The average visitor at the Wynkoop Brewing Company doesn’t usually walk in with art on his mind. No, he’s thinking about microbrewed beer and a burger and maybe a few rounds of pool. So the challenges of being an art curator at the brewpub are many, though longtime local art…

Clark Secrest doesn’t write antiquarian books, but he does write about antiquarian times, and to do so, he’s had to turn to…antiquarian books and documents. So it makes sense for the former Denver Post police-beat reporter and editor — now the author of a book on Denver’s shadier days and…

Yes, there is a cutting edge in Jewish liturgical music, and her name is Basya Schechter. A free spirit who grew up in the Orthodox community of Brooklyn’s legendary Boro Park, where elders with conservative religious views constantly monitored how freely one moved or dressed, Schechter was first drawn not…

For the record, when lowriders start doing the cha-cha on souped-up hydraulics or airbags, they hop — they don’t jump. That’s the word from Lowrider Magazine spokesman Marco Patiño, a well-educated young L.A. talker who says his father, a custom-car buff himself, impressed upon the son early the importance of…

Howard Crabtree barely saw When Pigs Fly take off — he died of AIDS five days after it premiered — but some would say he lives on each night that his costumes take the stage. Magnificent drag-wear — and then some — constructed from foam rubber, sequins, glitter and other…

Listen up, people: Forget you ever believed in the stereotype of the stone-faced Indian right now, this instant. Sherman Alexie will have none of that, and he’s entitled. One of modern literature’s most talented and committed newcomers, the Spokane Indian fiction writer can shatter that stoic mug with a single…

The erudite and upstanding host of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, Scott Simon, has seen it all, firsthand, from El Salvador to Sarajevo. Yet in spite of his vast professional portfolio, when the quintessential news correspondent wrote a memoir, it was, loosely, about being a sports fan. But names can…

Never mind trying to decipher the plot: If you really want to understand the Cirque du Soleil, open your eyes and shut off your mind. Forget your expectations and just be amazed, because, at its best, the Cirque is the stuff of dreams — a highbrow sports event delivered in…

When the second annual Celebrate Colorado Artists Festival returns to the Denver Performing Arts Complex this weekend, expect a few new artists, a few improvements — and a lot more of the same. If the success of last year’s event, which drew about 45,000 people, is any indication, that means…

Denver’s Hue-Man Experience Bookstore doesn’t march; it meanders. And, as far as bookstores go, well, the whole place would fit comfortably into one little corner of the cavernous Tattered Cover. But Hue-Man’s sizable legacy — a long-lived commitment to bringing literacy to the African-American community — is its real strength:…

The rules of the game: Go slow. Have a station wagon. Spring cleaning means it’s high season for dumpster diving. “It’s like shopping at a thrift store,” Mary says. “You can’t be looking for something specific.” But while on the road with veteran divers Mary and Tony, who are as…

Imagine this: You’re a high-end, work-driven Bay Area management consultant with degrees from Cornell and Princeton. The world is your oyster, though you swallow it in eighty-hour-a-week increments, stopping at home once in a while to — what? — brush your teeth, maybe, or dust the empty refrigerator shelves. Then…

Cinco de Mayo celebrates a tiny slice of history — the Mexican army’s defeat of the French occupation at Puebla, deep in the heart of Mexico, in 1862. But the real celebration is more about the spirit of common people linked together in a shared cause. So, it’s a time…

Some purists say gardens need no ornamentation other than that which comes naturally, but we know better. At Groundcovers Greenhouse & Nursery, 4301 East Iliff Avenue (303-758-8957), you’ll find a good selection of ornate cast-iron trellises and arches to keep untidy vines in line, along with a whole menagerie of…

It’s a good day for Steve Moore. The spring is glorious in Richmond, Virginia, where he lives, and his T-cell count is higher than it’s been in more than seven years — 437 three months ago, it’s now up to 672. Moore, a standup comedian who’s been stuck with the…

Ever since early man and woman first shook their booties to a makeshift drumbeat on a prehistoric log, few cultural symbioses have been more elegant or innately automatic than the one between music and dance. But these days, some musicians and dancers say, that primitive dynamic has been dampened by…

Even in the mildest of winters, there comes a time — late in February, perhaps — when you think you’ll puke if you have to look at one more leafless tree. In fact, the total absence of snow only enhances the unyielding, mud-brown plainness of winter in the Denver area…

One of the toughest women you’ll ever encounter, Paulina Cruz Suárez isn’t a cop or a firefighter or even a lady wrestler. For most of her life she’s been a maid, preparing meals and caring for the children of rich families in Mexico City. But her story, told in a…

Chip Ward moved to Grantsville, Utah, in the 1970s, looking for an unsullied place to drop out of the rat race and raise a family away from it all — but somehow it didn’t turn out that way. Instead, he found out that even on the edge of the Great…

There’s niche marketing and then there’s marketing in niches. If anything, they’ve managed to corner the market on both at the Bookies, the only bookstore in town with enough children’s poetry tomes to stock prominent displays of everything from the Robert Louis Stevenson classics to a volume of odes to…

All of Ireland is like a small town — everyone knows everyone else’s business and often makes it their own. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing: In Cork, Ireland’s largest county, that simply translates into a deeply invested tradition of volunteerism among the women, who consider spreading good works…

You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to fool a Greater Prairie Chicken. Though they’ll strut their stuff with authority in like company, the showy little creatures, slightly smaller than domestic chickens, are shy around humans, especially when it comes to mating rituals. But each spring, the…