Workers of the World, Unite! Thanks for Stuart Steers’s “Still Hurting,” in the March 28 issue. It seems that the rich just keep getting richer–and the poor keep hurting. Stan Brackett Denver I enjoyed “Still Hurting,” by Stuart Steers, very much. The ancient Roman policy of bread and circuses still…
When Spicer Breeden crashed into Greg Lopez on March 17, two worlds collided. The ironies piled up quickly. Just a year separated Lopez and Breeden in age; the two had grown up mere miles from each other. And both men were familiar faces in Lower Downtown hangouts–although Breeden frequented the…
Kim Eli, a 39-year-old single mother with two daughters, knows firsthand just how compassionate Colorado’s workers’ compensation system is toward people who are injured at work. For years she worked in the delicatessen departments of area King Soopers stores, including the Mayfair branch at 13th Avenue and Krameria Street. Slicing…
It may be old-fashioned, but it is a dream many people still hold: to start and run a family business. What could be more satisfying than earning a living while working closely with loved ones? The answer, if you’re a member of the Lewis family, is, just about anything. Nine…
Drive, he said: Yes, that was Ben Klein, the only RTD boardmember who’s been officially certified sane, schmoozing two weeks ago with Transportation Secretary Federico Pena at a White House ceremony marking the feds’ agreement to fund an extension of Denver’s light-rail system. Klein, the current RTD chairman, knew Pena…
Last fall, as Jet Aspen, a start-up airline that plans to link several major cities to Colorado’s most noted ski resort town, prepared its flight application to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the company’s chief executive officer boasted that he had accumulated $8 million in financing. That was a problem–but…
As allegations of ethical misconduct by House Speaker Newt Gingrich continue to mount, prominent Colorado Republicans once again find themselves ensnared in the embarrassing fray. Familiar names such as Bo Callaway, Kay Riddle, June Weiss and Glenn Jones keep popping up as both the House Ethics Committee and its newly…
Guadalupe “Lupe” Salinas was controversial long before he was appointed to head up Denver’s regional Social Security Administration office in 1991. But five years into his tenure at the SSA, it’s hard to track the many bureaucratic tiffs involving Salinas without a Social Security scorecard. Not only have nine of…
At first glance, the morning mail holds few surprises. Two spring seed catalogues. The April issue of American Assassin. Hefty bills from the fishmonger, the liquor store and our regular supplier of badminton birdies. There’s a postcard from Elvis (vacationing in Grand Forks this week), a Republican flier recommending the…
Run for Your Life! Regarding Steve Jackson’s “Life…and Death…on the Run,” in the March 14 issue: Clack clack clack. With his fingers pounding the keyboard at three cliches per second, Steve Jackson knew in his bones his latest story was right on schedule–and in big trouble. Because Steve Jackson knew…
Colorado’s political caucuses are often dull affairs–neighborly barn-raising reminders of our state’s origins, when the real action now takes place in banks and boardrooms across town. But the gathering next Tuesday at Loveland’s Monroe Elementary promises to be a true barn-burner. That’s the caucus where Democratic precinct committeeman Tony Brown…
In winning a $350,000 settlement against his former employers at the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Carlos Renteria got his job back at the Labor Standards Unit (LSU), received a promotion and raise–and nearly caused the unit to shut down. Some of Renteria’s critics are practically choking on the…
Some people would say that the hit man is an emotionless, cold-blooded killing machine; that he has no fear and no belief in God. On the contrary, a hit man has a wide range of feelings. He may be excruciatingly tender towards his woman. He may be extremely compassionate towards…
The run-down Evans School towers over the so-called Golden Triangle, surrounded by a sea of asphalt parking lots and empty, weed-strewn fields on the south edge of downtown Denver. The century-old school at 1115 Acoma has sat untouched and vacant for 22 years. But now that the Golden Triangle is…
Clyde Hoeldtke, the Evergreen developer who built Florida houses under the name Beacon Homes, liked to think of his customers as satisfied. “Thirteen thousand happy Beacon homeowners,” he’d called them, even after he left numerous buyers with incomplete homes or liens filed against them by subcontractors Hoeldtke hadn’t paid. Now…
In the cross-wired, deeply incestuous world of communications conglomerates, nothing lasts forever. Telegiants swap partners with abandon; today’s bitter foe is tomorrow’s big-asseted object of desire, and vice versa. US West knows the drill. The Englewood-based Baby Bell is currently duking it out in a Delaware courtroom with estranged partner…
Fed up: Federal Judge Richard Matsch’s decision to move the Oklahoma City bombing trial to Denver, his home court, triggered an explosion of publicity too loud to ignore–an explosion that could propel the trial right back out of Denver. At least, that’s the rationale of Timothy McVeigh’s chief defense counsel,…
Now that America’s TV sets have had a few days to cool down and spouses everywhere are finally off the phone with their divorce lawyers, we can pause to consider what we’ve learned from the first two rounds of this year’s Big Dance: 1. Earl Boykins, the tiny point guard…
Bar None Am I the only person who noticed that Patricia Calhoun’s most recent columns (“A Federal Case,” March 14, and “Patching Things Up,” March 7) were set in bars? Although I appreciated her writing, it seems to me that Westword’s editor could focus her attention on more worthwhile places…
The story was about two people with brain injuries who met in a support group and married. The woman had been hurt in a fall, the man in a car wreck. Now they were going for a walk. They stopped to look at a crocus that had poked through the…
It takes three Denver police cars and four officers to evict the spindly, aging man from his burrow in the old county courthouse at Speer Boulevard and Colfax Avenue. Two of the officers come up the front steps, carefully traversing broken glass and chunks of wood. The other two wait…
The 1995 green Camaro Z28 roared out of the dark hills at 95 miles an hour, barreling east on Interstate 70 toward the coming sunrise. Behind it flashed the blue and red lights of an Idaho Springs police cruiser. The officer had noticed a young man and woman standing by…
