Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i 5280 Magazine

IT WAS COLD and starting to snow when I visited the Columbine Memorial on a Sunday afternoon this past winter. Perched atop a hill just northwest of Columbine High School, in Robert F. Clement Park, the monument feels exceedingly small given the magnitude of the events of April 20, 1999, and the place they hold in our collective consciousness. My colleague Lindsey Koehler and I were the only ones there that day. We split up, separately reading the short remembrances of the 13 people who’d been murdered nearly two decades earlier, before taking in the plaques that are embedded in the outside border of the memorial. It was very quiet. We didn’t talk, really. There wasn’t much to say When our editorial team started thinking about creating this special issue,…

The odds drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who twice escaped from Mexican jails, will bust out of his likely new home in Florence’s supermax prison in southern Colorado If the Denver Broncos trading for experienced (read: old) Joe Flacco means the team won’t pick its QB of the future in the NFL Draft. The mysterious cloud of smoke over Red Rocks Amphitheatre on April 18. (It’s just a Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and Warren G concert.) Whether anyone outside the Centennial State knows that former Governor John Hickenlooper is a 2020 presidential candidate. The fate of Broadway’s iconic Sports Castle. An Atlanta developer plans to surround it with apartments but keep the landmark for public use.…

Before lifts grind to a halt this season, select Colorado resorts host one last hurrah for diehard downhillers: pond skimming. In these madcap contests, strangely costumed skiers and snowboarders descend a slope and jump off a ramp to create (hopefully) enough momentum to skim across a glacier-cold body of water. Competitors who impress the judges often earn prizes, including, at Vail Ski Resort, free Epic Passes. This year, spectators can win, too—thanks to our bingo card. Just mark these pond-skimming standards as you spot or hear them; first person among your friend group to holler “BINGO!” gets their next round paid for.* *Just to be clear: by your friends, not 5280 | **E.g., the one committed by the idiot who tried to jump over the crowd at Copper Mountain last…

Bridget Dorr Ceramics 5280 Pick: A handmade set of three Honeycomb dishes with 22-karat gold luster detailing. $58; bridgetdorr.com Old Pine Candle Co. 5280 Pick: The Summit citrus and pine candle hand-poured with American soy wax and phthalate-free fragrance oils. $20; oldpinecandleco.com Union Stitch & Design 5280 Pick: A hand-sewn Classic Collection kitchen apron. $75; unionstitchanddesign.com…

Copper Mountain will spread 65,000 candyand prize-filled plastic eggs across 2,500 acres during the World’s Largest Easter Egg Hunt on April 21. The three hunts for younger kids vary by age, but even adults can search for the 12 golden eggs hidden on intermediate and beginner terrain that contain prizes such as a GoPro or a 2019-’20 season pass. copper colorado.com Find more events in the Calendar on page 100 and online at 5280.com/events.…

If you’ve eaten the glorious burger at Boulder’s Blackbelly Market, you’ve already tasted the handiwork of Zach Johnston’s five-year-old culinary seasoning company, the Spice Guy. In addition to the blend of paprika, garlic, sugar, salt, and Worcestershire powder it makes for Blackbelly, the Spice Guy crafts aromatic wares for 500-plus other restaurants and brands across Colorado. Luckily for home chefs, Johnston recently expanded his business to include an Aurora production facility with a blending bar where visitors can concoct custom mixes for $12 per pound. Staffers are on hand to help you navigate more than 200 spices—ranging from gourmet salts to Hatch green chile powder to ground ginger—which you can combine to your liking. Or, if you’d rather leave the blending to the masters, pick up one of the Spice…

1 Limit use of the perpetrator’s name to once in a story—never using it in prominent display copy like headlines, pull quotes, and captions. That’s just one of the media protocols disseminated by No Notoriety, an organization founded by the parents of Alex Teves, who was killed in the Aurora theater shooting. Also on the list: Refrain from broadcasting or publishing “self-serving statements, photos, videos and/or manifestos made by the individual.” 2 Don’t simplify shooters’ motivations or speculate about them. Reporters should consult with experts about diagnoses or signs of mental health issues and ask questions about family life in addition to those about social relationships, says Peter Langman, an expert in the psychology of school shooters. When reporting breaking news, University of Oregon journalism professor Lori Shontz says journalists…

Used At Columbine Used In Recent Mass Shootings Over the past 35-plus years, mass killers in America have heavily favored semi-automatic handguns. However, in six of the 10 deadliest attacks going back to the 1960s, the gunmen used semi-automatic rifles. At Columbine, the shooters employed an array of arms. In many cases, firearms used in mass casualty situations have been obtained legally, leading to debates about the ease with which Americans can purchase guns. SAVAGE 67H 12-GAUGE PUMP-ACTION SHOTGUN The Columbine shooters sawed off the barrel of this relatively inexpensive weapon—typically used for home defense or hunting—to roughly 26 inches, making it easier to wield and more deadly because the projectiles scatter more widely. The killers also carried a Savage 311D 12-gauge shotgun, sawed off to 23 inches. INTRATEC HANDGUN…

