Best Ladies' Night 2005 | Lake Steam Baths | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Ladies' Night

Lake Steam Baths

Some Sundays scream to start off the week with full debauchery and drunkenness, while others need to commence in a more cleansed, restful manner. Try to schedule those around the third Sunday of every month, when the Lake Steam Baths open for a special ladies' night. Normally, the West Colfax Avenue institution is only available to the fairer sex on Mondays and Thursdays, but this year owner Amy Hyman finally gave the gals an extra day of pampering. So forget $2 drink specials or free draws, and instead sit and steam in the eucalyptus room or relax with a cheap massage. Bottoms up!

Best Place to Detox -- and Retox

A New Spirit Wellness Center and Spa

While A New Spirit Wellness Center and Spa has all the makings of a classically great day spa, owner Andrea Hawkins-Leigh offers some non-traditional joys as well. After an hour-long deep-tissue massage, relaxation hounds can get an osmosis detoxification foot bath, try the flotation tank, or experience a pedicure accompanied by sound and light relaxation glasses. So indulge, and try something daring. As Hawkins-Leigh likes to say as she's handing you a glass of wine, "One detoxes so one can retox!" Cin-cin.

Best Place to Detox

Shambhala Mountain Center

Buddhists have a favorite joke about their practice: "I tried to meditate, and nothing happened." Truly, there's usually very little happening at Shambhala Mountain Center, a meditation and retreat center northwest of Fort Collins. Scattered around the boundless mountain encampment, groups gather in tents and study halls to tune out the world and tune into themselves. Advanced students of Shambhala Buddhism spend weeks at the center in silence. But it isn't an entirely wordless world: Beginning classes and seminars are available for those looking to learn about meditation, and guided tours of the grounds and the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, the largest Buddhist shrine in North America, are daily activities. Stay for an hour, a day or a weekend; for those seeking some quiet time, Shambhala is Om away from home.

Best Spa for Hygienic Humans

Beau Visage

Sure, other rub joints can offer you a facial and a wax, but Beau Visage has the whole package: soft lights, music, lunch and a staff that's fanatical about hygiene. Family-run and friendly, the BV staff is ready to indulge your every spa need, whether your pleasure's a hot stone massage, a non-surgical face lift, a sea-kelp pedicure -- or just some time lounging and chatting with the nail techs in one of those super-comfy La-Z-Boy-type chairs.

Best Spa for Horses

The Colorado Horse Park

Parker's Colorado Horse Park has a growing reputation among equestrian circles as a competition site; it also has big plans for a horse museum, an equidome and a wildlife refuge. But savvy horse owners know it as a premier boarding facility, with more than a hundred spacious, heated stalls -- each with its windows and bedding cleaned daily. A scenic location, plenty of trails, a cross-country course. Mr. Ed never had it so good.

Best Cattery

Animal Rescue and Adoption Society

Tens of thousands of animals are euthanized in Denver every year, simply because nobody wants them. The Animal Rescue and Adoption Society does what it can to save as many cats as possible from that fate. The 23-year-old no-kill shelter operates on less than a shoestring budget and without the fanfare of some of the city's larger shelters, but it's enjoying quiet, steady success. The facility isn't much to look at, and ARAS is always in desperate need of food and supplies. However, the money they do receive (all private donations, no government funding) goes to giving their feline friends the royal treatment with free-roaming cat rooms and a safe, caged area outside where kitties can play or sit and bask in the sun. The Animal Rescue and Adoption Society is the cat's meow.

Best Help for Winged Things

The Birdbrain

Bird is the word at the Birdbrain, a retail store and community-outreach resource for the birding community. Run by the Gabriel Foundation Education Center, the Birdbrain offers seminars on parrot wellness and behavior that bring together parrot enthusiasts, bird specialists and veterinarians. The 'brain center stocks plenty of toys to keep Polly happy, including games designed to stimulate cognitive functions and hardware such as swings and cages. As pets go, parrots are high-maintenance, but the Birdbrain makes it a snap to care for our feathered friends.

Best Way to Make a Fast Friend

Recycled Racers of Colorado

Recycled Racers seeks good homes for retired greyhounds -- pooches whose brief careers chasing a mechanical rabbit gave them little chance to show off the breed's gregarious, gentle and often-clownish nature. Located near the dog track, Recycled Racers allows adopters to meet and greet retirees, who are in the two- to five-year-old range, right in the kennels, guided by knowledgeable volunteers. The speedsters are already spayed or neutered, vaccinated -- and ready to assume their new jobs as 45-mile-per-hour couch potatoes.

Best Place to Take Your Dog for a Dip

City Bark

All week long, the poodles and Pomeranians, Rottweilers and retrievers in City Bark's care frolic in the facility's 12,000-square-foot backyard obstacle course and pool. But on Sundays, when City Bark is closed, owner Nicole Delmoro invites the rest of the city's pooches to come for a swim at the doggie daycare. It's just $5 per dog -- on the honor system -- and there are plenty of lawn chairs for owners to loll on while Fido and Fifi have their day in the sun.

Best Portraits of Your Pooch

ScoutDog Studios

While artist Jen Griggs can paint a realistic portrait of your pooch, her whimsical "ScoutDog Style," which gives new life to the oft-maligned pet portrait, is even more fun. Griggs starts your custom painting by choosing from her "Dog-matic Table of ScoutDog & Her Friends" -- featuring 86 breeds -- and then personalizes the basic caricature with your furry friend's markings or favorite toy. The result it 100 percent mantel-worthy. If you're not quite ready for that level of devotion, Griggs offers a host of other products, from T-shirts to hand-drawn holiday cards.

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