Believe it or not, during Transformers: Age of Extinction, Michael Bay’s fourth rattling of the toy box, I felt one moment of near transcendence. Three-fourths of the way through the punishing 165-minute runtime—and fifteen minutes after my seatmate took off her 3-D glasses in exhaustion—my brain left my body, crying…
“Coffee’s not what you think it is,” says Brandon Loper, director of >A Film About Coffee, a new documentary about the ubiquitous beverage screening tonight at the Mayan Theatre. Moving from the places where coffee’s grown to the places where it’s served and all points in between, Loper’s film examines…
In a culture frozen by the social mores of the Cold War era, Neal Cassady — a Denver boy who was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road — burned bright. Allen Ginsberg branded Cassady an icon of the Beat Generation, a movement that Cassady’s wife, Carolyn, derided as…
Suzie Ahlers, boardmember of the Rotary Club of Five Points Cultural District, has wanted to throw an event with food trucks ever since the food-truck scene exploded in the city a few years back. So in some ways, tonight’s Final Friday Food Truck Fiesta is a dream come true for…
Now that the Outdoor Handmade Homemade Market is in its third year, it’s easy to forget the event’s humble origins — as a bartering party for crafty folk. “It came out of somebody’s living room and back yard,” notes Handmade Homemade’s Stephen Toma, “and it was an opportunity for people…
It all began with Irish drinking songs. “I had learned all of these songs playing pubs in Europe,” explains musician Adam Goldstein. “When I came back from living abroad, I thought I would never find a place to do these songs in Denver, somehow I did.” Goldstein is the man…
Reduce, recycle, reuse and get a taste of local art today at the Aurora Arts Festival. This growing celebration of music, theater, visual art and community collaboration takes over Fletcher Plaza and explores Aurora’s rich art scene through the eyes of reclaimed-materials artists. As part of the “Recycle and Upcycle…
It’s been just over a year since the Denver Actors Fund — John Moore’s project that offers cash and assistance to members of the theater community facing medical crises — became a formal thing, and it’s grown exponentially in that time to include a board of directors, sixty volunteers on…
In May 1974, bombs exploded inside two separate cars in Boulder, 48 hours apart. The blasts killed six Chicano activists and seriously injured a seventh. Cuarenta y Ocho, written and directed by Su Teatro artistic director Tony Garcia, is a suspenseful thriller that explores the 48-hour period between the attacks…
Denver is experiencing a creative surge, say Timothy Arguello and Stephen Jones, the brains behind the Denver Taco Festival. “Denver’s culture is a melting pot of all these cool things happening from the coasts,” Jones says, and their street party will be no exception. Revelers will chase tacos with tequila,…
The story of Damien Echols — a member of the West Memphis Three, who were released from prison in 2011 after serving nearly eighteen years on a murder conviction for crimes they say they didn’t commit — isn’t quite over yet. On the heels of Echols’s best-selling memoir Life After…
The finished Levitt Pavilion in Ruby Hill Park is still a dream on paper as fundraising continues to help finance the proposed 7,500-seat amphitheater, slated to open to the public for fifty concerts in 2016, under shared sponsorship by the national Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation and the City of…
Aaron Swartz isn’t a household name, but in the age of threatened net neutrality, NSA spying and the fight for a free Internet, he should be. His accomplishments co-founding the influential website Reddit and helping develop key Internet architecture were impressive enough, but it was his political activism — fighting…
People would laugh until they cried when Lori Callahan took the stage at Comedy Works South. And on April 13, both laughter and tears poured out as friends, family members and Callahan’s fellow comics gathered in the room where the redheaded comic had slung jokes for years, taking their turn…
When art collecting brothers Ron and Roger Pollard purchased a handful of paintings at an online auction in 2004, they had no idea what they were in for. The pieces, bought from a seller in Germany, were done in the style of an early-twentieth-century art movement known as Russian avant-garde,…
The twentieth annual Westword Music Showcase turned the Golden Triangle into a block party — make that blocks party — on Saturday. We spotted all kinds of outfits in the crowd, but the most energetic menswear look came courtesy of Jüna Hæm. Keep reading to learn what inspires his style,…
Perhaps it’s the pull of longer days and glorious nights that shuts down local stages in the summertime. But there are still places where you can catch a great musical or a dance performance when the heat of the day begins to subside. Here are our picks for this week…
Today is the nineteenth annual Bike to Work Day, and registered riders, while reveling in the health benefits and environmental awareness that the event fosters, can also score some free food at Civic Center Park during their trek — and then party with other wheeler-dealers at the end of the…
On Saturday, the Westword Music Showcase transformed the Golden Triangle into a block party — make that blocks party. In the fashion-forward crowd that filled the streets, we spotted a woman with a pair of iridescent wings that raised her style above the rest. Keep reading to learn more about…
My home in North Denver is special. Not just because everyone who lives there pays a quarter of the rent that the average person in the city pays or because we make our own kombucha as a household. It’s because we live communally. But this isn’t an ordinary commune; we…
#71: Sarah Rockett A draftsman first, artist Sarah Rockett re-imagines the basics of line and movement and all the tricks of drawing in three dimensions, making installations built from everyday materials and soft sculpture. Inspired by the horror movie genre, she takes those shapes into dark yet appealing places. Last…
Nik Pew brings his passion and creativity to not just tattooing, but also re-building motorcycles and cars. The Denver native has been tattooing for twenty years and is known for illustrating custom designs. He currently works at Landmark Tattooing and donates his time to Love Thy Chopper, a fundraiser that…
