After months of study by the 76-member Pioneer Mascot Steering Committee, which included an online survey sent to 78,032 members of the greater University of Denver community, the committee just released its decision on the hunt for a new mascot. Is the school’s new symbol for the Pioneers the Elk?…
If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. Ten counties in northeastern Colorado are still considering seceding from the state. Cheyenne County (population 1876, appropriately enough) has already gotten the proposal on the November ballot; Weld County could do the same soon. In this week’s Westword, we offer some…
We remember when rebranding would get you hanged or shot. Or both,” wrote Lew Cady, the just deceased (and very much missed) adman who did so much to help shape the image of this state. How soon we forget. Once again, Colorado has gone back to the drawing board to…
Colorful Colorado became a lot less colorful yesterday. Lew Cady — resident of Central City; graduate of East High School; adman and publisher of the Little Kingdom Come; beer-drinker (and beer-can collector); baseball fanatic; lover of lists and hijinks; wearer of cowboy hats, boots and beards; friend to thousands, grandfather…
For political pundits and satirists, Anthony Weiner is the gift that keeps on giving. Even as he was resigning from the House in disgrace, it turns out that “Carlos Danger” kept living dangerously, sexting other women around the country. How did he find the time to run for mayor of…
Our January 10 issue featured a caricature of Colorado’s Secretary of State on the cover, along with the headline “Scott Gessler Is Always Right.” Gessler liked the article so much that he used it for a campaign fundraiser, promising to give an autographed copy of the issue to “anyone who…
When Mayor Michael Hancock delivered his third State of the City speech on July 15, he skipped the clunky slogan that has echoed in so many other mayoral talks: “Delivering a world-class city where everyone matters.” But apparently he was just giving it a brief rest, because the phrase was…
What’s the most dangerous stretch of road in Colorado? After the slaying of an airman in LoDo last Saturday, some people might say 15th and Market streets. Anyone who’s gotten stuck on the mean streets of Cherry Creek might suggest First Avenue. But our nomination this week is Marksheffel Road…
Fire up! Expect a packed house at 8 a.m. today, when Denver’s Independent Audit Committee will be briefed on the “eagerly anticipated audit” of Denver’s Medical Marijuana licensing and regulation process. For the audit, the Denver Auditor’s Office assessed the policies and practices of the Department of Excise and Licenses’…
“No exercise groups of any size permitted in this area.” Those signs started popping up around Denver parks this year, discouraging groups of early-morning runners and mid-morning mommies pushing strollers in syncopated workouts. The city’s crack-down on organized exercise seems so ludicrous that it even rated a story in the…
Jaxine Bubis was feeling the heat last week, after it was revealed that the would-be Republican challenger of embattled Senate president John Morse in his recall election had written erotica under the pen name Jaxine Daniels, including 2004’s Beantown Heat. El Paso conservatives were shocked — shocked! — by some…
This diamond is really in the rough. By now, Homeless Diamond — the summer softball league organized by real-estate developer Joe Carabello whose players are homeless men — should be well into its third season. But the Denver Department of Parks & Recreation decided to do a major, and needed,…
No matter how sensitive the University of Denver is these days, it keeps getting spanked. First, the school got bashed by boosters of Denver Boone, the onetime Pioneer mascot. Then some loyalists griped about a commission to investigate the role of John Evans, the territorial governor who founded the school,…
For the past eleven years, Colorado Inside Out, the weekly public affairs roundtable on Colorado Public Television, has taken an annual trip in the Colorado Time Machine. The show’s reported on current events of 1912 (last year’s show, when I played Margaret “Molly” Brown or 1951 (the 2011 episode, when…
It could have been worse: The University of Denver could have been stuck with the Exterminators instead of the Pioneers. “Exterminator” is the label that Major Edward Wynkoop slapped on then-territorial governor John Evans after he endorsed “the destruction and killing” of “all hostile Indians” — an endorsement acted on…
Will Guy didn’t set out to minor in civics when he transferred to the University of Denver. He just wanted a good education in design. “On my first tour,” he recalls, “I just out of curiosity asked what the mascot was. The tour guide gave me a puzzled look and…
“I’m a welder and a family man, and I tell you, that feels pretty great,” says Seth Lee. It sounded pretty great, too, as this welder/family man stood before a crowd gathered today in the Capitol to talk about how far he’s come since that day in 1998 when he…
Don’t haul out the peanuts and Cracker Jack just yet: The opening of Sonny Lawson Field has been delayed from today to let the new sod take hold — and that means the first game of the Homeless Diamond’s third season has also been pushed back, to 9 a.m. Tuesday,…
Baseball has always been big in Five Points; in On the Road, Jack Kerouac described going to a game on Welton Street one night among “all humanity, the lot.” That game was on a field renamed Sonny Lawson Park in 1972, and it’s still home to one of the most…
The half-life of plutonium is 20,000 years — and it looks like books about plutonium have a long shelf-life, too. When Kristen Iversen decided to write about growing up in the shadow of Rocky Flats, she “wasn’t sure it would get published,” she says, even though she’d had earlier success…
Judge Herbert Stern will decide on Friday whether the city’s swap of eleven acres by Hentzell Park to Denver Public Schools in exchange for a DPS facility at 1330 Fox Street can go through — or will instead go to a vote of Denver residents on the November ballot. Meanwhile,…
While History Colorado and tribal representatives consult on Collision, an exhibit dedicated to the Sand Creek Massacre, and the political and cultural issues that continue to reverberate, other groups are gearing up to mark next year’s 150th anniversary of this sad chapter in Colorado history. Local filmmaker Aaron Sears, for…
