The Home Front: ‘White coffee’ spray painted on Denver’s Ink! Coffee shop following gentrification sign joke

“Someone spray painted ‘white coffee’ on the ink! Coffee location in Five Points and broke a window there in what appears to have been retaliation for a sign the business placed out front this week that read, “Happily gentrifying the neighborhood since 2014,” reports The Denver Post. “The sandwich board sign sparked outrage and –and drew national attention — when local writer and event organizer Ru Johnson shared a picture of it on her Twitter account Wednesday afternoon. Johnson, who has contributed to The Denver Post’s Reverb and The Know sections, added the caption “yo @inkcoffee we are not cool with this sign on 29th and Larimer. Bad decision. Bad design. BAD. W.T.F.” The sign went viral on social media, motivating so many one-star reviews and angry posts on ink’s Facebook page Wednesday night that the company shut down the review function.”

“A Texas man was killed in a car crash early Friday on Interstate 25 just south of Colorado Springs,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “The 27-year-old from Lufkin, Texas, who Colorado State Patrol did not identify, was riding in the front passenger’s seat of a 2016 Nissan Versa driven by 28-year-old Oscar Guerrero-Olivares from Angelina, Texas at about 1 a.m. The two were traveling southbound on I-25 when Guerrero-Olivares lost control of the car, drifted off the right side of the road and hit a light pole. The car spun clockwise and rolled four times.”

“As the frigid temperatures of winter approach, advocacy groups for the homeless are again preparing to help those without a warm place to escape from the cold,” reports The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “Feed My Sheep already has a record number of men signed up for its overnight shelter program, which started for the season this week. At the first of the season the overnight program is never at capacity, but once the weather turns it’s a different story, said Karen Peppers, the organization’s director. Peppers said that she knows of eight men still living in the open on the hillsides around Glenwood Springs.”

“Boulder County prosecutors charged a 15-year-old in juvenile court with first-degree murder Wednesday in the stabbing death of a Longmont woman, then requested the case be moved to district court,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “There, the teen — Aiden von Grabow, of Lakewood — would be tried as an adult in the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Makayla Grote on Saturday evening at her Longmont apartment. A transfer hearing was scheduled for March 5 to 7, at which time a judge will consider the motion to move the juvenile case to district court. Because the boy is under the age of 16, prosecutors could not directly file adult charges.”

“He just wanted his hair to look good more often, and that’s the irony of it all,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “Nate Ryken asked for weekly haircuts when he was at Berthoud High School, and his mom noted how expensive that was, so for his 16th birthday, she gave him a pair of clippers as a gift. “Before that I was playing around with some old clippers we had. So I started cutting my hair and thought I was doing all right,” Ryken recalls. “Then I sat my little brother down; he didn’t really have a choice. It was a learning experience for me. He’d sit in the chair for an hour and half, two hours, and I was trying to do a good job. He’d walk away with some not-so-good haircuts at times.” It’s all been by trial and error, that and watching YouTube videos. He lived through some bad hair days, but he eventually became better. Then he branched out to his high school buddies in his garage, with a free clip being their main incentive to allow him to expand his skills. Now in his junior year as a Colorado State fullback, Ryken has pretty much opened shop in the locker room.”

“Earlier this year, a citizen working group determined that Boulder needed to undergo a ‘culture change’ with regard to its engagement of community members in local government issues,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “Now, to implement that change. On Tuesday, Boulder’s new engagement director, former city spokeswoman Sarah Huntley, updated the City Council on progress made to this point and on efforts to be made in the future. Essentially, the working group’s 30-plus meetings boiled down to an assertion that Boulder too often gets started on various projects without first soliciting citizen feedback, and thus ends up moving at a pace and in a direction that feels uncomfortable to the community. The working group recommended “nine steps to decision-making.” Huntley said the city assembled a staff group to follow up on the working group’s recommendations ‘to really suss out how we might make this a reality’ and ‘make sure we are embodying them in any framework that the city adopts.'”

