Kristen and Will Stillman survived unimaginable horrors during the dozen years they were prisoners of Eric Torrez. The twins were just eight when their mother, Karen, got kicked out of a fourth homeless shelter and took her children to a tiny house on Irving Street where Torrez lived with his…
When I equated the One Book, One Denver program with a McDonald’s Happy Meal — people-pleasing and easy to digest — I didn’t know that McDonald’s had signed on to sponsor this year’s celebration of reading, which will focus on The Art of Racing in the Rain. But hey, at…
When Elitch Gardens Amusement Park first moved downtown, it planned daily fireworks displays — until neighbors complained. Now, after sixteen years, Elitch Gardens finally has those nightly shows, and though it’s had to scale back the pyrotechnics, it will end the summer season with a bang on Sunday night…
Mayor Michael Hancock will reveal the eighth selection in the One Book, One Denver program today outside of the new Denver Municipal Animal Shelter, where a giant sculpture of a dog stands guard outside. “Sunspot” is a stunning reminder of how much the arts can enrich our lives… and our…
Sometimes the simple answer is the right answer. Simple, stupid even, but the right one. In a comment on Lisa Jones’s blog about the coverage of the Troy Lowrie bust — which fueled Peter Boyles’s radio show yesterday, and is again today — a commenter suggested that Westword’s Latest Word…
On Sunday, the world got to see amazing feats of athleticism as the USA Pro Cycling Challenge wound its way through stunning Colorado scenery to the finish line by the State Capitol. Tonight, the world gets to see another amazing feat of Colorado athleticism: Professor Splash has made it to…
Dear Mexican: I see a lot of vatos around wearing the clamdigger pants with the knee-high white socks and white sneakers. While this is nothing new, I’ve noticed recently that the shoes and socks are the whitest white I’ve ever seen. If I wear white sneakers and socks, they get…
You didn’t know you came to make a city, Nobody knows when a city’s going to happen… That’s the start of “Elegant Dust,” one of the poems in which Thomas Hornsby Ferril, named Colorado’s Poet Laureate in 1979, 83 years after he was born, captures the city he always called…
On September 1, Mayor Michael Hancock will announce the selection for the eighth annual One Book, One Denver program. I know it will not be a book by Thomas Hornsby Ferril. I know this because the program has never picked a book rooted in Denver, or even Colorado. (The closest…
Sean McAllister, the attorney who’s co-chairing the state’s DUID-marijuana working group, has a lot of suggestions for what we should do with medical marijuana coverage on this blog — including banning certain commenters and, above all, keeping a closer eye on our dispensary reviewer, William Breathes…
When civic-minded — and eagle-eyed — Coloradans noticed that their summons for jury duty was coming from Albuquerque, they were prepared to indict Colorado officials for sending yet another contract out of state. Was no local company capable of licking and sticking those forms? But now the verdict is in,…
What happens in Vegas is not going to stay in Vegas. Not if it involves Steve Horner. The anti-ladies night crusader who was giving Denver bars fits a few years ago has now taken his crusade to Sin City, where he’s been fighting the ladies-only offers at big casino pool…
Despite yesterday’s earthquake that hit the Trinidad region, “Colorado is considered a region of minor earthquake activity,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey. But forty years ago, a series of quakes rocked the Denver area — quakes caused not by Mother Nature, but by Uncle Sam…
It was five years ago that Steve Horner went to Proof of the Pudding one hot August night and asked to get in free — just as women were on ladies’ night. When the doorman refused, Horner filed a complaint against the club, which soon spiraled into dozens of cases…
Denver is renowned around the world for its weather, its scenery and its local institutions — most notably the Broncos, MMJ dispensaries and the Denver boot. But was displaying one of those car-immobilizing clamps at Sunday’s big tourism party really the best way to promote the city?…
Dear Mexican: This is going to sound absolutely and totally Caucasian. Lately we have been trying to lighten the mood around the office with delicate bits of international confections. With all that’s going on in the world, who needs one more worry? With that said, though, we are struck with…
Steve Horner has plenty of opinions about bars — both the kind that serve up drinks, and the kind that allegedly help serve up justice. During his several-year tenure in Colorado, he kept lawyers — and newspaper editors — busy with the complaints he filed about ladies’ night promos, as…
What’s next? Cows will get to cast ballots in Aurora? The Libertarian Party — like the National Western Stock Show, an institution that got its start in Colorado — is concerned that Aurora is about to give voting rights to a corporation: Gaylord Entertainment, the out-of-state company trying to rustle…
On his thirtieth day in office, Mayor Michael Hancock really got down to business yesterday, outlining a better, faster, stronger city government in a speech at the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce’s State of the City Luncheon that included his opposition to Initiative 300, the paid sick leave proposal on…
With four communications staffers in Michael Hancock’s office and director Wil Alston focusing on raising the Denver mayor’s national profile, couldn’t one of them have returned a call to the L.A. Times about the potential move of the National Western Stock Show? Last time we looked, the Times had a…
Turns out that William Koch, the Florida billionaire who bought the tintype of Billy the Kid for more than two million bucks at a Denver auction in June, isn’t just interested in photos of the Old West. He’s interested in Old West towns, too. And he just bought himself a…
Dear Readers: Your faithful Mexican is busy putting the final touches on his coming magnum opus, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (out April 2012) and is thus at the rancho, getting handmade tortillas made by his chica in pigtails while he works on rewrites. But instead of a…
