High Times In Madrid

Core New Art Space member Lola Montejo grew up in Madrid during the heady ’80s, when the urban center blossomed culturally after years of censorship under the Franco dictatorship. “My grandmother once told me that she was not even allowed to have a typewriter,” Montejo remembers. “During that time of…

J-Pop Culture

You’re going to need a costume for your costume to attend tonight’s Nan Desu Kan New Year’s Eve Costume Ball. “Imagine your character is going to homecoming,” says NDK spokeswoman Jinnie McManus of the cosplay-attracting end-of-year bash. NDK is known for its large-scale Japanese animation convention, which draws thousands of…

Have a Ball

Ten years ago, Kevin Larson realized that there was almost nowhere to go in Denver where you could get decked out in your finest and ring in the New Year in style. “So that’s when I said, ‘You know what? If nobody else is gonna do it, I will,'” says…

Tinny Dancers

Sure, you could stay home, get snockered and burn off your eyebrows lighting fireworks this New Year’s Eve, or you could hear some naughty poetry and watch belly dancers in steampunk gear. The Mercury Cafe, home of local booze, urban-hippie decor and a selection of vegetarian dishes that even carnivores…

Jump Back in Time With Howl

The annual New Year’s Eve soiree Howl takes its name from Allen Ginsberg’s history-making poem. And event organizer Jessie de la Cruz says that the poem, in which Ginsberg famously laments that “Denver is lonesome for her heroes,” has a lot to do with this year’s party. “There’s something about…

High Country New Year

“If you’re looking to ring in the New Year in a winter wonderland, this is your place,” says Keystone Resort spokeswoman Justine Spence. The ski resort’s New Year’s Eve festivities coincide with the first of the season’s monthly Kidtopia events, December 27-January 3, so start with a gondola ride up…

Colder Boulder

The Polar Plunge ain’t for cold-weather wimps. Now in its 29th year, today’s Alzheimer’s Association of Colorado fundraiser invites brave souls to participate in a freezing water dive at the Boulder Reservoir. Bathing suits are a must, but jumpers are also encouraged to get creative. Past participants’ costumes have included…

New Beginning Before

Ray Young Chu became something of a legend around town a few years ago when he occupied the streets with fun and graffiti generated by the Yummies, a furry-costumed bunch who rapped and made murals at art events at such hot spots of yore as the Fabric Lab and Capsule…

Jurassic Parts

There are only two words you need to read to get excited about T. Rex Encounter, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s latest exhibit: robotic dinosaurs. The interactive dinobots, which go on display today, come in three types: a Tyrannosaurus rex, a triceratops and two smaller raptors. They’ll be…

Finders, Keepers

Art appreciation and exploration go hand in hand at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s ongoing BMoCA Scavenger Hunt promotion, which began in mid-October and runs through the end of January. Financed by an Arts and Business Collaborative Grant from the Boulder Arts Commission, it links museum-goers with nearby businesses…

Was your X-Mas this f@#kng merry?

Three Kings Tavern hosted its sixth Annual “F@#K X-Mas Party” on Christmas night with Ooh La La Burlesque and Mark Star Karaoke. The 21-and-up party promised to include “the best of everything 3 Kings all at once,” which meant lots of Pabst Blue Ribbon, music, burlesque and holiday-themed underpants. Want…

Santa shreds the slopes: Six sick shots from ski country

Santa didn’t bring much in the way of fresh snow for Christmas (apparently some of you skiers and snowboarders out there have been naughty this year) but he did manage to get some turns in after making his rounds in Colorado, shredding his way into the Facebook feeds of many…

Find the counterculture at MCA Denver’s West of Center

Though not part of an ambitious series of events like Pacific Standard Time, our own MCA Denver is participating in the same zeitgeist anyway, with West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977. The show, organized by director Adam Lerner and his wife and co-curator, Elissa Auther,…

Take a director’s walk-through of Street Cred at the Longmont Museum

Graffiti-art aficionados will agree — Street Cred, the exhibition now at the Longmont Museum, earns its title. Direct from new Longmont director Wes Jessup’s former workplace, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, it offers an in-the-moment overview of California graffiti writers, as well as a local showcase tailored in-house by…

Now Showing

Birger Sandzén. Though Birger Sandzén was born in Sweden, studied painting there and in Paris and later made his permanent home in Kansas, we in Colorado can claim him as one of our own. Sandzén found his muse here — in our stunning scenery — and after his first extended…

Now Playing

Phantom. While playwright Arthur Kopit and composer Maury Yeston were still putting together Phantom, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Operatrundled onto the scene, and their backers vanished — along with any chance of a Broadway opening. This Phantom is much smaller-scale than Webber’s, with less spectacle and more emphasis…