Happy Fortieth Anniversary! The 2024 Best of Denver Is Coming!

The 2024 Best of Denver lands on the streets and the web later today. This is the fortieth-anniversary issue, our 41st annual celebration of the city.

The Best of Denver issues are like a time machine that capture the evolution of the city's social, cultural, political and business scenes, year after year. Thumbing through the very first Best of Denver, published in June 1984, is an amazing, nostalgic look at a city that was thriving but evolving. Although many winners may now be gone, some are still with us, forty years later.

As Westword's first Music/Culture Editor, I worked on that inaugural Best of Denver issue, and on many editions after that. Pulling together that first Best Of was like a license to be a know-it-all; we knew what we liked about the city, and this was our chance to share it with awards created for the very best people, places and things we'd found in Denver. The results were crammed in a huge (for the time) issue of 88 pages, with a fantastic full-color cover illustration by Buddy Hickerson of a classy cow in a tux holding a wine glass, looming over Denver’s skyline.

At the time, many city boosters were worried that Denver was still regarded as a cowtown — and we decided that the best way to fight that image, and to tick off some city boosters in the meantime, was to embrace the cow as our Best of Denver mascot.

It still is today, but you can teach an old cowtown new tricks.

The Best Suburb award in 1984 went to Arvada; today, I live there. The issue also had nods to the Best Comic Book Store, the Best Bank Lobby, the Best Laundromat (RIP, Smiley's) and the Best Book Store (yes, the Tattered Cover, which is still around — but could soon start another chapter). The Best Movie Theater With No Lines was the long-gone Target Village II at Sheridan and Evans, where I saw Bruce Lee’s Hong Kong kung fu films when I was in high school. The Best Jazz Club, of course, was El Chapultepec. And then, as now, the Best Record Store was Wax Trax.
La Fiesta got the nod for Best Chile Rellenos in 1984; four decades later, it's still ladling up that sense-searing green chile (while it took a ten-week break after a pipe burst earlier this year, it reopened on March 30, just in time to sustain some of the crew working on this issue). Many of the other food winners disappeared decades ago, including the groundbreaking Cafe Giovanni, winner of Best Restaurant — Price No Object. The big shocker was that My Brother’s Bar only won Readers' Choice honors in 1984: Fuddruckers, a national chain that's no longer in Colorado, won out.

Maybe Denver was still a cowtown, after all.

Three Westword editors will be on Great Day Colorado at 9 a.m. today on KWGN to talk about the 2024 Best of Denver; watch for the issue to go live on westword.com this afternoon.