I still remember the first time I ate at Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe, years ago. It wasn’t much to look at, particularly then, but it was clearly a family affair, with the kids and dad Virgilio Aguirre taking orders and bussing the tables and mama Rosa Linda hard at work…

Every parent has the same experience. When you look at your own child, you see the most beautiful creature in the universe, an ever-changing bundle of dreams, quirks and personality in a glowing flesh-and-bone package that you know so well, yet not at all. That’s the bittersweet nut of parental…

Bollywood is big business these days: First it was Slumdog Millionaire, then the Oscars, and the next thing you know, the East Indian dance style is popping up everywhere, from So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Best Dance Crew to SpongeBob SquarePants. But as local Bollywood dance maven…

This year’s Starz Denver Film Festival, subtitled “Destination: Anywhere,” promises to generate the usual high level of excitement, from this evening’s opening-night red-carpet screening of Precious to official closing festivities with The Young Victoria on November 21, both at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. But it’s often the little things…

Are you cool? Or, more important, do you want to be cool? Author Ted Gioia (author of The History of Jazz and other music-related tomes) thinks maybe you don’t, at least not in the smoldering, back-turned mold of Miles Davis, Bob Dylan or James Dean. Strung throughout with his own…

In 2008, the Bronx-based Universes ensemble came to town as part of the National Performing Arts Convention, offering a reading of Ameriville, a new kind of performance work in progress, at Curious Theatre, a longtime supporter of new and exciting works. “They blew the roof off this building,” reports Curious…

When Tran Wills first sent out the word that she’d be closing the doors of her six-year-old indie fashion boutique, the Fabric Lab, at the end of the year, there was a flurry of panic among a certain hipster/design-savvy sector of the community. How could Wills close the groundbreaking East…

Ski bums, it’s here: The 18th annual Colorado Ski & Snowboard Expo is back, promising the usual bargains and the latest snow-sports gear, as well as a convention hall’s worth of fun things to do in between aisle-perusing. New this year, you’ll find Olympian Doug Lewis’s Eliteam Training Center, an…

One of the region’s most extensive holiday sales, the Foothills Art Center Holiday Art Market, has downsized a bit, says market manager Jen Thario, but that will be no loss to the appreciative throngs who visit the sale each year. “We’re going for a high-end fine-art look, as well as…

I love the annual Gifts for Yule holiday sale more than just about anything, at least anything that has to do with shopping, and here’s why. Sam Robinson’s annual local handmade market is so friendly and so pretty, and the lunchtime fare, prepared by kitchen wizardess Erica MacNeish and sinful…

Mark Wood is a toothpick of a man, a driven, wild-haired rock star with a Flying V-shaped electric violin (it’s called a Viper, kids). Best known for his gig with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Wood is also a violin maker with his own unique line of guitar-like instruments and a dedicated…

I’m a big fan of the little guy, and I have to say that the oft-overlooked East End Arts District in downtown Aurora does wear the cloak of a little guy. But it wears it well: The brave network of galleries, studios and theaters clustered along the Colfax corridor, from…

Although I like to shop, I’m not sure I can say I like shopping for the holidays, when that uncomfortable sense of urgency takes over, casting its ugly commercial pall over everything. But my advice is this: Don’t let it get to you. Make a detailed list. Smile in the…

The Colorado-based PeaceJam Foundation has been inspiring youth with the help of a global enclave of Nobel Peace Laureates since 1996, but the nonprofit is also always on the lookout for kids too good to be true, especially those doing good deeds in our own back yard. And that’s exactly…

I first heard of the Idan Raichel Project when I saw a screener of the film Black Over White, which documents the unusual Israeli worldbeat aggregation’s trip to Ethiopia, also a homecoming and pilgrimage of sorts for the band’s Falasha Ethiopian singers. It was a somewhat strange journey peopled by…

Big Love is a big play. To begin with, Charles Mee’s modern interpretation of Aeschylus’s The Suppliants takes root in the ancient tale, in which fifty brides flee fifty grooms in a classic battle of the sexes. But Mee’s reimagined update is so jam-packed with theatrical artifice — a wild…

There’s a small group of folks in Denver who would like to see the return of the “Mizpah” arch at Union Station. The arch, a relic of Denver’s past, once served as the city’s own unique Statue of Liberty metaphor, welcoming visitors from the time it was installed in 1906…