Reader: Does Tim Tebow retablo exploit faith for profit?

Yes, the town seems ready to canonize Tim Tebow — but is it too early to dedicate a santera to the Broncos quarterback? Artist Catherine Robles Shaw makes retablos, plaques depicting the saints that are hand-carved and painted in a folk style that’s been handed down over hundreds of years…

Powderhorn opens with thirteen inches of new snow

Powderhorn Mountain Resort fired up its lifts this morning at 9 a.m. for its 45th anniversary season (and its first season under new ownership). Appropriately enough, it’s a powder day: The resort is reporting thirteen inches of snow in the last 48 hours. Powderhorn is a five-hour drive from Denver,…

10 things to do for $10 this weekend, December 16-18, 2011

There’s plenty to do this weekend to get in the holiday spirit, whether it’s drinking free sake at Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast, constructing crappy gifts at the MCA, or counting birds with the Audubon Society. And for the Scrooges out there, not to worry: there are a few non-holiday related…

Reader: The yuks stopped here, at the Squire

Greg Baumhauer hosted his last open-mic comedy night at the Squire on Tuesday, leaving behind lots of memories — some good, some bad. First the good, from Veronica: I feel sick that I missed Squire’s last comedy night. I feel sick that I wasn’t able to see Greg up on…

A Pirate’s Life

Phil Bender might be the heart and soul of the Pirate gallery, one of Denver’s oldest art cooperatives and a standard-bearer of the communal spirit, but 32 — the number of years Pirate’s been operating — is just another year to him. And he says he’ll be there, even if…

Let’s Put On a Show!

Just from its name, you can tell that the Boulder collaborative theater troupe Band of Toughs knows how hard it is for an experimental group to get a foothold out there — even in Boulder. And in the spirit of that sheer will and a good dose of brotherhood, they’re…

Have A Happy Crappy Christmas

If you’ve ever wanted to take a retro trip back to childhood when Christmas was all about construction paper, safety scissors and glitter, or if you’re just no-joke broke but industrious, then the Cheap Christmas Crapfare is where you need to be to make gifts for your friends, relatives or…

Feather Your Nest

“Early in the 1900s, people were hunting birds and killing them to put them on top of women’s hats,” says Emily Hertz, of the Audubon Society of Greater Denver. While birds were hunted year ’round, it all culminated at Christmastime with a holiday bird hunt. To put an end to…

Bros and Ho Ho Hos

SantaCon isn’t about celebrating the Christmas holiday — it’s about dismantling the illusion and lore. “We’re just scratching the surface of a pagan tradition based on red blood and white fur,” says Ms. Terious, chief instigator of SantaCon 2011. Ms. Terious, who brought the makeshift gathering of misfit Nicks to…

Happy Birthday To Breck

Breckenridge Ski Resort marks its fiftieth anniversary today with an all-day Birthday Bash that coincides with the Nike Open, the first stop on the 2011/2012 Winter Dew Tour. Catch the snowboard and freeski superpipe and slopestyle semi-finals on the mountain from 9:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. (free to spectators from…

Bring the Light

As the days get shorter and the nights get longer — and the stress of the holiday season begins to take its toll — it’s important to re-member that soon, Earth’s tilt will be bringing us closer to the sun and the warmth of spring. “Around the twentieth of December…

Father Knows Best

“I realized I would really love a space to talk with other fathers about parenting that’s not based on the gender-normative examples that we’re typically given, and also to talk about some of the radical politics that were on my mind with regard to parenting,” says Tomas Moniz, editor of…

Drama Salon

With one production under their belts in the new Laundry on Lawrence performance space, Brian Freeland and the LIDA Project are ready to meet more exacting artistic challenges of their own making. For instance, the second production of the season, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, which opens tonight…

Bad Santas

What makes a better Christmas movie: a sorority girl stabbed to death with a holiday ornament, or Santa kidnapped and sent to Mars? Thanks to those crazy cats at the Esquire Theater, you don’t have to choose. The theater’s Midnight Madness this weekend includes screenings of Black Christmas (the original…

Lovely Lena

The great songstress Lena Horne, who died in 2010 at the age of 92, was elegance personified; as lovely as an orchid, she could belt out a standard like nobody’s business and wasn’t afraid to be outspoken. She once said, “My life has been about surviving. Along the way I…

Life Is a Cabaret

Mare Trevathan, GerRee Hinshaw and Melanie Owen Padilla, the very funny and multi-talented trio behind Balls! A Holiday Spectacular, keep bringing the benefit variety show back every holiday season for some very valid reasons, one of the most important being that it serves an important urban niche: “It fills some…

Hanukkah Hoedown

While the debate still rages over whether applesauce or sour cream is the ultimate latke topping, the real question is, where can one get good sufganiyot? The fresh baked Israeli-style jelly doughnuts (and latkes with toppings, too) will be in abundance tonight at Festival of Lights, the second annual collaborative…

All Is Bright

They’ve got butterflies, and they’ve got lights. Also, glowing scorpions — and in the museum’s Rainforest conservatory, “firefly” lights imitating the real thing. And you say you were looking for something different this holiday season? The halls of the Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Center, normally, um, a beehive of invertebrate…

Bad Elf

Screaming children, department stores, seasonal jobs, green velvet costumes. These are just a few staples of the holiday spirit, and it’s this madness that writer David Sedaris covered in SantaLand Diaries, an essay about his day-to-day life as an elf at Macy’s that first appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition in…