Wake-Up Call: Talk about the Mile High (and Higher) City!

Even Balloon Boy couldn’t knock our hunt for a medical-marijuana reviewer out of the national news. Yesterday, NPR’s Sunday show ran a piece about our quest, resulting in still more applications coming in from across the country. But sorry, folks: We’re looking for a Colorado resident, someone who can identify…

Lobby manager takes a licking, keeps on ticking

Even as the area north of downtown gentrifies, certain problematic pockets remain. The area around 22nd and Arapahoe streets, for example, where the manager of the brand-new (and beautiful) Lobby American Grille, located in the space in the historic Paris Hotel at 2191 Arapahoe Street that was once occupied by…

Bitter bartender a contender in Iron Bar Chef Competition

James Lee, mixologist at the Bitter Bar at Happy (known as Happy Noodle House until very recently), is heading from Boulder to New York this weekend, for the annual Santé Restaurant Symposium — where he’ll be competing against against five other bartenders in the Iron Bar Chef contest. The competitors…

Wake-Up Call: Rico Munn appointment no trial balloon

Okay, so Falcon Heene was never in the balloon. But why wasn’t he in school yesterday? That’s a question for Rico Munn, who’s done good work during his two years as executive director of the Department of Regulatory Affairs, and yesterday was appointed by Governor Bill Ritter to head the…

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine…and music at Tony’s

The new Tony’s Market at 950 Broadway may be the only place in town where you can drink a beer or glass of wine while you do your shopping — legally. That’s because the market opened with a liquor license that covers not just the bistro inside the market, but…

Dive in to our dive-bar essay contest

Last week we asked for your favorite dive (among the nominees: El Chapultepec, Lancer Lounge, Squire, PS Lounge, BarBar, Berkeley, Charlie Brown’s Lion’s Lair). Now it’s time to prove your devotion: Write a love letter/tribute to your favorite dive bar, professing sincere fidelity to its wood paneling and nicotine-stained ceiling…

Girls and grills at CY Steak

Cliff Young, whose eponymously named restaurant transformed the Denver dining scene, is back in business at the Diamond Cabaret, where his CY Steak opened this week at 1222 Glenarm Place. It was a soft opening — in a room full of hard bodies. While strip clubs across the country are…

Wake-Up Call: Ryan Frazier dumps a clunker for a new race

Ryan Frazier is trading in a clunker in favor of a much sleeker vehicle. Six months after the two-term Aurora City Councilman announced that he was running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, he’s pulling out of that race and making a fast course correction for the 7th…

Happy hundredth to the Brook Forest Inn

In an industry when a restaurant reaching its first birthday is considered noteworthy, the run of the Brook Forest Inn is nothing short of remarkable. Edwin and Marie Welz, immigrants who arrived in this country in 1910 and took over a homestead near Evergreen, worked on transforming the place into…

Wake-Up Call: When animals attack

When we learned that Joe Rogan, former host of Fear Factor, had moved to metro Denver, we offered up our top ten list of very scary things for newcomers to Colorado. Number 4? Animal Encounters: “As houses sprawl across formerly uninhabited areas, the animals that used to live where your…

Hospoda closes the books on the town’s friendly beer house

Hospoda, the restaurant that billed itself as “friendly beer house,” has closed after a good effort in a bad location, at 3763 Wynkoop Street (right off Brighton Boulevard), the former home of the Wynkoop Grill. Jason Sheehan loved Hospoda it when I dragged him there — the ambience was a…

Wake-Up Call: Twisted Olive to open in Northfield

“Olives date back to before the invention of the written language,” notes the web page for the Twisted Olive. “We’re here to add a new chapter in Olive history, a fun and tasteful one. It starts with redefining and twisting the Olive’s role in entertainment, cuisine, nightlife and most importantly…you!”…

Wake-Up Call: ET, phone home — but use good manners

Jeff Peckman has had a tough month: First, David Letterman’s all-too-earthly horn-dog behavior made big news — and bit into the value of a clip from Letterman’s June 10, 2008 UFO interview with Peckman that’s prominently featured on the campaign web page for the Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. That’s the concept…

Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids & Solids opens today

It could have the oddest name ever: Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids. But don’t let that deter you from trying out this restaurant — because the liquids will come out of 43 craft taps. “This is an authentic craft beer bar right down to the keg-based fountains,” says…

8 Rivers puts lunch on hold

8 Rivers, Scott Durrah’s modern Caribbean restaurant that opened last October at 1550 Blake Street (after a successful stint in a much smaller spot at 3609 West 32nd Avenue, now occupied by Venue), is changing its hours for the winter. And they’re very ishy. The restaurant, which also bills itself…

Wake-Up Call: Matthew Shepard, eleven years later

This past weekend the largest gay-rights demonstration in close to a decade descended on Washington, D.C., where lawmakers may finally approve the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the categories covered by federal hate crime…

Remembering Frank Finn of the Gold Hill Inn

The inn at Gold Hill, ten miles up from Boulder, has been around about as long as Colorado has been a state. Poet Eugene Field stayed there, and described his visits in “Casey’s Table d’Hote,” the first poem in his 1889 book A Little Book of Western Verse. Oh, them…

Wake-Up Call: A noble, if not Nobel, calling

Yesterday was a long day in Idledale, the tiny town in the foothills where Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff put up their feet when they’re not pounding the pavement on behalf of PeaceJam, the non-profit they founded over a dozen years ago that links up youth from around the world…

Guess where I’m eating?

It’s not easy baking at 8,000 feet, but this pastry chef seems to have hit the jackpot. Want to be rolling in dough? Then guess where I’m eating…

A sign of the times at Aviano Coffee

Coffee’s on at Aviano Coffee — and so is the heat. Owner Doug Naiman, who opened his spot in the beleaguered Beauvallon back in 2006, never anticipated the building being obscured by scaffolding and swathed in plastic. “When this scaffolding goes up over my business, what’s it going to look…

What’s the best dive bar in Denver?

What’s your favorite dive bar in Denver? Drew Bixby, our Drunk of the Week columnist, features nearly a hundred great lounges, taverns and saloons in his book Denver’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Mile-High City, due out November 3. But while Bixby includes a list of the…