City Cast Denver

For this week’s Friday news roundup, City Cast Denver host Bree Davies and producer Paul Karolyi are joined by Westword editor and founder, Patty Calhoun, to discuss a couple legacy businesses in the city that are undergoing some big changes. First, in a lengthy investigative piece, Denverite found that some employees of Denver’s largest independent bookstore, Tattered Cover, are less than satisfied with the new owners who took over in 2020 and started aggressively expanding the business. Then, Denver Business Journal revealed this week that Tom’s Diner on Colfax might be coming back from the grave as…a 1970s-era Las Vegas-style cocktail lounge? By the way, we want to find the best fried chicken in Denver, and we want your help! Email your pick to denver@citycast.fm or leave us a voicemail explaining why at 720-500-5418. Subscribe to the CCD newsletter for great food recommendations around the city: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/You can also talk to us about fried chicken on Twitter: @citycastdenver

People have been moving to Denver since, well, Denver became Denver. And it’s no secret, this tension between longtime residents and new folks is kinda the crux of our struggle as a city. So we thought, what better way to help get new Denverites acclimated than to bring in our boss David Plotz. He’s a lifelong Washingtonian, but as CEO of City Cast it’s part of his job to get to know all the cities that are part of our network: Chicago, Houston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and of course, Denver. So today on the show, David asks City Cast Denver host Bree Davies and producer Xandra McMahon some of his most embarrassing Denver questions, like: “What the heck is Red Rocks and do you actually get to sit on the rocks?” and “Does the altitude really affect your life that much?”City Cast is growing and we’re hiring in a lot of cities! Check out the list here: https://citycast.fm/jobs/Get all the Denver news and recs you need in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe to the CCD newsletter here: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/How would you answer David’s questions about Denver? Let us know on Twitter: @citycastdenver

Denverites are slowly returning to public buses, trains, and light rail, but ridership is still far below pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, bus drivers have been leaving the fleet in droves, and the Regional Transportation District (RTD) is still paying off huge loans from major projects of yesteryear. So why is now the right time for RTD to propose the biggest overhaul of bus routes since the 1970s? Colorado Public Radio’s transportation reporter Nathaniel Minor is back on the show to connect the dots. All of them. No matter how dispersed they are across the metro area.For more on this new RTD proposal, check out Minor’s article laying out the details: https://www.cpr.org/2022/01/12/rtd-bus-network-overhaul/At the end of the episode, Minor suggested that listeners who want a say in this route overhaul should get in touch with their RTD director. You can find yours and their contact info here: https://www.rtd-denver.com/board-of-directorsWe’ve got even more Denver news in our newsletter. Subscribe now and get your first edition tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/Talk transit to us on Twitter: @citycastdenver

Welton St. Cafe has seen Five Points change — a lot. But unlike many other Black-owned businesses in the neighborhood, the restaurant has been able to stay alive — and thrive — amid the displacement and gentrification of its own community. Still, real estate pressures have crept up on the decades-old, family-run business and the restaurant is ready for a new home. Host Bree Davies and producer Xandra McMahon sat down with Chereka Dickerson, whose family has been running the restaurant for most of her life, to find out more about their campaign to raise money for the next chapter of Welton St. Cafe and how they manage to keep the spirit of old Five Points alive.If you’d like to support Welton St. Cafe’s effort to open a new restaurant space, here’s a link to the GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/c6p4h-last-man-standingGet more news in your inbox every weekday morning by signing up for our newsletter: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/Have nice things to say about Welton St. Cafe? Tell us via Twitter: @citycastdenver

This past Wednesday morning, after negotiations with their parent company fell apart, thousands of King Soopers workers across metro Denver went on strike. We heard stories about tension along the picket lines, so host Bree Davies and producer Paul Karolyi went out to see for themselves. We heard from workers, shoppers, a protester, and one assistant manager, who really, really did not seem happy to be dealing with us or any of this. If you haven’t heard Bree’s interview with UFCW Local 7 president Kim Cordova from earlier this week, she explains why they called for a strike in the first place. You can listen to that here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6h7WKDjze5BpNYvqNFzEG0Here’s a link to the survey Bree references in the episode: https://inthesetimes.com/article/kroger-grocery-survey-disturbing-new-report-shows-dire-conditions-for-workersWe’ll be following the King Soopers strike as it develops, and you can keep up with every twist and turn in our weekday morning newsletter. Subscribe here: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/Hang out with us on Twitter too! We’re @citycastdenver, @cocodavies, @paulkarolyi, @xandramcmahon and @peytongarcia 

