Author: Bill Vogrin
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Side Streets: Manitou woman’s life stronger than ever even as rotting home threatens to collapse around her
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MANITOU SPRINGS – How are you spending your summer vacation? No doubt you will have more fun and relaxation than Diane Fitzkee. Her summer break from teaching blind children in the Falcon School District is shaping up like a disaster. She is bunking with friends while she salvages what’s left of her beloved 135-year-old cottage…
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Side Streets: Online archive and unique museum keeps Colorado Springs’ long love affair with bowling alive
Before there was bumper bowling, midnight bowling, cosmic bowling, color-pin bowling or elf bowling, Colorado Springs had plain old 10-pin bowling. Strikes and spares. The basics. Had it nearly forever. The region’s love affair with the sport dates to 1873, when Johnnies Ten-Pin Bowling Alley opened at Pikes Peak Avenue and Tejon Street, just a…
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Side Streets: Love of all things weather carried on in Manitou Springs
Barb Nichols doesn’t need to read the paper, watch TV news or consult online weather sites to know how much rain has fallen in Manitou Springs during recent deluges, or how hard the wind blew or how low the temperatures dipped. She needed only check her own weather station at her Manitou Springs home. And…
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Side Streets: Cragmor neighbors declare Chicago developers’ plan ‘monstrous’ and vow to ‘chase them out’
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Cragmor residents are vowing to stop a proposed housing complex they say would be akin to a fortress towering over the working-class neighborhood of 3,500 modest, 1950s homes just south of Austin Bluffs Parkway across from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Some are upset they may not get to voice their objections to…
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Side Streets: Manitou Springs lands in national spotlight with ‘peanut pushers’ museum exhibit
Manitou Spring, the village that gave us coffin races and fruitcake tossing competitions, is unveiling it’s latest quirky celebration: a fest for the “Pikes Peak Peanut Pusher.” On Friday night, the Manitou Springs Heritage Center will open at 6 p.m. for a free party honoring Ulysses Baxter, a rockabilly singer from Oklahoma who got on…
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Side Streets: Next-door neighbors warily watch landslide, wonder why taxpayers won’t fund improvements
It’s been a stressful week for next-door neighbors Monika Buckley and Doris Munson in Rockrimmon as they’ve kept one eye on the skies, watching for rain, and the other on the growing landslide out their back doors. You may remember their story from last week. Three days of torrential rain, hail and snow saturated the…
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Side Streets: Strange saga of Pulpit Rock neighborhood resumes as junk cars return, vanish
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The “Side Streets” hotline was ringing like crazy last week from residents of the Pulpit Rock neighborhood who wanted to report that Greg Heskin was at it again, amassing junk trucks on the dirt surrounding his home at Brittany Circle and Dublin Road. Just a few weeks ago, Colorado Springs police and code enforcement officers…
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Side Streets: Colorado Springs man no longer has front-yard lake as city removes faulty bubbler drain
A note of thanks popped up in my email the other day from D.C. Hayes, who wrote to say that recent torrential rains had not left his yard flooded, as often occurred in the previous 30 years due to a poorly designed intersection. Intrigued, I visited the Eastborough neighborhood near Murray Boulevard and Airport Road…
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Side Streets: Colorado Springs homeowners blame city inaction on erosion as yards, fences, decks fall in creek
During three days of torrential rain, hail and snow last week, next-door neighbors Monika Buckley and Doris Munson stood at their windows and watched in fear as North Rockrimmon Creek, which runs behind their homes, swelled dramatically and their backyards shrank. Finally, late Saturday, a large chunk of Munson’s backyard slid into the creek, dragging…
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Side Streets: Last of Cripple Creek’s legendary Mackin family selling out after nearly 70 years
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This summer, Manitou Springs resident Bonnie Mackin plans to sell her family home in Cripple Creek, a beautiful century-old Victorian that she and her husband, Stephen, bought in 1971, and where they raised their two children. The sale will end the Mackin family’s near 70-year association with the famous gold camp of Teller County, where…