$59,500,000 Grant money allocated by the 2018 Colorado General Assembly for a range of school safety improvements School Access for Emergency Response Grant Program Colloquially known as the SAFER grant program, SB-158 focuses on “interoperability,” a buzzword in school safety circles that harks back to April 20, 1999, when first responders from different jurisdictions couldn’t communicate because their radio systems were incompatible. Some progress has been made in comms among first responders, but this program aims to upgrade the connections between school communication systems and those of first responders. In a crisis, school staff could help police, firefighters, and paramedics respond effectively. Five million dollars annually will be available to applicants over the next six years. School Security Disbursement Program Sponsored by several state legislators, including Representative Patrick Neville, who…

CASSIE BERNALL STEVEN CURNOW COREY DEPOOTER KELLY FLEMING MATTHEW KECHTER DANIEL MAUSER DANIEL ROHRBOUGH WILLIAM “DAVE” SANDERS RACHEL SCOTT ISAIAH SHOELS JOHN TOMLIN LAUREN TOWNSEND KYLE VELASQUEZ…

RESUMÉ NAME: Kyle Freeland AGE: 25 OCCUPATION: MLB pitcher LAST CASA BONITA VISIT: During his senior year at Thomas Jefferson To start this past October’s win-or-go-home wild-card playoff game, the Colorado Rockies turned to a young pitcher only a few years removed from bleacher bumming at Coors Field with his buddies. Kyle Freeland responded by blanking the mighty Chicago Cubs at storied Wrigley Field. “That moment,” the 25-year-old says, “was exhilarating.” For a kid who grew up slinging fastballs for southeast Denver’s Thomas Jefferson High School, the experience was poetic—as was the fact that the southpaw racked up one of the best seasons ever for a Rox pitcher last year. With opening day at Coors arriving on April 5 (the team’s 2019 campaign began on March 28 in Miami), Freeland…

Harold “Hal” Sasaki’s hands move with swift precision as he winds a length of copper wire around a tiny dwarf jade tree’s trunk. The 82-year-old’s measured gestures reflect decades of pursuing perfection in the ancient discipline of bonsai, in which artists spend years training trees into miniature facsimiles of their natural, full-grown selves. The feeling of satisfaction the practice instills hooked Sasaki when he was 18 and still living in Kona, Hawaii, his birthplace. “There’s a communication between you and the tree,” he says. “It smiles back at you.” Sasaki began teaching classes at the Denver Botanic Gardens in 1977 after moving to Colorado. Decades later, he’s seeing an uptick in interest: The Botanic Gardens has increased its usual two bonsai classes to three in recent years as more urbanites…

Chef Lon Symensma has a knack for creating iconic dishes (see: the addictive fusion dumplings filled with French onion soup at his eight-year-old modern Asian restaurant, ChoLon). And just four months after opening his polished, European-inspired bistro, LeRoux, next door to ChoLon on the 16th Street Mall, it looks like Symensma’s wagyu beef tartare is poised to be another signature. It’s impossible to miss the appetizer as it’s whisked to diners in the candleand chandelier-lit space: The dish is encased in a tall glass cloche that, when lifted, unleashes an aromatic cloud of hickory smoke. Once it clears, layers of sauce “gribiche” made with cornichons and smoked hard-boiled eggs, raw chopped beef, chivedotted crème fraîche, and a generous spoonful of caviar are revealed in the shadows of impossibly tall waffle-cut…

RESUME NAME: Sean VanderVliet OWNER: Fenway Clayworks AGE: 33 FIVE-YEAR PLAN: Opening a cafe/pottery studio where customers can watch potters at work Mugs at Blue Sparrow Coffee. Cups and plates at Berkeley Supply. Tableware of all sorts at the Way Home in Carbondale and Beckon on Larimer Street. Just one year after leaving his software career for full-time pottery making, Sean VanderVliet has managed to infiltrate design-savvy coffeeshops, retail stores, and restaurants in Denver and beyond with his midcentury modern wares, sold under the Fenway Clayworks brand. Each made-to-order piece is the result of an in-depth collaboration between VanderVliet and his client. We pulled the busy ceramicist away from his wheel for long enough to tell us about his design process and why local chefs inspire some of his favorite work.…

70 Percentage of active shooter situations that are over within five minutes The two teenage gunmen at Columbine High School shot their first victim at 11:19 a.m. They turned their weapons on themselves at approximately 12:08 p.m. At 49 minutes long, the horror story they authored was a protracted one. In contrast, the massacre at Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall, eight years later, lasted 11 minutes. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 was over in about 10 minutes. At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, the murderer dropped his weapon after only six minutes. The discrepancy is not a coincidence; it’s a lesson learned. Although police were on the scene at Columbine within five minutes of the first gunshots, law enforcement did not enter the building until SWAT…

