The former Bonfils Theatre was once one of Denver’s cultural jewels, a community playhouse that brought thousands of people a year to East Colfax Avenue to watch everything from fairy tales to Shakespeare. For the past decade, however, the 1953 building, which was renamed the Lowenstein Theater in 1985, has…
No-tell hotel: Fred Kummer, owner of the Adam’s Mark, got slammed by a federal magistrate for discriminating against employees at his St. Louis hotel; knocked down the I.M. Pei-designed hyperbolic paraboloid on the 16th Street Mall; gave Denver those odd, alien ballet dancers as a consolation prize; and is in…
Local boxing aficionados are so desperate for a revived state boxing commission that one of them, Dr. Russell Simpson, even attempted to recruit his friend Liz Romer, the governor’s daughter, to deliver a message to the governor beseeching him to appoint a commissioner by executive order. But despite the unorthodox…
Let’s hear it for Don Baylor. The Rockies skipper has signed up for another two years’ worth of 15-13 games at Coors Field. He’s ready to endure another two years’ worth of ulcers whenever he looks down at the bullpen and sees the reluctant warriors huddled there, praying they won’t…
Info: Letters Life in the Fast Lane Wow! Steve Jackson’s “Live Fast, Die Young,” in the November 6 issue, was really powerful. It was a great true-crime story, but also a very telling indictment of a throwaway segment of our society. How could any mother abandon a thirteen-year-old child? And…
I was holding my sister’s one-month-old son in Framingham, Massachusetts, a mile away from the women’s prison, when a jury found its most famous resident, Louise Woodward, guilty of killing eight-month-old Matthew Eappen. Around Framingham–if not in England, the nanny’s native country–people were cheering. I could only hope that somewhere,…
Surprise! Colorado is a primo place to ski and snowboard. Oh, you knew that? Well, did you know there’s a secret stash on Aspen Mountain that only the locals have found? Did you know there’s a place near Vail that offers six tacos for $2 during happy hour? Or that…
The sun was just beginning to dip behind Pikes Peak when Detective Mark Finley turned off the highway between Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs and onto a narrow back road. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of his car as he steered through the seedy collection of single-wides that made up…
The beginnings of WCCR/88.3 FM (“grassroots radio at the bottom of your FM dial”) probably can be traced back to Angel Babudro’s childhood fascination with radio. But being forcibly banned from KVNF, the public-radio station in the western Colorado town of Paonia, was a crucial factor, too. Still, that’s being…
Joanne and Manny Salzman don’t really mind the sounds of city life–the trains rolling through Union Station across Wynkoop Street, the power-lunchers pouring into the brewpubs, the thousands of Rockies fans marching past their front door on their way to Coors Field. It’s all part of living in lower downtown,…
Deathwatch reunion: Discomfort was the theme when the five media witnesses to the execution of Gary Davis gathered at the Denver Press Club last Friday to discuss the intensive coverage of the event. No one was eager to volunteer for another such assignment. “I wasn’t emotionally upset about it until…
The U.S. Forest Service and the Vail ski resort have pressured Colorado Division of Wildlife personnel to stop grumbling about an expansion by the giant ski resort that would damage what is possibly the last refuge of the state’s elusive lynx population. The war of words over the lynx, revealed…
Telluride’s George Harrison wants to make one thing perfectly clear: He does not sell, nor has he ever sold, a bong. A bong, mind you, is a piece of drug paraphernalia used to smoke marijuana, and it is illegal to sell one in the state of Colorado. If someone were…
Don’t worry about a thing, Oklahoma. That 69-7 thumping Dr. Tom’s hard-running Cornhuskers laid on you Saturday afternoon was child’s play. Don’t sweat it, Central Michigan. Steve Spurrier’s Florida Gators may have chomped on you 82-6 earlier this year, but that ain’t nothing. Don’t get too upset, East Carolina, Rutgers,…
Promises to Keep I found Ward Harkavy’s article on the Promise Keepers’ “home church” (“Preach for the Stars,” October 30) simultaneously enlightening and troubling. My own “dreams” and thoughts these last few days have been about the PK folks, wondering what need they manage to fill in the hearts of…
Associated Press, September 27, 1997: A dime-sized finished diamond that tips the scales at more than 16 carats, found in a Colorado mine, may be the biggest cut stone of its kind from North America. Rocky Mountain News, November 19, 1872: The Denver Diamond Company has “had prospectors in the…
From their sanctuary high on a hill in Gunbarrel, members of the Boulder Valley Vineyard Christian Fellowship can gaze at the Rocky Mountains through a huge wall of glass. On October 4, however, all eyes turn upward to twelve huge TV screens hanging from the church ceiling. At high noon,…
Strike while the irony is hot: Just last Thursday, Mayor Wellington Webb was showing off the city’s snow equipment and emergency-preparedness plans, bragging that Denver was ready for anything El Nino might throw our way. He delivered his boast outside McNichols Arena, the facility bearing the name of the late…
The Denver Urban Renewal Authority’s most persistent problem lately doesn’t stem from any of the agency’s multi-million-dollar downtown development projects. Instead, it’s coming from a lone homeowner who holds DURA responsible for a four-foot crack in his home’s foundation. The ongoing fracas has seen DURA officials file criminal harassment charges…
To anyone who commutes along Sixth Avenue, the reservoir in front of the Oak Express furniture store is a familiar landmark. Several years ago Kenny’s Marina used it as a watery test track, where customers could try out new boats. More recently, Oak Express installed a giant fountain that blasts…
A horse is a horse, of course, but it’s what comes out of the horse that’s bugging Ted Robinson. The Wheat Ridge resident lives next door to Kim and Curt Fear and their 22-year-old mare. And though the horse’s name is Song, these days Robinson is the one singing the…
To hear the assorted hairdos on the boob tube tell it, you would have thought getting the Broncos onto that snowbound plane to balmy Buffalo Saturday night was a social imperative akin to feeding malnourished babies or keeping nuclear terrorists out of the Pentagon lunchroom. Forget about the sleepless expectant…
