We almost take the scooter from my place to Highland. But then Sean has last-minute reservations about riding without a helmet, and regardless of how engaged-to-a-beautiful-girl he is and how comfortable and happy I am with my hetero relationship, there’s still a certain amount of awkwardness when two dudes share…
I’m pretty well sauced on Guinness by the time Sean and I get to Charlie Brown’s Bar & Grill (980 Grant Street). The eighty-odd-year-old bar tucked into the Colburn Hotel & Apartments — a famed ’40s hangout of Beat hipsters Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg — is packed,…
With the exception of especially festive nights, when I do shots, or sushi outings, when sake is just what’s happening, I pretty much drink beer. There are a number of reasons for this, a major one being that I’m lousy at pacing myself. What I mean is, if there’s an…
It’s almost 9 p.m. when I hear Jesse call my battle name, Drewstroyer, from across the room. Immediately feeling sick to my stomach with first-time anxiety, I set down my second can of Olympia and wade through the crowd of fifty or so competitors and spectators. As I take a…
“Is this the shithole?” our cabbie — whose name I won’t use because I’m pretty sure he’s driving without the proper licensing — asks as we pull into the parking lot of Music Bar (4586 Tennyson Street). We’re packed four deep in the back seat (with another one in front),…
“Black eyes don’t count,” Mike tells me from three stools over — by which he means, “Black eyes aren’t a big deal.” But from where I’m sitting, the golf-ball-sized swelling surrounding his bloodshot eyes and extending well onto his cheekbones sure looks like a big deal. Combined with his lacerated…
I have every intention of drinking on my first trip to Barricuda’s (1078 Ogden Street), but it doesn’t happen. I glance longingly at the beer taps — Swithwicks? No. Guinness? Huh-uh — but can’t talk myself into a cold one. I make eyes at a Bloody Mary two tables over…
Ms. B.J. mumbles an apology to no one in particular because the beer’s not chilled enough, but Sean and I don’t mind. It’s already started to cool off outside, and we’re at B.J.’s Port, 2801 Welton Street, to enjoy ourselves, not complain. So we pour the contents of our first…
It’s never been about slumming. Or kitsch. Or camp. No, Barbara Middlebrook drinks at the Ace-Hi Tavern — a dive bar right down to its shag carpet and cash-only policy — for the same reason that she looks forward to walks down Main Street during breaks from her job at…
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, in all its interminable, rambling brilliance, inspired — even defined — a generation of teens and twenty-somethings suffocating under the tyrannical stronghold of nuclear families and spirit-stifling routine. But baby boomers weren’t the only ones who clocked out of structured, civilized life one day and…
For last year’s inaugural Great American Sing-Along, Tom Riis and the American Music Research Center crew ran off 100 programs, confident they’d be recycling more than a few of them. Then 400 people showed up. “We were blown away,” says Riis, director of the AMRC. “People were walking out really…
Jonathan Meiburg is up early. Not because it’s the first day of a tour and his band, Shearwater, still needs to practice before leaving — though that’s part of it. Mostly it’s because he wants to make sure all the talking he’ll have to do for this interview won’t drain…
Upon completing a work of fiction, readers are typically rewarded with one of two feelings of accomplishment: The “I’m-so-much-more-educated-and-better-off-for-having-read-that-highly-literate-piece-of-prose” kind of accomplishment, or the “I-just-devoured-that-book-faster-than-a-stoner-could-eat-a-bag-of-Peanut Butter Chex Mix” kind. Both elicit a justifiable amount of pride within readers, because, let’s face it, reading books makes us feel good about ourselves…
Years ago, when Denver sculptor Maureen Hearty (aka Mauxheart) created Lilyanna, she debated whether or not to develop the “awkward, gangly, ugly” skull-headed character into a children’s book. She decided against it, and considering the psychedelic world of “crazy metal plants,” kleptomaniacal jellyfish, Venus flytraps and raunchy blobs where Lilyanna…
Die-hard Monty Python and the Holy Grail fans hoping to take those dusty coconut shells off the shelf this summer for Film on the Rocks will have to wait another year, as will families banking on an animated or G-rated feature for the kids. It’s not that the Denver Film…
This weekend’s tenth Aurora Asian Film Festival showcases some new feature-length films, all right. Nine of them, actually — originating from countries all along the Pacific Rim. But this year, the films are only one piece of the pie. “We’re going to really be displaying the culture that we’re trying…
“When Art for AIDS started back in ’86, HIV and AIDS were just ravaging our community, especially the gay community,” says Michael Lee, director of communication for the Colorado AIDS Project. “At that time, the community had no idea what they were dealing with, really. So people started looking for…
There may be more than one way to learn a language, but for Kelsey Horine and the rest of the Alliance Française de Denver crew, there’s only one way to truly experience a culture: immersion. The proof is in the pairings at today’s French and Italian Wine and Cheese Tasting,…
Who do Beth Medanich and Wesley Wayne think they are? Where do they get off aggressively disseminating information about — and voraciously recruiting people to — Denver’s hippest weekly ’70s and ’80s dance party? Seriously stepping up the MySpace spam to promote themselves as Off the Wall’s newest DJs would…
Sometimes, when my girlfriend and I are feeling silly and carefree, we go for rides around town on my 49cc scooter and scream in unison the lyrics to Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” — only we yell “scootering!” instead of “motoring!” I’m telling you this because, as a scooter owner/lover, you…
It’s been a rough winter — a rough fifty winters, really — for the Burns and Sopris Gardens at City Park. “Those gardens haven’t been fully planted in more than fifty years,” says Carissa Lester, a senior public-relations manager for Ground Floor Media. “That part of the park is pretty…
California isn’t the only state that produces delicious wine, you know. Then again, maybe you don’t. “There are over sixty wineries in the state of Colorado, and I think a lot of people are unaware of that,” says Chris Lighthall Hellvig, co-owner of Denver-based Colorado Wine Country Tours. “We’ve had…
