As I drove south along Speer Boulevard this morning, I passed a dozen sign-fliers — some begging for help, some begging for money, some begging for beer — as well as several new signs posted along Speer by the Denver Police Department warning against trespassing in certain medians, or under…
While there’s plenty of talk about ugly buildings popping up all over Denver, there are definitely some designs worth celebrating — and Mayor Michael Hancock did just that yesterday, when he and Brad Buchanan, executive director of Denver Community Planning and Development, honored sixteen projects at the 2015 Mayor’s Design Awards…
The Rocky Flats Lounge has been a landmark on highway 93 for more than sixty years — first as the payroll office for the brand-new Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, then as a dive frequented by bikers riding along the foothills and, for the last two decades, as the metro…
The meeting of the board of History Colorado originally scheduled for this morning was cancelled — no quorum — but that doesn’t mean boardmembers have been inactive since the Colorado Legislature approved a revised structure for the board this past spring, and Governor John Hickenlooper appointed eight members to the…
Jim Bishop will soon be king of his castle again. More than forty years ago, Bishop started building a stone castle in Wetmore, just outside of the San Isabel National Forest, adding rooms, features and height — always height. The castle, which now stands over 160 feet tall, has become…
Think the wheels of justice turn slowly? Today Denver Public Schools will dedicate the Joe Shoemaker School, an elementary school that opened last month as the Hampden Heights Expeditionary School at 3333 South Havana Street, at the edge of southeast Denver. Meanwhile, a request to return nine acres of land…
Forget Hatch chiles. It’s time to celebrate the Pueblo chile — and this is the weekend to do it, since September 5 is Pueblo Chile Day, a new event at the Colorado State Fair. “The Pueblo Chile has been a centerpiece of popular fair foods at the Colorado State Fair, making…
A week after History Colorado CEO Ed Nichols announced that he was retiring, History Colorado yesterday announced the transition leadership that will guide the organization as its board of directors — a new board appointed by Governor John Hickenlooper in July — hunts for a new CEO. Robert E. Musgraves, the…
Since it opened over six years ago in downtown Denver, Cafe Options has taught people a lot. And those are just the people who have stopped into the breakfast/lunch spot and gotten a taste of this ground-breaking operation run by Work Options for Women; hundreds of women have also gotten hands-on…
The bus stops here…and here…and here. The 16th Street Mall shuttle is one of those features that’s both loved and loathed. Many Denverites (and even more visitors to the city) appreciate the free ride along the mall; others says they don’t like the endless interruptions and noise and would prefer…
On August 1, thousands of people followed the urging of the banner outside the History Colorado Center to “step into the story” and went inside for a celebration of Colorado Day complete with cowboy tricks, rare artifact displays from the museum’s usually off-limits treasure trove, and cake. But the revelers,…
When the crowds disembarked at Union Station a year ago this Saturday for the gala reopening, they saw a stunning transformation of the century-old terminal, now a grand public space full of bars, restaurants, lounging areas and, overhead, the Crawford Hotel. What they didn’t see were the two model-train layouts…
Plutonium has a very long half-life — so it shouldn’t be surprising that plans for a Rocky Flats Cold War Museum have been going very slowly. It’s also not surprising that proponents of the museum, which would tell the history of the former nuclear weapons plant sixteen miles northwest of…
Connor Ward engaged in an unscheduled swordfight at the Colorado Renaissance Festival this past weekend, when he ran out of the crowd and grabbed a weapon. Details were few — but the jokes were many, since the miscreant was subdued by a costumed woman described as a “wench” — and…
Construction is progressing at Tavern Platt Park, which is now looking at an end-of-summer unveiling as the eighth Tavern in the Tavern Hospitality Group (not including spots at Coors Field and Sports Authority Field). Although it has the Tavern name, the brand-spanking-new restaurant on Old South Pearl will be something…
It’s been a long time coming. But then, the Sand Creek Massacre was 150 years ago, and the wounds are still fresh for the descendants of those who were injured or killed by Colonel John Chivington’s volunteers on November 29, 1864 — an estimated 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne, mostly women,…
Denver’s white-hot real-estate market keeps burning through boundaries and previous records, scorching feelings and facts along the way. And memories of Denver a generation ago, a decade ago, a year ago, wind up tossed in the dustbin of history. Perhaps the most inventive rewriting of the past, coupled with the…
Westword editor Patricia Calhoun has won first place for General Column Writing in the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Awards (daily circulation 1-100,000/non-daily publication) with a collection of columns that included two pices on the Sand Creek Massacre (including Governor John Hickenlooper’s apology to descendants) to a pioneering…
On April 25, the fourth anniversary of Hart’s Corner Bar & Restaurant reopening on the corner of Mississippi and Sheridan Boulevard, I drove past the old roadhouse — hailed as Lakewood’s oldest business — and saw that it had gone dark again, ninety years after it first opened. Over the…
When Sassafras opened in an old Victorian bungalow listed on the National Register of Historic Places three years ago, co-owner Julia Grother brought considerable experience in the restaurant business to the Jefferson Park neighborhood – and a lot of Southern comfort. One thing was missing, though: a liquor license. Even…
Glendale officials last week announced their plans for a 22-acre project, Glendale 180, that promises to return that little town surrounded by Denver not to its squeaky-clean origins as a dairy a century ago, but to the swinging ’70s. Glendale 180 is slated to include 25 bars and restaurants, a…
When the trains pulled back into the renovated Union Station last year, one stop was conspicuous by its absence: the model train layouts that had graced the basement of the building for decades, and were featured at regular open houses for the public. The oldest was the 6,500 square food…
