WTF, Fruita? Controversial slogan wears out its welcome

WTF, Fruita? The Western Slope town already has a festival devoted to Mike the Headless Chicken, so was it such a stretch to put out a WTF welcome mat? But before the debate was over — how welcoming was it, really, to greet tourists with a hearty “what the fuck?”…

Denver snow job could be this city’s true namesake

Are we stuck with the Denver boot? Yesterday, in advance of Mayor Michael Hancock flipping a Denver omelet to promote Denver Restaurant Week, we wondered what better items were named for this city, which seems to be officially memorialized by nothing more than the Denver boot, a clamp devised to…

Marlowe’s marks its thirtieth birthday with an all-day party

Happy thirtieth birthday to Marlowe’s, which opened in February 1982 on 16th Street — before there was even a 16th Street Mall. We’d gotten to know Phil “Zoom” Roberts as the owner/operator of Govnr’s Park, a ’70s fern-bar hangout that remains a sports bar hangout today, and when he and…

Denver Wheel Club 404 officially rolls out today

After two months of renovations, Club 404 will officially reopen today as the Denver Wheel Club 404. The watering hole that Jerry Feld bought back in 1951 is now in the hands of Craig and Andrew Caldwell, and Brad Evans, the designer who also keeps the Denver Cruisers rolling, has…

Four chefs give the lowdown on what makes LoDo cook

Chefs are Denver’s rock stars, and lower downtown is one hell of a stage. Last night I was lucky enough to moderate a panel of four LoDo chefs — Jen Jasinski, Matt Selby, Tom Coohill and Max MacKissock — who dished out restaurant tidbits (both literal and figurative) before an…

Colorado firefighter calendar rises from the ashes tonight

The party had everything: a worthy beneficiary (the Children’s Hospital Burn Center), lots of alcohol for the mostly female crowd, and stripped-down, smokin’ hot firefighters. But then the Denver District Attorney threw a wet blanket on the fun: Turns out that Fired Up for Kids might not have been sending…

Hot Pockets, a cool Colorado invention, is moving out of state

Denver has long proclaimed itself the home of the cheeseburger, and even has a monument to that invention on Speer Boulevard — though several other cities have tried to claim the burger-king crown. But we were also the undisputed home of the Hot Pocket, which brothers David and Paul Merage…

Dan Savage made Rick Santorum’s name mud…or close enough

You can bet that the 26,000-plus Coloradans who voted for Rick Santorum at yesterday’s Republican caucuses, pushing the conservatives’ conservative to a surprise victory, are not faithful readers of Savage Love. Because Dan Savage, the author of that sex-advice column, not only took issue with Santorum’s stance on gay sex,…