Located almost a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, Fort Collins isn’t in danger of being devastated by hurricanes anytime soon. Nevertheless, research conducted in the northern Colorado city has been giving those who live on the East Coast an idea of how wet and windy their summers might be for more than three decades. In 1984, Colorado State University tropical meteorology professor Bill Gray found that hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean declined during El Niño years. Recognizing such patterns, along with fancy statistical modeling, allowed him to do something considered far-fetched at the time: forecast the severity of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June through November. He released his first report that year, and although Gray died in 2016, CSU professors Phil Klotzbach and Michael Bell carry…

In 2016, Justine and Andrew Barone—an admittedly impetuous couple when it comes to adventure—decided they wanted to go standup paddleboarding. The Denverites looked online for rental SUPs and called different outfitters. Forty minutes later, they still hadn’t secured boards. “We wasted the entire day,” Justine says, “and didn’t even rent one.” It was as if the gear industry was stuck in the 1990s, when shoppers had to cold-call via the Yellow Pages. Then a consultant for a real estate technology firm, Justine figured she could drag rentals into the age of Kayak. In April 2018, the Barones debuted an online marketplace called Gearo that virtually checked different outfitters’ inventories and aggregated the available options (from skis to canoes) within a searchable geographic area. Shoppers could then book through the site.…

Six years ago, while hanging out at Uptown’s Ace Eat Serve, Blake Adams had a realization. “I said, ‘I bet ping-pong halls were cool in Brooklyn like five years ago,’ ” Adams recalls. That led the Tulsa, Oklahoma, native to start thinking about other business models that had already blossomed in bigger coastal cities but not yet hit the Mile High City. Less than a year later, Adams held the first Denver Flea, a weekend bazaar featuring artisanal brands—a concept he cribbed from New York City and Los Angeles. The inaugural event in City Park had 35 vendors, live music, and several kegs. Adams says he had to beg sellers to come, but his pleading paid off when more than 5,000 people attended. “Every vendor was totally cleaned out,” Adams…

OPENING APRIL 27 EPHEMERAL ART To create each of his world-renowned sculptures, Patrick Dougherty starts by gathering a large pile of tree branches. Then, over three weeks, the North Carolina artist and a group of volunteers carefully weave the sticks into a whimsical, almost Seussian structure. Dougherty intends for each piece to serve as a reflection on the uncertain life cycle of the natural environment—which means there’s a timer on how long Coloradans will be able to view his latest installation. During Stickwork at Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms, one of Dougherty’s elaborate works will stand against the backdrop of the Front Range’s expansive foothills. It will live on the venue’s grounds until it falls apart organically, returning to a stack of twigs. botanicgardens.org MARCH 31, APRIL 12–14 WORKSHOP IT…

Posted outside some yakitori restaurants in Tokyo, you’ll find hand-drawn gustatory maps of the chicken. These can be almost comically detailed, for many Japanese chefs are beak-to-tail completists. In one yakitori joint, there may be up to 30 poultry offerings, including skewers of grilled coccyx, spleen, and even the fatty pope’s nose. It’s this deep particularity that partly explains the post-sushi obsession American chefs have with Japanese cuisine. Our best cooks are pushing the boundaries of technique and flavor—ingredients like yuzu, sansho pepper, and miso fit right in—while also doubling down on tradition and discipline. Exhibit A in Denver right now is seven-month-old the Wolf’s Tailor, from chef Kelly Whitaker (of much-loved Boulder Italian bistro Basta). Inside his Sunnyside restaurant’s back door sits a yakitori grill, burning super hot with…

PARKLAND, FLORIDA; SANTA FE, TEXAS; Aztec, New Mexico; Roseburg, Oregon; Marysville, Washington; Santa Monica, California; Newtown, Connecticut—no matter where it happens, the news coverage of school shootings unfolds in almost exactly the same way every time. The first reports appear, often filled with inaccuracies, especially about the gunman (it’s almost always a man) and the number of victims. Then come the updated stories, which attempt to correct the information that was initially wrong. This is when we start to see reporters interviewing survivors or family members of those killed—sometimes accosting traumatized individuals while they’re still wearing bloodstained clothes. Next, we learn details about the perpetrator, and a list of the dead and injured circulates. There’s almost always a candlelight vigil of some sort. More interviews; politicians and community leaders offer…

