Opinion & Commentary

On December 1, the City of Denver will start collecting city sales tax from every medical marijuana dispensary in the city. “Tax revenue agents will be meeting with all dispensaries, giving them the information,” says Denver City Attorney David Fine. Not that the city has a list of all the…

There’s still a month to go before the year ends — plenty of time for more people to join the elite flock of fuck-ups for 2009 (and for Josh McDaniels to get back on the list, after his last-second reprieve with yesterday’s win). Still, there’s been no shortage of Colorado…

I haven’t thought about pot this much since eighth grade,” says one Colorado official. But over the past two months, as the medical marijuana industry has continued to boom in this state — inspiring a parallel boom in efforts to regulate the industry, with some municipalities proposing rules and others…

You’d think that supplying medical marijuana to someone who needs medical marijuana — and has already had a licensed physician attest to that — would be enough to qualify a person as a “primary caregiver.” But you’d be wrong, at least according to the Colorado Court of Appeals. Four weeks…

Before you tuck into your turkey, give thanks for people like Brad and Libby Birkey, who in October 2006 opened SAME Café – a pay-what-you-want restaurant at 2023 East Colfax Avenue whose name stands for So that All May Eat. Running SAME Café has “really opened our eyes,” Libby told…

Who’s the biggest turkey in Colorado? We’re accepting all nominations, fair or fowl, for the most unsavory characters in the state this year, and will post our Top Ten Turkeys of 2009 list here first thing Friday. And although it’s hard to imagine anyone topping the antics of Richard Heene,…

John Mariani, the food writer for Esquire, publishes a weekly newsletter, Virtual Gourmet, in which he regularly serves up industry news — and another critic. In the November 22 edition, it was Jason Sheehan’s turn. Under the heading “THAT’S VERY GOOD, JUST KEEP ON TRYING TO THINK LIKE A NORMAL…

On Saturday, a group of Tea Party activists gathered at the Colorado State Capitol to celebrate Thanksgiving — and small government — by reading the Mayflower Compact. For political theater that laid an egg, it didn’t come close to the turkey served by Roy Romer-era Lieutenant Governor Mike Callihan, who…

Although the metro area’s third Earls was rumored to be opening today in the former home of Ocean at 201 Columbine Street, it now looks like that will be pushed back until Friday, November 27 (according to the poor fellow who just opened the phone at 5:50 a.m.). But there…

Tom Tancredo will have his Kumbaya moment at 10 a.m. today, when he gathers with Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis and other top GOPs — including former governor Bill Owens and former gubernatorial Josh Penry — to unveil an agreed-upon set of Republican principles. And that will mark the end…

Erik Osborn, the disgraced developer who has a December 7 trial date in Denver District Court, failed to show up for a hearing yesterday. The Denver District Attorney’s office sent this brief note to some of the complainants in what has grown into two separate criminal cases against Erik Osborn,…

The last time Anthony Bourdain passed through Denver, on a 2002 loop hyping A Cook’s Tour, he found nothing in this town to recommend a return trip — and said so, loudly.Still, he got a warm welcome when he returned yesterday for “An Evening with Anthony Bourdain” at the Buell…

Representative Wes McKinley is sitting in a bar in Denver, but his mind is hundreds of miles away — on the rangeland of southeastern Colorado, that stunning swathe of cactus and canyons and ranches that have been in families for generations. The land that the U.S. Army would like to…

Today, Councilman Charlie Brown is presenting his proposal for regulating the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries to the Denver City Council’s Safety committee. We live blogged the meeting. To read the account in chronological order, start at the bottom item below. 10:50 a.m.Councilman Linkhart calls up four industry representatives who’ve been…

They may all be independent restaurants, but the members of the Denver Independent Network of Restaurants know how to work together. Close to fifty of them have joined to create DINR decks, which could be just the thing to stuff a food-lover’s stocking this Christmas. Every deck holds 52 cards,…

Fort Collins, Pueblo and Loveland have joined the ranks of Colorado cities with moratoriums on additional medical marijuana dispensaries — although their actions yesterday were more limited than the hysterical “emergency” designation on the day’s hearings had implied. Fort Collins wound up approving just a three-month pause, Pueblo went for…

City Council rep Charlie Brown has taken the lead on corralling medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver. And he’s taking the task seriously — so seriously that, last week, he took his cowboy hat and traveled to Los Angeles (using campaign funds, not taxpayer dollars) to check out that city’s booming…

Although Nathan and Ian are the technical victors in our Tony Bourdain ticket giveaway, the real winners are diners in Denver, because the contest entries posted by readers serve as a terrific cheat sheet for the very best places to eat in town (and proof that Denver did not deserve…

Welcome to cannabis Colorado. This weekend, at a gathering of publishers from across the country, all the talk was about Colorado and pot — and they weren’t just asking if I was carrying. No, they wanted to know about the booming business in medical-marijuana dispensaries in this state — and…

The last time Anthony Bourdain came to Denver, on a book tour in 2002, he wasn’t impressed with the town — and said so. So he’ll have a lot to answer for during his Q&A at the Buell Theatre next Wednesday night. Helping to grill Bourdain:: Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper,…