Feature

Frank Whitworth went down to the local gay bar. It was the usual Hide & Seek drinking crowd, and Whitworth knew everyone. A couple of men, still in suits and ties from their work day, teased the bartender boisterously. One guy, his name stitched on the patch of his blue…

Show & Sell

These days, more and more people are getting their news from television — or at least they think they are. But while local TV newscasts cover the events of the day (a handful of them, anyway), they’re also sophisticated selling machines. And their target, dear friends, is you. That’s just…

The Combatants

KWGN-TV/Channel 2: Channel 2 is often overlooked in the late-news Olympics because its broadcast, which airs from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m., doesn’t directly compete with those produced by other local stations. But the newscast got a credibility boost when Ernie Bjorkman, who’d left Channel 2 years earlier in favor…

What You See Is What You Get

A newscast is made up of a lot of bits and pieces that go by so quickly, many viewers don’t even notice them. So we’ve slowed down a sample program — the November 8 broadcast on Channel 2 — to help you catch what you’ve been missing: the good, the…

The Gay Nineties

Frank Whitworth went down to the local gay bar. It was the usual Hide & Seek drinking crowd, and Whitworth knew everyone. A couple of men, still in suits and ties from their work day, teased the bartender boisterously. One guy, his name stitched on the patch of his blue…

Breast Reduction

Inside Gary Haney’s office, in the basement of a building just off Broadway and 6th Avenue, there’s a knee-high stack of hardcore porn videos that don’t get much of a workout anymore. The covers are plastered with wide-open mouths, bare breasts and stuffed orifices, and frankly, Haney couldn’t care less…

Off Limits

At last! A true public service announcement from WestwordAfter you’ve packed away pounds of turkey, and stuffing, and gravy, and yams, and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and then settled your expanded self into a chair to watch a Thanksgiving football game and look through some long-neglected mail, do NOT…

Son of Stern

Most award-winning radio programs have something in common: respectability. So imagine the surprise of local media pros when the Best Evening Show prize doled out at the 1999 A.I.R. (Achievements In Radio) Awards ceremony held November 16 at the Gothic Theatre went to RoverRadio, arguably one of the least respectable…

Crop Circles

Perhaps the most wonderful thing, Cheryl Bailey thinks, is that phones are ringing all over the hotel, but none of the calls are for her. In the three resort kitchens, dishes are piling up, but they’re not her mess. She’s so far from that workaday life — the one in…

The National Free-for-All League

Kurt Warner may not know it, but Some Things Never Change. With six weeks left in the National Football League season, the perennially miserable Cincinnati Bengals are 1-10 and eager to clean out their lockers. The flightless Philadelphia Eagles are once more lolling in the NFC East basement with a…

Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?

On the Internet, there’s no accounting for taste. That makes it easy to explain the existence of Web pages with names like www.buttsacrossamerica.com and www.donkeysex.com. But what about that goody-two-shoes bluemountain.com? The crudest thing this site offers is its graphic design, a throwback to the days of 14.4 modems and…

4th and Wrong

I. HOW TO WIN On the second Saturday in October, in a small park in southwest Denver, two groups of children come together to play a game of football. Each of the boys is hidden beneath his beefed-up shoulder pads and oversized helmet. At their age, most of the players…

Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?

On the Internet, there’s no accounting for taste. That makes it easy to explain the existence of Web pages with names like www.buttsacrossamerica.com and www.donkeysex.com. But what about that goody-two-shoes bluemountain.com? The crudest thing this site offers is its graphic design, a throwback to the days of 14.4 modems and…

Like So Much Drama

Act I, Scene I. The Drama Teacher: Enter stage left. Stephen Nye doesn’t mind a little drama. In fact, he welcomes it. Nye, who has taught theater at the Denver School of the Arts for three years, didn’t think twice about producing two medieval-era plays with strong Christian themes and…

A Rough Road Ends in Jeffco

After eighteen months of fighting against a proposed gravel quarry in their neighborhood, Coal Creek Canyon homeowners finally blew a hole through Asphalt Paving Company’s plans. Their victory came November 9, on the sixth and final day of public hearings before the Jefferson County commissioners, who were considering whether to…

Off Limits

Tempest in a teepeeLast week the Senate Ethics Committee cleared Harley-riding, party-switching senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of conflict-of-interest charges filed by Phil Doe’s Citizens Progressive Alliance and two other environmental groups. The charges stemmed from Campbell’s involvement — as a local landowner — with the proposed sale of the Vallecito…

Run for Their Lives

There is no simple way to explain what most people cannot understand. And after 135 years, there is no simple way to heal a wound that still bleeds. Yet on Thanksgiving weekend, Otto Braided Hair will try. If the good weather holds and plans proceed on schedule, he will spend…

Man Without a City

Here’s a startling statement: It’s entirely possible that more people in this nation are familiar with Ken Hamblin than any other Denver-based media figure. After all, his radio program, which airs from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays, is heard on more than a hundred stations in the U.S., his newspaper…

Moments of Glory

As midnight draws near for the decade, the century and the millennium, humankind’s most powerful, most undeniable impulse is to make lists. By now, of course, most of the good lists are already taken. Chiseled in stone. Scotch-taped to David Letterman’s ego. Posted on the Internet. Magnetized to the refrigerator…

Liars on the Line

For years, Coloradans have been wondering: What exactly is the problem with US West? As thousands of customers from Fort Collins to Parker waited for months to get new phone lines, neighbors asked each other why a regulated monopoly with guaranteed profit margins couldn’t seem to get its act together…

Welcome to the Real World

Maybe it’s the political message of Johnny Cash’s Man in Black blaring from a back room that keeps blood pumping through the veins of the college students answering phones and pecking at their keyboards inside the Westside Outreach Center. Maybe it’s the sharp chill in the building, where the furnace…