Opinion & Commentary

Lori Midson is off on a mouth-watering mission: She’s winging her way to New York City, where she’ll attend tonight’s dinner at the James Beard House being prepared by the Five — which now comprises ten local chefs. The Five concept got its start in 2008, when Leigh Sullivan decided…

Talk about a veiled threat! On Saturday, a bride emerged from a LoDo salon hours before her scheduled nuptials in the mountains, only to find a Denver boot on the Range Rover that a friend had borrowed so that they could arrive at the ceremony in style. Now we’ve got…

Last September, I told the story of Kristen Stillman. She’d survived incredible horrors while imprisoned in a home in northwest Denver, where her mother had left Kristen and Will, her twin, when they were just eight. Eric Torrez, the head of that household, tortured the twins, raping Kristen and fathering…

Does the City of Denver boot vehicles on weekends? For years, scofflaw drivers felt safe parking their too-many-ticket cars all over town on Saturday and Sunday. But we recently learned from the Department of Public Works that the city will indeed boot cars on Saturdays. And this weekend, a booted…

Last year, billionaire William Koch bought Buckskin Joe for $3.1 million, and moved the buildings to his private ranch outside Gunnison. But now you’ve got another chance to buy an old-timey Colorado town… if Koch, who also dropped $2 million on a Billy the Kid tintype, isn’t there with his…

Decades of this city’s history gathered last night in the stunning Gates Reading Room at the Denver Public Library to honor historian Tom Noel, aka Dr. Colorado, who received this year’s Eleanor Gehres Award. And the fact that Noel had served on the Eleanor Gehres Award Committee for 2011 was…

Denver restaurateurs are some of the most generous people in town, donating food, labor and cash to all the good causes forever hitting them up. But while the idea of a generous paid time-off policy for employees sounds good in theory, restaurant owners — and former restaurant owners, like Governor…

Now that the scaffolding that masked Mountain Mirage is gone, and the defective fountain that was supposed to create a silhouette of the Rockies but instead leaked down into the trains has been removed and replaced by open space, you can see the bones of the Jeppeson Terminal at Denver…

I’m back in the town where I grew up, the town where my father grew up, the town where his father moved 130 years ago, the town that started out as an Illinois farm community but is now a pricey suburb of Chicago whose water is tied for second-best in…

Let’s hope Mayor Michael Hancock has Curt Fentress’s number on speed dial. The Denver architect was brought in to fix Denver International Airport before it ever got off the ground decades ago, and the expansion plans he crafted back then could be looking very good now that starchitect Santiago Calatrava…

The house has stood on the edge of downtown Denver for 120 years. For 88 of those years, it was the home of Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Colorado’s first poet laureate; his words line the rotunda of the State Capitol and mark the spot where Denver got its start at Confluence…

Mayor Michael Hancock defined his concept of a “win” for Denver in any “win-win-win” solution for the National Western Stock Show during a speech before the venerable City Club of Denver yesterday: “Folks, we have got to find a way to keep the National Western Stock Show in Denver,” he…

Kristen and Will Stillman survived unimaginable horrors during the dozen years they were prisoners of Eric Torrez. The twins were just eight when their mother, Karen, got kicked out of a fourth homeless shelter and took her children to a tiny house on Irving Street where Torrez lived with his…

When I equated the One Book, One Denver program with a McDonald’s Happy Meal — people-pleasing and easy to digest — I didn’t know that McDonald’s had signed on to sponsor this year’s celebration of reading, which will focus on The Art of Racing in the Rain. But hey, at…

When Elitch Gardens Amusement Park first moved downtown, it planned daily fireworks displays — until neighbors complained. Now, after sixteen years, Elitch Gardens finally has those nightly shows, and though it’s had to scale back the pyrotechnics, it will end the summer season with a bang on Sunday night…

Mayor Michael Hancock will reveal the eighth selection in the One Book, One Denver program today outside of the new Denver Municipal Animal Shelter, where a giant sculpture of a dog stands guard outside. “Sunspot” is a stunning reminder of how much the arts can enrich our lives… and our…

Sometimes the simple answer is the right answer. Simple, stupid even, but the right one. In a comment on Lisa Jones’s blog about the coverage of the Troy Lowrie bust — which fueled Peter Boyles’s radio show yesterday, and is again today — a commenter suggested that Westword’s Latest Word…

On Sunday, the world got to see amazing feats of athleticism as the USA Pro Cycling Challenge wound its way through stunning Colorado scenery to the finish line by the State Capitol. Tonight, the world gets to see another amazing feat of Colorado athleticism: Professor Splash has made it to…