Java junkies, rejoice! Rather than pay a hefty rent increase, Common Grounds left its original home on West 32nd Avenue at the end of April, with hopes of reopening a version of the two-decade-old coffeeshop in Common Grounds’s roasting facility at 2139 West 44th Avenue a month later. The project…
Music is life — or at least it is for us. When we’re not writing about it, we’re thinking about it, talking about it or listening to it. These are the things that were in heavy rotation for us this week. What are you listening to? What should we be…
Excision is making his way back to the Centennial State to rattle the windows at 1STBANK Center for the inaugural Boom Festival featuring Deltron 3030, Funtcase vs Cookie Monsta, Brillz, Ill.Gates and Robotic Pirate Monkey on Friday, November 15. Tickets ($30-$39.75) are on sale now. Continue on to see what…
Fair food — fried, salty, sugary — took center stage at the Denver County Fair over the weekend, whether attendees were biting into big corn dogs or showing off their potentially prize-winning pies. The fair fare was the perfect complement to the quirky event, and Westword’s Brandon Marshall was at…
The third annual Denver County Fair took over the National Western Complex this past weekend. The urban-alternative celebration once again combined the traditional and the quirky, offering everything from drag shows to a geek pavilion, zombie pageants and some very cute animals. Westword’s Brandon Marshall was there, and brought back…
From the moment that Mary and Lisa Rogers opened Common Grounds in 1992, the coffeehouse at 3484 West 32nd Avenue was a neighborhood gathering place — even if the Highland neighborhood was far from the hot spot it is today. Today the area is so hot, in fact, that the…
You’ll have to get your bacon and eggs elsewhere this morning: Johnny’s Diner has closed in Aurora. During a recent Aurora Fire Department inspection, the owner of the decades-old joint was told he needed to replace the fire suppression hood over the grill — a $3,000 repair. That was enough,…
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE @ RED ROCKS | THURS, 8/15/13 A six-year hiatus hasn’t made Queens of the Stone Age forget its roots. The earnest full-length album …Like Clockwork, released earlier this year, is a long-awaited return to the spotlight, and it proves that the band hasn’t lost its…
The Stapleton Tap House opened earlier this month in the Shops at Northfield, offering shoppers and Stapleton residents an easy way to try out unusual beers from smaller breweries across Colorado. The 1,500-square-foot spot, located near Harkins Theatre, has thirty taps and a saying that “the easier it is for…
YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND @ RED ROCKS | SAT, 8/10/13 If any band typifies the Colorado approach to contemporary bluegrass, it’s Yonder Mountain String Band. The quartet built up its chops playing in venues in Boulder, Nederland and beyond in the late 1990s, and its fusion of traditional instrumentation and…
The debut of The Source at 3350 Brighton Boulevard was touted as one of the big events of the summer by Visit Denver — and it looks like the European-style artisan food market/retail complex will just squeak in under the wire. The new opening date for the Zeppelin Development project…
Update: Read the winner below. “Are giant bears walking through downtown Colorado Springs?” asked a nitwitted FoxNews anchor last week, after video of the dumpster-diving bruin outside of the Edelweiss German Restaurant in Colorado Springs aired for the umpteenth time on the network. And Fox wasn’t alone; the schnitzel-hunting bear…
Eating won’t be the only entertainment at some new spots opening in Denver. As our Backbeat blog reports, two bars opening in the coming months will offer not just food and drinks, but live shows — and that’s music to our ears. The Monkey Barrel will open on Platte Street…
Music is life — or at least it is for us. When we’re not writing about it, we’re thinking about it, talking about it or listening to it. These are the things that were in heavy rotation for us this week. What are you listening to? What should we be…
First Friday in Denver can be quite a show, especially on Santa Fe Drive — and Westword photographer Danielle Lirette was there on Friday night to document the scene. Below is a sampling of the scenes she snapped; see the full gallery here: First Friday on Denver’s Art District on…
The Brûlée Kinky Circus Burner party heated up City Hall on Saturday, with performance artists and music. The event was a fundraiser for “Camp Brûlée,” a campsite that Denver locals will set up at Burning Man in late August. Keep reading for more photos by Jim Wills. See also: Brulee…
Summer’s hot, but it’s easy to cool off with your favorite beverage, and you can have your pick on Friday, August 16 at the Endless Summer Beer & Spirits Festival, which is dedicated to liquids in various forms. A benefit for Water for People, which is focused on water preservation…
What’s the oldest family-owned restaurant in the metro area? So far, we haven’t found anything to top the Blue Parrot, the red-sauce emporium that the Colacci family opened in Louisville back in 1919, and has been run by members of that clan ever since. Within Denver city limits, we’d thought…
STEELY DAN @ RED ROCKS | THURS, 8/8/13 Enigmatic, intellectual, wry and clever, Steely Dan played what sounded a bit like smooth jazz when the band debuted in the mid-70s, even as singer/pianist Donald Fagen sang pointedly about clandestine acts, the lurid underbelly of American society and the nuanced psychodrama…
As faithful visitors to our Schmuck of the Week archive know full well, schmucks come in every size, shape and description. But one frequently seen thread seems to be collateral damage, i.e. a schmuck whose frustration over one thing boils over in a way that causes a whole raft of…
GIGANTOUR @ 1STBANK CENTER | FRI, 8/2/13 Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine first conceived of Gigantour as a platform to showcase acts whose music featured virtuosic guitar playing. In addition to his own band, the festival’s inaugural roster, in 2005, included prog-rock vets Dream Theater, extreme-metal unit Nevermore and skronky math-core…
More than two dozen restaurants opened in the metro area in July, serving everything from empanadas to tacos to pizza…and beer, of course. Leading the way in the eatery action? Glendale, whose CitySet project will soon have eleven restaurants — but the town also lost its oldest saloon, Jack Casey’s…
