I’m sitting in the snow at the top of the half-pipe at Eldora, watching Chris Pappas ride down. The eighteen-year-old boys around me stop doing whatever they’re doing and stare down into the pipe. They all know who Chris is, and it’s commonly accepted that on some level, he has…
Journalists love anniversaries — and why not? It’s all but impossible to plan in advance for the specifics of breaking news, since in most cases no one knows where, when or how it will happen, or whether it will ultimately achieve a lasting significance. But story commemorations don’t suffer from…
Basketball players and boxers, in particular, like to talk about how they get no respect. What this usually means is that the athlete allegedly being disrespected (see also: “dissed”) feels his opponent is not showing proper regard for the dissee’s sporting skill. Denver-area curlers, though, have a much more basic…
Mad TV Regarding T.R. Witcher’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised!” in the March 30 issue: What a typical Denver story: A legitimate bid for a building is rejected so that the city can play favorites with a certain political faction. But this time, the joke is on the Hispanic…
Lee Hill pulls his truck over to the curb in an older, tree-lined Boulder neighborhood. He gets out and glances around, a Glock 9-millimeter handgun concealed beneath his black trench coat. The home where he’s stashed The Witness is a few blocks away, but he doesn’t want to park in…
On Wednesday, February 23, Sharon Vigil and Scott Flores, the president and chairman of the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, respectively, posed in front of the former Denver District Attorney’s building at the busy corner of Colfax Avenue and Speer Boulevard. They were announcing that the Hispanic Chamber would be…
Tracy Jenkins sounds like she’s fielding three calls at once. It happens when you’re one of two people responsible for a new cable channel that was supposed to air last week but at the last minute has been delayed. Though the Hispanic Entrepreneur Channel has fizzled out, the Black Entrepreneur…
Near the mouth of Denver International Airport’s Jeppesen Terminal, right before Peña Boulevard splits into the east and west entrances, and just out of view, is a huge parking lot filled with hundreds of taxicabs, a dozen shuttles, several limousines and an RTD bus or two. In the middle of…
Bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman slips out the front door of his office, which is across the street from Sloan Lake Park, dodges the cars speeding down Sheridan Boulevard and rescues a fellow dog, a large black poodle named Copper. Lost for hours, Copper had roamed onto the street. When…
Cranky Calls Criticism last week of a US West-backed bill that would deregulate the monopoly phone carrier prompted an attack on the state’s consumer advocacy group by the bill’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Doug Dean. The proposal is a watered-down version of a previous bill that was defeated earlier in…
Mayor Wellington Webb traveled to London in mid-March to meet with government and business officials and to formally open Denver’s new British trade office there. He also took time to observe London’s current mayoral race and to offer personal grooming advice to Frank Dobson, a Labor Party candidate who is…
Whenever someone asks Marcus Roybal about her ethnicity, which seems to be happening a lot these days, she simply glances at the back of her 82-year-old hand and checks the color of her skin. “Chicano,” she says. But if you really want to know the truth, she’s part Sioux and…
A lot of businesses have dispensed entirely with printed memos, preferring instead to go with the electronic variety. But the Rocky Mountain News is still doing things the old-fashioned way, and we’re glad they do — because a couple of memos intended for News employees that found their way to…
Ramsey Tough Very good tag-team coverage in the March 23 issue of the continuing Ramsey screwups. Although I enjoyed Michael Roberts’s outing of Ramsey sympathizers in “The Message” and Patricia Calhoun’s continued bashing of the Jeffco persecution — oops, make that prosecution — in her column, the reader’s choice prize…
There are many fine bowlers in the state of Colorado. There is George McDonald, who, in his 68 years on this piece of earth has won 36 state and local championships, a record that makes people like John Wooden, UCLA’s Wizard of Westwood, look like a flash in the pan…
Joshua Beckius is 21 years old and living in limbo. When he was sixteen, he received a forty-year sentence for second-degree murder and was immediately placed among adult prisoners in the Buena Vista Correctional Facility. There, he attacked another inmate. The next stop was the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he…
Dayton James’s daughters were the center of his life, and he was the strong and certain linchpin of theirs. Although he and their mother divorced when the girls were small, James saw Darcy and Daytona every week. He took them bowling or to dinner; he let them select movies. Sometimes…
Josh Beckius was fourteen years old when Dayton James was killed in an armed robbery at Boulder’s Basemar Cinema Savers; prosecutors believe Beckius served as a lookout. He was sixteen when he was sentenced — as an adult — to forty years in prison. By contrast, the three teenagers who…
The state health department has proposed a settlement in a bitter dispute over water pollution from natural-gas wells in Las Animas County, but federal environmental officials say Colorado has gone easy on the polluter, and at least one person wonders if the administration of Governor Bill Owens — who worked…
Editor’s note: In the early hours of March 22, 2000, a mysterious intruder entered our offices through the unguarded lackeys’ entrance, consumed all the beer in the fridge, slapped 2,183 tiny luminous stars on our ceiling and left the following diary excerpts, which were written on stationery swiped from the…
The son also rises: Senatorial progeny Colin Lee (don’t call me Nighthorse) Campbell has been raking in the gubernatorial appointments. In December, Governor Bill Owens asked him to serve on the eleven-member Colorado Utility Consumers Board, which makes recommendations on policies to the Office of Consumer Counsel, and in February…
Once in a while, someone comes into Johnny’s Newsstand who is not a regular customer. Imagine! The Johnny of Johnny’s Newsstand is Johnny Kareski, and such occurrences fascinate him. Exhibit A: “Check this out,” he says, from behind the cash register where he keeps a guitar, sheet music, his first…
