It’s early in July 1997, and Jack has just turned three. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t respond to directions. He can’t sit still for fifteen minutes. He shuns everyone around him, including his parents. On the rare occasion that his dad is able to make eye contact with him, Jack…
William Vance Turner told them he didn’t do it. They didn’t believe him, of course. Three years ago, anything a prisoner had to say about what was going on inside the special housing unit (SHU) of the federal penitentiary at Florence would have been dismissed by authorities as pretty damned…
At a hearing last week, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission invited anyone who wanted to comment on US West’s pending merger with Qwest to come forward and speak. Only a handful of people showed up at the meeting overseen by PUC chairman Ray Gifford, but those who did had a…
The ongoing saga over a proposed northwest Denver elementary school has taken an ironic turn. Parents who spent months trying to convince the Denver Board of Education to offer a dual-language/Montessori program at the new school found out last week that their wishes had been granted when the board voted…
Deck the hallsTime’s Denver bureau had real reason to celebrate at its annual Christmas party Monday night. The big-scoop Columbine issue, with its summary of the Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold videos, was just hitting the stands (a week early, to counter the Rocky Mountain News’s three-part series that started Sunday); several…
The man speaks slooow and LOUD, as if to a person who doesn’t know her hearing aids have failed. “It’s just stuff I have,” he says. “And now I’m getting rid of it. We’re moving.” “But how do you happen to have three glass jewelry display cases?” I ask. “At…
Brian Christopher, known to his loyal listeners as B.C., mans the 7 p.m.-to-midnight slot weekdays on the Fox, and he does so with an extremely local slant, talking knowledgeably about Denver happenings and interacting directly with Colorado callers who make the classic-rock requests that dominate the program. But there are…
The little blond boy looked out the window of the United Airlines jet as it left Denver. Raoul Wuthrich had just turned eleven in the Jefferson County juvenile detention center, where he’d been placed for sexually assaulting his five-year-old sister, but now he was free to go. “Bye-bye Denver, I…
Dick Schwarz has had enough. His family has been selling books, antiques and art in Boulder County since his parents opened a shop in an old stage house in Lyons back in the late Fifties. But his Stage House Two, on Pearl Street just west of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall,…
1963: Crossroads Mall opens at 30th and Arapahoe streets in Boulder; JC Penney and Montgomery Ward stores promptly move there from downtown, which soon falls into decline. Rents become depressed; many downtown stores are boarded up; streets are deserted in the evening. By the early Seventies, “Tumbleweeds could go down…
Like most attractive public spaces, the Pearl Street Mall has been the site of an ongoing battle between merchants and transients. Sometimes it seems that unusually belligerent or obstreperous street people have made themselves at home on the mall. But Boulder also has more than its fair share of merchants…
Since its opening, entertainers have been a crucial part of the mall. Policy regarding what they may do, where they may do it and what, if anything, they should pay the city for the privilege has varied over the years. One longstanding controversy involved Evan Ravitz, a slack-rope walker who…
We’re on the record on October 19, 1999, at 9:30 a.m. I’m Kelli Chan,” the tape begins. “I’m a member of the Enforcement Division of the Central Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I am an officer of the Commission for purposes of this proceeding. This is an…
Stunt doubleRemember the movie Dumb and Dumber, with Jeff Daniels? How about 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, with Hulk Hogan, or Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, the Andy Garcia flick that was just about DOA when it hit movie theaters? Those are just a few…
Max Levin died on August 25, 1892, one month before Rose Hill Cemetery began keeping records. Although the details of what killed Max have faded from memory, it’s easy to imagine what happened immediately after he died. The chevra kaddisha, the sacred society of Jewish men who consider preparation of…
Bill Johnson had a hard act to follow. A former staffer with Southern California’s Orange County Register, Johnson was hired as a columnist for the Rocky Mountain News in August 1996, mere months after his predecessor, the widely revered Greg Lopez, was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Since then, by…
Juan Toribio could see signs of trouble the first day he walked into the cafeteria in Pueblo. They were gang signs, flashed from table to table among the baby-faced convicts of Colorado’s Youthful Offender System as they tucked into their meatloaf and cheese mac. In 1997, Toribio was convicted of…
Within the boundaries of Denver City Council District 8, high-rises loom above downtown. City Park spreads out around the zoo and the natural history museum. Nightspots draw nouveau-cool crowds to 17th Avenue. Neighborhood kids walk to East and Manual high schools, while vagrants wander near the Ballpark Neighborhood — Denver’s…
On November 2, 1999, all was sweetness and light at the headquarters of the Regional Transportation District. After years of crushing defeats and internecine warfare among the agency’s elected board of directors, RTD finally managed to win strong voter approval for its plan to borrow $457 million to build a…
OverdueNext week, families of those who were murdered at Columbine High School last April will announce a $3 million fundraising drive to turn the site of the infamous school library into an atrium and build a new library on the school grounds. More than forty family members have been meeting…
It’s an inside joke, this thing about food, but in a way, it really did start with their guts. The Navy. Pearl Harbor. The USO. The billboard. Wal-Mart. For Dick and Doc Nash, poster boys from The Big One, it all came down to a full belly. “Hell, yeah,” says…
On October 15, Penny Parker, a former business writer for the Denver Post, took over as the gossip columnist for the Rocky Mountain News — and her bow was a rocky one indeed. Examples? A Parker-penned item about the Wynkoop Brewing Company’s annual “Running of the Pigs” had the event…
