Know Your Mayors (7 of 12)-John W. Hickenlooper

Today we go to the Mile High City as we continue to profile twelve mayors of American cities. If I am so inclined, we may profile international city mayors at some juncture later this year.


Mayor John W. Hickenlooper of Denver, Col., was born in Narbeth, Pa., on Feb. 7, 1952. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University. His wife Helen Thorpe writes for magazines such as "The New Yorker."

Hickenlooper is a real estate developer who owns several restaurants in the LoDo section of Denver. And, he is one of the founders of the original Wyakoop brewing Company microbrewery.

The mayor's post in Denver is a non-partisan job, but Hickenlooper is believed to be a Democrat and he helped the city land the Democratic National Convention where Barack Obama made his historical speech last year.

Hickenlooper is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and he was named as one of the top five big city mayors in America by "Time" magazine.

Six Degrees of Separation- Alex English

We are actually concluding one of our long-running blog series with this entry dedicated to former NBA star Alex English (pictured here) who gave a rather good performance in the 1987 sleeper film "Amazing Grace and Chuck."

In this series, we look at how many degrees of separation a given actor is removed from Kevin Bacon with the help of The Oracle of Bacon web site.

We choose English_ well, because it is basketball season! But, to my mind, his performance in "Amazing Grace and Chuck" may be the best performance by a basketball player/actor with the exception of Ray Allen, who was in the Spike Lee film "He Got Game."

English primarily played for the Denver Nuggets and he lead the NBA in scoring in 1983. The Nugget star was still an active player when he starred in the respectable independent film. He also played for the University of South Carolina from 1972-76.

English was in the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle "Eddie" (1996) with Frank Langella who played Richard Nixon in "Frost/Nixon" (2008) which also co-starred Kevin Bacon. Thus, English is two degrees removed from Bacon.

Well, we never got around to seeing how many degrees of separation Kevin Bacon was from my friend Charles Cullen, a cult actor/filmmaker from Roanoke, Va. But, I will mention that one of his films is actually entitled "The Day the Whole F--k--g World Blew Up."

To my knowledge, he has never been in a film with Kevin Bacon.