Every December, my parents would pack the family into the station wagon and head to downtown Chicago, where we’d look at the displays in the department-store windows and all the Christmas lights that glowed brighter than the tail-lights in the traffic jam around us. Downtown department stores have gone the…
The Walnut Room brought new life — and cash — to NoDo, the area northeast of Coors Field. But for its next venture, it’s taking on an area that’s already ground zero for hipsters: Broadway. And at 9 a.m. today, Walnut owner John Burr will be at the Denver Department…
Denver International Airport has the money to start planning a transformation of the Jeppesen Terminal into a massive mall (and move security screening to the perimeter) — but it’s put the Scrooge to its annual holiday entertainment, blaming budget constraints for the $50,000 cut. For twenty years, the International Performance…
Time magazine is out with the Top 10 of Everything in 2009 — and Jason Sheehan’s Cooking Dirty makes the list of the top ten non-fiction books of the year, coming in at #9. Here’s what Time says about Sheehan’s book in its round-up: “It’s a paradox of the post-Bourdain…
Last month’s Kumbaya moment, which featured most of Colorado’s top GOPs uniting behind gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis and the Republican Party’s Platform for Prosperity, did not resound in southeastern Colorado. They’re singing a different song near Pinon Canyon, a stunning swathe of ranchland east of Trinidad, because the platform is…
Dear Mexican: As a Chicano/Mexican, I have lost my faith in God. While they take pride in their country like everyone else and like to make frequent jokes, Mexicans are generally very humble (poor) people. Isn’t God supposed to be on the side of the poor and humble? Why is…
With new dispensaries opening daily across Colorado, the prime names are getting snapped up faster than the docs who are willing to prescribe medical marijuana. Now to worry, though; with this handy medical marijuana matrix, you can devise a new dispensary name faster than it takes to light up a…
State senator Chris Romer could have used some medical marijuana last night, to soothe the headache of dealing with all of yesterday’s complaints over his just-released, 63-page bill to regulate the industry. Among its provisions: creating a state licensing authority to handle licenses for both clinics and growers and setting…
He missed a court date at the end of November — but disgraced developer Erik Osborn showed up in plenty of time for his trial in Denver District Court, which got under way on Monday. The crux of this case is Osborn’s involvement with One Lincoln Park, and how he…
At holiday parties this weekend, everyone was talking about pot. I haven’t been asked about marijuana this much since my first day of college in 1972, when I wore a hippie-print dress and my dormmates assumed I could hook them up. People were talking about the booming business in medical…
Paul Piciocchi is putting into the former home of Alto, opens tonight at 1320 15th Street. The Drink, a sports tavern, made its debut on November 20; Mix Music Lounge is set to open next week. But right now, it’s Rack & Rye, which will host private parties starting at…
It’s been a tough year for Peacejam, the homegrown nonprofit that over the past fifteen years has reached out to hundreds of thousands of kids around the globe, showing them that in the toughest circumstances, it’s still possible to push for peace — and then proving it by bringing ten…
First, the folks behind 8 Rivers open a medical marijuana dispensary up the street. Now comes word that Colorado’s first “gourmet marijuana restaurant” will be opening next week in Denver. The official details are being kept under wraps until next week, but yes, all the culinary offerings will contain pot…
“Oh, we know you were here,” a city official told me Monday, after I’d returned from my undercover mission to inventory the shlock and awe that is Denver’s annual holiday display on the steps of City Hall — and then explain why, exactly, it’s legal to have a Nativity scene…
Dear Mexican: I used to frequent a cantina in Chicago where half of the bar was Polack, the other half beaner. The Polacks would speak in their native tongue and either start or finish all of their sentences with the word kurwa. I understand this to mean “whore” in their…
An inventory of the annual awfulness that appears every holiday season on the steps of the Denver City and County Building (from left to right): 1) Plastic Santa in his sleigh, heading up a ramp behind four pairs of plastic reindeer, with red-nosed Rudolph in the lead. 2) Wooden stable…
This is not energy conservation here, folks, this is a glitch,” quipped Mayor John Hickenlooper at last Friday’s “Light the Lights” event, after he and son Teddy flipped the switch on the new LED light display at the City and County Building — and the entire scene went black a…
Ernie’s will open on schedule today, after a whirlwind renovation by Rod Wagner of the space that for years held 3 Sons, and for decades before that was home to Ernie’s. But while the original Ernie’s — which opened in 1943 and whose sign has been reconstructed for the new…
Wanda James and Scott Durrah, the owners of 8 Rivers, just celebrated the end of their first year at 1550 Blake Street in LoDo, where they moved their restaurant after a successful run in the tiny spot at 3609 West 32nd Avenue that now holds Venue. “You can’t have a…
Unlike Michigan, Colorado doesn’t have a Cannabis College — not yet. But the entire state is getting quite an education in both the efficacy of medical marijuana in soothing certain maladies and the difficulty of imposing new rules on dispensing it. Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown has gotten a real…
One hundred and fifty years after the last rush to the Rockies, when gold was discovered back in 1859, a new rush is on. This time, adventurers are mining medical marijuana — and business is smoking! Every day, I get a call from another acquaintance thinking of getting into the…
The Denver Department of Excise and License has received an application to transfer ownership of a liquor license at 1445 Market Street in LoDo. That’s the old home of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse — but it’s also the building that houses the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce. And, in fact, the…
