The nation’s top outdoor-recreation official, Lyle Laverty, isn’t scheduled to take over the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region until November, and Colorado environmentalists are already howling like a pack of wolves. “Recreation is the new game,” says Roz McClellan of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, “and as a result,…
Now that the Padres and Rockies, newcomers to these proceedings, are peering up from the darkness, it cannot hurt to examine what they see high above. They see the Giants and the Dodgers, a couple of storied teams that would just as soon slash each other’s throats as exchange pre-game…
Since I last visited the Lace House, back on Memorial Day, an entire tourist season has come and gone–without one tourist touring through what was once Black Hawk’s top (and arguably only) attraction. But that was in the days when people enjoyed the ramshackle charms of the old mining town…
Rush to Judgement Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s August 21 column, “Once Upon a Mattress”: KOA should fire Keith Weinman. The only reason to listen to any Jacor station is to hear Rush. Don L. Lewis Aurora It’s very appropriate that in last week’s letters column, Mike Cooper compared Keith Weinman to…
Arnold Schwarzenegger smiled for the photographers on a chilly day in March 1995, strolling down Wazee Street with a retinue of overawed city bureaucrats, retail CEOs, neighborhood potentates and bodyguards. The beaming actor told reporters that he thought lower downtown was “fantastic” and that he wanted to do a project…
Paula Larsen, the first woman in America to use a new federal law to help her collect child-support payments, didn’t get a lot of attention for earning this pioneering title. Her ten years of effort, which included a lawsuit against such notables as Denver’s district attorney, didn’t go unrewarded, though…
As recently as last spring, it looked like the Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation was on a roll that would never stop. The nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, which controls one third of the hospitals in metro Denver, was racking up record profits and acquiring community hospitals at a feverish pace. Now…
The Reverend Henry Lyons, the embattled president of the nation’s largest black denomination, has come under fire in recent weeks for driving a Rolls-Royce that he allegedly purchased with church funds. Perhaps when Lyons is in town this week for the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention USA, he…
Armed with industrial-strength paint remover and blessed with a face that apparently melts into a crowd, a midnight marauder has targeted the ski town of Breckenridge where it hurts the most–right in the tourist industry. Breckenridge police call the culprit, who’s been tossing batches of caustic liquid onto cars with…
Big deal: Since the Colorado Springs Gazette dropped the Telegraph from its name and soon after pulled out of the Colorado Press Association, the organization has scrambled to fill the over 100,000-circulation category in its annual contest. Years ago, Westword was allowed to compete with the dailies in that slot;…
Early on a Monday morning just before Thanksgiving break last year, somebody stepped onto the campus of the Community College of Aurora with a stack of neon-green leaflets and began plastering them on building walls. The anonymous author of the fliers, which also were inserted into faculty mailboxes, seemed intent…
This is football country. Oh, sure, Coloradans have embraced their late-arriving, lovable Rockies, which makes everyone feel very big-league and connected to the ghosts of Ty Cobb and Jackie Robinson. Scratching their heads, fans also learned that Peter Forsberg isn’t allowed to make a two-line pass, and when the Stanley…
The Apes of Wrath I don’t know how much Bill Gallo and Robin Chotzinoff are paid to write for you, but it can’t possibly be enough. As for Patricia Calhoun’s “Once Upon a Mattress,” her August 21 column about Keith Weinman–isn’t he the missing link? Thank you, Westword. Mike Cooper…
Leroy Jones does not play the game by the rules. Not when he believes the game is fixed. As a driver for Yellow Cab when it went into receivership, he quickly recognized that the court-appointed receiver was taking everyone for a ride. And so Jones started protesting–loudly and often–that the…
The door of Lonnie Lynn’s house stands open. “Make yourself at home,” he says. “If you’ve been here thirty seconds, you are home.” A couple of crumpled Budweiser cans adorn a chair on the front porch. Summer evenings will find Lonnie there with his young son, Malone, on his lap,…
On June 29 the state commissioner of agriculture, Thomas Kourlis, traveled to Salida to address the Colorado Beekeepers Association. The beekeepers consider themselves an underappreciated group, the overlooked child of Colorado agriculture, and this was the first time the government’s top farm official was paying them close personal attention. They…
Picture perfect: “Are They Innocent?” asked the headline of Sunday’s Rocky Mountain News, a question echoed on hastily printed fliers and posters hyping that day’s edition. But at the end of ten pages (plus a cover with its stand-by-your-man portrait taken at some location the News agreed not to disclose,…
After five-year-old Dustin Redd drowned in City Park’s Ferrel Lake last June while attending a city-run day camp, Mayor Wellington Webb and parks manager B.J. Brooks rushed to name a new playground at the park in the boy’s memory. However well meant, that gesture hasn’t stopped Redd’s family from filing…
The sanctuary of the old Eastside Christian Church, once a place of worship for Baptists, is now something of an altar to outer space. Muted light filtering through 92-year-old stained glass windows gives an eerie glow to the artwork hanging around the room: depictions of astronauts golfing on the moon,…
It was the blackberries, not the cigarettes, that most impressed state senator Ray Powers when he visited sunny Costa Rica for six days this summer as a guest of tobacco giant Philip Morris. A highlight for Powers, who made the trek along with eleven other state legislators from around the…
Let’s be clear. We’re not saying we want Andres Galarraga to drive that big green Mercedes of his off a cliff or come down with a case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever that lasts until precisely the 28th of September. Not at all. We’re not hoping the Big Cat gets…
On Monday morning, Keith Weinman’s voice oozed out of the radio, delivering a pitch about how much “we” enjoy a certain brand of mattress. It was slightly nauseating. And not just because the alleged “business editor” of KOA-AM’s “Business for Breakfast” show has no business shilling for clients. That’s a…
