While the truncated 4/20 festivities have turned Civic Center Park into ground zero for a discussion of which events are a First Amendment exercise and which are commercial, the Civic Center Conservancy will soon take a pot-free breather. On May 8, the Civic Center Conservancy, Historic Denver Inc. and Denver…
Dear Mexican: Although I’m familiar with your column, I don’t read it regularly. But today I was struck by something you said recently. And I quote: “We called ourselves Spanish, we considered ourselves white.” I’m Mexican, and I consider myself “white” because I’m not black or red or Asian. I…
Civic boosters love to travel to other cities to see how they do business — and maybe engage in some monkey business themselves. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce’s City-to-City Leadership Exchange (LEX) will make its 24th annual trip in October — this one to Pittsburgh (last year was Austin)…
The Platte Valley & Western Railroad club started packing up its thirty-year-old model-train layout in the basement of Union Station last weekend, with no idea where the 2,000-square-foot display will eventually land. Union Station Alliance, the developer of Union Station, says it’s “offered the basement of the Sage Building on…
On Saturday, while thousands of freeloaders hopped on board the new West Line to ride light rail from downtown to Golden and back, members of the Platte Valley & Western Model Railroad club gathered in the dark basement of the shuttered Union Station and started dismantling the layout they’d initially…
Dear Mexican: I have always liked ranchera music. As of late, I have wanted to get deeper into it as far as the history, the culture and especially the songs and lyrics go. The older I get, the more rancheras seem like poetry to me…sounds cursi, I know. I was…
The space fills with the sounds of dogs barking, horses galloping, people running, gasping for breath. Red, white and blue lights illuminate quotes on white cloth shrouding the artifacts beyond: a poster calling for Indian fighters, a pair of moccasins, a howitzer. If this were one of the seven other…
Since we broke the sad news yesterday that the two model-train layouts that have been in the basement of Union Station for decades — eight decades, in one case — will not be there when Union Station reopens in 2014, fans have been hopping on board to help find them…
The beloved model-train layouts in the basement of Union Station have reached the end of the line. Back when two developers were competing for the contract to redevelop the facility, both promised there would always be a spot for the model trains — and the clubs that ran them. And…
Civic Center is quiet this morning: the grass raked, the trash collected…and the crime scene tape down. The Denver Police Department had used it to cordone off the southeast corner of the park after after multiple shots rang out — stampeding the crowds and leaving three 4/20 celebrants with bullet…
The Sand Creek Massacre isn’t the only grim chapter in Colorado history that will mark a major anniversary in 2014. Next year is also the hundredth anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre, the darkest moment in the Great Coalfield War. On April 20, 1914, a skirmish broke out between the Colorado…
Dear Mexican: What do we need to do to make the güeros understand that we come in peace? As Mexicans, we are from this great American continent as well, but in the average closed-minded English-speaking folks’ definition of “American,” it’s amusing to see they don’t understand what it really means…
The University of Denver has been meeting with members of the DU community to discuss the “mascot development” process. Doug Hirsh has been following the process with particular interest: He was the first human Denver Boone, chosen to portray the caricature that Walt Disney donated to DU to serve as…
While the University of Denver explores the role that John Evans, its founder, had to the Sand Creek Massacre, some people have moved beyond study to action. Aaron Sears, for example, has written a script for a movie he plans to direct: The Soul of Silas. The film is far…
In the late ’80s, after a Broncos Super Bowl loss, a CBS report said Denver had never been number one in anything besides air pollution. But that wasn’t true: At the time, Denver had Smiley’s, the world’s largest laundromat. And this modern marvel’s existence had been shared a few years…
Dear Mexican: We’re in state testing this week at the high school where I teach. After the students finish a section, they can only sit and read or just sit. I did an experiment: I chose the cholo-est, most tatted, pierced non-readers and dropped your book on their desk. Students…
Given Arapahoe County’s record, Fox reporter Jana Winter should be glad she’s only facing contempt-of-court charges, not the death penalty. As media outlets were chasing every possible tip in the days following the Aurora shootings last July, Winter came up with a real scoop: James Holmes had sent a notebook…
Even as Coors Field was filling up last Friday, fans were learning Ballpark neighborhood mainstay Snooze would no longer support the city’s May 2012 ban on camping because it hadn’t helped the homeless community. Snooze had initially supported that proposal — a stance that inspired Occupy Denver to boycott the…
As the weather heats up, so do concerns that the camping ban Denver City Council approved a year ago has not worked as envisioned. Last week, Denver Homeless Out Loud released the results of its survey of 500 homeless people on the impact of the ban, which took effect on…
Is the University of Denver’s hunt for a new mascot turning into a Boone-doggle? That’s what some alumni are wondering after attending a Thursday focus group, part of a campus-wide process to calm controversy and select a new mascot. Denver Boone, a coonskin cap-wearing caricature, was adopted as the image…
What makes Colorado Colorado? That’s what “Making Colorado,” the state’s new branding mission announced yesterday, wants to determine — and it’s set up a website where you can offer your own suggestions that will help determine the state’s new brand. This DIY approach drew the attention of the New York…
Dear Mexican: Please explain to me why so many mexicanas seem to think it more important to stay home and baby-sit than to attend school (so that they may become more in life than producers of offspring). As an educator (lately of students identified as “at risk” for failure in…
