Riding the RiNo

The ever-changing RiNo Art District continues to grow and prosper, which means this year’s seventh annual RiNo Art Safari promises more stops and diversions than ever before. The event, which began as a series of art-studio open houses, has grown to include dozens of galleries and creative spaces, as well…

Dog Day

It’s been fourteen dog years since the last Lucky Mutt Strut, but the 5K fun run and walk, which benefits the MaxFund No-Kill Animal Shelter and Adoption Center, will return today after having skipped 2012. The 25-year-old MaxFund gives cats and dogs a “second leash” on life, placing more than…

Building Blocks

What could a fresh coat of paint, live music and a comfortable place to enjoy a meal outdoors do for a block in your neighborhood? The second annual Better Block project — this year focusing generally on Five Points, and specifically on 24th Street between California and Welton — aims…

Life’s Shining Armor

“I’m not gonna lie about it,” Buntport Theater’s Brian Colonna says of his autobiographical play, A Knight to Remember: My Quest to Gallantly Recapture the Past. “I’ll just come out and say the conceit is that the other members of Buntport thought it was a bad idea, so they wouldn’t…

Mother Knows Best

A recent Facebook thread carried a passionate argument about whether childbirth was ecstatic or hideously painful. “Painful” voters found the ecstatic folk smug; the ecstatics hinted that the painful contingent were insufficiently maternal. Apparently Motherhood Out Loud, an evening of linked monologues on the theme of motherhood, comes down on…

Leafing Out

You might never have given a second thought to the culture of trees growing on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, but veteran groundsman Alan Nelson, who’s been caring for them for years, thinks they’re more than just trees. That’s why every spring and fall, he takes a break…

On the Vanguard

When Baltimore burlesque artist Paco Fish quit his day job to pursue performing, it resulted in serious financial repercussions: His home went into foreclosure. But Fish saw it as an opportunity, loading his entire life into a van and embarking on a 52-week burlesque tour of the U.S. and Canada…

Flick Pick: Something in the Air

Olivier Assayas’s gorgeous, freewheeling, semi-autobiographical Something in the Air is an ode to both youth’s universal qualities and the specifics of Assayas’s youth in particular. The picture opens in the suburbs just outside Paris in 1971, among a group of teenage students still energized by the explosive student and worker…

Monk’s Dream

Local sculptor Yoshitomo Saito’s new bronze installation, Bemsha Swing in Denver, refers to the Thelonious Monk composition “Bemsha Swing,” in a funny way: via his own mystification at reading the drily notated Wikipedia description of the jazz standard. “Because of my inability to comprehend this Wikipedia explanation for my favorite…

Benjamin’s Buttons

Denver comic Ben Roy is relentless. Since his first album, I Got Demons, was released last summer, Roy has performed countless shows with both his band and his comedy team, the Grawlix – which has received glowing reviews for its Amazon-produced pilot Those Who Can’t. This week, Roy recorded a…

Jane Austen Sings

Fans of both Jane Austen and musicals should be thrilled that the Denver Center Theatre Company is launching the world premiere of Sense and Sensibility: The Musical tonight. The novel, which follows the Dashwood sisters — Elinor and Marianne — as they fall in love and out of love and…

May Flowers

Yes, Día de los Muertos takes place in early November, but celebrating the holiday in the spring — the season of rebirth — made perfect sense to the group of artists putting together Muertos in May, an art extravaganza at the Bonacquisti Wine Company. “The skulls are symbolic; they remind…

Tracy Weil takes the wheel at the Aurora Cultural Arts District

Tracy Weil is a master at the art of breathing life into ideas. He calls it branding, and that’s the business end of his skill, but it’s also about being engaged in the community, which is what makes it so special. An artist, urban agriculturist, designer and Westword MasterMind, Weil…

RedLine’s Artist’s Studio series celebrates resident artists

In the ’60s, art happenings were all the rage. People got together to experience unique cultural gatherings that would never be repeated. Now RedLine is planning to provide Denver with a modern version of these aesthetic landmarks with its Artist’s Studio series, which will feature events designed and facilitated by…

The ten best stores on Tennyson Street

It’s ironic that nearly all the businesses mentioned when we named Tennyson Street the best neighborhood shopping district in 2011 have left the block or closed their doors (see the link below), including some that were strangled by prolonged street construction in the heart of the district. But now that…