Blogs

Jefferson Park United Neighbors (JPUN) have been butting heads with developers over a proposed apartment complex on the site of the shuttered Baby Doe’s and Chili Pepper restaurants in northwest Denver for a long, heady 20 months, which you can read about here and here. When it came time last Monday night for City Council to make the final vote on whether to approve the zoning change that would allow the potential development, named Pinnacle Station, to move forward, most observers thought the hearing would be an open-and-shut deal. Either Council would green light the project or they wouldn’t. After all the time the neighbors spent battling the project, what impact could one last hearing have on their case?

Score one for democracy: The public comments at the City Council meeting led to several shake-ups in the battle over Pinnacle Station — though not all of them to JPUN’s advantage.

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There is something about Chipper Jones that just drives white-trash women crazy. It’s uncanny. Much like NASCAR, buckets of fried-chicken, pit bulls, cold sores, black eyes and having way more babies than they can afford, white-trash women are unable to exist without a love of the Atlanta Braves slugger. It’s a great litmus test: want to find out if your broad is trash? Ask her about Chipper Jones. She gets weak in the knees? Total refuse. Throw some beef jerky off into the woods and bone out when bitch sprints to retrieve it.

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Kirsten Dunst has been lighting up the fashion blogosphere with her on-again-off-again relationship with style as she trounces through European press junkets promoting Spidey 3, trying ever so hard to convince crowds that she could, in fact, portray falling if shoved off a cliff. (Naturally, nobody believes her.)

The snarky fashionistas over at Go Fug Yourself had plenty to say about Kiki and her various outfits, but they fully mischaractarized this one (photo courtsey of People.com) as looking like "she's about to hop on the trapeze at a gay circus."

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In general, the Denver dailies did an impressive job of covering the trial of former Qwest chief executive Joe Naccho (pictured). But while the Denver Post's Al Lewis, in particular, made a strong showing throughout the process, the Rocky Mountain News narrowly bested its crosstown rival, thanks to the energy and extensiveness of its offerings, as well as a competitive spirit exemplified by the internal memo reproduced below.

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This cover story in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine is a lengthy but surprisingly slipshod examination of the Robert Charles Browne case, the former tree farmer who claims to be one of the most prolific serial killers in history, with 48 victims scattered across the country. The piece, by Chip Brown, can be found here (registration required).

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Camel No. 9 Glamour Ball
3 Kings Tavern
04/206/2007

Slideshow

R.J. Reynolds has redirected its energy. No longer does the cigarette company focus on baiting children with a seemingly innocent mascot, but they have now moved on to cornering the hipster market. Or maybe the children of the Joe Camel days are the hipsters of today, and productions like the one they put on last night at 3 Kings Tavern was just the tail end of a decade-long advertising campaign. Either way, Camel must be doing something right, because the amount of money being funneled into each of their events – Danny Masterson at the Bluebird in March, and The Faint at The Ogden in November of last year -- might even reach into the quintuple digits. I just hope there’s some left over when I sue R.J. Reynolds’ ass for chemotherapy money. Damn you, Joe! Damn you, and your beguiling ways.

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All of us mile-high slack-jawed mouth breathers can rejoice: culture has finally reached our little Podunk burgh. As the front page of yesterday’s Denver Post declared, “Surreal world comes to Denver.” As Post fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan breathlessly reported, “Bubbling up from the street-smart subcultures of surfing, hip-hop and hot-rodding, a new art form has emerged.” And this movement, alternatively labeled urban contemporary art, pop-surrealism or 21st-century figurative art, isn’t just limited to the big, scary cities on the coasts, notes MacMillan: “It is spreading across the United States and can now be seen at the Limited Addiction Gallery, which opened in February on Santa Fe Drive.”

Stop the press! What news! There’s finally urban contemporary art in Denver! There’s only one problem with MacMillan’s article: such work has been around this town for a long, long time. While many are excited about Limited Addiction Gallery, the space follows in the footsteps of other local galleries that have embraced this artistic movement, such as Plastic Chapel, Andenken Gallery and Design, Capsule Gallery, Joy Engine in Boulder, and now-defunct facilities like Revoluciones Collective Art Space and DC Gallery.

