History is never very tidy. Technically, we could have celebrated Denver’s 150th anniversary on September 24, the day in 1858 when William McGaa and other min-ers founded St. Charles on the northeast side of Cherry Creek. Or on November 1, when William Russell founded a competing settlement, Auraria, on the…
Small could just be another way of saying “affordable” where artworks are concerned, but in the case of WEE: A Small Works Photo Show, which opens today at FLASH, A Working With Artists space in Belmar, gallery spokeswoman Valerie Photogoddess thinks there’s more to it. “Small images are asking something…
36 Hours of Keystone, we hardly knew ye, brah. For four years, we had to ingest an arsenal of trucker speed and energy drinks in order to shred groomers at 4 a.m. and chillax with local brews and live music for a day and a half straight. It was brutal!…
Do you like to savor a good sauvignon? Does the mention of pinot perk you right up? Then the tenth annual Beaujolais & Beyond Festival is for you. Don’t speak French? No problem. All you need is one handy little phrase: Vin rouge/blanc, s’il vous plait (“Red/white wine, please”). The…
When it comes to tea, I’m undeniably spoiled. My father used to take frequent business trips to China, and he’d return laden with loose-leaf greens, blacks and oolongs that tingle the tongue. And now it’s possible to get high-quality Chinese tea right here in Denver: You’ll find it at Seven…
What goes around comes around, and as the contemporary success of neo-burlesquers, jug bands, Gypsy jazz and vaudevillian revivalists proves, old-timey is new-timey for a whole new generation of strongmen and tattooed ladies. So it’s the perfect time for a band like the Wiyos, a new York City-based acoustic string…
Nothing says vampire like blood, so celebrate the release of the sure-to-be megahit Twilight — a teen-angst melodrama about vampires in high school — by giving up some of your precious bodily fluid for a good cause. The Cinebarre Theater, 10001 Grant Street in Thornton, is sponsoring a blood drive…
The art tidal wave that’s hit Denver in the past few years hasn’t just led to a museum-building boom. It has also led to an explosion of galleries. I haven’t sat down to count all the commercial art venues in town, but I know it numbers more than a hundred…
Performance art, which has been around since the early twentieth century, is pointedly non-commercial because it’s so ephemeral. It literally comes and goes with little remaining but memories — and a few photos and props. It’s the opposite of object-based art and has as much or more to do with…
Adam Helms. This solo in the MCA’s Paper Works Gallery is the New York artist’s first museum show anywhere. In his works on paper and in a monumental sculpture that conjures up a shooting blind, Helms explores political themes, especially armed struggle. He takes images of different radical and extremist…
Fat Pig. Neil LaBute’s plays are nasty, but they usually contain subtext, irony and ambiguity. Fat Pig has none of these. It’s flat and thin, a straightforward, almost schematic story with a quivering pink core. Tom, a shallow careerist male of the kind we remember from In the Company of…
Three misfit high school students in Salem, Oregon, come together on the debate society. Solomon longs to be a professional reporter and wants to reveal the right-wing mayor’s pederast activities in the school newspaper; Howie, a transfer student anxious to create a gay-straight alliance, is frustrated by his inability to…
Those of us who adored Casino Royale, the 2006 reboot of the haggard, self-parodic James Bond franchise, had some trouble trying to decide where to place it among the series’ finest. Was it better than Goldfinger? Probably not, but close. The Spy Who Loved Me? Maybe so. From Russia With…
If you traveled the length of John Malkovich’s medulla oblongata, hung a sharp left at the desk where Beckett’s Krapp recorded his last tape and walked through the adjoining door of the interstellar hotel room at the end of 2001, you might end up somewhere in the vicinity of Charlie…
It’s that time again. The white stuff is building into a thick blanket over Denver’s backyard playground, and Westword is here to remind you how lucky you are to live in Colorado. In The Edge, area insiders offer advice on where to find the sickest powder stashes you never knew…
Some people just bask in the golden glow of old stuff; Jeanne Connolly’s one of them. A New Jersey native and former Crate & Barrel visual designer, Connolly, who longed to learn the ropes of upholstering, had one of those turning-thirty moments and moved west, on the advice of a…
If the City of Lost Children was a real place, this group would certainly hail from there. With an aesthetic that recalls Self-Non-Self-era Cranes with elements of early Laurie Anderson, Yellow Elephant’s hypnotic drones and musique concrète/found-sound take on pop is not like much of anything today, but rather artistically…
Everyone can agree that firefighters are all heroes — but we don’t really understand exactly what goes on in a fire. You might have seen Backdraft a million times, but it still doesn’t quite capture the feeling of being in the midst of a blaze. “A lot of people know…
When touting the awesomeness of adult dodgeball leagues and tourneys, organizers and participants always talk about reliving the glory days of gym class. They talk about totalitarian school districts that have banned the game from recess and physical education classes. Sometimes they even talk about how good it feels to…
Fine art and craft curve together in a delicate tête-à-tête in Jennifer Falck Linssen: Beyond Katagami, a new exhibit opening today at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center, 400 Quail Road in Longmont. Linssen, inspired by the Japanese craft of katagami (or cut-paper stencils) used for the printing of intricate…
Nobody’s going to be taking any chances this holiday shopping season. Purse strings are tight, and a rosier future seems possible but still far away. But this mid-November weekend is bursting with thoughtful, homegrown and unique shopping opportunities at non-commercial venues where your hard-earned discretionary budget won’t be wasted. Imagine…
It was 1995 and I was fresh out of college, interning at an indie record label and talking to my work crush. He shoved a Q-tip into each nostril and proceeded to act as if nothing overtly weird had just happened. I giggled and blushed. I was easily amused. Eventually,…