A QUICK SCAN OF THE BILL WATCH section of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ website on February 26 shows 20 bills relevant to its cause that the Loveland-based gun rights advocacy group expects to be introduced during Colorado’s 2019 legislative session. In bright red lettering, the word “Opposed” is stamped next to 15 of them, even though 11 of those potential bills have yet to be named or sponsored by a legislator. The language of the bills isn’t even certain. “Dudley Brown and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners,” says Eileen McCarron, president of Colorado Ceasefire Legislative Action, the lobbying arm of the statewide organization dedicated to reducing gun violence, “will oppose anything.” That may be a fair characterization. Then again, McCarron isn’t exactly an unbiased observer. Her organization spends much of its…

TWENTY YEARS have passed, but A.J. DeAndrea’s memory of April 20, 1999, remains sharp. He was out for a jog when he got the page: Man with gun. Shots fired. Columbine High School. He says that upon arrival at the school he and other SWAT members were told there were six gunmen with hostages inside the 250,000-square-foot school. His voice softens when he says he only fully grasped the situation when he saw the bodies of 17-year-old Rachel Scott and 15-year-old Daniel Rohrbough outside the building Inside, he remembers wading through shin-high water from the sprinkler system—triggered by detonated pipe bombs—and being unable to hear anything because the fire alarm and school bell were going off. He can still see the faces of the 18 kids he and his team…

Evan Todd was in Columbine’s library on April 20 and saw what he calls “vile things.” Todd, now 35 and a father, recalls in vivid detail what it was like to talk with the teenage shooters and to believe he was going to die. It’s that memory and mental images of others “lying in their own pools of blood” that has compelled Todd (pictured) to advocate for a practice that has polarized Colorado and the nation: arming school personnel. Although it’s illegal in Colorado to bring a firearm to any public K–12—regardless of whether one has a concealed carry permit—state law makes an exception for those with concealed carry permits who also are designated by the school district as security officers. Those “security officers” can be any employees who complete…

~10,000,000 American kids trained in the Standard Response Protocol, a step-by-step crisis plan created by Colorado’s I Love U Guys Foundation Just days after losing their daughter, Emily, in a 2006 shooting at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, John-Michael and Ellen Keyes founded the nonprofit I Love U Guys Foundation, named for the final text they received from their daughter. After researching best practices, in 2009 the I Love U Guys Foundation released its Standard Response Protocol, a free-to-download, directive-based plan with four possible actions—and a standardized vocabulary—that can be performed during emergencies. According to law enforcement officials, the SRP can affect positive outcomes during crises. Here’s how it works. If The Order Given Is “LOCKOUT” That Means There is a hazard outside the building, like an armed robbery…

HIL ABBOTT USED TO PLAY LACROSSE—he was a long stick middie for Littleton High School—and was also a gifted student. He took multiple AP classes his senior year and got good grades; “the human calculator,” as his friends called him, was admitted to Auburn University’s competitive engineering program in 2016. For years, the blond-haired, quick-to-smile, considerate teenager had been a regular in the youth group at University Park United Methodist Church. And he didn’t go off to college and suddenly stop being a thoughtful and involved son and brother. One night early in his freshman year at Auburn, Abbott got a text from his mother: His younger brothers were throwing a party, and she was struggling to keep it under control. Abbott offered to send over some of his old…

MUSIC APRIL 3 Tina Phillips Trio Denver singer Tina Phillips draws influence from blues, Latin jazz, and bebop to create a musical style all her own. Her 2015 album, So Heavenly, is a compilation of 10 original compositions; the poetic tracks exhibit the songstress’ astoundingly wide vocal range. At this show, the fingers of talented local pianist Eric Gunnison and bassist Mark Simon will follow her frequent shifts in meter and tempo with ease, allowing Phillips to transition from a quick scat to a melodic ballad without hesitation. Wed 7 p.m. Broomfield Auditorium, 3 Community Park Rd., Broomfield, 303-469-3301, broomfield.org. Free. Visit tinaphillipsjazz.com. APRIL 5 Hozier Before this soulful Irishman hurtled into stardom, he recorded most of his songs—including the 2013 Grammy Award–nominated single “Take Me to Church”—in his parents’…

SYMBOL KEY NEW Indicates a restaurant featured in 5280 for the first time (though not necessarily a restaurant that has just opened). 25 BEST Indicates inclusion in our annual list of Denver’s best restaurants, released each October. These selections are at the discretion of 5280 editors and are subject to change. PRICE KEY (Average Entrée) $ under $10 $$ $11 to $15 $$$ $16 to $25 $$$$ $26 and higher A 25 BEST 12 at Madison $$ Congress Park / American This restaurant is ideal for dining with a small group. Reservations accepted. 1160 Madison St., 720-216-0190. Dinner, Brunch 25 BEST Acorn $$ RiNo / American First-class Boulder eatery Oak at Fourteenth dials it down a bit with this Denver iteration. Reservations accepted. The Source, 3350 Brighton Blvd., 720-542-3721. Lunch,…