News

Food for Thought I agree completely with Kyle Wagner’s December 21 and January 4 Mouthing Off columns on the restaurant critics in Denver, particularly Pat Miller. Paging through Miller’s 1995 restaurant guide, I felt as if I were reading one of those cheesy hotel “Things to Do” guides, which list/promote…

Like most other serious boxers, Joe Silva has discovered that his time isn’t his own. Five evenings a week he meets his coaches at a gym in a Thornton strip mall. He stalks and feints his way through shadow boxing, first righty, then southpaw. Later, he stages furious rounds against…

The morning chill was still in the air December 14 when the news flew up and down Colfax Avenue: “Shorty’s dead. Murdered. The midget hooker is dead.” The street people knew before the media, before the coroner, before many of the cops on the beat. Another dead prostitute. But Belinda…

Is there a script doctor in the House? Credit Glenn Jones, the man behind Englewood-based Jones Intercable, with fast work in getting Newt Gingrich’s lecture series, “Renewing American Civilization,” on his Mind Extension University. Last Thursday, the same day the Speaker’s mom was whispering sour somethings to Connie Chung, Jones…

Hitting Home In response to Karen Bowers’s story on the Wahrle family situation (“A House Divided,” December 21), I would like to educate the writer on human decency. It was obvious, in my opinion, that Ms. Bowers acted as judge, jury, then God in her description of this horrible life…

Colorado’s fringe political parties have been griping for years that the state makes it unfairly difficult for them to get their candidates on the ballot. Now, many of them fear, it’s about to get even tougher. A nascent electoral-reform proposal backed by former secretary of state Natalie Meyer could drastically…

A homebuilder under grand jury investigation in Florida for leaving dozens of buyers without promised houses is now building luxury homes near the Front Range town of Evergreen, where he moved in 1993. Clyde Hoeldtke, 58, once one of the largest residential builders on the Gulf Coast of Florida, claims…

Denver businessman Herman Malone seemed to score a coup sixteen months ago when he won a huge chunk of the pay-phone contract at Denver International Airport. As a subcontractor on the deal to long-distance carrier MCI, Malone’s RMES Communications would install more than 300 phones at DIA and share in…

Sixth-grade science students at Peck Elementary School in Arvada have been putting on up-with-nature environmental shows for more than a decade. Only recently, however, have the half-hour performances, staged for Rotarians and other community groups, begun featuring a new prop: a Geiger counter supplied to science teacher Dudley Weiland by…

part 2 of 2 This Christmas it was the Kauffman family’s turn to be creepidential. “It’s a big family,” Sister Maureen says, “and they put all the money they would have spent on presents for each other into an envelope. I just received this envelope–with nearly a thousand dollars in…

part 1 of 2 Sister Maureen Kottenstette is trying to escape the office for the third time this evening when a knock sounds at the door. She needs to leave before dark, she explains, because she’s just had cataract surgery and can’t see to drive at night. As she gets…

Backward, march! Here’s a prediction for 1995: Denver will get some new prognosticators. Since psychic Lou Wright got mired in future shlock a few years back–money and marital problems, in particular–the town’s been shy a seer or two. As a result, on New Year’s Eve the Denver Post resorted to…

After Elliot “Hollywood” Raibon’s murder trial in May 1989, Denver district attorneys knew that gang cases were going to be different from anything they’d done before. “We didn’t have a gang unit back then,” recalls Tom Clinton, who tried the case and now heads the Denver district attorney’s gang-prosecuting unit…

The Slime of Your Life Just when I think Patricia Calhoun may be developing a lick of sense, along comes a column like “The Mind Is Reeling” (December 21) to restore my faith. Comparing life to movies may work for a P.J. O’Rourke, but it falls flat when done by…

The new director of AIDS programs under the auspices of the troubled Metropolitan Urban League has resigned after less than a month on the job. Her departure raises concerns among activists and even the state department of health about the Urban League’s commitment to AIDS services in the black community…

part 2 of 2 EDUCATION Young people apparently had a bit more trouble relating to the Denver Public Schools, which began the school year with a week-long teacher’s strike. The district never stopped learning, though, bringing in replacement teachers to show movies in the gym and dodge spitballs. State officials…

part 1 of 2 It was once the hate state. But now Colorado’s in a state of ecstasy. During a visit to northern Douglas County, a real estate scout for Merrill Lynch was so overwhelmed by the sight of a herd of antelope that the company decided to build a…

Stop or I’ll Squirt A masked gunman wearing a stocking cap and a ski mask stole twenty head of cattle from a Weld County dairy farm. The daring raid took place at 3:45 a.m. while a milker was working in the barn. “He held the gun on him and told…

Mike Musgrave Occupation: Manager of Denver Department of Public Works Thanks to a change in the city charter a few years back, Baby Face Musgrave was given subpoena power in his role as the czar of public works. And Bozo the Airport Clown used it with a vengeance, demanding that…