Denver is experiencing a creative surge, say Timothy Arguello and Stephen Jones, the brains behind the Denver Taco Festival. “Denver’s culture is a melting pot of all these cool things happening from the coasts,” Jones says, and their street party will be no exception. Revelers will chase tacos with tequila,…
In May 1974, bombs exploded inside two separate cars in Boulder, 48 hours apart. The blasts killed six Chicano activists and seriously injured a seventh. Cuarenta y Ocho, written and directed by Su Teatro artistic director Tony Garcia, is a suspenseful thriller that explores the 48-hour period between the attacks…
In a culture frozen by the social mores of the Cold War era, Neal Cassady — a Denver boy who was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road — burned bright. Allen Ginsberg branded Cassady an icon of the Beat Generation, a movement that Cassady’s wife, Carolyn, derided as…
Beer and community building go hand and hand, says Eric Wallace, founder and president of Left Hand Brewing Company. Over the years, the Longmont-based business has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for issues as varied as theater, flood relief, the YMCA and, most recently, Intercambio, an organization teaching English…
Mundane things like ordering from a menu, talking to a doctor, applying for a job or navigating traffic signs can be hard for people who don’t know a country’s language. When non-English speaking people migrate into the United States, one of the biggest obstacles they face is figuring out how…
PrideFest is back, and the LGBTQ community is prepping to hit the streets where booze flows, bodies grind, rainbow flags wave and skin burns under the sun. While there are the usual liquor drenched festivities, thumping dance parties and ample opportunities to cruise, there are less debaucherous options as well,…
When Denver hosted its first PrideFest 39 years ago, being gay was illegal in most states and the idea of gay marriage was inconceivable, says Rex Fuller of the Colorado Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Center. “Our theme for this year is Same World Same Love. We’re talking about the…
Thirty million surveillance cameras operate in the United States, shooting four billion hours of footage each week, say Nothing to See Here curators Christina Battle and Adán De La Garza. “Let’s just stop and think about that for a second — the average person (with a life expectancy of 75…
History can build and destroy nations, create and end wars and help society wrangle with ethical obligations and failures. But when teachers reduce it to an endless scroll of names and dates that have been stripped of context, history loses its power. The Smithsonian Institution’s Richard Kurin is on a…
Forty years ago, bombs exploded in Boulder, killing six Chicano activists. Their deaths are still shrouded in mystery: Who killed them and why? Were they plotting a bombing? Did the police and FBI entrap them? Were they murdered? Su Teatro’s Tony Garcia has written Cuarenta y Ocho, a play that…
Peggy Jo Tallas started donning faux facial hair and holding up banks in the ’90s in order to raise funds for her ailing mother. The FBI dubbed her “Cowboy Bob.” After serving a stint in prison, Tallas swore off crime. But at sixty, she couldn’t resist one last holdup, which…
Too often, history is relegated to dusty stacks of books bloated with abstract ideas that make the past feel so distant, only a devoted few are inspired to approach it. But History Colorado’s Shawn Snow says that objects are a powerful way to connect with our stories, which is why…
California’s first openly gay elected politician, Harvey Milk, was a feisty camera-shop owner turned political activist. He fought homophobia, commanded LGBTQ people to “come out,” and struggled to build coalitions between oppressed communities. When fellow San Francisco city supervisor Dan White gunned him down in 1978, Milk became a martyr…
Gender inequality plagues the theater world, and “women are fully misrepresented as far as getting our work up on stages goes,” says Susan Lyles, founder and director of the And Toto Too Theater Company, an organization that showcases new works by women playwrights. Tonight, for the troupe’s fourth annual Play…
“Harvey Milk inspired people, and still does, today,” says Denver Gay Men’s Chorus artistic director James Knapp. And he should know: Knapp will conduct ninety singers and a twenty-piece chamber orchestra tonight in I Am Harvey Milk, an emotionally driven oratorio celebrating the life of California’s first openly gay politician…
“You don’t have to tell me about masochism, I’m in the theater,” says Vanda von Dunayev, one of the characters in Curious Theater’s current production, Venus in Fur, by David Ives, which tells the story of a playwright-director attempting to adapt Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Fur into a…
Whether you’re looking for a dip into cinema studies, a killer sports doc or a trashy romantic comedy, Denver’s big screens have you covered this month. Bike to the Blake Street Tavern for 40-Year-Old Virgin, immerse yourself in the glory of five of Hitchcock’s greatest films and kick your way…
When the FBI tried to track down Cowboy Bob, a repeat bank robber in Texas, they had no idea that they were looking for a single, middle-aged woman who used her heists to fund her ailing mother’s health-care costs. Tallas was a modern-day outlaw, making her tale irresistible to both…
For Tony Diego, art and education are inseparable. For over fifteen years, he has worked with young people, using art as a tool to address social issues. Diego is also a part of the Chicano art collective Los Phantazmas, which started in the ’90s with Josiah Lopez, Carlos Fresquez, Ismael…
Paying rent in a bloated market isn’t working for you? Have the piles of stuff you’ve hoarded in your closets finally forced you to scream: “I’m ready for a purge”? Maybe you just want to live a simple, green life? If you are ready to start thinking about building a…
“We have the biggest prison population in human history here in the United States,” says Piper Kerman, author of the bittersweet prison memoir Orange Is the New Black. “In a relatively short time — in basically one generation — we have invested so deeply in incarceration that our prison population…
Nissa Rost-Rothman greets the two hippies from northern Virginia who have been staying at her home, the back half of a single-story duplex in south Park Hill. For $145 a night, Airbnb guests rent her place and she couch-surfs. Though Rost-Rothman doesn’t feel well, she’s bubbly as she shows off…