The Marshall Fire burned hundreds of homes and businesses in Colorado to the ground, leaving many of us to wonder: Are wildfires in urban areas becoming a common occurrence? To get a better understanding of what happened with this latest megafire, host Bree Davies talks with Dr. Natasha Stavros, a fire ecologist and the Director of the Earth Lab Analytics Hub at CU Boulder. Dr. Stavros discusses the role of climate change and the conditions that led to the Marshall Fire. She also explores how — if we were to embrace hundreds of years of indigenous knowledge on how to use fire as a tool — we could potentially change the outcomes of these disasters. Sign up for the City Cast Denver newsletter and stay up-to-date with news from around the city: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/Chit-chat with us on Twitter: @citycastdenver

State Sen. Brittany Pettersen has served the community of Lakewood for 10 years, leading legislative efforts to fix our broken mental health safety net and impose new gun safety measures. And as of yesterday, she’s running for Congress. Pettersen hopes to replace fellow Democrat Ed Perlmutter, who has represented Colorado’s District 7 for the past 15 years. City Cast Denver host Bree Davies chats with Pettersen about her new campaign, what she has her sights on this legislative session, and how the “Red Flag Law” she co-sponsored back in 2019 could have done more in the Denver/Lakewood mass shooting on Dec. 27. It would mean so much to us if you’d subscribe to our newsletter and then tell a friend to sign up too! https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/You can also connect with us on Twitter: @citycastdenver

With a snowstorm bearing down on Denver last Wednesday evening, Denver Public Schools sent an email to families cancelling the next day’s classes “due to severe weather" but also citing “continued severe staffing shortages.” We’ve been hearing about teacher shortages throughout the district for months, but something about this new mix of winter weather and the Omicron variant felt different. So we asked a teacher. Host Bree Davies sits down with North High School teacher Tim Hernández to hear why teachers are feeling so burned out, what are the stakes of the remote vs. in-person learning debate, and how the DPS staffing shortage is affecting his students. For more on the poetry and photography project Bree mentioned at the end of this episode, check out this piece from the Denver Post. You can also find a digital copy of the project here. Subscribe to the City Cast Denver weekday morning newsletter for even more news and cool events from around the city: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/Hang out with us on Twitter @citycastdenver

Early on in the pandemic, employees of grocery stores were deemed “essential” and “frontline workers.” But for many of them, going to work never stopped feeling like going to war. And now, the parent company behind Colorado’s largest grocery chain, King Soopers, is playing hardball on their new contract. So starting Wednesday, approximately 8,400 King Soopers employees are planning to go on strike. Host Bree Davies sits down with Kim Cordova, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, which represents King Soopers workers in Colorado and southern Wyoming, to hear how we got to this point, why the UFCW Local 7 filed a lawsuit over “scabs,” and how this strike would fit into the recent surge of labor organizing across the country.For more on the parent company’s side of this labor dispute, we recommend this Westword article with a detailed breakdown of their latest contract offer and the union's counterproposal: https://www.westword.com/news/king-soopers-rips-union-over-strike-plan-13179992The UFCW Local 7 is planning for the strike to last three weeks, and we’ll be following all the twists and turns in our newsletter. So subscribe now to stay informed: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/Chat with us on Twitter @citycastdenver

It’s Friday, which means the City Cast Denver crew is back for a roundtable discussion on all things Denver. Producers Paul Karolyi and Xandra McMahon, newsletter writer Peyton Garcia, and host Bree Davies discuss the upcoming Stock Show, its lax stance on vaccination requirements, and what the whole agricultural enterprise historically means for Denver. Plus, SPOILER ALERT: the team discusses “Don’t Look Up,” the most-watched movie on Netflix ever that just so happens to be created by some Colorado-connected folks.In the show, Paul mentions the Colorado Encyclopedia entry for “The First National Western Stock Show” : https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/first-national-western-stock-showThe song featured at the end of today’s episode was “Seeds We Sow” by David Lawrence and the Spoonful: https://davidlawspoonful.com/