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Butterfly House celebrating 25th anniversary with Hollywood-theme party tonight

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. - The Butterfly House is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a big Hollywood-themed party Friday night.You can be a social butterfly and dance the night away. The fundraising event will include a cocktail reception and floral-inspired desserts. St. Louis had only 2 officers for an entire district – Both called in sick The Butterfly House is in Faust Park on Olive Boulevard in Chesterfield.

Volunteers cleaning up trash downtown today

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

ST. LOUIS - Volunteers will be on the streets Friday to pick up trash in downtown St. Louis.It's a partnership between 'Explore St. Louis' and the downtown community improvement district. They'll focus on areas around the convention center and downtown hotels. St. Louis had only 2 officers for an entire district – Both called in sick The goal is to tidy up the city for tourism. They call it the "Tourism Trash Force."It's an annual event.

Everything you need to know about the solar eclipse at Mesa Verde National Park

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

NASA personnel will soon be in Colorado for a celestial event that hasn’t been visible from North America in more than a decade.On Oct. 14, Mesa Verde National Park in Southwest Colorado will be almost directly in line with the annular solar eclipse. During this type of event, the moon comes between the Earth and the sun and blocks most of the light.Because the moon will be at one of its furthest points away from the Earth, the moon will appear smaller than the sun and not block its light completely. Instead, the moon will appear as a black dot surrounded by what’s called a “ring of fire.”It’s a stunning sight – one that can only be viewed safely with the aid of protective eyewear, according to NASA. That’s why Mesa Verde is expecting robust crowds during the otherwise sleepy shoulder season.“This event might be pretty huge compared to an average October day,” said Eric Sainio, supervisory park ranger at Mesa Verde. “NASA has told us that in former annual eclipses, they’ve see...

Theater review: Local Theater Company’s “You Enjoy Myself” grabs us at “hey”

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

Fast friends Cory (Bobby Bennet, left) and Isabel (Iliana Lucero Barron) in Local Theater Company’s world premier of “You Enjoy Myself.” (Michael Ensminger, provided by Local Theater Company)Even if the beloved-by-so-many band Phish isn’t your jam, the new play “You Enjoy Myself” very well might be. Because as Judith (Eden Lane) tells the audience at the outset of Topher Payne’s intricate, sexually frisky and open-hearted work, “Melody and memory cradle you, wrapped up in your collected stories … whether you feel swaddled or smothered … You’re just there.”Music’s power to be exquisitely personal even as it can be deeply communal is on fine display as the comedy’s Phish phanatics and their loved ones revisit their bonds and forge new ones. “You Enjoy Myself” is receiving its world premiere at the Dairy Center for the Arts thanks to the diligent work of the Boulder-based Local Theater Company, which nurtured the sly comedy at its 2022 annual development gathering, Local Lab.A decades-...

Bustang canceled 51 Colorado rides over past two weeks

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

Coloradans planning to take Bustang buses between Front Range cities couldn’t be certain they’d reach their destinations this week as the state transportation agency’s contractor again canceled rides, inconveniencing travelers at a rate of roughly one in 13 scheduled buses.Bustang service between Denver and Fort Collins has been canceled nearly every day since Sept. 11.  Bus rides between Lamar and Colorado Springs also were canceled on Tuesday, according to the “alerts”  that the Colorado Department of Transportation’s contractor, Ace Express Coaches, posts at ridebustang.com and on X, the social media site formerly called Twitter.These followed delays and cancelations over the past month on multiple routes around Colorado. CDOT and contractor officials blamed the frequent delays on traffic and the cancelations on “driver unavailability,” particularly along the high-demand route that links Denver and Fort Collins.The cancelation rate for the 692 bus tr...

