SAT, 4/9 The initial run of the Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway could have been monumentally disastrous. Utilizing a “cog” or “rack” railway system that was relatively new at the time — outside of a few steep tracks in Switzerland, there were not many such railways in existence — designers…

Local playwright Melissa Lucero McCarl, fresh off the lauded run of her dramatic Frida Kahlo tribute, Painted Bread, says the creation of her next great project, a play about expatriate author Gertrude Stein, resulted from a “serendipitous chain of events.” The chance to show off the complexities of the legendary…

THURS, 3/31 Imagine, if you will, a sardonic tale of a maniacal cowboy prospector who, with the help of a greedy group of financiers, senators and businessmen, conspires to overturn an entire village in his crazed obsession for oil. Sound familiar? Well, believe it or not, there’s not a single…

THURS, 3/31 The Yard Dogs Traveling Road Show is rolling back into town, ready to prove that a Yard Dog can, indeed, learn new tricks. “Nail your hat to your head and hide the wine,” says the carny’s barker, Eddy Joe Cotton. “Did I mention the Œdancing girls, dancing girls,…

TUES, 4/5 Ask any kid on the street who Charlie Chaplin was, and you’ll probably get a blank stare or, at the very least, a snicker about that retarded dude with the weird mustache and big feet. It’s just a fact of nature: The little guy on the flickering screen…

FRI, 3/18 Charles Dickens once said that “home is a name, a word,” but for the students at P.S.1, the concept of “home” can also be expressed in images. For the past month, more than a dozen students from the charter school have been working with digital storytellers Daniel Weinshenker,…

Most mothers of small children know the score: They shyly finger the racks at Oilily or April Cornell, purposely ignoring the price tags and, well, dreaming. Because unless they’ve got hundreds of bucks to throw away on a gorgeous ensemble their kid will outgrow next month, they know they’ve got…

You could never call Thaddeus Phillips boring. The New York-based East High and Colorado College grad has become the toast of the fringe-theater crowd, and he’s done it all by his lonesome, with little more than a healthy imagination and a knapsack full of props that come to life in…

When local gallery owner and humanitarian Sandra Renteria does something charitable, she does it on her own terms. Already in the do-good business as founder of the Art Creation Foundation for Children, an organization that puts art supplies into the hands of children in troubled Jacmel, Haiti, Renteria took off…

THURS, 2/24 Cheech Marin chucks Chong and the bongs tonight for a bit of culture. As the owner of one of the largest collections of Chicano art in the country, Marin is in town to participate in Leaving Aztlán: Rethinking Contemporary Latino and Chicano Art at Metropolitan State College of…

FRI, 2/25 The lesser snow goose is an undependable fellow: Cruising the Western Central Flyway during migration, it makes one of its stopovers at John Martin Reservoir near Lamar. But, hey, some days the pickings might look better at Horse Creek Reservoir outside Las Animas. And sometimes, when the weather…

MON, 2/21 The war in Afghanistan introduced Americans to a dirt-poor country peopled by fundamentalist mullahs, warlords, persecuted women hidden head to foot in the folds of heavy burkas — and little more. Even in the media spotlight, the country came across in glaring 2-D, with little insight offered into…

Face facts, gentlemen: Most women don’t want Victoria’s Secret for Valentine’s Day. Skimpy lingerie is what they, ideally, give to you. And everyone knows that too much chocolate makes a girl fat and pimply. So what do the ladies want? Women, you’ll learn, love the kinds of trinkets they won’t…

French aniumaFRI, 2/4 Artists have long labored to capture the sublime through sensual stimuli evoked by visual imagery. Spend a few hours before a Bierstadt landscape or a depthless Rothko color block, and you’ll start to get it. It’s a romantic notion that survives even in our technological age. The…

FRI, 2/4 When Josh Levy was studying music and art at the California Institute of the Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago, he noticed that his creativity and focus heightened when he worked around other people. Years later, while teaching at a summer arts school for children in New…

SUN, 1/30 Boulder jazz drummer and composer Chris Lee first fell for Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s music in the 1970s, when the percussionist, only fourteen years old at the time, listened to Wheeler’s debut album, Gnu High — a fine romp with Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette –…

At first, the darkness was intimidating and the smell of ozone strong. My mind wouldn’t slow down. Why, I kept asking myself, would a self-proclaimed ADD sufferer voluntarily submit to lying in a ten-inch-deep tank brimming with water and enough epsom salts to fill the Dead Sea? I was trapped…

TUES, 1/25 Charismatic singer Bobby McFerrin, who beatboxed his way up the charts in 1988 with the Grammy-winning “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” brings his bebopping rhythm and jazz — not to mention that signature grin — tonight to the Newman Center for the Performing Arts. McFerrin, who studied with Leonard…

SAT, 1/15 Chip Walton’s Curious Theatre Company is starting the year in the highest of style, with Edward Albee on its platter. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? is a witty comic drama that’s also a deadpan shocker: It’s about a middle-aged architect who announces to his family that’s he’s…

THURS, 1/13 Ever since Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party — an installation of table settings celebrating female figures of cultural and historic importance — was first viewed by the public in 1979, it’s been an undying symbol of feminism. But while the five-year collaboration of hundreds of artisans and assistants…

Five Green Boxes was an anomaly in the local retail world when it opened five years ago on South Pearl Street — part eclectic design emporium, part craft store, part boutique, all stretching out across a vast, color-flooded floor. It was so fun and homey, you half expected customers to…

TUES, 1/4 I worked for years in the retail world, where the general atmosphere always builds to an apocalyptic frenzy in December. Then there’s the day-after sale and, after that, inventory to be taken. No rest for the weary. Even after I retired to a behind-the-scenes buying job in the…