John Hickenlooper didn’t even know he had a cousin named George until one day in 1991, when a fellow in town for the Denver International Film Festival went over to the Wynkoop Brewing Company for a beer. Hickenlooper isn’t a very common name, and those who carry it tend to…
The tipster poured her story into my ear, a long, involved tale of bureaucrats behaving badly. “I’ll talk to the writers and see if we can get that in the paper,” I told her. “Oh, I don’t care about the paper,” she said. “I want it on TV.” Since I…
George Hickenlooper has spent the last several months with Jack Abramoff, the jailed influence-peddler who’ll be the focus of his next film, which stars Kevin Spacey. For his last effort, the filmmaker used a much less experienced crew of actors: the staff of Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, who just happens…
I’m looking over the Platte Valley at the sliver of the “Travel by Train” sign I can still on Union Station through pricy lofts and office buildings constructed over the last few years. And some day there will be a lot more of them, if current plans for the revelopment…
This morning, the 2009 class of North High School will rehearse for tomorrow’s graduation ceremonies at the Colorado Convention Center. The entire graduating class. That’s because on Tuesday, Denver Public Schools put a halt to North principal Ed Salem’s plan to prohibit about 50 out of 180 graduating seniors from…
Ken Gordon was term-limited out of the Colorado Senate in 2008 — but he’s not going quietly. In fact, he’s started a new blog, where he offers this thesis: “I believe that the American people fundamentally misunderstand their form of government and their place in it.” As proof, he offers…
School Daze Against all odds, Michael Ballez will be graduating from North High School this year. Those odds include: the classmates who’ve dropped out, one by one, until only a handful of the kids he started with as a freshman remain in school. The pressures he’s faced — and fought…
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, May 9, all state employees received this e-mail from Julie Postlethwait in the Department of Personnel & Administration: “This past Wednesday, Governor Ritter took time out of the last week of a busy legislative session to acknowledge all you do for our State; he officially…
At 12:34 a.m. on May 9, an e-mail from Julie Postlethwait, PIO for the Colorado Department of Personnel Administration, arrived in the in-boxes of all state employees: This past Wednesday, Governor Ritter took time out of the last week of a busy legislative session to acknowledge all you do for…
Timing is everything. Early on, as president-elect Barack Obama started filling his Cabinet, Ken Salazar’s name kept surfacing — but so did word that what the first-term senator and former Colorado Attorney General ultimately wanted was a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the meantime, he was perfectly…
Governor Bill Ritter is heading down to Colorado Springs today, where he’ll host a town-hall meeting and sign a number of bills. And along the way, he’ll no doubt pass a handful of unauthorized signs along I-25, all asking, “Why does Ritter hate El Paso County?” Why indeed? I asked…
According to state senator Greg Brophy’s blog, “he’s been called one of the most conservative members of the legislature and a Prius driving, bicycle riding, eco freak. You decide.” But first read this, and you might come up with a couple of other descriptors. On April 24, he recounted the…
If the Colorado Legislature can tie a debate on the death penalty to the dismal economy, no reason California can’t do the same for a discussion of legalizing marijuana. “Well, I think it’s not time for (legalization), but I think it’s time for a debate,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday…
It’s impossible to travel through Five Points without thinking of Charles Cousins. His signs are everywhere — offering this property for rent, announcing that his company manages another. But Cousins, who passed away Monday morning at the age of 91, left his mark in so many other ways. The history…
Yes, the Nuggets are advancing, but Colorado can already claim a real winning team: the East High Constitutional Scholars, who just won the We the People contest in Washington, D.C. — for the third year running. The high schoolers are already preparing to make it four in a row, but…
With two cases of swine flu (the “other white flu”) confirmed in Colorado and bumbling Vice President Joe Biden calling for quasi-quarantine, it could be time to go to your bookshelves and dust off that copy of The Stand, Stephen King’s 1978 novel. In this epic (it was re-released, uncut,…
After pork producers and Israeli officials complained about the name “swine flu,” world health authorities have come up with a new name for the pending pandemic: “the other white flu.” Variations on that joke have been flying around the Internet for days, but to Brian Gansmann, who was on the…
Andrew Speaker, Denver’s accidental tourist, has some sense of timing. Speaker, the focus of our last international health-scare when he went on the lam, and in the air, after being diagnosed with tuberculosis and warned not to fly, this week filed suit against the Centers for Disease Control for invasion…
At Greetings From Colorado, a store on the A concourse of Denver International Airport, don’t expect to find many actual Colorado greetings. Yes, there are cards from Leanin’ Tree, the Boulder-based Western art emporium that Edward P. Trumble founded back in 1949; and gilded aspen-leaf jewelry created in this state;…
“Colorado Speaks for Itself.” That’s the tagline of a new Colorado tourism campaign, a variation on the old “Let’s Talk Colorado” that puts quote marks around pretty pictures of the mountains. But sadly, the campaign can’t leave well enough alone. A pricey two-page spread in the April 20 edition of…
At Monday’s tourism rally, Governor Bill Ritter urged us to “Rediscover Colorado” this summer. I started by walking the length of the 16th Street Mall at lunch yesterday, and found that this seventeen-block stretch — touted as the most successful pedestrian mall in the country and one of this town’s…
Verse came to worse last night at the Central Library, where close to a hundred people gathered for last night’s Fresh City Life poetry reading inspired by “Mustang,” Luis Jimenez’s blue horse sculpture out at Denver International Airport. We were in the depths of the basement, but spirits soared as…
