There’s a new club in town, one with a big name for itself that’s picked Stapleton, a corner of town not yet known for its rockin’ nightlife, as a home. That’s almost comic, but in this case, comic is a good thing: It’s the nation’s 22nd Improv Comedy Club —…

What’s new at this year’s Gifts for Yule holiday antiques and handmades sale is that little is new: What was strong before is simply stronger and fresher than ever, at least in part because the many returning, tried-and-true vendors of art-fair entrepreneur Samantha Robinson’s annual shopping extravaganza will generate excitement…

If you’ve ever been to a Crave Party — or even if you haven’t — you’ll love how the Crave folks have teamed up with KB Homes this holiday season to host a series of Crave/KB Homes Holiday Marts, all housed in model homes at KB developments throughout the metro…

Contemporary furniture-maker Chase DeForest already has a style all her own, building topsy-turvy cabinets and drawers from both reclaimed materials and fine hardwoods alike. But it’s her side line, inspired by her own sports-minded disposition, that’s turning heads and making people smile these days. That endeavor, characterized by pieces built…

The elephant journal is Boulder personified: Touted to be the town’s “guide to the mindful life,” it deals with all things natural, organic, ecological, indie, spiritual and yogic, with just the right level of laid-back, we’re-okay, let’s-jam temper we all expect of someone dispensing such Boulderiana. Well, when in Boulder,…

What started out as a little sample sale ten years ago — conceived as an opportunity to offer more one-of-a-kind prototypes to the public by collaborating designers Debi Belk of Lele Knitwear and Laura Woodward of Garden Girl — has turned into a holiday tradition. The dressmakers have been joined…

Leave it to laid-back Boulderites to approach Arts Awareness Month with as little hoopla as possible. Instead of a grand effort on the scale of Denver’s recent Arts Week, the Boulder County Arts Alliance board decided to highlight the ordinary: “We thought, why not get people to do what they’re…

The capital-punishment issue has rarely been handled more poignantly than in Sister Helen Prejean’s book, Dead Man Walking, and its 1995 film version, directed by Tim Robbins and amply brought to life by the tour-de-force performances of Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Both, too, were spun from the very stuff…

According to PlatteForum founder and artistic director Judy Anderson, current resident artist Rory Golden is a fascinating character who paints into the wee hours, creating images drenched in an honest, egoless interest in righting wrongs and taking on social issues. A book artist with branches, Golden works with unusual materials:…

When fashion crosses over into art, the subtle collision really hits on why we care about what we wear in the first place: It’s an aesthetic choice we make every day that keeps us in touch with our creative innards. What happens when fashion designers cross over to become fine…

Travelers call it the “Last Shangri-la,” while locals think of Bhutan as the “Land of the Thunder Dragon.” Regardless, the tiny, isolated and pristine Himalayan nation remains a relatively peaceful place where the scenery is spectacular, Buddhism is practiced openly and old traditions live on. From out of Bhutan’s rarefied…

There’s possibly no better book to discuss at a library than Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s prophetic parable about a book-burning society of the future. The novel was an obvious choice for The Big Read, a nationwide initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts to encourage folks to read. And…

Back in 1999, one of my favorite exhibits ever left its footprints at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science: Titled Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, it was simply the most imaginative science show I’d ever seen, the creation of artist Ray Troll, the absolute R. Crumb of paleontology, whose hilarious…

Denver Arts Week is out of the chute today, spewing a downright miasma of cultural events, all of them held together by one loose thematic thread. It’ll be hard to pick and choose; still, you wouldn’t want to miss tonight’s Super First Friday, wherein five Denver arts districts pull out…

There are plenty of movements out there inviting lapsed, laissez-faire and staunchly secular Jews back into the fold, but perhaps one of the most engagingly persuasive is Storahtelling, the brainchild of Amichai Lau-Lavie, the descendent of a long line of rabbis dating back to the eleventh century and a man…

Generations of University of Colorado at Boulder art students have called the old Sibell-Wolle art building home since it opened its doors in the 1930s, but now the place is toast, scheduled for demolition later this fall to make way for a state-of-the-art replacement projected to open in 2010. Hence…

The first crime tome that really stuck to my bones was Meyer Levin’s Compulsion, the psychological profile based on the 1924 Leopold-Loeb murder. I couldn’t put it down until I finished it — all spooked and riveted by its awful realities — at three in the morning. Fascination and revulsion…

Ballroom dancing: Is it the next big thing? If you ask the six celebrity finalists in tonight’s YWCA of Boulder County fundraiser, Dancing With the Boulder Stars — designer Richard Foy, banker Wendy Reynolds, real estate maven Stephen Schaller, entrepreneur and self-help author Theresa Szczurek and Boulder parking czar Molly…

Jax Fish House PR gal Kate Baird saw last year’s changing of the guard at the James Beard House as a great opportunity for top Jax toques Sheila Lucero and Hosea Rosenberg. So she asked the duo to collaborate on a sample menu and sent it off to new Beard…

One man, one woman (or choose the gender match of your choice), a ring and a kiss: It all seems so simple, and yet it isn’t. These days, when you commit to marriage, you commit to weeks of intensive planning for a blowout that ostensibly happens only once in your…

The best thing about First Friday is the sheer variety of it all. So if you fell off the art bus on Friday last, you’ve already missed a fabulous mixed bag of hard and soft openings and more, featuring art both high and low. Among them are: The Buddy System,…

I first met Sandra Renteria when she ran Indigena Gallery, a socially conscious moving feast of folk and outsider art that last hung out on Santa Fe Drive before its owner packed it in to pursue other concerns. A rare free spirit whose feet are firmly planted on the earth,…