“Short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.” That’s Earl Devaney, the DOI’s inspector general, telling a House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday about the ethical black hole among the bureaucrats who manage one-fifth of all the land in the United States. In…
On a sunny spring day, Denver Animal Control Officer J. Lopez was driving through Swansea, the working-class neighborhood bisected by I-70, with the windows rolled down to let in some fresh air. They also let in the sound of chickens “going crazy.” Lopez followed the crowing and cackling to 4344…
It’s not the size of the cock in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the cock. And it’s not the strength of the cockfighting laws on the books. It’s whether or not they’re enforced. So says Ron Simons, executive director of the Society for the Prevention of…
Bill Menezes, the editorial director for Colorado Media Matters, doesn’t pretend to be ideologically objective — and neither does his organization. “We make it very clear on our website and anywhere else where we talk about Colorado Media Matters that we are a progressive research organization that is aimed at…
When Josh Blue was named the last comic standing, he automatically became Denver’s second-most-famous living celebrity — after John Elway, of course, and before… Dealin’ Doug? But Denver has no shortage of dead celebrities (Why else would Warren Zevon, now dead himself, pen the song “Things to Do in Denver…
The fates of David and Dina Weller all came down to a cigarette butt and blood. In the spring of 2005, the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde were ransacking the West Washington Park neighborhood, but Denver Police Department detective Philip Stanford didn’t have enough evidence to charge anyone. There were no…
I have a message for the baristas at the Starbucks at Sixth and Broadway: tall café mocha, whipped cream, hot, not cold. There will be occasional days when I request a piece of your pumpkin loaf, but please do me the extreme favor of not assuming that I want it…
Street Dreams Things to do in Denver before you’re dead: I just wanted to send my compliments about “A Federal Case,” in the September 7 issue. I loved your cover story about Broadway, was looking forward to another street — and here it is. I grew up in Denver, and…
Ah, MySpace, thou art a foul temptress. It’s amazing how the social networking website is treated by so many young adults as some sort of secret journal where they can spill their most outlandish desires and drug-addled exploits. It’s a virtual candyland for perverts and journalists alike. Nowhere else can…
There’s nothing that can bring back Sonja DeVries. But the Colorado Republicans just added insult to fatal injury when it sent out a release using the case of Sonja DeVires (sic) — killed by a drunk driver on July 18, 2004, when she was just nineteen— to bash Bill Ritter…
The current Message column concerns Colorado Media Matters, the first state-based spinoff of Media Matters, a Washington, D.C., organization devoted to counteracting, contradicting and correcting what the folks there consider to be “conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Media Matters president, CEO and founder David Brock is quoted in the…
Before Gustavo Arellano started appearing in the pages of Westword, he appeared on The Colbert Report. To watch, click on the control below…
It’s been dark days for Colorado, what with Ward Churchill, JonBenet Ramsey and Michael Tracey in particular (and CU in general) in the news. How like the national media to kick a good state when it’s down. Two weeks ago, the New Yorker sidelined Denver, calling it a “second-tier city”…
On a dry day it’s not unusual to see upwards of thirty scooters and mopeds assembled along the inner sidewalk of Speer Boulevard as it runs past downtown. A protest of our nation’s oil addiction? A hot, new modster hangout? No, the scooters belong to students and professors of the…
As if I don’t already have enough chef Troy Guard/Sullivan Group stuff kicking around in print, here’s another tidbit. In a recent conversation, spin mistress Leigh Sullivan let it slip that she’d just been on the phone checking on dance lessons for Troy, her husband.. “Seriously? Dance lessons? What for?”…
On Monday, Sandra Rivas testified in the trial of her common-law husband, Raul Gomez-Garcia (pictured), who’s accused of murdering Denver police detective Donald Young in May 2005. While on the stand, she acknowledged having had a conversation with Gomez-Garcia in which he admitted shooting Young and a fellow officer (Detective…
Scottie Ewing is becoming a household name in Denver — particularly in southwest Denver. On Thursday night, KDVR Fox 31 News broadcast a story about continued neighborhood opposition to his proposed nightclub at 1395 West Alameda Avenue. Ewing first appeared in these pages in June, when “Swap Talk” detailed the…
Last night’s 10 p.m. newscasts in Denver contained more tension than usual because of an intriguing confluence of events. Under ordinary circumstances, like it or not, channels 4, 7 and 9 probably would have led with the Denver Broncos’ humiliating loss to the St. Louis Rams. But since this defeat…
Word came down from Washington, D.C., last week: No more horse slaughterhouses in the United States. To which most people responded, “Are there horse slaughterhouses in the United States?” Yes, there are. Three of them. All owned by foreign companies that are slaughtering tens of thousands of horses a year…
You remember the tune, don’t you? Foleeeeeeeeey’s Red Apple Sale! Look what’s going on at Foleeeeeeeeeey’s! It was the elongated emphasis on the “e” in “Foley’s” that kept that little ditty pinballing around your cranium for days, like someone hysterically shrieking autumnal savings to the heavens, but in the goddamn…
Why the Krisana Park Modern Home Tour is not just another house tour: I grew up near, but not in, the Eichler-style, mid-century Krisana Park development and went to Ellis Elementary, the recipient of benefit bucks raised by this weekend’s seven-home tour. In those days, the Bruggenthies greenhouse still stood…
When Brett Andrews Allen, the subject of “The Impersonator,” appeared in Denver District Court yesterday, he was alone. His mother, who’d declined to be interviewed for the story, didn’t show up — but Allen didn’t seem surprised. He says his mom is terrified of the cameras and swarms of reporters…
