Update: What a difference a year makes. Both Slam Nuba and the Denver Mercury Poetry Slam team went down in their semifinal rounds on Friday night, Slam Nuba in a sudden death slam-off against Da Poetry Lounge of Hollywood. Saturday Night’s winner? Slam New Orleans. Hopeful and pumped full of…
This looks like it hurts. A lot. This morning, Westword photographer Christopher Morgan headed to the opening hours of this year’s Denver County Fair to capture the pained and friendly faces at the Freakshow Pavilion in the National Western Complex. This year’s event runs August 10-12 and promises “real freaks”…
The second annual Denver County Fair is already under way, and in honor of the fact that one-third of Denver County’s population is Latino, one-third of this year’s fair will be Latino. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, the fair will be devoted to Viva Denver, a celebration of…
It’s almost here, guys. This Tuesday will mark the official opening date of the national tour of one of the laugh-crackingest, award-winningest musicals in recent history — but more important, it came out of local minds. We’ve been writing about Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s The Book of Mormon since…
Jennifer Goodland teaches Colorado history at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and she truly loves this state. On an unpaid sabbatical from teaching, since April she’s been trekking across Colorado with the goal of photographing every town in this state. After photographing close to 400 places, she’s about halfway done…
Last weekend, more than fifty teams of local filmmakers wrote, shot and edited entire film in 48 hours. Oh, and in case that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the film they made had to be in a genre selected at random, and incorporate a line of dialogue and prop that…
There’s a lot of weird shit captured for posterity on videotape. Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have been collecting it for 21 years, and touring the world sharing it under the name Found Footage Festival for the past eight. During that time, they’ve become de facto VHS historians, amassing an…
It’s easy to spend a summer wasting away inside, with the air-conditioning cranked high. But even though it’s easy, that doesn’t mean it’s right. Denver is full of great events this weekend that are cheap and cool — in spirit, if not in actual temperature. From films made in just…
The Yves Saint Laurent spectacular has come and gone from the Denver Art Museum, but its inspiration — a renewed appreciation for the craft, creativity and sheer beauty of high couture — stays on, especially within the local design community. The value of that exhibition certainly wasn’t lost on Dianne…
It’s been one hot summer — and that includes an incendiary atmosphere surrounding some events, whose tickets have been moving faster than a wildfire. The Great American Beer Festival tickets disappeared in under an hour, and you can expect Bruce Springsteen to go just about as fast on Monday. Meanwhile,…
Jacqueline Sophia Cordova wants to redefine the natural world. “I feel like so many people drive by in their cars, or walk by with their phones,” she says, pointing out people doing just that, “and they forget how magical everything is. So when nature is represented in a surreal fashion…
Just ten miles northeast of downtown Denver is one of the largest urban wildlife refuges in the country. Formerly a chemical weapons manufacturing plant and subsequently a highly contaminated hazardous waste site, the 16,000-acre Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge is now home to a diverse population of wildlife. Though the…
Beer is more than just a commodity here in Denver. It’s a cultural staple. Tickets for this year’s Great American Beer Festival — an event that holds a Guinness World Record for offering the largest number of beers on tap in one place — sold out within minutes of going…
Joe Piscopo joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1980, after honing his stand-up chops at New York’s Improv; he stayed with the show until 1985. During his SNL stint, he became known for such original characters as the Sports Guy, as well as celebrity impersonations of David Letterman…
Ruby Ann Boxcar is one of the bonafide stars of this year’s Denver County Fair, which runs tomorrow through Sunday. Hailed as the Dame Edna of the Trailer Park, Boxcar is a performer, speaker, and the author of numerous cookbooks that celebrate the art of frugal, second-hand living. A big…
When Sandra Fettingis looked at the shop housed within MCA Denver, she saw potential beyond the traditional confines of a retail space. The buyer for Shop MCA, Fettingis was interested in bringing “secondary programming” to the museum — an event beyond staple art openings and the consistently challenging Mixed Taste…
Bruce Springsteen tickets go on sale Monday, August 13 at 10 a.m. They’ll be gone within minutes, if not seconds — only to reappear shortly thereafter on eBay, StubHub and other aftermarket ticket sites for two, three or even four times their original cost. It’s nothing new. But it sure…
John Leo and Sophie Nimmannit met at the Boulder Fringe Festival some years ago, the story goes, and it was kismet — on both personal and professional planes. The bicoastal couple threw their fates together and created their own baby: the fringey comedy Peg-ass-us, which has been their bread-and-butter ever…
Every weekend Denver overflows with great events, many of them with fun themes, most of them with beer. How do you decide which one is for you? Yesterday, we offered a helpful tool to make your decision easier: our “Choose your wacky Denver event” flow chart. But every party has…
The Colorado Rockies have had a miserable season so far this year. How is that relevant to the art world? Well, you don’t need to consult the game schedule before you head out to the LoDo galleries — like the two I visited this week — since parking is so…
This deft, atmospheric Errol Morris-style tour through the phenomenon that is “serial imposter” Frédéric Bourdin homes in on one brief episode from the man’s berserk career: the period in 1997 when the 23-year-old Frenchman convinced a Texas family that he was their disappeared teenage son. This is already well-trod territory,…
The Bourne films have more than just overstayed their welcome and outlasted the Ludlum books: They’ve been Van Halenized, with an abrupt change of frontman and a resulting dip in personality. The only big-ass popcorn franchise of the past decade to have not been spawned on computers, the series up…
