I like roses as much as the next girl, but really, the flowers and the chocolate and the champagne and all that, they’re just subterfuge, meant to get a girl to squeeze into — ta-da! — the teensy lingerie that comes with it. Is it really all about me? Probably…

Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck is a musical rarity: a humble, but gifted phenom who makes his craft look easy without making a big deal of it. And that’s never been more evident than in Throw Down Your Heart, the 2008 documentary tracking Fleck’s voyage through Africa, discovering kindred spirits while…

Beat icon Neal Cassady, who once wandered Denver’s skid row as a kid, would have been 84 tomorrow. It’s hard to imagine the motor-mouthed, free-living inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty character in On the Road as an old man, but that’s what Neal would have been, with his years…

For boutique entrepreneur Stephanie Shearer, community played a big part in her decision to take a chance on renovating the EZE Mop Complex at 17th Avenue and Lafayette Street into a row of shops. She moved her Soul Haus men’s boutique and opened the new Peppermint gift shop there and,…

There’s nothing else quite like Cafe Nuba, and Denverites who’ve checked it out know just how lucky they are to have had the multicultural lovefest, grassroots “artivist” celebration, poetry slam and open mike to call our own. And though it’s not around as much as it used to be, the…

Fiction writers from the highbrow literary world don’t always qualify as superstars, but T.C. Boyle would be an exception: His reckless flash, flamboyant persona and elegant turns of phrase demand that kind of attention. So it’s always news when Boyle comes to town for a book signing, even if the…

In the local fashion world, Fallene Wells is the talk of the town. A hairstylist by trade and designer/homemade fashion show impresario by dream, she makes witty, comfortable clothing that’s a kick to look at and even more fun to wear. See for yourself when Fancy Tiger Clothing showcases Wells…

When the Denver Center Theatre Company premiered Plainsong last year, they had a hit on their hands with author Kent Haruf’s laid-back look at small-town life on the eastern plains of Colorado. That bodes well for this year’s world-premiere staging of Eventide, Haruf’s second yarn set in the fictitious community…

Formerly a sculptor of wild papier-mâché cowboys and bikers, longtime Lakewood resident Al Orahood switched somewhere along the way to painting. But even working in a new medium, Orahood still chose a workingman’s subject: the weathered neon signs of West Colfax Avenue, the ones that announce such run-down and evocative…

The Buntport Theater Company has taken on plenty of literary figures and playwrights over the years, from Shakespeare to Kafka, cross-pollinating the work of the greats with their own quirky brand. The latest is Eugene O’Neill, whom we meet in the hospital, recovering from an appendectomy and formulating the plot…

Improv makes us laugh, but real comedy aficionados know there’s a lot more structure holding up what seems to be something so marvelously off-the-cuff. Improv comes in many forms — it’s not all Whose Line Is It Anyway?, wham, bam, thank you ma’am — and in the case of Bovine…

Sniffed at as a mere caricaturist in his own time and buried in a pauper’s grave, the realist artist Honoré Daumier was a keen satirist and sociopolitical observer of Parisian life in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as a prolific master lithographer whose works paint a lively picture of that…

Poor Matthew Taylor. When Linda Klein and Barbara Gehring, his mates from the improv comedy group A.C.E., hit the big time with their long-running show Girls Only, Taylor was left twiddling his thumbs, right? Wrong. At Klein’s suggestion, he began to compile a cascade of wonderfully expressed personal stories and…

Winter is when the Denver Center Theatre company delivers the meat of its season’s repertoire: an annual selection of DCTC-commissioned world premieres offered in conjunction with the company’s yearly Colorado New Play Summit. The plays are sometimes experimental and often deeply moving works that always give off a sense of…

The last time Vail tried a Gay Ski Week, it didn’t amount to much. But after an interim, it’s back with a brave new ramped-up approach crafted by the same folks who bring you the popular Telluride Gay Ski Week. Along with your basic meet-up meals, après-ski gatherings and slope…

Some lucky amateurs (or otherwise) will have their moments in the spotlight tonight when the Boulder Theater presents Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway, an all-star revue of Broadway favorites sung by a cast of five pros direct from the Great White Way. So in addition to the experienced belting…

The time was right, says Plus Gallery’s Ivar Zeile, to listen to the advice of others and build his gallery by breaking into “the blue chip market” — the works of New York-based artists of renown. The opportunity then fell into his lap at the suggestion of Plus artist Naomi…

If local fashion maven Brandi Shigley had a million dollars, she’d use it to help local designers build their businesses. Since she doesn’t, she’s doing what she can: Shigley recently moved her cramped Fashion Denver headquarters to more spacious digs around the corner at 1070 Bannock Street, where she can…

A quartet of businesses along Curtice Street in Historic Downtown Littleton decided to beat the post-holiday doldrums by hosting tonight’s Progressive Dinner and Haiku Celebration, an event that serves up not just food and wine, but a little literary entertainment, as well. “This is a time of year when there’s…

Nathaniel Adams Coles, better known as Nat “King” Cole, was born in Alabama, the son of a Baptist minister. He learned to play the organ from his mother, who accompanied his father in church. Originally a keyboard phenom, he later studied classical piano, but it was jazz — and the…

The erhu, or Chinese violin, is a strange and ancient-looking instrument, with two strings along a long, narrow neck attached to a sextagonal sound box covered in snakeskin. It’s played with a horsehair bow that slides between the strings, and, like the Western violin, is a squeaky-squawky mess in the…

Roller disco and the Tower of Babel. John Hinckley and Jodie Foster. Ronald Reagan as the antichrist. Choreographed song and dance. Are you getting all this down? LIDA Project artistic director Brian Freeland doesn’t think small, and he’s putting his big ideas on wheels and taking them for a whirl…