At holiday parties this weekend, everyone was talking about pot. I haven’t been asked about marijuana this much since my first day of college in 1972, when I wore a hippie-print dress and my dormmates assumed I could hook them up. People were talking about the booming business in medical…

Paul Piciocchi is putting into the former home of Alto, opens tonight at 1320 15th Street. The Drink, a sports tavern, made its debut on November 20; Mix Music Lounge is set to open next week. But right now, it’s Rack & Rye, which will host private parties starting at…

It’s been a tough year for Peacejam, the homegrown nonprofit that over the past fifteen years has reached out to hundreds of thousands of kids around the globe, showing them that in the toughest circumstances, it’s still possible to push for peace — and then proving it by bringing ten…

First, the folks behind 8 Rivers open a medical marijuana dispensary up the street. Now comes word that Colorado’s first “gourmet marijuana restaurant” will be opening next week in Denver. The official details are being kept under wraps until next week, but yes, all the culinary offerings will contain pot…

“Oh, we know you were here,” a city official told me Monday, after I’d returned from my undercover mission to inventory the shlock and awe that is Denver’s annual holiday display on the steps of City Hall — and then explain why, exactly, it’s legal to have a Nativity scene…

This is not energy conservation here, folks, this is a glitch,” quipped Mayor John Hickenlooper at last Friday’s “Light the Lights” event, after he and son Teddy flipped the switch on the new LED light display at the City and County Building — and the entire scene went black a…

An inventory of the annual awfulness that appears every holiday season on the steps of the Denver City and County Building (from left to right): 1) Plastic Santa in his sleigh, heading up a ramp behind four pairs of plastic reindeer, with red-nosed Rudolph in the lead. 2) Wooden stable…

Ernie’s will open on schedule today, after a whirlwind renovation by Rod Wagner of the space that for years held 3 Sons, and for decades before that was home to Ernie’s. But while the original Ernie’s — which opened in 1943 and whose sign has been reconstructed for the new…

Wanda James and Scott Durrah, the owners of 8 Rivers, just celebrated the end of their first year at 1550 Blake Street in LoDo, where they moved their restaurant after a successful run in the tiny spot at 3609 West 32nd Avenue that now holds Venue. “You can’t have a…

Unlike Michigan, Colorado doesn’t have a Cannabis College — not yet. But the entire state is getting quite an education in both the efficacy of medical marijuana in soothing certain maladies and the difficulty of imposing new rules on dispensing it. Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown has gotten a real…

One hundred and fifty years after the last rush to the Rockies, when gold was discovered back in 1859, a new rush is on. This time, adventurers are mining medical marijuana — and business is smoking! Every day, I get a call from another acquaintance thinking of getting into the…