Unpack your berets and bongos and prepare for a finger-snappin’ sit-in at the Denver City & County Building. Because on September 18, when the city reveals its choice for the next One Book, One Denver selection, it will not be On the Road. Again. Never mind that author Jack Kerouac…
It’s a disaster in the making. “Since the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and with the increasing and widespread concern for pandemic influenza worldwide, Coloradans have been deluged with constant warnings about their ongoing safety,” reads the What If? Colorado program overview page prepared by the Office of Emergency…
Some boosters think Colorado needs celebrities in the worst way. And that’s how this state gets them. Earlier this summer, Andrew Speaker was kept under wraps — literally — at National Jewish, after his global run from a tuberculosis diagnosis. And yesterday, fugitive fundraiser Norman Hsu wound up in a…
“Mexican Trucks Stampede to U.S.!” Web sites and radio shows are full of talk today about the Mexican truckers who will soon — perhaps even today — cross the border into Texas in a Bush-sanctioned trade deal. This talk describes the Mexican truck deal as the camel’s nose under the…
When the 37th annual confab of the Beewery Collectibles of America — the CANvention — convened in Denver last week, there was only one possible person to deliver the keynote address: Mayor John Hickenlooper, who gave this town one of its most liquid assets when he and a couple of…
You can’t keep a good judge down. Yesterday Joe Nacchio notched a win in the first round of his appeal over his conviction for illegal insider trading, with three appellate judges ruling that the badly toupeed former Qwest exec can stay free on $2 million bond pending an expedited appeal…
Elvis Presley died thirty years ago today, but he left behind many reasons for Denverites to remember him. Cadillacs, for starters…
Yes, Ivan Suvanjieff has been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. But he has a bigger concern right now. “I’m going to miss the White Stripes on this tour,” he laments. The artist/musician/former Ford factory-worker/current peace-pusher had tickets for Jack White’s New Mexico show in October, but it was…
This is not only something I can do as a United States citizen, this is something I believe I must do,” Steve Horner told Judge Brian Campbell. “This is Rosa Parksish. This is Martin Luther Kingish.” This is ludicrousish. On its surface, the concept of ladies’ nights might seem unfair…
Logging onto my computer, it almost hurt to type my password. For now, it is the name of a small town fifteen miles away from the Montana cabin where my family has spent every summer since 1970. The experts tell you not to choose a password that people might be…
Steve Horner will have his day in court today, when his complaint filed against Westword for advertising ladies’ night deals goes before Judge Brian Campbell. The action is in Denver County Court,(courtroom 4 in the Adams Mark annex off Cleveland Place) but Horner has been all over the media –…
Yes, on the DIA train that’s now the voice of Denver mayor John Hickenlooper welcoming you to Denver. Pete Smythe and Reynelda Muse have also left the station, replaced by Alan Roach and Adele Arakawa. And sound artist Jim Green, who installed the original recordings fifteen years ago, didn’t stop…
Big Beef. Tiny Tim. First Lady. Early Girl. Better Boy. Kenny Vetting laughs at the notion of “heirloom” tomatoes that are only fifty years old. But then, the seed business that his grandfather started is 87 years young. And sometime in early August, the Rocky Mountain Seed Company will finally…
The Micky Manor is back. That’s Micky, without an “e.” In 1932, when the old firehouse first became an eatery, Walt Disney didn’t look too favorably on a joint being named after his star cartoon character. But dropping a letter seemed to do the trademark-respecting trick, and no one ever…
Is that glass half-empty or half-full? Just in time for the next First Friday — the gaggle of gallery openings around town tomorrow, July 6 — Colorado Lawyers for the Arts has posted a summary of liquor laws compiled by the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses and the Office…
After years of being studiously – insultingly – ignored, I was finally called up for jury duty in Denver District Court a few years ago. I was eager to do my civic duty, particularly since the courtroom where I was sent along with dozens of other potential jurors was set…
Mayor John Hickenlooper has found a replacement for Stephanie O’Malley, the former director of the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses who now has her hands full as the newly elected Clerk & Recorder. Yesterday Awilda R. Marquez was named to head the department – and she’s going to have…
I’m beginning to feel like Carrie Nation, that busybody Prohibitionist who came from Kansas to Denver “because it was the nearest big city,” surmises local historian Tom Noel, “and it was filled with vice.” And not only did Carrie swing her hatchet at liquor bottles in local saloons, but she’d…
Steve Horner did not attend the monthly meeting of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission on Monday. I knew this without even talking to Horner, because the meeting actually concluded — and if he’d been there, the seven appointed commissioners would still be stuck in their conference room, listening to Horner…
Mike Jones’s fifteen minutes of fame just got extended. He knows all about billing by the hour. In the days before last fall’s election, the male escort’s revelation that Ted Haggard had been a longtime client exploded in Colorado, and the fallout spread across the country. On November 1, Jones…
By the time I squeezed through the closing doors, I was ready to punch the walls if I heard that same bossy voice telling me that I was “delaying the departure of this train.” I was delaying the departure?…
Patricia Calhoun of Twin Falls, Idaho, is a very generous woman. Particularly with my phone number. Last Wednesday, my direct line at Westword started ringing before eight in the morning, and it didn’t stop all day. “Why did you send me this money?” asked a woman in Kentucky. “What am…
