Best Home Gallery 2011 | Super Ordinary Gallery | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Home Gallery

Super Ordinary Gallery

Not every couple chooses to open a gallery in their own home, but leave it to design-savvy Tran and Josh Wills to do just that. No sooner had they finished fixing up and settling into their urban family dream home in RiNo, but they opened up Super Ordinary Gallery in hopes of promoting downtown style, artists and ideals to the public. These are people who get things done: Tran, a Westword MasterMind, is the brain behind the former Fabric Lab and a zillion other local fashion, art and design projects; Josh is a forward-thinking graphic designer. So despite its name, we're expecting big things from Super Ordinary.

Best Hope for the Future

New Play Summit

The Denver Center Theatre Company introduced its New Play Summit five years ago, and it continues to give us hope for the future of theater in this town. This year's incarnation featured two premieres based on last year's staged readings: The Catch and Map of Heaven. Four fascinating — and entirely unique — new plays were read for possible full production this season, with their playwrights commenting afterward on how much they cherished the freedom and support of the New Play Summit. Denver's own Buntporters experimented with tech as they explored the work of Nikola Tesla; a panel discussed the mind-blowing possibilities that digitization brings to live theater; and actors, techies, directors and theater fans thronged the corridors, chatting enthusiastically about what they'd just seen and hoped to see again.

Best Impersonation of a Museum by a Co-op

Ice Cube Gallery

Though it started up just over a year ago, the Ice Cube Gallery has already made its mark not just in RiNo, but in Denver's art world as well. This is partly because of the obvious talent of the co-op's members, who include Sophia Dixon Dillo, Theresa Anderson, Karen Roehl, Carol Browning, Katie Caron, Michael Gadlin, Ray Tomasso and Regina Benson. But it's also because of the swank and enormous exhibition space that Ice Cube occupies in a handsome red-brick building that was once a dry ice factory; this impressive facility puts every other Denver co-op to shame.

Best Jazz Club

Dazzle Restaurant & Lounge

Mark Payler

For close to fifteen years, Dazzle has shown that it has what it takes to be a dazzling, world-class jazz venue. Downbeat magazine agrees: It's rated Dazzle as one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world. This is just about the only place in town where you can regularly catch jazz legends like Christian McBride, Curtis Fuller, Bobby Watson and Junior Mance, as well as such great local players as Ron Miles, Kenny Walker and Jeff Jenkins; over the past year, the venue has somewhat broadened its horizons by bringing in forward-thinking acts that include the Bad Plus and the Nels Cline Singers. And not only does Dazzle feature stellar talent seven days a week, but it also serves mouth-watering food and boasts an excellent $5.60 happy-hour menu.

Best Jukebox

Lion's Lair

Molly Martin

Taped on the front of the Lion's Lair jukebox is a letter from Colorado congresswoman Diana DeGette, congratulating the bar on winning the award for Best Jukebox in the 2004 Best of Denver issue. There's a good chance that many of the CDs on that weathered box today were there seven years ago, too; hell, if ain't broke, why fix it? With one of the most eclectic collections in town, the Lair's jukebox is stocked with everything from the blues of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters to the Stones, Zeppelin and Hendrix and metal icons like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and AC/DC. Of course, punk is present and accounted for, too, with the likes of the Clash (Joe Strummer drank here), X (John Doe plays the Lair nearly every time he comes to town) and Iggy. And along with at least five discs by Bruce Springsteen and a few by soul singers such as Otis Redding and Curtis Mayfield, you'll even find Miles Davis's watershed recording, Kind of Blue. Take a letter, Diana.

Best Karaoke Bar

Music Bar

Eric Gruneisen

For most people, karaoke is something done only in the privacy of the shower or when your friend drags you (with your fourth or fifth vodka tonic in hand) to the stage to giggle through an ensemble rendition of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." But for the few and the proud, karaoke is an art form. And there's no better place to practice that art than at Music Bar, where the karaoke is on three nights a week (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) and where your chances of getting multiple turns at the microphone in a single night are better than at other karaoke mainstays — in between renditions of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," of course.

Best Label Compilation Album

Experimental Dance Breaks 36

Label compilation albums are tricky to pull off; they have to work on multiple levels, from bringing in new fans to appeasing established ones. But the tongue-in-cheek name of Experimental Dance Breaks 36 shows exactly how a label should be doing it. This is equal parts old material, new material and — here's the important part — material from other people in the same scene who aren't on the label. In the end, this compilation not only shows off what Plastic Sound Supply has to offer, but it shows off what the label's friends are up to, as well.

Best Lifetime Achievement in the Arts

Hal Gould

Most of the masters of Denver's current photo scene weren't even born when now-ninety-something Hal Gould opened his House of Photography in Cherry Creek in 1955. And he was an accomplished photographer long before that, having gotten his first camera in 1932. He went on to help establish the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in 1963, mounting shows as the exhibition director of the group, and then in 1979, he opened his Camera Obscura Gallery directly across from the Byers-Evans House, just west of the Denver Art Museum. In the intervening decades, Gould put together one impressive show after another, some highlighting the efforts of internationally known photography stars, others featuring works by top Colorado shutterbugs. And Gould would probably keep going for decades more, but with a weak art market as a result of the recession — not to mention that he's really earned a rest — he and partner Loretta Young-Gautier recently decided to close the gallery. The term "end of an era" is thrown around a lot, but this time that poignant phrase is the perfect description of what's going to happen when Gould finally locks up Camera Obscura at the end of April.

Best Live Hip-Hop Band

BigWheel Electrosoul

If live instrumentation were a living organism, you would find it alive and well at Appaloosa Grill on Tuesday nights. That's when the trio of DJ Check One, Charlie Parker Mertens and Qknox join as BigWheel Electrosoul and set the place ablaze with their progressive and confident brand of hip-hop. With Check One on drums, Qknox on keys and Mertens on bass, the threeome serves up classy and innovative music that makes you want to dance — or at least enjoy a drink at the bar. Big Wheel isn't just a bar-residency band, however; these musicians have a full-length album in the works, not to mention a "brunch" collaboration with DJ Vajra titled The Guac Vol. 1.

Best Local Actor Who Left Denver

Paul Page

After giving us a gallery of interesting characters at numerous Denver venues over the years, Paul Page left town last year to pursue acting work in New York City. Last we heard, he'd acquired a good agent. So we're beating back that nasty, sneaking hope we always entertain when one of our favorites leaves that he/she will fail miserably and return to us. Instead, we're wishing Page a brilliant career.

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