranger tests of the University of Colorado’s new get-tough policy on sexual harassment, an internal committee has found “no concrete evidence” to support harassment charges against a prominent Boulder professor–even though the committee’s report raises uneasy questions about the professor’s admitted “romantic” relationships with female students…
Sexual assault?” Dave Lawrence, who manages the Park Centre Lounge, a Westminster karaoke bar, is perplexed. “I guess you could call it that. If you want to get technical…I mean, most guys in a bar would kind of like that sort of thing.” Nonetheless, that’s the charge listed on a…
When they asked Ozzie Smith last week about the best plays of his career, it was a little like having Picasso pick out a couple of favorite pictures. Where do you start? Still, the slickest-fielding shortstop in the history of the game obliged his questioners. * On April 20, 1978,…
Off Track Stuart Steers’s June 20 article on the proposed Southern Pacific/Union Pacific merger, “Whistle Stopped,” is an interesting mix of old-time nostalgia and economic fantasia. What Mr. Steers completely ignores is that the Southern Pacific is the walking wounded of American railroads that has recently had its crutches removed…
I am sitting in a local bar, and I am thinking that I would like to punch Bruce Willis in the nose. The bar is a block from where the world’s billionth Planet Hollywood will make its debut next year. The 33rd opened in Seattle this past weekend, and according…
The breeze moves across the creek, turns the corner by the old porch swing, dallies with the ancient lilac bush and settles where the ladies sit in rockers with their quilting hoops: A mother, an aunt and three daughters, all taking refuge from the heat of the eastern plains. The…
The Turntable Restaurant is in a squat gray building that sits along the railroad tracks running through the small mountain town of Minturn. Just a stone’s throw from the Eagle River, the Turntable will never be mistaken for one of the many shops and cafes in Minturn that sell howling…
Tammy Montabon had high hopes of getting off welfare and finding a job to support herself and her son when she enrolled at Barnes Business College in January 1994. Those hopes faltered when the school declared bankruptcy in August 1995, five weeks into the eleven-week semester. But Montabon picked herself…
John Deans learned a hard lesson about office politics: Be careful what you say about your boss. Particularly if you’re a federal employee investigating possibly illegal fund diversions at Denver International Airport and your boss happens to be the godfather of DIA. Last year Deans, a criminal investigator with the…
A brush with fame: Sunday’s Rex Kildow & Co. auction offered a variety of pieces by local artists, none more famous at the moment than Peter Schmitz. But the painting by Schmitz, who is better known for his reported role in the death of Greg Lopez than he is for…
Looking up and down the seemingly peaceful 1200 block of Milwaukee Street, longtime resident Darby McNeal observes that there’s “inhibition all over the block.” That may be an understatement. After film crews from the miniseries version of The Shining descended on the block for a single day of shooting last…
In the age of MTV and the no-attention span, most Americans demand their spectator sports stuffed with flash, crash and bang–along with the occasional three-color dye job. Graying Cadillac owners still watch golf on the boob tube, but the silent beauty of man or woman gliding swiftly over a course…
Picture Perfect I don’t often see in your Letters column praise for the art that accompanies your lead stories, in this case Steve Jackson’s “Rough Waters,” in the June 13 issue. Tony Ortega’s cover really amounts to fine art; it’s much more than illustration. Steve Jackson’s article in itself is…
The wind people tug violently at the white flag above the corral’s only entrance–on the east side, as is proper. The flag proclaims that this is the Southern Ute Bear Dance in Ignacio, Colorado. The first few vendors have erected their tables outside the corral. Kiowa neck chokers. Navajo silver…
Park County, which borders sprawling Jefferson and Douglas counties, is where Colorado’s genuine horse country collides with the commuters of the Front Range who dream of pastures and idyllic canters through the mountain woods and meadows. So it’s no surprise that equine matters there can escalate into turf wars. That…
One day last week, LoDo artist Jorg “Peter” Schmitz accompanied his girlfriend, Ingrid Pfennig, on a shopping trip to the Cherry Creek Mall. “He was trying to get her to buy all these slutty things,” says an employee of one trendy clothing store. “When she hesitated, he told her, ‘You…
Lifestyles of the rich and infamous: The most telling statement yet to emerge from the calamitous Greg Lopez/Spicer Breeden/Peter Schmitz encounter came from one of Schmitz’s collectors last week. Learning that the alleged artist had just been indicted in Lopez’s death, he asked hopefully, “Do you think my piece is…
Jim Goble is obsessed with drive-ins, with what he calls “the atmosphere of the huge screen looming up out of the ground, looking at a wall of cars parked out there, even the gravel crunching under your feet.” So obsessed, in fact, that at the age of 47, he was…
Westword writers and editors took home prizes in a string of national, regional and local writing contests this spring. The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors announced last week that Westword editor Patricia Calhoun has received the Golden Quill Award, presented annually to the country’s best opinion writer. Calhoun won…
On June 24 the good people of Quebec will celebrate the feast of Saint Jean, commemorating the good works and the martyrdom of John the Baptist. Those conversant with the New Testament, or–failing that–who’ve seen a couple of Cecil B. DeMille movies, know that Jesus Christ began his public life…
Court and Spark Karen Bowers’s article on Peter Schmitz, “I Know Nothing,” in the May 30 edition, gave fascinating insight into a world almost too bizarre to be true. Apparently, truth is really stranger than fiction. So Schmitz’s grandfather, Otto KranzbYhler, who defended war criminals at Nuremberg, thought the trial…
