Opinion & Commentary

Erik Osborn, already sentenced to ten years in community corrections earlier this month, will be back in Denver District Court today for a second trial. He’s again charged with felony theft, for again allegedly using funds raised from one development project for another. Osborn’s first conviction, in December 2009, involved…

The last time any member of the public was in what’s now known as the McNichols building, the old Carnegie library on the edge of Civic Center Park, it was to pay an overdue property tax bill. But the city’s finance offices long ago moved into the Wellington E. Webb…

John Haney is a Denver cop who happens to own a neighborhood joint, Haney’s Coffee Shop. Susan Shepherd is a Highland Mommy who’s all about urban farming. Jon Lehmann even has a campaign chef. They’re all among the ten candidates running for the District 1 Denver City Council seat recently…

This city is full of angels. On Sunday, I helped kick off the Parr-Widener 5K Walk-Run, an annual event that benefits the A+ Angels, a mentoring program at East High School, and is named for John Parr, Chase Parr and Sandy Widener, who died in a car crash at Christmas…

Denver’s zoning code update, a project in the works for a half-dozen years, finally gets a public airing at a Denver Planning Board meeting at 1 p.m. today at the Wellington E. Webb Building, 201 West Colfax Avenue. Planning staffers will also be on hand from noon to 3 p.m…

The breakfast burritos started going out the doors a few minutes ago, when the three spots in the Best Breakfast Burrito Neighborhood all opened their doors for the day and the customers began coming in, looking for a to-go breakfast burrito: a steaming-hot aluminum foil tube filled with eggs, potatoes,…

Even before today’s celebration of International Cannabis Day commences in Civic Center Park at 9 a.m., this city’s booming medical marijuana business has already inspired a number of out-of-town journalists to come to Denver to cover the event. And there will be plenty to report on today, because the Cannabis…

Charlie Sheen didn’t study his Colorado legal history before he headed to Aspen for a vacation last Christmas. Three decades ago, Colorado was at the cutting edge of recognizing the dangers of domestic violence. The first battered women’s shelters in the country were established here, and Colorado was the first…

Next thing you know, Denver won’t actually be a mile high. The current Men’s Journal casts a shadow on Denver’s claim to have 300 days of sunshine annually, pegging our sunny total at 245. Turns out, boosters are counting not days, but hours of the bright stuff. How many days…

Over the past few years, cupcake shops have popped up across town; they’re this decade’s frozen yogurt shop. In Denver, you can trace the trend back to Happy Cakes Bakeshop in Highland, and that shop — now in a new location in the courtyard at 3434 West 32nd Avenue –…

Denver’s touted as a mecca for the creative class, but no tourist would guess at this city’s artistic inclinations from a walk along the 16th Street Mall — sixteen blocks of empty storefronts and shlocky souvenir shopping. But this week, and sadly this week alone, the Create Denver Pop-Up Market…

A chocolate-chip cookie. That’s the consolation prize for faithful Midwest fliers, now that Republic has announced that it will be keeping the Frontier brand, and merging in Midwest flights. But at least one remnant of Midwest will remain: the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies served on each flight since 1986. In…

I’ve been a fan of Frontier since its first incarnation, when the in-flight mag featured the “From the Cockpit” column by Captain Chick Stevens — a more reassuring mascot than the animals that took off with Frontier’s reincarnation. But still, Republic was wise to stick with the high-flying Frontier brand,…

“Patricia. this might seem weird at first,” read the mash note in my e-mail yesterday. “went by applebees and thought about u.” Yes, it seemed weird, because I’ve been to an Applebee’s maybe once in the past decade. But it also seemed weird because I’d gotten two very similar notes…

It had to happen. For the past year, Denver has been living up to its billing as the Mile High City, hitting new heights daily as the medical-marijuana business shows no signs of slowing down. And now, inevitably, The Daily Show has come to town to profile our booming dispensary…

“I’ve been there,” pronounces the subject line in the e-mail blast from Joe Biden that just landed in my in-box. And judging from the message that follows, the veep is still there, stuck in the ’80s, when the letters pages of newspapers actually had power. When they were, in Biden…

Developer Erik Osborn thought that One Lincoln Park would be his towering achievement. Instead, it could land him in the big house with a 24-year sentence. Osborn will be in court this morning for sentencing on his felony-theft conviction in connection with financial shenanigans at One Lincoln Park, the luxury…

In just four days, RTD buses racked up three collisions that resulted in four fatalities. The latest victim? Marvin “Chip” Webb, who was riding his bicycle in Lafayette when he was struck by a bus Tuesday night. Webb, the owner of Chip’s Place, had worked at Chip’s Cafe, a diner…

A snowstorm at dawn, patio weather at sunset — yesterday’s weather was a Colorado classic, one that seemed to back the favorite booster claim that Denver enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year. Except… When the April issue of Men’s Journal included Denver on its list of the 25 Best…