If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Without THC. The quickly reorganized Colorado Cannabis Convention kicks off at 4 p.m. today at the Colorado Convention Center. Title sponsor Kush Colorado and its sibling, dailybuds.com, stepped in to take the lead after a dispute with the original sponsor wound up in…
Yes, for the first time in years, our Best Burger in Denver is actually served in Denver — rather than at Bud’s Bar down in Sedalia. It’s at Colt & Gray, the restaurant that opened last August at 1553 Platte Street, and was also a contender for Best New Restaurant…
Best tip you won’t find in the Best of Denver 2010, now hitting newstands: The Best Parking Meters are in the 2100 block of Larimer Street. Not only do those old-time meters charge just 25 cents for an hour, but you can still feed them this pittance with a cashkey…
Some of our favorite Westword stories — including ones connected to our annual Best of Denver issue — are not the ones we’ve published. I spilled a few of the juicier ones when I sat down with the Denver Post’s Bill Husted for his Bar & Grilled interview earlier this…
Want to be the first to read about Denver’s Best New Restaurant? Sign up for Cafe Bites, our weekly dining newsletter, right here. Every Tuesday night, Cafe Bites serves up a heaping helping of restaurant scoops. And tonight, it will reveal which restaurant will be named the Best New Restaurant…
The first-ever Colorado Cannabis Convention almost ended before it began. That’s because the original promoter, Raymond Springsteel and Boulder Talent Agency, which had booked the Colorado Convention Center for a pot convention this coming weekend, apparently disappeared after collecting — and cashing — a major haul of checks from vendors…
One of the best moves of the year — both literally and figuratively — was the city’s last-second save of the Denver Civic Theatre for Su Teatro, which just opened its first production in the heart of Denver’s historic Santa Fe Drive area. Su Teatro was already in the process…
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has surrendered to the inevitable. Yesterday morning I wrote about a friend,Elaine Betts, who’d received her medical marijuana card more than five months after she applied for it — and over two months after she died. Soon after, the department announced that…
When I agreed to be grilled by Bill Husted for Bar and Grilled, his interview feature that appears in today’s Denver Post, I had an important question to answer (and no, it wasn’t why I would agree to be grilled in the first place): What bar to choose for the…
Elaine Betts took care of her family and friends, took care of her neighborhood. I know, because she used to live on my block, before she bought a little house a few blocks away and started taking care of that neighborhood. When she was diagnosed with cancer last year, she…
Dear Mexican: I just read that Speedy Gonzales is getting his own feature film and will be voiced by George Lopez. I read in the Hollywood Reporter that Lopez said he gave Speedy his “Latino Seal of Approval.” Who grants this seal? What does it look like, and how did…
Frank Bonanno, who was named a semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurateur in this year’s James Beard Foundation Awards, didn’t make the cut when the finalists were announced Monday. But he’s already won a string of honors, including Best New Restaurant in Best of Denver 2009 for Bones, the noodle house that…
For months, my e-mail has been deluged with a blizzard of messages from Colorado candidates. And although the City of Denver just announced that it’s opening late today because of the snow, I just received my first generic message from Mayor John Hickenlooper, who announced his run for governor in…
The people gathered in a meeting room at the Blair Caldwell library last summer were getting restless. “You all wasted our time,” proclaimed one community activist. “This was not a waste of your time,” replied Rico Munn, then-director of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Affairs, which includes the Division of…
The last time the House judiciary committee considered HB 1284, which would regulate medical marijuana from seed to sale in this state, the March 4 hearing went on for ten hours, and over 800 people signed up to testify. Today, when the committee again takes up HB 1284, there will…
Despite the lousy economy, 2009 was a great year for new restaurants. Some years, when we set out to pick the Best New Restaurant for the Best of Denver, we’re hard-pressed to come up with one worthy contender. This round, we have more than a dozen restaurants that last year…
Steve Horner, go back to your corner. This week, Westword received a packet that contained copies of a dozen letters sent to Horner, the anti-ladies’ night crusader, from Steven Chavez, director of the Colorado Division of Civil Rights, all dated March 11 and all starting this way: “This letter is…
Leadville has a long, colorful history. Colorful enough even without the latest colorful chapter: the much-publicized arrest in Ireland of Leadville-come-lately resident Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a 31-year-old blond, single mom whose own mother — also a recent addition to the Leadville lineup — has been all over TV talking about her…
The first sign that something was funny? People kept coming up to Jolt — real name Jeremy Silas Ulibarri — at First Friday, telling the urban artist that they’d seen his work on the History Channel earlier that evening, that his Guerilla Garden logo, a stylized graffiti gorilla, had been…
More than anything, I’m mad at myself,” admits Francisco Gallardo, program director of Denver’s Gang Rescue and Support Project, one of the key players in the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver and a willing participant in “Mile High Killers” — until he actually saw that episode of Gangland. “Nothing but…
Dear Mexican: By now, I’m sure you’re aware of all the hate crimes against Hispanics in the last few years. By now, I’m sure you’re thinking that this is ¡Ask a Mexican!, not ¡Ask a Hispanic! But let me tell you that all the hate crimes against Hispanics have been…
Want to give someone a quick feel for Denver? Walk the seven blocks of Wazee Street from Cherry Creek — where Denver got its start when gold was discovered 150 years ago — up to Coors Field, where the Rockies will start digging for gold in just a few weeks…
