This Saturday is my favorite holiday: Kentucky Derby Day. In keeping with a tradition set forth long ago by my grandmother, I’m decorating a big hat with lots of ribbon and flowers, mixing up a batch of strong mint juleps and hosting a garden party. Then, once the winning Derby…
FRI, 4/23 El Centro Su Teatro’s annual Neruda Poetry Festival and Barrio Slam events are all about instilling a new appreciation for literacy in Chicano youth through a series of in-school residencies designed to get kids excited about putting words together in a creative way. The wordplay culminates with tonight’s…
WED, 4/28 The best-selling novel Getting Mother’s Body, by Suzan-Lori Parks, holds a chorus of voices from cover to cover. Indeed, the replication of voice — from simple syntax to each character’s unique inner psychology — is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s forte, regardless of which medium she’s dabbling in. And…
SAT, 4/24 Get ready for a royal thigh workout at today’s thirteenth annual Imperial Challenge adventure competition, held in Breckenridge. The contest begins with a 6.2-mile mountain-bike ride on unpaved roads to the base of Breckenridge Ski Resort’s Peak 8, followed by a 2,998-foot ascent of the Claimjumper run using…
FRI, 4/23 “My mission is to make something new out of an old piece of crap that nobody wanted anymore and to bring forth genius — satirical, irony-filled attitude — to a mundane world of fashion drones,” says Boulderite Rachel White, who will show her new designs at tonight’s Retrofit…
Prepare for an out-of-this-universe experience at Sputnik, a Broadway lounge named for the world’s first artificial satellite, which was launched by Russia in 1957. To fuel your flight, down several sweet Lenin Martinis ($7), made with vodka, Grand Marnier, fresh lemon juice, a splash of grenadine and Tang — the…
FRI, 4/16 Soar past the second star on the right and find yourself joyfully lost in Neverland at the Colorado Ballet’s world-premiere production of Peter Pan. “I’ve been thinking about doing Peter Pan for a long time, but it’s a very hard story to tell because it’s very poignant,” says…
FRI, 4/16 Think you play a mean pinball? Prove it. You’ll be up against the best of the flippin’ best at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, which starts today at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Elton John will be there, ready to whup your ass from behind the glass of his…
Denver fashionistas no longer have to make a run for the coasts to deck themselves out in red-hot designer duds. Now they can simply strut down to Skye, a newly opened LoDo boutique. “I really think it’s time to put Denver on the fashion map,” says owner Skye Forrest. “The…
With the resounding thwack! of wooden bats, baseball joyfully returned to downtown Denver this week. And while I don’t particularly enjoy watching the slow-paced game, I truly love the spring-summer drinking season that accompanies it. When I want to tie one on before diving for fly balls at Coors Field,…
THURS, 4/8 According to Boulder dancer Ellie Sciarra, women tap dancers deserve an opportunity to strut their stuff under the bright lights of center stage. “The tap world is very male-dominated,” she says. “While we all know who Gene Kelly and Gregory Hines were, women tap dancers were traditionally just…
MON, 4/12 Siona Benjamin’s background is beyond exotic, a story no journalist could resist repeating. A Sephardic Jew who grew up in the Bollywood district of Bombay, India, she hails from a milieu that has been defined by a swirl of multiculturalism, including Western and Eastern philosophies and Jewish, Catholic,…
THURS, 4/8 If you think your four-legged friend has the makings of a champion, check out Rally Obedience, a canine competition that’s quickly gaining in popularity. “It’s a new sport that is a cross between standard obedience and agility,” says Chrissy Linzy, owner of Educanines, which offers Rally Obedience classes…
TUES, 4/13 While sexual assault is no laughing matter, supporters of Denver’s Rape Assistance and Awareness Program will share a jovial evening while raising money at tonight’s Give A Wit comedy benefit. “Our issue is so heavy — we were looking for a way to lighten things up,” says RAAP…
Spring has definitely sprung in Denver, and that means one thing: Warm evenings will find me drinking cool beers on the magical urban patio behind My Brother’s Bar. The bar has eighteen brews on tap, with everything from Boddington’s to Left Hand Jackman’s Pale Ale, but my favorite spring sipper…
Celebrate personal freedom at “Banned: A Celebration of the First Amendment,” a performance by the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus. “We seem to be at a place in history where the First Amendment is somewhat under assault,” says DGMC artistic director Sue Coffee. “This is a really good topic for a…
THURS, 4/1 Expand your boundaries this weekend at the fifth annual Denver International GLBT Film Festival: Seeing Queerly 2004, which begins tonight with an 8 p.m. screening of the transgender film Transfixed. “This is our opportunity to bring cutting-edge queer films to the community at large,” says Greg Lovell, spokesman…
SAT, 4/3 Move over, skate rats: The gals are going to tear up Lakewood’s X-Games Skatepark at today’s Op Girls Learn to Ride. “We’re trying to recruit some females to the sport since it is still a male-dominated industry,” says Nick Moscia, operations manager of the 40,000-square-foot skate park. Part…
I was pleasantly surprised when I strolled into Brix — a tiny, hip bistro in Cherry Creek North opened earlier this year by Charles Master, whose parents own Mel’s Restaurant and Bar — and saw that it was serving cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon in brown paper bags as a…
SAT, 3/27 There’s a dusty crease where the wide-open range of the Western Slope meets urban sprawl, where cow-tipping is almost a spectator sport, where boot-scootin’ cattle ranchers power-lunch with city slickers. The place is Loveland, Colorado. The Sweetheart City is also the home to the state’s only alternative-country-music label,…
FRI, 3/26 Art as Action, a local grassroots movement of artists bringing people together to create social change, will debut its second original collaborative arts performance, Citizen of the Earth, tonight at Boulder’s Dairy Center for the Arts. “In this show, we wanted to express the idea that too often…
SAT, 3/27 Things have gone considerably better for John Elway’s Arena Football League team in its second year. Heading into tonight’s 7 p.m. head-butt with the Indiana Firebirds, the Colorado Crush has already won the season’s three home games. That’s quite a turnaround from last year, when the Crush managed…
