In today’s New York Times piece on the Colorado Legislature adopting “Rocky Mountain High” as a second official state song — “Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind” — reporter Kirk Johnson offers this gem: “A lot of people probably think it’s already the state…
Wow — dope really does affect your memory. Because in all the yapping over making “Rocky Mountain High” a second official state song, no one at the Colorado Legislature mentioned a potential snag. Back in 2005, Coors Brewing Co. bought the rights to the song — the lyrics and music,…
Rounding the corner at DIA Monday morning, I ran smack into artist Gary Sweeney, who moved from Denver more than a decade ago, but left plenty for this city to remember him by. “America…Why I Love Her,” for example, the airport’s most beloved public-art piece, complete with a map of…
Give PeaceJam a chance. On March 8, a handful of celebs — including Nate Corddly and Martin Sheen — will launch Refunds for Good, which aims to take $20 billion collected over the past 108 years through a federal telephone tax — the “War Tax” — and redirect it to…
Denver Restaurant Week, Day 1 (an eyewitness report from Patricia Calhoun) Saturday, February 24: The numbers are staggering. Restaurants participating in the third annual Denver Restaurant Week, which starts tonight, are booked solid. At Prime 121, a Cherry Creek steakhouse that hasn’t exactly been packing them in, they have reservations…
The controversy came out of almost-thin air. After Barack Obama announced that he would give up smoking, The Hill asked other presidential contenders about their vices. “I smoke the occasional cigar,” said Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. And then, in passing, he told the reporter a funny story — about how…
Steve Horner leans in for a hug. But I do not hug on a first interview. Not even if the subject of the interview has already left me a lengthy voice-mail warning that I, and this newspaper, “have been totally insensitive to the needs of this egalitarian society” — not…
Mike Jones is having a bad week. The Capitol Hill apartment building where he lives suffered a fire, and he’s out of his place and in a hotel — with just one week to go until he has to turn in his book on his three-year “relationship” with Pastor Ted…
After a few weeks of counseling, Ted Haggard — who just reached a settlement with the New Life Church that dictates he never talk about the Mike Jones scandal that led to his resignation from the church he founded — insists he’s “completely heterosexual.” Never mind the gay porn, the…
“I can no longer, with good conscience, tell my neighbors and consituents that ‘the city is on its way,'” Denver City Council President Michael Hancock said in an e-mail to the Hickenlooper administration. Almost six weeks after the first flakes fell, the natives are getting restless. But just imagine if…
As of nine this morning, the Denver Election Commission had received 40,039 ballots — and those are ballots filled out by voters, not returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable (another 30,000 or so), after the DEC had already given itself an A+ on its performance with this single-ballot…
In this Miami Herald column, Dave Barry takes off after Colorado representative and perhaps presidential candidate Tom Tancredo. Among other things, Barry calls Tancredo (the subject of a recent blog) an “ignorant yokel blowhard” and a “xenophobic dimwit.” And I am not making this up! “Back in November,” Barry writes,…
These 50-degree days aren’t just melting snowbanks. They’re going to make a new traffic jam disappear, too. The city has yet to decide on the final design of the new Justice Center, but work has already begun on that project, necessitating the closure of 14th Avenue east of Speer so…
Within hours of the death of Darrent Williams, an imprompu shrine sprang up where the Denver Bronco had been shot, with fans leaving candles, notes, flowers, teddy bears, an empty can of Bud Light and jerseys — including one tattered orange Bronco shirt accompanied by this note: “This is my…
Yesterday afternoon, after making my daily pass by the Darrent Williams shrine, I drove by the old Ritter/O’Brien campaign headquarters at 11th and Bannock. And what did I see but First Lady Jeannie Ritter, loading furniture into the big, green family van. Not supervising — although she had a few…
Another day, another Denver story in the national news. But at least the news was good early this morning — as opposed to yesterday’s prediction of another snowstorm snarling the country’s travel, and Sunday’s report of an avalanche at Berthoud Pass. As ABC wrapped up its news reports just before…
“It’s not exactly a secret that Bill Ritter’s people and John Hickenlooper’s people aren’t always filled with love toward one another. But maybe it truly was a coincidence that the inaugural 21-gun salute was fired toward city hall.” That’s the word on the front page — the front page! —…
On Monday, January 15, the Denver Election Commission will start collecting mail-in ballots for the special, one-item election that Denver City Council approved on December 26. But before Denver voters can start turning in those ballots that could make Denver the 63rd out of 64 Colorado counties with an elected…
The unofficial Darrent Williams shrine at 11th and Speer not only survived the most recent snowstorm, but it’s grown. Mourners who marched from the Shelter, the club at 1037 Broadway where Williams was partying on New Year’s Eve, to the site of the shooting left more flowers, more cards, more…
Bad day for Denver on the national news. On Fox & Friends this morning, the five-minute hourly update included a piece on the Darrent Williams slaying, a segment on Denver’s third big blizzard (including a live report from the National Western Stock Show on the status of all those frozen…
A few hours after news broke that Darrent Williams had been shot dead, people started leaving tributes to the Bronco at the scene of the shooting — hats, signs, cards, flowers. Keith Schrum, associate curator of manuscripts at the Colorado Historical Society, decided to take a look at the unofficial…
At seven last Friday morning, as I shoveled my walk — again — I watched a city trash truck coming down a nearby street, pause so that the driver could contemplate the right-hand turn that would have led to my rutted, iced-in block — and then continue on in the…