The radical idea to combat Colorado’s predatory towing problem

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

John Connolly wants to scrap the entire system and start over.The president of the Towing & Recovery Professionals of Colorado, a trade group representing the state’s towing operators, remembers how his industry used to operate. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, property owners paid towers to remove abandoned vehicles from their lots — without charging consumers.But in recent decades, “we allowed the fox in the henhouse,” state Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, a Fort Collins Democrat, said.Apartment complexes, which used to pay to have cars removed, now get the service for free. Instead, tow carriers bill drivers hundreds of dollars per tow, causing serious financial strain for a wide swath of low-income residents. And the more cars these companies haul off to tow yards, the more money they rake in.Colorado lawmakers in recent years have sought to address these financial incentives by passing a “Towing Bill of Rights” designed to better protect consum...

Better than expected, still dicey: Colorado business leaders size up economy

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

The economy has turned out better this year than Colorado business leaders expected, but they remain pessimistic due to high interest rates, inflation and trouble filling open jobs.The latest Leeds Business Confidence Index released Thursday by the University of Colorado in Boulder marks the seventh consecutive survey indicating business leaders’ pessimism about the national and state economies.A score of 50 is neutral, while marks below that signal negative outlooks. The overall confidence index fell to 43.6 heading into the fourth quarter of 2023, down from of 44.1 in the third quarter.But the outlook for the first quarter of 2024 brightened a bit to an overall level of 45.7.“We heard from business leaders, a majority of them, about two-thirds, indicated the economy has outperformed their expectations so far in 2023,” said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of research at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.At the same time, Colorado business leaders c...

Keeler: Thanks to Deion Sanders, from The Rock to Lil Wayne, Boulder is where stars want to be

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

BOULDER — Who needs Will Ferrell when you’ve got Lil Wayne and Ralphie?A year ago at this time, the home sideline at Folsom Field was radioactive. Now it’s the new Crypto.com Arena, the sporting venue where stars — we’re talking A-list dudes: The Rock, Master P, Offset, Terrell Owens — want to be seen.“That doesn’t happen anywhere, for real, unless you’re in Los Angeles and you’re winning,” LenDale White, former Broncos running back, USC star and Chatfield High state champ told me a few days ago. “Bama? People don’t stop there (unless) you’re winning. (Then) people want to be a part of that.“But for people to already be at CU and seeing that excitement already. I haven’t seen that effect in college football. Even in my (time at USC), I was on teams where we had two Heisman winners and my spring game never had a sellout crowd or stuff like what the CU spring game had.”White was a Denver ki...

Mustang goes airborne before smashing into Grand Terrace home

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

Surveillance video captured an out-of-control Ford Mustang going airborne before it crashed into a Grand Terrace home Thursday evening.The incident occurred around 7 p.m. in the 22000 block of Pico Street near Mt. Vernon Avenue.A surveillance camera captured a car crashing into a Grand Terrace home on Sept. 28, 2023. (OnScene.TV)The video shows what appears to be a speeding driver losing control of their vehicle, which eventually went airborne after going through a stop sign. The car then hits the corner of the home as it returns to the ground. The driver was able to get out of the vehicle after the crash and declined medical treatment, news stringer OnScene.TV reported. Man walking dog shoots, kills man in Garden Grove neighborhood No one inside the home was injured in the incident, according to the report.It was unclear what caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle.

Gunshots in the grandstands: Why violence at high school football games is spiking and what can be done

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:50:22 GMT

In the middle of coaching his team’s first game of the season, Lloyd Johnson looked up into the stands at Fremont High School in Oakland and saw fights breaking out, one after another.The same thing happened that night at Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose with fights among spectators forcing the game to be canceled.Fan violence is happening elsewhere, too, sometimes involving gunfire. In Sacramento, 15 shots were fired at a recent youth football game. At a high school game in South Los Angeles, a stray bullet sent a woman to the hospital. At a game in Oklahoma, a 16-year-old was fatally shot and four others were wounded. There was another shooting fatality in Louisiana. Shots have been fired at games in St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago.This year, there have been 39 school shootings at high school sporting events nationwide, according to David Riedman, a data scientist who founded the K-12 School Shooting Database.With football season not yet at its midpoint and basketball seaso...