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Gerald Styron, a write-in candidate for Denver City Council District 1, paid a visit to the Westword offices today. It seems the old guy – who seriously looks like Methuselah – was pissed that Kenny Be didn’t include him in this week’s Worst-Case Scenario cartoon.

Of course, he didn’t actually read the cartoon (natch!) so he missed the point that this election has been so boring that it might as well go straight to DVD. As such, a handful of the candidates from District 8 (the only really hotly contested district) also didn’t get any face time.

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Nothing warms up the soul for a little rock ‘n roll better than reggae.

Warren Haynes, a latter-day recruit of the famed Allman Brothers Band, probably learned that long ago. But regardless of when Haynes crossed paths with Toots Hibbert, frontman of the legendary Jamaican band Toots and the Maytals, Denverites at the Fillmore Auditorium on April 26 got to reap the benefits.

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Museum of Contemorary Art/Denver director and curator Cydney Payton made her final choices in the Cydney Payton Design Challenge, in which eight designers from the Tamarac Square Fashion Project sketched her a “museum-opening oufit” (appropriate since the new MCA building opens this fall). Payton considered both the artistic and stylistic nature of the sketches, and after a lot of deliberating chose:

Runners up: Mona Lucero and Jose Clark

Winner: Tricia Hoke

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The April 27 Rocky Mountain News features the final installment of "Border Street," a year-long series about an unnamed Denver block where, according to its introduction, "old meets new, English meets Spanish, legal resident meets -- and sometimes marries -- illegial immigrant." The concluding piece, dubbed "The River Churns Endlessly, Tossing Two Cultures Together," is a microcosm of the opus as a whole. It overflows with ambition, and frequently displays the abundant talents of its writer, columnist Tina Griego (pictured) -- yet it also contains more than its share of teeth-grinding moments.

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It’s said, it’s done, it’s over. Cat knows who won the final challenge, a day-to-evening look, and Cat knows who is going to be representing D-Town at New York Fashion Week in the fall.

You want to know who won… click here for the complete slideshow. Then come back to Cat and post your thoughts on the shows, the designers and the fashions! It’s been a whirlwind, but we’ll do one more prize – a $25 gift card to Rio Grande for their super tasty and potent margaritas – for the designer with the most “votes.”

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As noted in the March 8 story “Bus-ted,” Parents Television Council Denver Chapter Director George Robison is suspiciously good at the violent video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories – but that doesn’t mean he wants ads for the game splashed all over Regional Transportation District trains and buses. After such an ad campaign last fall, Robinson and a host of supporters petitioned the RTD board to stop accepting ads for adults-only games.

Despite Robison’s appeal, a request bolstered by RTD’s Operations, Customer Service and Marketing Committee, the RTD board voted last month to reject the video-game ad ban. The problem, decided board members, was that banning access to free speech-protected video games based on subject matter may be unconstitutional.

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The slideshow from last night's Tamarac Square Fashion Project will be up later this afternoon -- a lot of pictures to go through! -- but in the meantime, here's some fun video of the Little Black Dress and Ace Hardware challenges, shot by Johnny Morehouse and Ben Kronberg, to keep you entertained!

If you want to start commenting on last night before you've seen the images, feel free to post your comments here. Remember, the designer with the most comments, or "votes," wins the final prize from Cat.

Little Black Dress

Ace Hardware

Opening Night

Here's a bonus for fans of Joseph Arthur, who's profiled in the April 26 edition of Westword. The published piece was based on an extensive Q&A reproduced below. Among the topics Arthur touches upon: his risky new solo album, Let's Just Be, and why at least one song on it is closer to punk rock than most of the current music labeled as such; the assembling of his current band, dubbed the Lonely Astronauts; his decision to start his own label, rather than submitting to the whims of corporate suits; the issue of how much material is too much to release in a given time period, complete with a defense of Ryan Adams; a few words about his intriguing online tour blog, which can be accessed by clicking here; his participation in a Bruce Springsteen tribute at Carnegie Hall; the almost dada-like sequencing of his new CD; and a hint about what treasures remain in his musical vault.

Go, Joe, go:

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