Best Mascot 2011 | Rocky | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
Navigation
Support Us
Search

Best Mascot

Rocky

Rocky, the mountain-lion mascot for the Denver Nuggets, drains backwards, half-court shots (sometimes on stilts) and crushes trampoline dunks. He once pinched then-Celtic Kendrick Perkins's ass and took several left hooks from Charles Barkley. He hits on ladies in the crowd and roughhouses with kids. Mostly, he's generally not annoying (at least to fans), which seems to be the job description of almost every other mascot.

Best Mini-Golf Driving Range

Aqua Golf

Most driving ranges are essentially the same: long, green fairways where you can forget about the more nuanced parts of the game and smash some drives. That's great — but Aqua Golf allows you to crush balls into a lake, which is even better. Where most ranges have actual golf courses attached, Aqua Golf has mini-golf, so don't go if you're crazy serious about your game. But if you'd like a change of scenery from pretty much every driving range you've ever been to, get thee to Aqua Golf.

Best Mountain Bike Park

Trestle Bike Park

Winter Park expanded its Trestle Bike Park in 2010 with eight new runs and new features all over the mountain, adding both a "Green World" novice area and insane new terrain worthy of pro events like Crankworx Colorado. For starters, try the Trestle 101 progressive lesson and guide program. If you haven't upgraded your helmet and other body armor (or your health insurance coverage) recently, the Trestle Bike Park is the perfect excuse: Prepare to eat dirt.

Best Mountain Smoke Shack

Topher's Trees

The Forest Service isn't fond of smoke shacks, those hideaways constructed of wood, cardboard, tree limbs and what-have-you that lurk just beyond many ski runs in this state. But while the Forest Service isn't fond of them, skiers and boarders sure are, and for every smoke shack that comes down, another one goes up. The best is located in Topher's Trees, a patch of woods on the Mary Jane side of Winter Park that also has some of the best tree skiing in Colorado. The area is named after Christopher "Topher" Sendroy, who died in a tree well here back in 1995, when he was 26; he's commemorated by his old Head skis on that tree and a bronze memorial plaque on a nearby catwalk. But tokers give thanks to Topher as the namesake of the best smoke shack in Colorado. A new makeshift hut replaced the old makeshift hut this season, but the spirit remains the same.

Best Move by a General Manager

Extending CarGo and Tulo's contracts

While the D-Nuggs dumping Melo is beginning to look a lot better than it was supposed to, the best move for our money came from a team that isn't exactly known for making fan-happy decisions. Over the winter, the Colorado Rockies extended the contracts of its two heaviest hitters since the Blake Street Bombers, and not just by a little bit: Troy Tulowitzski got an additional $134 million, making him a Rockie until 2020, while Carlos Gonzalez reaped a seven-year, $80 million deal. Neither move can be overemphasized. A tip of a CR-emblazoned cap to GM Dan O'Dowd.

Best New Nugget

Wilson Chandler

The drawn-out drama leading up to the February trade of Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks had several downsides. Among them: the loss of Lala Vazquez, Anthony's wife and one of Denver's only VH1 reality-TV stars, and the even more heartbreaking loss of Chauncey Billups, who was ripped away in the deal. But the upsides include Knick-turned-Nugget Wilson Chandler, a young 6'8" forward with "Unstoppable" tattooed across his upper back and the game to match. Chandler started his time in Denver with a bang, scoring sixteen points in his first game to help beat the Celtics, and he's continued to provide a spark, a sense of humor and a lot of points off the bench and in a starting role. If he can sustain that kind of basket-filling, Nuggets fans will soon forget all about that flashy golden boy whose name rhymes with "Jell-O."

Best New Skatepark

Aurora City Park

Colorado has some of the gnarliest skateparks in the world, giant concrete behemoths packed with everything a skateboarder could ask for. So why do those stubborn street urchins still slide and grind on every little ledge in the city? Aurora's new pocket-sized park, designed and built by the skatepark experts at Grindline (a Seattle-based company better known for building bigger, burlier bowls) officially opened in February and probably won't do much to keep kids off the streets, but its handful of small ledges, manual pads and a simple banked feature are already attracting skaters from all over the metro area — proof that bigger isn't necessarily better.

Best New Ski Lift

Black Mountain Express

The new Black Mountain Express at Arapahoe Basin represents the end of an era for the 65-year-old no-frills ski area, where the old A-frame lodge and parking-lot beach parties are still just as skiers have always loved them. In this case, it's a change for the best: The high-speed quad replaces the circa 1978 Exhibition lift and cuts the old fixed-grip triple chair's trip time to the top in half. But the truly hard-core among A-Basin fans don't need no stinkin' lift: The Full-Moon Snowshoe Dinner series at Black Mountain Lodge (elevation: 11, 500') with chef Christopher Rybak sold out months in advance for the entire season.

Best New Ski Terrain

Heli Ski/Heli Board

Nothing compares to the 22,000 acres of new ski terrain open at Silverton Mountain this season, where the lone chairlift is now supplemented with a whirlybird, thanks to a new operating agreement. Heli drops start at $159 per run (less with a $399 season pass) or $999 for a full day (six runs), making this the most affordable heli-skiing operation in the United States, and get you as high as 13,514', with vertical drops in the 3,100' range; Silverton uses proceeds from the heli-skiing to subsidize its use of the helicopter for avalanche control. And the ski area gets as much as 600 inches of new snow annually, which should keep your rotors spinning.

Best Nugget

Nenê

It's a tough time to be a Denver Nugget. Carmelo Anthony, possibly the best player in franchise history, and hometown hero Chauncey Billups were recently traded to New York for good but not great players, cash and draft picks. We wish the 6'11" center would rebound and block shots at a higher rate, but Nenê is a presence, and he's resilient. He leads the league in field-goal percentage and is generally efficient. He's a team player — and that's exactly what the Nuggets need right now.

Best Of Denver®

Best Of

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our terms of use, our cookies policy, and our privacy policy Westword may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 Denver Westword, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do Not Sell or Share My Information
Powered By Foundation