The 1991 court victory against Amoco proved the last hurrah for service-station dealers in Colorado. The company chipped away at the trial verdict, partially overturning the decision on appeal. In 1996, exhausted from the struggle and facing a new round of appeals, the dealers agreed to settle, took the money…
This month, a team of analysts will begin sniffing around the Denver Police Department, hunting for some fat to trim. They’ll likely find a good amount stashed in one place: the rank of captain. Former police chief Tom Sanchez, who held the keys to the big office for just a…
When he was a cop in Eaton, Eric Harding spent Halloween 1996 cruising around in his patrol car, pulling up in front of unsuspecting trick-or-treaters with lights flashing. He would then emerge from the vehicle, clad from the neck down in his police uniform and from the neck up in…
As governor, Dick Lamm made national headlines when he pronounced that we all have a “duty to die” and get out of the way. But today the former Governor Gloom is only 65, which means he may have another twenty, or even thirty, years left before he fulfills that duty…
To many who live at 37th Avenue and Lipan Street, Bernabe “Indio” Franco is little more than a name on a sign, someone who lived in the neighborhood many years, then died. Yet there are times when people who live in this corner of north Denver step into the park…
For many young urbanites, the cultural vitality of a community can be judged by the number of homegrown, advertiser-supported periodicals that are piled up near the doorways of CD stores or funky restaurants — and by those standards, Denver’s in the dumper. At any given time during the last decade,…
To Hilltop and Back Home, sweet home: I had strong feelings regarding Stuart Steers’s “You Can’t Go Home Again,” in the November 2 issue. What a strange way local politician Susan Barnes-Gelt discusses free enterprise! The “son of a bitch” who purchased her childhood home did so legally, and he…
Hunched over the counter of the only 7-Eleven in Widefield, an elderly black man named Leo mulls over what could be his most consequential purchase of the day. You never know; this could be the time, the magic moment, that life-altering, red-letter, once-in-a-lifetime lucky day. You just don’t know. This…
Sorting through a stack of planning documents and books on a shelf in her office, Denver city planner Ellen Ittelson pulls out a faded booklet with yellowed pages. It’s a Denver planning-department primer from the 1940s, and the main topic is how to remake the city’s streets to accommodate cars…
The Hilltop neighborhood, which sits on a bluff east of Colorado Boulevard and north of Alameda Boulevard, was largely developed in the 1940s and ’50s, and most of its homes are suburban-style ranch houses that could just as easily have been built in Lakewood or Littleton. For years, Hilltop was…
Russ Seward gets up with the prairie chickens. So does Carol Twiss. In fact, so many people in eastern Yuma County wake with the birdies that the local historical society has printed buttons featuring a picture of the prairie chicken and the slogan “I got up with the prairie chickens.”…
The homeless lost more of their homes at the former Lowry Air Force Base on October 17, when Catholic Charities and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless accepted a cash settlement to end a civil suit against the Lowry Redevelopment Authority. The agreement reduces the overall number of “transitional units”…
The Rocky Mountain News apparently didn’t have room for third-party candidates in its October 22 voters’ guide, but it managed to make some space on Tuesday after the Libertarian Party coughed up a chunk of change for a full-page ad listing the state Libertarian candidates that the Rocky didn’t –…
All by himself, Rick Rosner is a few of my favorite things. In 1986, the story of his life thus far constituted my first Westword feature. He had just won second place in Omni magazine’s Smartest Man in America contest, which he aced by completing a long quiz of which…
“The liberal media.” The phrase is so stale that it’s practically fossilized — not that this condition has prevented politicians of a certain stripe from regularly trotting it out in advance of next week’s balloting. But while it might be true that a sizable percentage of reporters, editors, news directors…
You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst or a Pentagon code-breaker to understand the threat that Pat Bowlen issued last week. It was the ultimatum of an angry man, pure and simple. If the professional football team Bowlen owns and loves and realizes a handsome profit from doesn’t win its…
You’ve Got Male! Ice breaker: Patricia Calhoun’s October 26 “Skating on Thin Ice” is the typical response I expected your “paper” would produce regarding the arrest of Patrick Roy. Ms. Calhoun recklessly lumps Roy’s actions in with those of convicted abuser and former Denver Donkey Vance Johnson, as well as…
The thing about it is, Barry McDonald says, he doesn’t think he actually attracts weird and creepy phenomena. “But I do seek it out,” he explains. “And if you seek out something long enough, you’ll find it.” Back when he managed the Officers’ Club at the old Lowry Air Force…
Lucy Walker, the 74-year-old founder of EDEN Theatrical Workshop, sits sipping her coffee with measured grace. At this breakfast banquet extolling the benefits of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which apportions sales-tax money to arts and cultural organizations throughout the Denver metro area, arts enthusiasts offer skits, fancy slide…
A wooden windmill looms out of the October fog along rural Weld County Road 39, thirty miles east of the Rocky Mountains. Standing guard over a rickety tub, the old windmill pumps water for a dozen head of cattle chewing mouthfuls torn from the rangeland of yucca, sagebrush and prairie…
When Lieutenant Governor Joe Rogers organized a conference on youth education last spring, he got a lot of help: The University of Denver lent him the Magness Arena at cost; BeWell.net, a local Internet provider, set up a Web site; polling company Floyd Ciruli and Associates pitched in its expertise;…
At first glance, it looked like there would be a major turn in the long-running feud between local television outlets and residents of the Lookout Mountain area over the construction of a digital TV tower there (“Something in the Air,” April 6). In the October 18 Canyon Courier, an article…
