“I didn’t start out to do what I’m doing,” says John Scherer, CEO and founder of Video Professor Inc., one of Colorado’s most incongruous success stories. He insists that he wound up starring in the commercials and infomercials that have made him a familiar figure among the nation’s insomniacs “because…
“Chief Hosa Lodge, the handsome stone pavilion built by the city in Genesee Mountain Park, has opened its doors this summer under a new management,” announced the June-July 1921 issue of Municipal Facts, an informative, if slightly propagandistic, publication once put out by the City and County of Denver. In…
When the Denver Botanic Gardens released its summer concert schedule last week, one name was conspicuous in its absence. Marc Cohn, fresh from a performance at that outdoor venue, was shot on August 7, 2005, at 14th and Stout streets. According to police, Cohn ran afoul of a carjacking –…
Like me, most of my friends are the first Colorado natives in their families. Our parents are all transplants, attracted to Denver from every imaginable corner of the United States, drawn by the sense of opportunity, the allure of the West, the fact that you can get drunk quicker at…
The Seven-Year Bitch Where the Columbine growl: Regarding Alan Prendergast’s “Hiding in Plain Sight,” in the April 13 issue: Let’s see. Since 1999 we have seen 3,000 people toasted by al-Queda on 9/11. We have seen 210,000 slaughtered on our highways. Yet seven years after Columbine, you are still talking…
In the debate about whether Video Professor’s marketing procedures are all they should be, one question is seldom asked: Are the products John Scherer keeps asking everyone to try actually any good? To find out, I decide to test them on a subject who, in his own way, is almost…
Cradling a sawed-off shotgun in his lap, Eric Harris glares into the video camera. He takes a pull from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and winces. Then he talks smack about the pathetic losers involved in school shootings in Oregon and Kentucky. “Do not think we’re trying to copy anyone,”…
Jon Vaupel had been cooling his heels in a federal immigration detention facility in Aurora for three months when the guards finally told him to pack it up, that he was being released. What they didn’t tell him was that he was being released to deputies from Adams County, where…
Last weekend was shaping up to be a big one at the Denver Pavilions, which is now billing itself as an “urbanist” destination. After a private party the week before, Jazz @ Jack’s — a longtime fixture in the Platte Valley — was going to unveil its larger, much snazzier…
What the fuck was Michael Brown thinking when he decided to go on The Colbert Report on March 28? Survey says: He wasn’t thinking. Matter of fact, the ex-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief is getting pretty famous for not thinking, an oversight reflected in everything from his infamous musings about…
You’ve seen them: slick, highly produced commercials about the oft-delayed construction of a new, 730-foot digital tower on Lookout Mountain. The spots declare that viewers in the Denver metro area are being denied free, over-the-air HDTV by recalcitrant residents who have refused every compromise offered to them by the eminently…
Parole Call The hard cell: Thanks to Alan Prendergast for again exposing the doctrinal policies of Governor Bill Owens and the Republicans who are bleeding Colorado to death (“Over and Over Again,” April 6). Parole in Colorado is a thinly disguised system whose main mission is to keep as many…
Having been deep in it most of his life, John “Jake” Johnson can smell trouble coming. So last year, when the fifty-year-old inmate found out he would be paroling from a private prison in Trinidad to a homeless shelter in downtown Denver, the news smelled very bad indeed. “I told…
Larysa Maslenko was depressed when her first marriage failed after just six months, but instead of posting a profile on Match.com, the Ukrainian woman signed up for a free service that promised introductions to marriage-minded American men. “I didn’t know what to do. All the time I was crying,” says…
Instead of cake and candles on her 28th birthday, Baby Girl got khakis and handcuffs, courtesy of the Denver County jail. Just a couple of months after graduating from the Chrysalis Project, a twelve-month drug-treatment program for crack hos (“Lost and Found,” June 2, 2005), Baby Girl was already back…
Brian O’Connell’s past finally caught up with him on Monday, March 27. The 38-year-old naturopath was sentenced to thirteen years in prison after pleading guilty in February to multiple criminal charges, including criminally negligent homicide, practicing medicine without a license, assault and theft. Police learned that O’Connell might be practicing…
It’s springtime in the Rockies, and things are officially getting weird. For the third year in a row, Governor Owens and Mayor Hickenlooper engaged in their annual game of catch, and right when Owens was answering a reporter’s question, Hick up and fired the high heat, beaning the Guv square…
One argument for greater diversity in American newsrooms can be summed up as follows: Press types who have firsthand knowledge of minority issues are apt to produce more accurate, more meaningful reports about related topics than will those who don’t. Likewise, this line of reasoning suggests that even well-intentioned outsiders…
Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow Never on Sunday: Jessica Centers did a great job with “Last Call,” in the March 30 issue. Blake Harrison isn’t alone in wishing he could buy a six-pack of his favorite brew on Sunday. I can’t remember the last time my buddies and I tipped a…
Blake Harrison sips on an Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale as he talks about his two lifelong passions: public policy and finding the perfect beer. The Odell 5 is not his favorite — that place in his heart is reserved for Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale — but it’s…
I’ve always felt just as drunk after a day of drinking 3.2 as I do after a day of drinking any light beer. Yet friends and acquaintances claimed to despise 3.2. They’d go to great lengths to avoid it, even if they knew that 3.2 percent alcohol by weight is…
Russell Enloe first brought his aesthetic proclivities to South Broadway when he opened American Aces Vintage Clothing in 1991. Back then, the block of small storefronts was dilapidated and struggling with a high number of vacancies, but the cheap rent and off-the-grid locale made it a perfect place for fringe…