“Colorado became the first state in the nation after this month’s election to complete a ‘risk-limiting’ audit, according to the Secretary of State’s Office,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “Such an audit, ordered by the Colorado Legislature in 2009, is a procedure designed to provide statistical evidence that the election outcome is correct, and has a higher-than-normal probability of correcting a wrong outcome. Risk-limiting audits require human beings to examine and verify more ballots in close races, and fewer ballots in races with wide margins. “Colorado is a national leader in exploring innovative solutions for accessible, secure and auditable elections,” said Matt Masterson, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, who witnessed the audit. ‘Colorado’s risk-limiting audit provided great insights into how to conduct more efficient and effective post-election audits. (The commission) is eager to share some of the lessons learned with election officials across America.'”

“Dee Judd was home alone July 12 when her blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels. Her brain fuzzy and her body aching and burning from head to toe, life moved in slow motion,” reports The Coloradoan in Fort Collins. “Thinking she might be dehydrated from working in the garden on a hot summer day, she steadied herself along the wall in her Glacier View home to get to the couch, drank water and took her blood pressure: 312 over 218, a life-threatening reading. She didn’t trust the number and thought, “The cuff must be broken. I just need to rest.” Her husband, Al, was on a motorcycle trip in Oregon with his son and wasn’t expected home for days.”

“The Galloping Goose rail bus era in Southwest Colorado will be featured on Rocky Mountain PBS’s “Colorado Experience” on Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m,” reports The Durango Herald. “Seven Galloping Geese ran on the Rio Grande Southern Railroad from 1931 to 1952. They carried cargo, mail, and passengers between Dolores, Telluride and Ridgway. The documentary will feature their mechanical and weather-related adventures, how they have been preserved, and why they attract visitors from around the world. “A lot of the filming and interviewing was done during one of our Goose tours in Chama, New Mexico,” said Joe Becker, motorman with the Galloping Goose Historical Society, in Dolores.”

“Jim Piraino went running door-to-door, sharing the good news with any neighbor he could find Wednesday morning,” reports The Greeley Tribune. “He just received word the planned $20 million concrete and asphalt plant across the street from his house, the one already looming above his quiet neighborhood north of Johnstown, might never go into operation. Piraino, his neighbors, their homeowners association and others prevailed in their fight against the Board of Weld County Commissioners and Martin Marietta Materials, as a three-judge Colorado Court of Appeals panel Wednesday unanimously reversed the board’s 2015 decision to allow the plant.”

“A man and his accomplice– accused of the July 29 shotgun slaying of an 18-year-old Canon City man — were ordered Wednesday to stand trial following a preliminary hearing in Fremont County District Court on Wednesday,” reports The Pueblo Chieftain. “Tyler Delaney, 20, of Canon City faces first-degree murder and 26 other felony charges in connection with the killing of Thomas Gwardyak, 18, whose body was found near Brush Hollow Reservoir in Penrose July 30. Delaney’s codefendant, Kayla Mattice, 21, is charged with three counts of accessory to a crime, alleging she helped Delaney to prevent his apprehension in connection with a first-degree murder. She also faces drug charges.”

“Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner received boos and jeers while attempting to defend Republican efforts to rewrite the tax code,” according to an Associated Press report at ColoradoPolitics. “The Pueblo Chieftain reports Gardner, at a town hall meeting in Pueblo on Monday, argued that President Barack Obama also wanted to cut taxes. He also reminded everyone President Donald Trump won the popular vote in Pueblo County. The Colorado Republican told the crowd of about 150 people that cutting corporate taxes would lead to better wages and a stronger economy. That caused some in attendance to boo and yell out that “trickle down” economics had failed during President Ronald Reagan’s administration.”

“You too? Me too,” reports Denverite. “It’s a conversation women and the LGBTQ community have been having forever. You’d be hard-pressed to find a person in those groups who hasn’t experienced harassment or sexual assault. And since 2017 seems to be the year Americans are finally starting to hold men accountable for their bad behavior in this regard, it’s a great time to address the issue on the literal ground level: street harassment. It’s the insidious, everyday manifestation of misogyny and homophobia. It’s catcalling, ass-grabbing, slur-hurling, following and threatening, and it’s happening all the time.”