8 Rivers goes to pot — in a good way

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…

Wake-Up Call: Stirring the pot at Denver City Council today

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…

Wake-Up Call: Marijuana fuels the new rush to the Rockies

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…

Wake-Up Call: Tax marks the pot in December tomorrow

On December 1, the City of Denver will start collecting city sales tax from every medical marijuana dispensary in the city. “Tax revenue agents will be meeting with all dispensaries, giving them the information,” says Denver City Attorney David Fine. Not that the city has a list of all the…

Wake-Up Call: Top Ten Turkeys for 2009

There’s still a month to go before the year ends — plenty of time for more people to join the elite flock of fuck-ups for 2009 (and for Josh McDaniels to get back on the list, after his last-second reprieve with yesterday’s win). Still, there’s been no shortage of Colorado…

Colorado politicos have all gone to pot!

I haven’t thought about pot this much since eighth grade,” says one Colorado official. But over the past two months, as the medical marijuana industry has continued to boom in this state — inspiring a parallel boom in efforts to regulate the industry, with some municipalities proposing rules and others…

Give thanks for SAME Cafe

Before you tuck into your turkey, give thanks for people like Brad and Libby Birkey, who in October 2006 opened SAME Café – a pay-what-you-want restaurant at 2023 East Colfax Avenue whose name stands for So that All May Eat. Running SAME Café has “really opened our eyes,” Libby told…

Wake-Up Call: Calling all Colorado turkeys

Who’s the biggest turkey in Colorado? We’re accepting all nominations, fair or fowl, for the most unsavory characters in the state this year, and will post our Top Ten Turkeys of 2009 list here first thing Friday. And although it’s hard to imagine anyone topping the antics of Richard Heene,…

John Mariani takes a poke at normal person Sheehan

John Mariani, the food writer for Esquire, publishes a weekly newsletter, Virtual Gourmet, in which he regularly serves up industry news — and another critic. In the November 22 edition, it was Jason Sheehan’s turn. Under the heading “THAT’S VERY GOOD, JUST KEEP ON TRYING TO THINK LIKE A NORMAL…

Wake-Up Call: Let’s give thanks for political turkeys

On Saturday, a group of Tea Party activists gathered at the Colorado State Capitol to celebrate Thanksgiving — and small government — by reading the Mayflower Compact. For political theater that laid an egg, it didn’t come close to the turkey served by Roy Romer-era Lieutenant Governor Mike Callihan, who…

Signs of life at Earls in Cherry Creek

Although the metro area’s third Earls was rumored to be opening today in the former home of Ocean at 201 Columbine Street, it now looks like that will be pushed back until Friday, November 27 (according to the poor fellow who just opened the phone at 5:50 a.m.). But there…

Wake-Up Call: Is Erik Osborn on the lam?

Erik Osborn, the disgraced developer who has a December 7 trial date in Denver District Court, failed to show up for a hearing yesterday. The Denver District Attorney’s office sent this brief note to some of the complainants in what has grown into two separate criminal cases against Erik Osborn,…

Fork you: John Hickenlooper serves up Anthony Bourdain

The last time Anthony Bourdain passed through Denver, on a 2002 loop hyping A Cook’s Tour, he found nothing in this town to recommend a return trip — and said so, loudly.Still, he got a warm welcome when he returned yesterday for “An Evening with Anthony Bourdain” at the Buell…

Live blog: Denver City Council considers medical-marijuana regulations

Today, Councilman Charlie Brown is presenting his proposal for regulating the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries to the Denver City Council’s Safety committee. We live blogged the meeting. To read the account in chronological order, start at the bottom item below. 10:50 a.m.Councilman Linkhart calls up four industry representatives who’ve been…

DINR members deal out an incredible deal

They may all be independent restaurants, but the members of the Denver Independent Network of Restaurants know how to work together. Close to fifty of them have joined to create DINR decks, which could be just the thing to stuff a food-lover’s stocking this Christmas. Every deck holds 52 cards,…

Wake-Up Call: While three cities put pot on hold, Denver prepares to fire up

Fort Collins, Pueblo and Loveland have joined the ranks of Colorado cities with moratoriums on additional medical marijuana dispensaries — although their actions yesterday were more limited than the hysterical “emergency” designation on the day’s hearings had implied. Fort Collins wound up approving just a three-month pause, Pueblo went for…

Wake-Up Call: Charlie Brown hits the mean streets of Los Angeles

City Council rep Charlie Brown has taken the lead on corralling medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver. And he’s taking the task seriously — so seriously that, last week, he took his cowboy hat and traveled to Los Angeles (using campaign funds, not taxpayer dollars) to check out that city’s booming…

Anthony Bourdain tickets: one last chance

Although Nathan and Ian are the technical victors in our Tony Bourdain ticket giveaway, the real winners are diners in Denver, because the contest entries posted by readers serve as a terrific cheat sheet for the very best places to eat in town (and proof that Denver did not deserve…