The Bust of Denver Fossil fuel: Congratulations, Westword! With your new Best of Denver 2001 edition, you’ve confirmed, once again, what a tacky rag you’ve become. Like that ’70s dinosaur, Patricia Calhoun, Westword is one more reason to think Denver is still a backwater cowtown. Best of Denver 2001 was…
One hot morning last summer, a small valve was turned on at the Lowry Superfund Site, and groundwater from the old landfill began flowing through a newly constructed sewer line. The water had no color, no odor, and had already undergone several procedures at the landfill site to remove certain…
David Gelber adjusts his tie. He tugs it left, then right again. It’s as if he’s trying to get more oxygen without disrobing, as if what’s needed right now is a little fresh air, something to cleanse his lungs of the bad odor wafting through the halls of the Jefferson…
In 1995, Ken Swinehart realized that US West’s neglect of the San Luis Valley had given him a good business opportunity. Although the gigantic phone company was busy installing fiber-optic lines to provide high-speed Internet access and other services along the Front Range, it couldn’t be bothered to do the…
Kim Benson doesn’t know why Teller Elementary has such a bad reputation. She just knows that many parents who live around Congress Park won’t even consider enrolling their children there. “I’ve heard from families that have moved into the neighborhood that they’ve been told they shouldn’t even look at Teller,”…
Andy Warhol quipped that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes — but he didn’t explain how to make it happen. The following makes a good first lesson. On April 1, the Boulder Daily Camera ran a story previewing an April 3 Boulder City Council meeting at…
Jerry Wiggins lights a Pall Mall, fits a screwdriver attachment into a drill, and eyes the hinges of a door that’s been scuffed, dented, riddled with bullets. “People stop by for free coffee sometimes,” he says, sliding a stepladder over the threshold. “But this is a working station. It’s not…
At its best, the rapport between area readers and their hometown daily newspapers, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, is wonderfully personal. Subscribers may love them on some days and hate them on others, but their mere existence is reassuring, and what fills them matters in unexpected ways…
National Basketball Association players visiting town to abuse the Nuggets prefer to stay at the Westin Hotel downtown, from which they can easily walk to dinner at clubby restaurants such as Morton’s and the Denver ChopHouse & Brewery. Professional golfers on tour through Colorado usually pass time between rounds lounging…
When Joanne and Manny Salzman moved into their 3,500-square-foot loft on Wynkoop Street in 1980, no one had heard of LoDo. The area was filled with empty warehouses and broken windows, and the couple’s former neighbors in Hilltop worried about them walking the deserted streets at night. But the opportunity…
Gwen Compton Ternes has been living with pain since she fell to the floor in 1987 when the wheels of her office chair came off. The injury to the former office manager led to a series of health problems, and by 1999, three doctors agreed that Ternes required replacement surgery…
Jeff Campbell begins his class at George Washington High School by grabbing a dictionary — a big red Webster’s. He looks up the word “respect,” whose definition yields other words, like “consideration” and “regard.” A couple of teens then head to the blackboard, and in a few minutes, the class…
In an important victory for the mentally ill in Denver, a local judge found this week that the state is in contempt of court for failing to provide care and shelter to those with chronic mental illnesses. Denver District Judge Morris Hoffman fined Colorado $1.4 million and ordered the state…
Of the nine candidates running for the District 6 city council spot recently vacated by Susan Casey, Charlie Brown probably has the best name recognition. Unlike the browbeaten cartoon character, however, this Charlie Brown is no blockhead: A former teacher, he served for two years in the mid-1980s in the…
The Russian thistle is the worst of weeds. Brought over in the trouser cuff of a clueless immigrant, it buried its evil seed in the Nebraska sand more than a century ago and soon took over. Today the Russian thistle’s empire stretches well into the Rocky Mountains. Although the thistle’s…
The March 30 press conference near the federal courthouse downtown didn’t contain many surprises. For instance, it wasn’t shocking that Jake Jabs, tiger-hugging owner of American Furniture Warehouse, would be heading up a cadre of people upset about rising ad rates in the wake of the joint-operating agreement between the…
In this era of obscene player salaries and disposable loyalties, assembling a baseball team is an agony of constant reinvention, incessant tinkering and, when the occasion calls for it, vain hope. Unless, of course, you’re the New York Yankees, who have no need for the usual wishful thinking, so inflated…
Carrying a Torch Love everlasting: I just read Steve Jackson’s incredible “The Racer’s Edge” series, including “The Bounce-Back Kid,” in the March 8 issue, and “The Kid Bounces Back,” in the March 15 issue, for the fifth time. I wanted to write to tell you how moved I am, and…
Wendy is the birthday girl for the second time in six months. On her first “birthday,” in September, she got $20,000. And she’s hoping to receive another generous gift soon. The money couldn’t have come at a better time. Wendy, a 51-year-old single mom, lives in a mobile home in…
The concept behind the Original Dinner Party isn’t original. Ever since 1886, when the first Avon Lady in Winchester, New Hampshire, started peddling cosmetics to her friends, women have understood the importance of networking to make it in a man’s world. And businesses have understood that women are usually the…
The politicians assembled in a conference room inside Denver’s City and County Building are on edge. A routine meeting of the city council’s parks and recreation committee is suddenly at the center of the hottest political story in town. Charles Robertson, a high-level manager with the parks department, has been…
Andrew Hartman is only in his second year of teaching, and already he’s out of a job. The teacher’s problems began last November, when students in the Thornton High School chapter of Students 4 Justice began distributing anti-military literature during a visit from armed-forces recruiters. It was the students’ idea…
