Twenty years ago, when this city was still dreaming of getting a baseball team, the area above the just-designated LoDo Historic District was fondly known as NoDough. There was simply no dough in the blocks past the last outposts of civilization at 20th Street: El Chapultepec and Mori, the Japanese…
Clip and save: After the shootings early Sunday morning, June 22, there’s lots of talk about violence in LoDo — and if people can’t be clear about what they’re talking about (and judging from the conversation so far, they can’t), at least they can be clear about where they’re talking…
On day eight — a dozen short of the predicted germination date — my second pot of Denver daisies hit the dirt. As detailed in this report, the sole Denver daisy to emerge from my last attempt mysteriously disappeared into dust while I was out of town. This time, the…
After 75 years of continuous operation, Billy’s Inn closed early this year — but now it’s coming back! The building at 4403 Lowell Boulevard started life as a service station in the ’20s, and then Billy and Judy Smith turned it into Billy’s Inn in 1933. The kitchen closed in…
Dear Mexican: I recently went to a Los Angeles Dodgers game. There are always rivalries in any sport, of course, pero the white people cheering for the St. Louis Cardinals clapped and cheered when their team did something good. When the Dodgers did good, the Mexican fans — mostly homeboys…
For so many of us, watching Meet the Press has been a Sunday ritual, a celebration of civic engagement and free speech that we observed religiously. With the passing of Tim Russert on Friday, our Sunday service is missing its leader — but his spirit lives on. Back in April,…
Dear Mexican: This might be a seasonal question, but why do Mexicans like swimming in their clothes? Is it a Catholic thing? I remember my pocho Catholic cousin even bathed at home in his T-shirt and underwear through his adolescence. He claims the nuns told him it was a sin…
Jeff Peckman, David Letterman, UFO, extraterrestrials
Just got copied on a form letter sent by one Bradley Guildner of Thornton to CBS regarding Swingtown. “The offensive content clearly violates our local community standards and does not reflect your license obligation ‘to serve the public interest,'” he writes. “I urge you to refuse to air future episodes…
A moment of silence, please, for Ted, the inanely named little brother of United Airlines. The low-cost, shuttle-like service to nearby destinations made sense when it was announced in late 1993; the name never did. It was the equivalent of renaming an economically challenged portion of this city “Ver.” Even…
I try to be faithful to Frontier, the homegrown airline that took off in 1994. And when I heard that it was adding flights to Missoula, Montana, where I frequently travel, it seemed that my longtime loyalty had paid off: I used to fly the old Frontier direct to Montana,…
My Denver daisy got off to a fast start, but it’s been slow going — and growing — since then. By June 4, day twenty, from when I poured the seed packet into my scrounged pot of dirt — and the official date for germination — my packet had produced…
Dear Mexican: First it was the Native Americans, then the blacks, then the Japanese. For a while, Muslims. Now I fear that American prejudice will soon overwhelm Mexicans. It’s one thing to be called a dirty Jap or border-hopper, but is it possible that America will cause another ethnic group…
It’s not easy being green. Not much fun, either. Although restaurants specializing in good, healthy food abound in Denver, and many chefs focus on using local products whenever possible, the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee has a way of sucking all the flavor out of a concept with its bossy,…
Denver is a city built on great neighborhoods, filled with characters and coffeehouses. I fell in love with Stoneman’s Row when I first moved to Denver and would take frequent trips to the original Muddy’s, just so I could detour past these eight ancient stone houses standing sentinel over the…
On June 6, Denver will see its last Thirst Friday — because this summer, one of Colorado’s biggest cultural assets will also become a liquid asset. As of July 1, the state can start issuing art-gallery permits that allow galleries to serve (not sell) alcohol for four hours a day,…
Dear Mexican: I’m a Mexican-American, but I always lie and tell people my ancestors were from Spain and immigrated to the United States in the 1920s. My whole family says this. We feel embarrassed if we tell people that our heritage is Mexican because Mexicans in the USA are so…
Celebrity-starved Denver has a new star — and he didn’t arrive empty-handed. Pastry chef and Food Network personality Keegan Gerhard and his wife, Lisa Bailey, moved to Denver earlier this year, and today they’ll unveil D Bar Desserts, their jewel-box of a bakery/dessert bar at 1475 East 17th Avenue, right…
Dear Mexican: Why did the comedian Cantinflas never catch on in Hollywood? I thought he was supposed to usher in the Mexican wave of actors and movies that would help transform Hollywood.El Curioso Dear Curious: Do people even know who Cantinflas is anymore? For those of you not familiar with…
The face of the River North neighborhood changes almost daily. Last week, the old Denargo Market — the warehouses where famers unloaded produce for decades, and where Jack Kerouac did some heavy lifting sixty years ago — came down, changing the view to the west from the Broadway/Brighton Boulevard viaduct…
The concept behind the Colfax Marathon seemed like a can’t-miss proposition. After all, Colfax Avenue — America’s longest main street — runs exactly the length of a marathon, and passes through some very colorful parts of three towns. But what worked conceptually didn’t work in reality, according to race organizers,…
When Goodfriends closes at the end of service on Saturday, May 17 (or, more likely, early on the morning of May 18), it will close for good. With it will go a lot of memories — since the restaurant/watering hole at 3100 East Colfax Avenue has been open almost thirty…
