“I said, “Are you gonna let me take a spin on your ride?'” a teenage youth shouts to a security guard riding by on a Segway. Sporting tattoos and a Carmelo Anthony jersey, the teen cocks his head and pauses, as if he actually expects the guard to let him…
By last year, the Regency Hotel had fallen a long way from the days when it served as Elvis’s crash pad. Under Art Cormier, the former owner of Smiley’s Laundromat, the once-elegant hotel had turned into a layover for day laborers and a major nightspot for Mexican immigrants — legal…
A quintet of twenty-somethings will throw down — and maybe throw up — on behalf of Hurricane Katrina survivors this weekend. The tenderhearted tipplers have concocted the Katrina Relief Drink-a-Thon set for Saturday, September 24, at Lodo’s Bar and Grill, where they’ll toss back their favorite cocktails for charity. “This…
I count rabbits. That’s not the name of the latest coming-of-age indie darling to stun the packed, B.O.-scented screening rooms at Cannes. It’s just something I do. For the most part, I’ve abandoned the OCD behavior that I exhibited as a child. I no longer name and catalogue inanimate objects,…
Hurricane Katrina can’t be said to have ushered in a new golden age of journalism, since the lethal weather system struck the Gulf Coast mere weeks ago, and the press’s commitment to the story already shows signs of waning. Still, the generally impressive work done by national correspondents has trickled…
The Bottom Line Comic relief: I just wanted to congratulate Westword on adding more comics — and by locals! Although no one will ever replace Kenny Be in my heart, I laughed out loud over both Overheard Conversations and Rebels of Reality in the last issue. Ethan Wenberg can fling…
“I feel for these people, because we were there as refugees.” That’s what Trinh Chu has been telling clients — she asks the non-Vietnamese to call her Trina — at Top Nails, the Aurora salon she owns with two of her sisters. This morning, Trinh is sitting Indian-style on a…
Genesis: Focus on the Family packed them in like sardines. At $35 a head, more than 1,500 teens, parents and youth-group leaders had converged on Colorado Springs from 21 states, Puerto Rico and Canada for the two-day Dare 2 Dig Deeper apologetics conference, aka the “Big Dig.” A few dozen…
“I’m going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night’s sleep,” Michael Brown, Colorado’s most infamous export, said last Friday after he was pulled out of Louisiana. “And then I’m going to…
What’s So Funny was in a fraternity. Straight up and down, Sheldon. Can I call you Sheldon? Doesn’t matter, Sheldon, because the thing was, my fraternity was not very frat-like. There were no shirtless meatheads tossing a football around outside the house. Date-rape scandals were non-existent, and the recruitment process…
The first woman is an anti-abortion protester who Rocky Mountain News columnist Bill Johnson says repeatedly threatened him over a two-year period. The second woman is an e-mailer who thinks the protester is fictional — and although Johnson insists otherwise, he was worn down by her persistence. Earlier this month,…
Fed Up All’s well that ends oil: It was a very nice surprise to read Alan Prendergast’s “Duke of Oil” article in the September 8 issue, very reassuring to know there are federal employees like Bobby Maxwell who are dedicated to serving the public interest. His work has demonstrated integrity…
“Rise, rise, shake your hips and move your thighs. You wanna see, you wanna see, see the Bolts come alive. Do it!” Two decades after graduating from Manual High School, Anna Jones still remembers her alma mater’s pep cheer. “I was such a white girl, but going to Manual taught…
Rats. That’s what many of the neighbors remember about the early days of Chamberlain Heights. And when it wasn’t the rats, it was the hos — crack or otherwise — who moved into their yards after construction took over the abandoned lot at East Colfax Avenue and Steele Street that…
Malissa and Scott Spero Owners, ArmAzem Bookstore & Cafe 3215 East Colfax Avenue Years on Colfax: One week (they just bought the business) “We spent a year teaching ESL in Korea, and we were dreaming about owning a coffee shop. When we got back, Scott saw an ad on Craig’s…
For 28 years, Bobby Maxwell crunched big numbers for the government. He wielded a calculator with patience and determination for the Minerals Management Service, a branch of the Department of the Interior responsible for collecting royalties on oil, gas and mineral leases on federal lands, Indian reservations and offshore waters…
In 2001, under then-director Joe Allbaugh — who’d headed George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign — the Federal Emergency Management Agency predicted that a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was one of the three most likely, “most catastrophic disasters facing this country.” When Allbaugh left the agency — to consult…
Sometimes it takes a little time apart from a person to make you really notice what’s changed about him. If you see someone every day, you’re not going to realize that he’s gotten taller or that he finally had a voice box installed in place of the festering hole in…
The cover illustration for August’s Toilet Paper seems calculated to offend as many constituencies as possible in the free monthly’s Colorado Springs base of operations. Labeled “The Fashions of the Christ,” the drawing (by an artist who calls himself XT) spotlighted a “Commando Crusader” series of refrigerator magnets built around…
My Blue Heaven The joke’s on us: I love Josh Blue! I love Adam Cayton-Holland for writing “Kind of Blue,” and Westword for putting him on the cover of the September 1 issue. Josh is not only inspiring, but he is — as Adam says — fucking funny. Period. Laura…
Todd Hennis is not the sort of man to underestimate the dangers of wandering solo through an abandoned mine. The first time he went into the Mogul, a once-thriving gold mine high in the San Juans above Silverton, he took a professional crew from Utah with him to do an…
I can’t get over the new elevators. Even coated with layers of drywall dust and construction plastic, they’re an improvement — make that a miraculous improvement — over the last elevators here. They’re lit, for one thing. No Nazi swastikas are carved into the walls, for another. And there’s no…
