Talkies may have cut off the short, electric rise of silent film, but who ever expected that the long-lost genre would be resurrected, decades in the future, to flicker again — not up on the silver screen, but on the stage? And that the result would be so modern and…

The story of how Rhonda Piggins came to be called Simbala runs quite parallel to the story of how Simbala came to be a jewelry and African-art entrepreneur. Both have to do with the very human art of becoming the person you were meant to be, by whatever magical means…

In bold counterpoint to the swinging girders of a multimillion-dollar complex slowly rising over the intersection of 16th and Market streets these days, a new burst of color stands out against the grit and grime of the bustling construction site. As departing mall shuttles whiz by and high-heeled businesswomen clack…

Each year on or around February 19, members of the Japanese-American community gather for a complicated ceremony. A mixture of somber observance, flat-out activism and unbridled hope for the future, the annual Day of Remembrance is a protracted commemoration of one of this country’s darker lapses in judgment: the day…

You could spend your whole life trying to find a novel way of telling the girl in your life — whether she’s two, 22 or 82 — you love her. But the frenzy to prove it — with spontaneity and zest — boils over this week when the telltale heartbeat…

What if HBO held a party for the comedy industry and everybody in the whole world came except A.C.E.? The Denver improv comedy trio’s multinational members would rather not find out. Not invited by the bigwigs for the second year in a row, Canadian Barb Gehring, American Linda Klein and…

Denver storyteller Skywalker Payne has a good explanation for her flighty moniker, which she says is her legal name: She’s firmly disconnected from the ground and proud of it. “I’ve been a professional gypsy most of my life,” Payne declares with a worldly smile that practically covers her thin, well-traveled…

We all have a story about the Magic 8 Ball, the enigmatic Tyco toy that’s been answering kids’ questions with inscrutable replies — “Signs Point To Yes,” “Better Not Tell You Now,” “Most Likely” and more — in bedrooms, basements and backyards across the country for more than thirty years…

We don’t all get to live a fairy-tale existence, but then again, we all differ when it comes to defining what one is. For Eric Paddock, the fairy tale is an endless yarn, stored away plot-twist by plot-twist, in box after box of photographs and negatives — some priceless, some…

Most Coloradans are more familiar with Jolly Rancher candies than they are with the Harmsen Western Art Collection, but the two are closely related. Jolly Rancher entrepreneurs Bill and Dorothy Harmsen came to Colorado from Minnesota in 1942 and built an ice-cream factory out on Ward Road that eventually began…

Abbott Fay thinks skiers lamenting this year’s late and scant snowfall ought to quit bellyaching. Farmers and ranchers throughout the West already know that drought is a cyclical occurrence, after all. Fay, a semi-retired Grand Junction history professor who has written the entertaining A History of Skiing in Colorado, knows…

When choreographer Deborah Reshotko launched her first Building Community Through Dance program in 1998, forty people turned out for Saturday-morning rehearsals. There were kids and teens, single moms from the Warren Village assisted-housing project, neighborhood grandmas and everything in between. Some were culled from outreach programs conducted by Reshotko and…

Once upon a time in ancient Denver, when there were few contemporary art galleries and even fewer galleries showing unproven work, a ragtag crew of pirates fresh out of art school and unspoiled by the business of art banded together in search of a sturdy galleon with clean walls and…

When Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, gets under way Friday evening, they’ll be lighting the first candle on menorahs all over town and getting ready to open the first night’s gifts. But unlike Christmas, when the whole haul is carried away in one fell swoop, there’s still another week’s…

Down in the basement of Union Station, there’s a water-stained passageway of stone masonry that leads past a solid vault door gone green with age. Those walls date back to the 1880s, and their musty smell and weathered stone provide all necessary testimony regarding their age. Like much of the…

Beauty is out there, all over the place. So why is it so hard to find? Locating the right finishing touches for your new living salon, bedroom or bath can be quite a pain in the neck, a fishing expedition in a great big sea: You travel far and wide,…

When you wax nostalgic for the ’50s and ’60s, aren’t the cars what you think of first — the ’57 T-Birds and ’62 ‘Vettes of your (or someone else’s) bygone youth? It doesn’t matter if you weren’t alive then: They’re the stuff of popular folklore and, truly, the style barometer…

“Funky” still lives on Santa Fe Drive. For instance, on the 700 block, a collective of potters, painters and photographers has banded together, bypassing middlemen, to sell their unique wares directly to the public at Artists on Santa Fe. Here you’ll find Cristine Boyd’s black-and-white animal-print ceramics, James Garnett’s raku…

Elvis fans, you know who you are. You might be a slightly addled, middle-aged white woman — that’s the stereotypical prototype — but chances are you’re not. So says Erika Doss, an art history professor at CU-Boulder and the author of Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith & Image. In reality, Doss…

When was the last time you really saw a neighborhood in flux? LoDo is over; with the addition of a few new restaurants, the Golden Triangle will be here to stay; and even Capitol Hill, bless its over-inflated heart, can just hitch its future to a star, because upscale inner-city…

There are a lot of tangled branches in the tap-dance tree — there are jazz, rhythm and show tap, to name a few of the principal limbs — but Ellie Sciarra’s not willing to sort them out. An athletic dancer with more than twenty years in and out of the…

Gunslingers, Ghosts and Gold: The Spirit of Denver Walking Tour. Daily except Tuesday, weather permitting, leaves from Eighteenth and Wynkoop streets, $15, call for times and reservations, 303-860-8687, http://atlas.csd.net/~deebeaux