Cherry Creek was slow last night, without the usual crowds at Little Ollie’s and Houston’s. But just down the street at 201 Columbine Street, in the former home of Jim Sullivan’s Ocean (and Mao before that), there are signs of life: The sign is up announcing that Earls is on…
KJ’s Coffee Bar, the Whittier neighborhood watering hole at 1710 East 25th Avenue that Kenny and Kristin Johnson opened last year, adds music to the mix tonight, when DJ LHD and friends start spinning at 7 p.m. But don’t come to KJ’s empty-handed: It’s running a food drive to benefit…
Colorado is not all about balloon boys and terrorists — unless you count fat babies and health insurance companies. Senator Michael Bennet has been getting a lot of face time lately, speechifying about our broken healthcare system. And in his most recent speech, he may have finally given the debate…
It’s been three weeks since we first posted news of our search for a medical-marijuana reviewer. Within five minutes of that posting, we had our first application for this extremely part-time job. Within ten minutes, our first media inquiry. And the applications and media calls keep coming. This morning –…
Dear Mexican: As a teacher, we’ve been exhorted to expand our efforts in closing the achievement gap between majority and minority students (read: Anglos and Mexicans). I teach all of my students in the best ways that I can determine for each individual student, within the constraints of a classroom…
Outside, the temperature was dropping — but inside Lola, we might as well have been on a beach in Mexico. That’s because chef Jamey Fader and guest chef Roberto Solis were hosting a Yucatan dinner, full of the tastes of that region . “We’re all just chefs,” Fader said as…
Before the Balloon Boy story blew up around the globe, Colorado’s Najibullah Zazi was reportedly getting ready to blow up New York City. Our hometown terrorist is now being held without bail in New York on charges of conspiring to detonate explosives in the United States; his father has a…
I was at Lola, 1575 Boulder Street, twice on Sunday — for brunch (the chicken-fried pork special) and dinner (the Sunday paella special). And you’d think I might have had my fill of Lola for a while — but you’d be wrong. Because tonight, Lola is hosting a Yucatan Dinner,…
Ryan Frazier made a smart move, even though his announcement last Thursday that he was switching from a run for the U.S. Senate to go for the 7th Congressional District seat currently occupied by Ed Perlmutter was completely overshadowed by a certain silver balloon. But someone took notice: The Colorado…
Aurora was slated to get its very own Smashburger on Wednesday, October 21, but the opening of the store at 2630 South Parker Road has been delayed — “a permitting issue that the landlord is working through,” according to Julie Noyes, spokeswoman for the homegrown chain. When the Aurora outlet…
Even Balloon Boy couldn’t knock our hunt for a medical-marijuana reviewer out of the national news. Yesterday, NPR’s Sunday show ran a piece about our quest, resulting in still more applications coming in from across the country. But sorry, folks: We’re looking for a Colorado resident, someone who can identify…
Even as the area north of downtown gentrifies, certain problematic pockets remain. The area around 22nd and Arapahoe streets, for example, where the manager of the brand-new (and beautiful) Lobby American Grille, located in the space in the historic Paris Hotel at 2191 Arapahoe Street that was once occupied by…
Okay, so Falcon Heene was never in the balloon. But why wasn’t he in school yesterday? That’s a question for Rico Munn, who’s done good work during his two years as executive director of the Department of Regulatory Affairs, and yesterday was appointed by Governor Bill Ritter to head the…
Cliff Young, whose eponymously named restaurant transformed the Denver dining scene, is back in business at the Diamond Cabaret, where his CY Steak opened this week at 1222 Glenarm Place. It was a soft opening — in a room full of hard bodies. While strip clubs across the country are…
Ryan Frazier is trading in a clunker in favor of a much sleeker vehicle. Six months after the two-term Aurora City Councilman announced that he was running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, he’s pulling out of that race and making a fast course correction for the 7th…
Dear Mexican: An uninsured wetback just hit my car and totaled his. He had no insurance and no license, but he did have a nice cell phone. I asked him if he was okay in my limited Spanish, but he did not ask about me or my children. He was…
In an industry when a restaurant reaching its first birthday is considered noteworthy, the run of the Brook Forest Inn is nothing short of remarkable. Edwin and Marie Welz, immigrants who arrived in this country in 1910 and took over a homestead near Evergreen, worked on transforming the place into…
When we learned that Joe Rogan, former host of Fear Factor, had moved to metro Denver, we offered up our top ten list of very scary things for newcomers to Colorado. Number 4? Animal Encounters: “As houses sprawl across formerly uninhabited areas, the animals that used to live where your…
Hospoda, the restaurant that billed itself as “friendly beer house,” has closed after a good effort in a bad location, at 3763 Wynkoop Street (right off Brighton Boulevard), the former home of the Wynkoop Grill. Jason Sheehan loved Hospoda it when I dragged him there — the ambience was a…
“Olives date back to before the invention of the written language,” notes the web page for the Twisted Olive. “We’re here to add a new chapter in Olive history, a fun and tasteful one. It starts with redefining and twisting the Olive’s role in entertainment, cuisine, nightlife and most importantly…you!”…
Jeff Peckman has had a tough month: First, David Letterman’s all-too-earthly horn-dog behavior made big news — and bit into the value of a clip from Letterman’s June 10, 2008 UFO interview with Peckman that’s prominently featured on the campaign web page for the Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. That’s the concept…
This past weekend the largest gay-rights demonstration in close to a decade descended on Washington, D.C., where lawmakers may finally approve the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the categories covered by federal hate crime…
