While Denver has been enjoying unseasonably warm days, punctuated by the occasional plunge far below zero, snow keeps piling up on the East Coast. Faced with mounds of white stuff, my sister and her school-break kids booked a trip to escape winter — where else but Colorado?…
Dear Mexican: I am a mocha-skinned woman with long, curly hair and dark-brown eyes. Puerto Ricans always ask if I am Puerto Rican; Dominicans just come and start speaking Spanish; Cubans ask if my abuelita made good arroz con leche — but Mexicans know I’m black. What gives? La Morena…
When John Hickenlooper moved from the Denver City & County Building across Civic Center Park to the State Capitol, he found a message from his office’s previous occupant posted on a painting by the governor’s desk. “I will be easy to find,” said the note from Bill Ritter, who’d drawn…
Image isn’t everything — but appearances count when you’re trying to market a state. Colorado already has a head start with its scenery and a colorful governor who’s a walking sound bite; here are three other ideas guaranteed to raise this state’s profile, if not its revenues. 1) A state…
John Hickenlooper’s appearance on ABC’s This Week yesterday wasn’t nearly as warm and fuzzy as his holiday gig on the same network’s Good Morning America two years ago. This time, he was part of a em>roundtable of four “top” governors taking on the country’s budget crisis and big labor pains…
The Colorado legislature just nixed a plan to tack a ten-cent fee onto movie tickets, money that would have been used to provide financial incentives for film companies that want to make movies in this state. As revised, the bill would now ask for donations from movie-goers — a good…
Pinnacol Assurance, the quasi-public workers’ compensation insurance fund, dodged a bullet last year when the legislature backed off on a proposed $500 million raid of its reserves to help fill budget gaps. But now Governor John Hickenlooper has nominated a critic to the Pinnacol board who’ll be the proverbial fox…
Attorney/urban-homesteading activist James Bertini didn’t even get the cease-and-desist letter the Dervaes Institute sent to other urban-homesteading groups, bloggers and publishers. Instead, he found out on February 14 that Facebook had disabled the page for his year-round, indoor farmers’ market (Westword’s Best Farmers’ Market in 2010) because its name, Denver…
“Please play,” urges the sign by the display of three playhouses at Denver International Airport, an exhibit officially titled “Form, Fun & Function,” and created by Colorado architects and builders. The kids waiting for their parents to grab bags at DIA last night would have loved to spend some time…
Dear Mexican: The perception of Mexico having a defective culture has come up in your column several times. It’s most important to point out the historical differences. The United States was invaded by settlers who came to live here permanently. Mexico was conquered by gold-seeking thugs who wanted to return…
The Green Awards came to Denver yesterday, touting the Green Giant-sponsored program that will give $25,000 to the best idea for greening the environment. And to advertise the contest, a giant, temporary eco-ad mural made of grass was created at 22nd and Blake streets, just past Coors Field. Here’s my…
Seven years ago, Westword introduced the MasterMind program, which every year awards cash prizes to five artists or arts institutions that are changing the cultural landscape of Denver. This week, we revealed the 2011 winners, who will be honored Saturday night at Artopia. The next creative class? Slam Nuba, Illiterate,…
Mayor Bill Vidal made some noise yesterday — without calling a press conference. It might have been hard to hear over the roaring of all those rescued lions (and the media hubbub), but his recording welcoming travelers to Denver is now live on the train at Denver International Airport. And…
Urban explorers are everywhere these days. They’re breaking into abandoned buildings like the Gates Rubber Company, where a teenage girl fell through the roof this past weekend and wound up badly injured. In steam and transportation tunnels under the city. At old missile silos. And definitely at what’s left of…
Denver is full of aesthetic entrepreneurs, artists and organizations that are changing the landscape of this city. Some of their efforts are so underground, though, that they’d have miles to go just to reach the grassroots…
Dear Mexican: I’m a white, rural, ninth-generation Texan who left the farm and is now a lawyer for a large corporation in one of the largest cities in the state. Maybe a quarter of the clients they assign me speak Spanish, so the company’s paying for me to learn Spanish…
The old Gates Rubber plant was supposed to be a new urbanism showplace — but development has been stalled by the economy. Still, the abandoned buildings have been doing a booming business in urban exploring, and last night, another band of adventurers made it into the old factory at 900…
After flying into DIA last night and hopping on the train, I was greeted by former mayor John Hickenlooper delivering a hearty “Welcome to Denver.” But soon, current mayor Bill Vidal will have his say. But after the wild will-he/won’t-he events of the past week, you can’t help wondering who…
The Colorado Republican Party didn’t just lose the governor’s race in November — it also lost over a hundred bonus members of the State Central Committee, which will vote for the new party chair next month. Incumbent chair Dick Wadhams was going for that slot again — until his Monday…
Yesterday morning, I was talking to Dick Wadhams, the chair of the Colorado Republican Party, about the upcoming State Central Committee meeting, where he would be going for a third term. Yesterday evening, I was talking with Wadhams about his sudden announcement that he would not run again…
Dear Readers: Although many of you have loved and/or loathed my columna for years, the Mexican still finds new readers every week in the unlikeliest of spots (hola, Chattanooga! See you in August, inshallah!). As a result, I sometimes receive questions about the methodology of the column, questions that everyone…
By eking out 11 percent of the vote, Dan Maes managed to save the Colorado Republican Party from the ultimate ignominy of losing its major-party status. But the state’s top GOPs lost plenty of other things in the debacle of the November gubernatorial election: the governor’s office, which had looked…
