SAT, 7/26 Bringing frog racing to Empire required a real leap of faith. After all, the tiny mountain town is far from any lily ponds. Still, two decades ago, a farsighted mayor decided that a Frog Rodeo would be just the thing to put Empire on the map, and he…

FRI, 7/25 Downtown Denver will be buzzing today as the streets are infiltrated by a swarm of scooter enthusiasts participating in this year’s Shopping Ride, a highlighted adjunct event in the sixth annual Mile High Mayhem scooter rally. “Still pushing junk” is the theme as the two-strokers take the road…

MON, 7/21 Hold on to your helmets, because tonight Mr. Pacman, those intergalactic video-game playboys and local Atari rockers, unleash the PacFashion show on Panopticon, 60 South Broadway. Like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome meets Tron, PacFashion is a full-contact show of primitive punk-entangled astrowear, with the models engaging the Mr…

SAT, 7/19 Kids stretch themselves every which way at KidSpree 2003, which is dubbed A Kid’s Eye View for all the obvious reasons. The annual event, hosted by the city of Aurora, is designed exclusively for the junior set and is one of the best available adventures for kids around…

SAT, 7/19 Imagine yourself cycling merrily through trendy LoDo, the Ballpark neighborhood and the Platte River Valley one Saturday morning. Where do you stop down there during the day, before the area’s nightlife heats up? If you’re certified, cultured city folk, you go to galleries. If you’re bohemian, perhaps you…

SAT, 7/19 There’s something that everyone from gearheads and grease monkeys to Snoop Dogg and Ice-T can agree on: The hottest way to blaze around town is chillin’ in a lowrider. So cruise on over to Six Flags Elitch Gardens today for the 2003 Lowrider Invitational. “These are the top…

Dina Castillo found the perfect job at Denver’s Th’Ink Tank Gallery, as gallery curator for a venue where lowbrow art and tattooists mingle freely. But Castillo can still dream, can’t she? Th’Ink Tank is already booked up through 2004 with shows featuring national talent from the underground pop-art arena, and…

MON, 7/14 At age 57, Essie Garrett just keeps on going. But even she admits it isn’t getting easier: One of Denver’s favorite long-distance runners, Garrett’s known for her one-woman cross-country fundraising marathons, which cover hundreds of miles, all in the name of one cause or another. One of her…

Dan Zanes wants to change the world. He thinks music, particularly the back-porch variety, is the key. And because grassroots efforts must start at the very beginning, he’s taken to pitching his to kids — or, to be more exact, families. Zanes has recorded a string of high-quality CDs with…

SUN, 7/6 Do you remember your first Grateful Dead concert? The one you went to before Jerry got really tired and grizzled? Maybe you’re having a hard time remembering after the concoction of mind erasers you took that day, but it wouldn’t have been a real Dead concert otherwise, right?…

FRI, 7/4 Tai Beldock of Denver’s Erico Motorsports wants the U.S. to give equal time to European motorcycles. The Cherry Creek Arts Festival, she says, eschews the Harley’s stylish overseas cousins with its all-Harley “Art on Two Wheels” display. So her faction decided to put on its own show, Moto…

TUES, 7/8 Where’s the last place your mother wanted to catch you hanging out on a summer evening? No contest: It was the pool hall, where boys became men (and girls became sharks) while racking them up in the back-room murk. The game of billiards comes with twenty tons of…

SAT, 6/28 Can’t afford a European adventure this summer? Here’s how to enjoy a Roman holiday without ever leaving the comfort of your own scrappy little American city: Be transported by Sargent and Italy, a traveling exhibit from the Los Angeles County Museum and Italy’s Ferrara Arte Museum that opens…

TUES, 7/1 For children, the life-sized elephant puppet may be the highlight of Walden Family Playhouse’s Toby and the Big Top. But adults will be amazed by the sense of nostalgia for an old-time circus re-created by internationally accomplished artists. “We’re kind of re-creating the turn-of-the-century circus that stopped a…

SAT, 6/28 Pink and white cherry blossoms no longer line the banks of Cherry Creek, but that doesn’t stop Denver’s Japanese-American community from celebrating its culture each June at the annual Sakura Matsuri, otherwise known as the Cherry Blossom Festival. Now in its 31st year, Denver’s Cherry Blossom Festival takes…

SUN, 6/22 Perhaps one of the most misunderstood tenets of Jewish law, the mikvah, or ritual monthly immersion by women after menstruation, is one of those things people don’t talk about. Among Orthodox Jewish women, though, it’s been practiced for centuries, handed down privately from woman to woman. For some…

FRI, 6/20 Was there ever life before Harry? Depends on how you look at it: Harry Potter, you could argue, has always been here and always will be — if you throw out the usual boring restrictions of real time, which can’t possibly regulate happenings in the magical Hogwarts cosmos…

SAT, 6/21 The recent news that the last of the old-style Volkswagen Beetles will trundle off the assembly line this summer at VolkswagenMexico in Puebla, Mexico, may be just a blip on the radar of Gens X and Y as they whiz by with daisies in their dashboard vases. But…

SAT, 6/14 Many new phrases — Ground Zero, “Let’s roll,” “axis of evil” — have entered the American lexicon since terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The latest, “Dixie Chicked,” is a term signifying political backlash — and it’s one that rebel comedian Bill Maher can probably…

FRI, 6/13 Carl Sagan once said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” At the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the time is now, and the place is the new Space Odyssey exhibit, which opens at 9 a.m. today. “Science is the creative exploration of the world and…

TUES, 6/17 How, after seeing all that he saw, did Jack readjust to normal life once he descended the beanstalk? The Arvada Center deals with this question in the children’s-theater production of Under the Beanstalk. The answer? He didn’t. Picking up where the traditional tale leaves off, Under the Beanstalk…

SAT, 6/14 Bob Bennish thinks the first annual Rocky Mountain Recumbent Rally will be relaxing. After all, participants — riding recumbent bicycles on which the riders are almost lying down — have to exert less effort than cyclists on upright models. “It’s more efficient and easier,” says organizer Bennish, himself…