Calhoun: Wake-up Call

Tap+Smart, Denver Water, Patricia Calhoun

What with all the history being made in Denver these days, it’s not surprising that Mayor John Hickenlooper might lose track. On July 9, the city celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Auditorium Theatre — which had opened on July 8, 1908, just in time for that year’s Democratic National…

Drinking at high altitude can be hazardous, as delegates to the Democratic National Convention could soon discover the hard way. As advance warning, convention organizers should enlist the poster child for high-altitude alcohol affliction: Susan Olsen, the child star who became Cindy Brady a few days after her seventh birthday,…

Two weeks ago, the Denver dailies and TV newscasts were full of stories about an early Sunday morning shooting in LoDo — only six blocks, or eight blocks, or ten blocks (depending on who was doing the counting) from where the Democratic National Convention will convene at the end of…

Although I haven’t moved in a decade, I now live in LoHi. The reason? The area of town where I live — right above I-25, at the very edge of Highland — is newly hip, and a newly hip area needs a hippish name. Enter lohi, as it’s referred to…

It was a bad week for the city to turn down its air-conditioning and turn up the emphasis on Cool Biz, the energy-saving plan that Mayor John Hickenlooper had announced last Thursday. City Hall was already muggy on Tuesday, July 1, and the place really heated up after Rene Marie…

We were seated at our favorite table at the Buckhorn Exchange, right beneath the two-headed calf and not far from the whale’s penis, discussing the relative merits of elk and rattlesnake, when a cameraman came by. He was filming ten of Denver’s best places for the Democratic National Convention, he…

On Tuesday, John Hickenlooper delivered his fifth State of the City speech since the former geologist/brewpub owner/raconteur became the upset choice for mayor of Denver. That a man with that resumé could pull off such an upset is certainly one of the best things about this city: Anything seems possible…

The city’s abuzz over Rene Marie’s surprise decision to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” with the Black National Anthem at yesterday’s State of the City speech at the Wellington E. Webb Building. A surprise to everyone else in the room, Mayor John Hickenlooper included, but not to the jazz singer. Marie’s…

Last weekend, on day seven, my second attempt at raising a crop of Denver dailies took a tumble off the deck. Although the cause seemed lost, I swept up some of the dirt and tossed it back in the pot. And on June 30, lo and behold, a slender seedling…

Saturday, June 28, was a good day for the Independence Institute. Its sixth annual ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) Party attracted a record number of participants to the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club for the “most politically incorrect” event of the year. But while Jon Caldara’s group advertised the 2008 AFT…

Talk about Cool Biz! Governor Bill Ritter was apparently very, very serious when he and Denver mayor John Hickenlooper whipped off their ties last Thursday to show how sincere they are about saving energy in government buildings this summer with their Cool Biz initiative. Because when he went on Meet…

Twenty years ago, when this city was still dreaming of getting a baseball team, the area above the just-designated LoDo Historic District was fondly known as NoDough. There was simply no dough in the blocks past the last outposts of civilization at 20th Street: El Chapultepec and Mori, the Japanese…

Clip and save: After the shootings early Sunday morning, June 22, there’s lots of talk about violence in LoDo — and if people can’t be clear about what they’re talking about (and judging from the conversation so far, they can’t), at least they can be clear about where they’re talking…

On day eight — a dozen short of the predicted germination date — my second pot of Denver daisies hit the dirt. As detailed in this report, the sole Denver daisy to emerge from my last attempt mysteriously disappeared into dust while I was out of town. This time, the…

After 75 years of continuous operation, Billy’s Inn closed early this year — but now it’s coming back! The building at 4403 Lowell Boulevard started life as a service station in the ’20s, and then Billy and Judy Smith turned it into Billy’s Inn in 1933. The kitchen closed in…

For so many of us, watching Meet the Press has been a Sunday ritual, a celebration of civic engagement and free speech that we observed religiously. With the passing of Tim Russert on Friday, our Sunday service is missing its leader — but his spirit lives on. Back in April,…

Jeff Peckman, David Letterman, UFO, extraterrestrials

Just got copied on a form letter sent by one Bradley Guildner of Thornton to CBS regarding Swingtown. “The offensive content clearly violates our local community standards and does not reflect your license obligation ‘to serve the public interest,'” he writes. “I urge you to refuse to air future episodes…

A moment of silence, please, for Ted, the inanely named little brother of United Airlines. The low-cost, shuttle-like service to nearby destinations made sense when it was announced in late 1993; the name never did. It was the equivalent of renaming an economically challenged portion of this city “Ver.” Even…

I try to be faithful to Frontier, the homegrown airline that took off in 1994. And when I heard that it was adding flights to Missoula, Montana, where I frequently travel, it seemed that my longtime loyalty had paid off: I used to fly the old Frontier direct to Montana,…

My Denver daisy got off to a fast start, but it’s been slow going — and growing — since then. By June 4, day twenty, from when I poured the seed packet into my scrounged pot of dirt — and the official date for germination — my packet had produced…