Buried Treasure

The great responsibility of the photographer to record life is more than evident in the work left behind by Holocaust survivor Henryk Ross, whose Lodz Ghetto Album: Clandestine Photographs of Ghetto Life goes on display today in the Mizel Center for Arts & Culture’s Singer Gallery. Shot on the sly…

Roller Derby

Prepare yourself for the next generation of bar sports with RollerBall, a game that inventor Bob Lyons calls “a cross between air hockey and foosball, laced with the essence of boxing.” Players face each other across a table and try to launch a one-inch steel ball into one of three…

Feast Fantastic

The ninth annual Black Is…CultureFeast arts and culture extravaganza, presented by the Pan African Arts Society, is aptly named. The Feast is five days of film screenings, panel discussions, workshops, performances and more, stuffing attendees to the gills with programming and parties. Black Is… kicked off last night with an…

Hello, Dolls

The Denver Roller Dolls will take a page from the history books tonight when they face off against Albuquerque’s Duke City at the Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 Clarkson Street. The building that houses the Fillmore opened in 1907 as the Mammoth Roller Skating Rink. From 1935 to 1962, it became Mammoth…

Wonder Women

In our topsy-turvy world of shrinking bank accounts and quickly changing trends, it can be both empowering and cost-effective to embrace a DIY outlook. Whether you want to pinch your pennies by doing your own taxes or dropping that gym membership and working out at home, the Colorado Women’s Expo…

Wine and Dine

Dean Martin loved the charms of the grape, and he laid them out in his lyrics: “I can hear a mandolino/Softly entice/While I raise a glass of vino/Praising your eyes.” And there’s no better place to raise a glass than Bonacquisti Wine Company’s annual Spring Barrel Tasting Party, which takes…

On the Road

Kelly Shortandqueer and his friend Jamez Terry had a dream: the Tranny Roadshow. “My good friend Jamez called me back in December 2004 and pitched the idea to me,” Shortandqueer remembers. “The two of us thought we would go on tour with maybe one or two other people and it…

Black and Blues

As Barack Obama bids for a room in the White House, it’s hard to imagine that less than fifty years ago, blacks couldn’t even stay in the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. Legendary African-American blues singer Dinah Washington had something to say about that little fact in 1959: Instead of…

Shredding the News

As the co-creator of The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead, who cracks wise today and tomorrow at the Comedy Works, has had plenty of experience needling the nightly news. But until she got a dog that insisted on being taken outside at the break of dawn, she didn’t watch enough of…

Go, Cat, Go!

Denver filmmaker Mike Olafson, enamored of the simpler sounds of ’50s and ’60s rock, set out in 2006 to make a short film about the local retro/rockabilly scene. “But then everybody said, ‘You should talk to this person, or you should talk to that person,'” he says, “and it just…

Flobots

Stephen Brackett’s intuition was unbelievably strong — when it came to Jamie Laurie, anyway. On his first day at Bradley Elementary, the wide-eyed fourth-grader took one look at the fifth-grader across the schoolyard and whispered to his father, “Hey, Dad, that guy’s going to be my friend.” “And then,” Brackett…

Get a Grip

Marianne Faithfull is the best reason to see 2007’s Irina Palm, hands down. The premise of the movie, which opens today, sounds comic: The story revolves around Maggie (Faithfull), a middle-aged widow who gains local renown under her “stage name,” Irina Palm, for her skill at anony-mously wanking off men…

Buck Wild West

How a cultural series held together by a slender string of part-mythology — Oscar Wilde’s visit to Colorado to deliver a lecture on the aesthetics movement in 1862 — winds up pulling a Western film series out of its holster is open for debate, but once Fresh City Life’s Chris…

Winding Down

Tonight marks the closing of the ninth annual Black Is…Culturefeast, which featured enough film, literature, arts and cultural filling to stuff even the most discerning participant to the gills. As part of the closing ceremonies, the Pan African Arts Society (which hosts Black Is… each year) is presenting the Fade2Black…

Think Globally, Drink Locally

Some folks drive hybrids for the environment, while others sleep in trees, canvass neighborhoods and annoy you on your walk to work. Many tie newspapers in bundles and separate cans from bottles, and some even have a stinky compost pile. However, the easiest and most relaxing method of saving the…

Garden Fresh

This is my first spring in a new home with a big yard, and I find the task at hand overwhelming. Please don’t ask me if my garden is xeric, native or alpine. I can hardly tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers. But that’s all going to…

N.E.R.D.

Pharrell Williams is so in-demand as a producer that every time he tours with N.E.R.D., his most consistently weird project, he probably costs himself money. But in the days before the release of his latest gun-for-hire superstar collaboration, Madonna’s Hard Candy, he’s on the road again, for reasons that make…

Never Forget

The annual Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program, hosted each April by the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, always couches its somber yet necessary message in changing ways: One year, survivors might speak. Another year, people who’ve witnessed genocide in other contexts might relate their experiences. This year, the unique twist…

These American Lives

Once while visiting my aunt and uncle in Tucscon, Arizona, they took me on a trip to see Tombstone. That tiny town is still capitalizing on the fateful day when Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp finished (or started, depending on your view of history) a gunfight in the OK Corral…

Your Baby Will Rock!

Rock The Cradle, Denver’s new, hip baby store opened at 18 South Broadway on Saturday. Families milled about, remarking on the cute-yet-edgy designs while sampling tasty treats from the Shoppe. Owners Brian and Melissa Ball opened their store as an alternative to the treacly, pastel-laced baby stores and they’ve filled…

Things to Wear to a Wedding: Your Own

It’s coming up on us fast and furious: wedding season. We’ve all been to one, we’ve all seen them in movies and TV and seen those women (affectionately dubbed “bridezillas”) on reality shows who apparently have no grip on reality. But many of us do get married, and most of…

Vespadition

In April, Peter began a journey across the United States and Canada on a Vespa. But rather than just making the trip about riding across 49 states and 8 Canadian provinces, he decided to make the undertaking count. Peter is riding in a journey he has dubbed a “Vespadition” in…