Last week, Union Station Alliance announced the first three restaurant tenants that will be in the rehabbed station for its summer 2012 opening — local projects all. But while a Snooze, the Kitchen Next Door and a new market/restaurant concept from Fruition’s Alex Seidel have signed on, it’s still unknown…
By now, just about everyone admits that the Fox31 story of the cab driver fingering an Italian businessman with the Perazzi gun company as a terrorist was a fake, including the station, grudgingly. We know how it happened (9News has done a good job of dissecting the original story), but…
Dear Mexican: Like many Americans, I’ve heard about the Fast and Furious scandal, in which our own ATF was shown to be corrupt and guilty of supplying guns that ended up in the hands of the drug cartels. I also recently saw a report about the violence in Mexico, and…
Last week’s meeting of the Denver Board of Education was a mess of complicated math problems, including: Question 1) If Denver Public Schools is planning to release 220 teachers, how long will the public-comment period — seven-and-a-half hours, filled with complaints — extend the meeting? Answer: Until after 3 a.m…
Last week, Mayor Michael Hancock was at the CELL to announce the expansion of Transportation on Patrol, a program that empowers Denver’s cabbies, limo drivers, truckers and even pedal-cab operators to alert law enforcement of suspicious behavior. Days later, a taxi driver reportedly called the cops because a supposed gun…
Things have gotten hot at Union Station, where two model-train clubs are scrambling to find new spaces for their train layouts, which have occupied space in the basement for decades. Although both groups had been told in the fall of 2011 that the layouts could remain through the remodeling job,…
On May 1, Adams County commissioners and other elected leaders gave Mayor Michael Hancock a week to provide a list of “tangible benefits” they would realize from Denver’s plans to push forward with development around Denver International Airport. Hancock responded with a letter saying their demand had an “unrealistic deadline”…
Dear Mexican: Where did the notion of adding an -o to the end of an English word and assuming it makes it a Spanish word come from? Juanito Dear Wab: “Anglos have long held power in making Spanish and Spanish-speaking culture invisible,” writes University of South Florida assistant professor of…
When a wrong is almost 150 years old, righting it may not be quick. That’s one of the many lessons of the Sand Creek Massacre, a stain on Colorado history that stretches back to November 29, 1864, when Colonel John Chivington led 700 troops on a raid of a peaceful…
The Better Block Project comes to Five Points tomorrow, when it will focus on sprucing up the block of Welton Street that’s home to the legendary Sonny Lawson Park — and its ballfield. Neighborhood groups have been meeting for over a year to discuss what to do with this parcel…
Dear Mexican: Why is it that people from Chihuahua and Monterrey are such jackasses? They come from pinches ranchitos and talk about their haciendas, and they cross the border and act as if their cagada does not stink. Why do they act as if they are better than us American…
Civic Center Park is ready for its close-up tonight, when the Civic Center Conservancy, Historic Denver Inc. and Denver Parks and Recreation will share a 2012 State Honor Award for their Civic Center work during Colorado Preservation’s awards at History Colorado. Although Civic Center has already hosted several big gatherings…
Historian Ari Kelman was watching Iron Man 3 this past weekend with his son when he was startled by a familiar reference, one that seemed very out of context in a Hollywood blockbuster. Mandarin, the apparent arch-villain played by Ben Kingsley, was comparing his own act of terrorism in attacking…
While last week’s snow and this week’s predicted rains have made forecasts of drought seem all wet in metro Denver, the threat is still very real to farmers in southern and eastern Colorado. Last week, they planted more than 550 acres of Rocky Ford cantaloupe — almost a 40 percent…
While the truncated 4/20 festivities have turned Civic Center Park into ground zero for a discussion of which events are a First Amendment exercise and which are commercial, the Civic Center Conservancy will soon take a pot-free breather. On May 8, the Civic Center Conservancy, Historic Denver Inc. and Denver…
Dear Mexican: Although I’m familiar with your column, I don’t read it regularly. But today I was struck by something you said recently. And I quote: “We called ourselves Spanish, we considered ourselves white.” I’m Mexican, and I consider myself “white” because I’m not black or red or Asian. I…
Civic boosters love to travel to other cities to see how they do business — and maybe engage in some monkey business themselves. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce’s City-to-City Leadership Exchange (LEX) will make its 24th annual trip in October — this one to Pittsburgh (last year was Austin)…
The Platte Valley & Western Railroad club started packing up its thirty-year-old model-train layout in the basement of Union Station last weekend, with no idea where the 2,000-square-foot display will eventually land. Union Station Alliance, the developer of Union Station, says it’s “offered the basement of the Sage Building on…
On Saturday, while thousands of freeloaders hopped on board the new West Line to ride light rail from downtown to Golden and back, members of the Platte Valley & Western Model Railroad club gathered in the dark basement of the shuttered Union Station and started dismantling the layout they’d initially…
Dear Mexican: I have always liked ranchera music. As of late, I have wanted to get deeper into it as far as the history, the culture and especially the songs and lyrics go. The older I get, the more rancheras seem like poetry to me…sounds cursi, I know. I was…
The space fills with the sounds of dogs barking, horses galloping, people running, gasping for breath. Red, white and blue lights illuminate quotes on white cloth shrouding the artifacts beyond: a poster calling for Indian fighters, a pair of moccasins, a howitzer. If this were one of the seven other…
Since we broke the sad news yesterday that the two model-train layouts that have been in the basement of Union Station for decades — eight decades, in one case — will not be there when Union Station reopens in 2014, fans have been hopping on board to help find them…
