Yes, mom-and-pop places are suffering in today’s economy — but so are strip clubs! According to a story by former Denver Post writer Kris Hudson in today’s Wall Street Journal, the country’s two publicly traded strip-club chains have been hit hard by the recession, and are now “catering to a…
See a slideshow from the event at westword.com/slideshow. Last night’s Hot Rocks Griller Challenge at Elway’s in Cherry Creek was hot (if a bit damp). Some of Denver’s most talented chefs grilled up a storm, creating sliders for a cause (the event benefited the Denver Health Foundation). Come back here…
This just in: The Icehouse Tavern at 1801 Wynkoop Street will be opening June 22, according to James Mazzio, the award-winning chef who ran the kitchen at the space’s previous incarnation, Via, and who’s taken a very active role in its transformation into the Icehouse Tavern.It’s still owned by the…
Late Monday, the Denver Film Society announced that a search was already under way for a new executive director to take the place of Bo Smith, who’d finally been dismissed just two days before. “We are looking for a permanent replacement,” DFS board chair David Charmatz told me. “We’ll decide…
Colorado, Take 2 “I found it in Colorado.” That’s how Billy Crystal explains his smile at the end of City Slickers, the 1991 movie filmed largely in Colorado, and it’s the final scene on David Emrich’s promotional reel touting Colorado filmmaking and the more than 375 movies at least partially…
In retrospect, the new executive director’s on-stage debut at the screening of Slumdog Millionaire at last November’s Denver International Film Festival should have been a clue. Bo Smith, who’d been selected by the Denver Film Society board to take over from retiring founder Ron Henderson and two interim directors, had…
Maggiano’s Little Italy introduced an amazing deal today. From now through July 8, if you dine at a Maggiano’s — and there are two in Denver, one in the Pavilions and one in the Tech Center — and order a chef’s $12.95 speciality dish, you’ll get your next night’s dinner…
Twins Will and Dave Elger, who were born in Mexico but are very much Denverites, worked in the tequila business for a decade before creating their own five years ago: Muchote Tequila. Nancy Levine first caught up with it last September at Lime XS, where she discovered it made a…
While most of the employees of the Denver Film Society are back at work, they’re not quite sure if they’re still employees, because twenty of them had officially resigned before the board voted to dismiss new executive director Bo Smith last Friday. And there’s also the matter of a major…
Westword’s last office was across the street from the Wynkoop Brewing Company at 1634 Wynkoop Street — and in the early days of that brewpub, our staffers drank a lot of beers (and other things) there. “Westword kept us in business for two years,” former brewmeister/now mayor John Hickenlooper recalled…
Denver’s entry on The Bachelorette, “pizza entrepreneur” Mark Huebner, survived round three of the show last night. But while he’s wooing bachelorette Jillian — in TV time, at least — work continues at Huebner’s Denver Pizza Company, with the windows at 309 West 11th Avenue filled with city permits and…
From the hillside overlooking downtown, La Loma has been slinging green chile for close to four decades. It’s the recipe created by grandma Savina Mendoza, whose chile became so popular that the two families that opened La Loma in an old bungalow back in 1974 soon had saved enough money…
There’s plenty of action in the 2000 block of Larimer Street these days. The Gin Mill is finishing up the Barn Out Back, its backyard patio; the Three Door Bistro is looking at a July debut; and across the street at 2046 Larimer, Zanzibar Billiards Bar & Grill is getting…
If this were a movie, one insider theorizes, it would be like Crash, with everyone going through the same situation — but seeing it entirely differently. Last Monday, as Westword was going to press (we have new deadlines for our new format — although the paper still hits the street…
The Gin Mill, at 2041 Larimer Street, has become an integral part of Denver’s oldest commercial neighborhood in just a few years, as this recent slide show makes clear. And now the watering hole is about to become even more indispensible: In a couple of weeks, it will open the…
While other chains contract, Baker St. Pub & Grill has been taking advantage of the economy by snapping up now-empty locations in the metro area. First it took on a Chili’s at 1729 28th Street in Boulder; now it’s adding the former Nine75 north space at 2831 West 120th Avenue…
The last bill of the legislative session has been signed, and it’s all over but the shouting — particularly in front-page stories over the governor’s vetoes of union-friendly bills (and likely when the governor is on Mike Rosen’s show at 9:15 a.m.). But Bill Ritter also managed to please at…
In today’s Denver Post, Bill Husted writes about Jason Sheehan’s upcoming book, Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen, and quotes from a negative (and very entertaining) review published last week in the Los Angeles Times by that paper’s food writer, Russ Parsons. “You…
As Jason Sheehan reported yesterday, sometime this summer Yanni Stavropolous will move Yanni’s, his Greek taverna, from the strip mall at 2223 South Monaco where it’s been for eighteen years to the Landmark development in Greenwood Village. But not all of the equipment is making the move. The Squeaky Bean,…
It was 1969 all over again yesterday, when Governor Bill Ritter signed a bill that, as of July 1, 2009, will establish the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media. Re-establishes that office, actually: On July 1, 1969, Colorado became the first state in the country with a state film…
As Mindy Sink discovered, it’s not easy being a tourist in your own town — especially when you’re writing a guidebook with a deadline months ahead of when the book actually hits the streets. The Colorado native worked for six months last year on Denver, a Moon Handbooks guide that…
The name “Commerce City” may not be the most marketable. Still, two years ago residents voted two-to-one to keep the business-boosterish name. But that doesn’t mean Commerce City can’t work on its tarnished image — and, in fact, it’s paying a consultant $80,000 to help bring high-end projects to the…
