Valentine’s Day is almost here, guys, so what are you gonna do? If you’re smart, you’ll heed these tips on how to treat your girl like a lady. To start, retail entrepreneur Robin Lohre says she’s going all out for the holiday this year at her two eclectic shops. At…

SUN, 2/1 The title says it all: Fred Hess’s new quartet CD on the Tapestry label, The Long and the Short of It, displays the entire breadth of the local saxophonist/composer’s musical abilities, which draw simultaneously on the traditions and the broken rules of jazz. As Hess himself has said,…

FRI, 1/30 While graffiti and tagging are most commonly seen in alleys and on the sides of buildings and highway overpasses, the spray-paint works showcased in Rhythmic Chaos: Graffiti As Art, will hang on the walls of the Longmont Museum & Cultural Center. The exhibit, which opens today, is the…

SUN, 2/1 Ask any griot: Stories and drums have a history together. Before people wrote stuff down, they not only talked and sang about it, but they often beat it out in rhythm. So the combo seemed like a perfect fit for Sondra Singer, a Lakewood storyteller and drum enthusiast…

SUN, 2/1 Joe receives a ticket to the Super Bowl, but when he arrives at the stadium, he discovers he’s in the last row. Then he spies an empty fifty-yard-line seat. After getting past security, he sits down in the choice spot and asks the gentleman next to him if…

When local businessman Chris Frésquez opened his first Palabras Con Sabor Coffeehouse, at 22nd and Welton streets, in 2000, it was something to be proud of. First and foremost a bilingual bookstore dedicated to promoting Latino authors, it grew into something more: a coffeehouse/Internet cafe/meeting place to provide a safe…

TUES, 1/27 In her closing scene as Crystal in the cinematic version of The Women, Joan Crawford stares through her deliciously darkened diva eyes and growls, “There’s a word for you ladies, but it is seldom used in high society — outside of a kennel.” The manicured claws of bored…

SAT, 1/24 Head to the land Down Under at today’s screening of In Search of the Tasmanian Devil, with John Nelson, shown as part of the Macky Auditorium Travel Film Series. “Tasmania is a place that a lot of people don’t go to when they visit Australia, but it’s a…

TUES, 1/27 Move over, Squidward: There’s a new squid in town, and he’s 27 feet long and tall enough for a grown man to stand inside him. He’s the larger-than-life creation of Denver’s self-proclaimed “puppet guy” Cory Gilstrap, who built the Bunraku-style cephalopod for the new original children’s musical at…

FRI, 1/23 Everything from bronze wildlife sculptures to intricately beaded jewelry, crafted by more than 300 artists from across the nation, will be on display this weekend at the 23rd annual Colorado Indian Market and Southwest Showcase. “It’s a mixture of Native American, Southwestern, Western and wildlife art,” says spokeswoman…

TUES, 1/20 Mark Kurlansky has written books about the strangest things: cod, salt, Basque culture. But the one thing he’s constantly invested in all of them is a strong worldview — the social history of where such things came from and where they went. Though he’s focused on very singular…

FRI, 1/16 Why do we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day each year? Some would say it’s for the kids, for whom, especially, Dr. King’s vision still means something. That idea takes on a unique poignancy each year at the YMCA/Denver Nuggets Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast, where young Denver-area…

Some would call comic books a guilty pleasure, a childish entertainment meant to be put away by mature adults (or at the very least, packed away neatly in sealed plastic bags as a bankable investment). And then there are those who can’t help themselves. They never quite leave behind that…

THURS, 1/8 The Denver Center Theatre Company is heating things up this winter with a new production of Tennessee Williams’s sizzling drama A Streetcar Named Desire. In a twist on the award-winning classic, the DCTC show will feature an all-African-American cast. “To do Streetcar with an all-black cast was a…

MON, 1/12 Who really knows, other than a sculptor, what goes on in a sculpture studio? It’s actually a loud, messy business — with machinery buzzing and dust flying — but it’s also an endeavor that undergoes many stages of evolution between drawing board and finished work. Most of us…

At first it seems like a small thing: Out of nearly 200 artists nationwide whose work was chosen for inclusion in Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture and Education, an encyclopedic, comprehensive and absolutely gorgeous phone-book-sized pair of volumes put out by the Bilingual Press at Arizona State…

The last thing you’d expect from a stellar concert pianist, especially one on the level of Christopher O’Riley, is a rock concert. Riley, the winner of various prestigious awards, from a Van Cliburn to an Avery Fisher Career Grant, performs this weekend with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Scheduled to take…

MON, 1/5 We’ve all heard the term “the fabric of life,” but Santa Fe fiber artist Lauren Camp puts a new twist on the old metaphor by giving life to fabric. A jazz aficionado who’s found a unique way to express her love for music and musicians, Camp debuts The…

SAT, 1/3 When Spirit, the first of two new NASA Mars Exploration Rovers, hits the Red Planet’s atmosphere and hurtles toward the surface, local scientists and citizens will be able to witness the historic moment. Beginning tonight at 8:30 p.m., the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Boulevard,…

For most people, the winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, a gloomy occasion when the sun goes down early and total darkness ensues. For others, the winter solstice marks the longest night of the year, a cause for raucous celebration and fanfare.The people behind the 18th Annual…

A hundred bottles of tequila at the bar, a hundred bottles of tequila.Jesse Morreale and Chris Swank, the folks behind Nobody in Particular Presents, and three new partners have given Capitol Hill/City Park residents reason to sing. A hundred and four reasons, to be exact, which is the number of…

Pick up a pair of knitting needles and get down to business with Knit for the Homeless, a campaign to collect handmade hats, scarves and gloves for the underprivileged.”I get the chills when I think about it,” says Shellie Lubowitz, owner of the Shivering Sheep & Coppélia’s Needlepoint. “To me,…