Best Greeting-Card Selection 2003 | Decade | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Greeting-Card Selection

Decade

For those who refuse to say it with saccharin, the shelves at Decade await. Here's the place to find a wide selection of Roger la Borde stationery (the pastel kind with elongated people holding potted plants and juggling Santa hats) alongside modish and sparkly Rock Scissor Paper notes (previously found only on the Internet at recession-unfriendly prices). Our favorites are the spunky Squibnocket Cards, which are free of silly sentiments or precious images -- they're just blocks of whimsical, witty print that are sure to spread joy. Whatever your predilection, it's a reprieve from bland Hallmark hell.

Best Green Service for Greenbacks

Bike-Thru Banking
Pueblo Bank & Trust

Sitting in a line of fume-belching SUVs just to do some drive-through banking is almost enough to make you leave the bicycle at home. But not if you live in Boulder, where an estimated 10 percent of in-city trips are made by bike. Pueblo Bank & Trust has recognized the demand and opened a special Bike-Thru Banking lane just for customers on two wheels. Any would-be bank robber, however, should note that it's only fair that he make his escape on a tandem manned by a getaway cyclist.

Best Old-Style Banking Experience

First United Bank
Equitable Building

Banker Stephen Baltz wasn't made for these times. When he opened a First United Bank branch in the grand old Equitable Building, he renovated the space to resemble the First National Bank of Denver, which was located in the Equitable at the turn of the last century. Now, in what was most recently the dapper men's clothing store Andrisen Morton Co., you can make deposits through barred teller cages set in sleek, polished mahogany. But the pièce de résistance is the $150,000, 7.5-ton round vault door, a fin-de-siècle relic that still does the job proudly.

Best Old-Style Banking Experience for Kids

Young Americans Bank

Last summer, the Young Americans Bank, brainchild of local magnate Bill Daniels, moved into bigger digs after serving young financiers for fifteen years. All the old child-friendly amenities, such as height-conscious teller windows, are still in place, but the bank is now part of an entire town square. There's a town hall, television station, market, newspaper, hospital and snack bar all built for use by the bank's Young AmeriTowne program, which offers school kids a hands-on opportunity to run the town as accountants, editors, mayors and other community stalwarts. So maybe it's not totally realistic, but at least in this small world, the customer is still king.

Best Product for Kids on the Go

Starr Car Seat Travel Tray

The family minivan can have all the comforts of a rock-star limo, with snacks, drinks and toys all easy to reach. The Starr Car Seat Travel Tray is made of soft, durable, completely washable nylon, with a safe, flat surface and pockets and compartments on either side. It attaches to most convertible car seats and booster seats with Velcro. Alyson Simon started Starr Products last year to make the Car Seat Travel Tray for her young son. If the Mom-mobile is equipped with an optional on-board entertainment system, there's no reason to ever leave the back seat.

Best Kids' Birthday Parties

Denver Puppet Theater

Local puppeteer Annie Zook is a one-woman powerhouse of a children's entertainer. She's a soft-sculpture artist who crafts her own puppets -- a director, actor and playwright, a shopkeeper, a museum curator and collector, and an art instructor who's been running her own theater for ten years. On top of all that, she throws one hell of a birthday party. A pre-show puppet playtime, a performance, use of a party room for cake and ice cream and a well-managed puppet workshop can all be booked at the Denver Puppet Theater. And if you want to go a little over the top, she can create a personalized script with details from the birthday kid's life. If that don't make 'em smile, nothing will.

Best Web Site for Bored Kids

www.denvergov.org/greatkids

At one time or another, every child has complained that there's nothing to do -- but this portion of the City of Denver's official Web site proves otherwise. Click on Denver City Youth Program Database, and you're off. Compiled with the help of local youngsters dubbed "YouthMappers," the site sports contact information and details about a slew of programs, services and activities designed with kids in mind.

Best Way to Learn How to Read This Newspaper

Conversations in English
Boulder County Library

This award-winning course takes a highly individualized approach to teaching; volunteers work with a maximum of six participants per instructor. There are Conversations in English courses five days a week, and the curriculum touches upon topics as diverse as history and parenting. Clearly, these conversations will lead to many more in the future.

Best Parenting Classes

Parents' Mathematics Institute
Community College of Aurora

Show of hands: How many parents have had palpitations when a graphing calculator showed up on the seventh-grade back-to-school supply list? Was it just the cost, or was it also the fact that you had no earthly clue what a graphing calculator does or why anyone would need to know such a thing? The good news is that the folks at CCA realize there are major mathematical concepts that have been discovered since you left junior high. They've put together a two-week, mini-crash course, the Parents' Mathematics Institute, for moms and dads of kids in seventh grade and up that covers elementary math concepts, including writing, solving and graphing inequalities, estimating answers and beginning algebra. The bad news is that the course, complete with an introduction to that pesky graphing calculator and separate workshops for kids, took place earlier this month.

Best Comic-Book Store

Mile High Comics Megastore

With gallons and gallons of ink depicting the never-ending power struggle between spandex-clad goodie-goodies and animal-themed criminals, Mile High Comics Megastore in Thornton is the largest comics shop in the country, and the flagship of five metro locations. Mile High Comics president Chuck Rozanski started the company in 1969 and built it into the Superman of the comics retail/mail-order industry. With shelves of new comics, bins of back issues, toys and action figures from every possible merchandising deal, posters, games and other collectibles on its 11,000-square-foot floor, this place tempts young and old to travel great distances to unleash their inner Clark Kent.

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