Best Civic Makeover 2013 | McNichols Building | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Civic Makeover

McNichols Building

The McNichols Building started out handsome when it first opened as a Carnegie Library in 1910, and it remained stately through every changing of the guard, including stints as the Denver Water Board office and the Denver Treasury. It was renamed in 1999 for former Colorado governor Stephen McNichols, and then, sadly, sat vacant for ten years. The first glimmer that there might still be life left in the McNichols came with the first Biennial of the Americas three years ago, when it housed art exhibits and roundtables; since then, the city has at least partially completed renovations that make the space more conducive to showing art, hosting events and being rented out. Since its grand opening in October, the newly anointed cultural center has become the place to go for swanky galas as well as gallery shows and meetings. Book it!

Best Club Night

Mile High Soul Club

Mile High Soul Club is a monthly event, and while once a month would hardly seem enough to make it a destination, this club night packs more than enough good times and great music into one evening to hold you over until next time. Launched in 2008 at Rockbar, the night, helmed by Tyler Jacobson, DJ DogBoy and Creeper Steve, features a choice blend of hand-picked Motown and Northern and vintage soul. Not only has the night survived a succession of moves over the years, but it continues to thrive and grow. It's grown so much, in fact, that in February, Mile High Soul Club set up shop at Beauty Bar — which has plenty of room for the many fans who flock to Denver's best club night.

Best Club Night Return

The Solution

Evan Semón

At this point, the Solution is well on its way to becoming a Denver institution. But it isn't just our town's longest-running and most revered hip-hop night — it's also a testament to quality and resilience. Despite having moved virtually all over town since it was founded half a dozen years ago by DJs Low Key and Sounds Supreme, the Solution continues to draw a faithful crowd wherever — and however — it goes. Even after the Solution took a hiatus from weekly parties, the Solution crew continued to offer showcases featuring a parade of the best local MCs and producers, along with lauded acts from elsewhere. And last month, when the Solution returned to a weekly format at its new home at the Meadowlark, all was right in the cosmos again.

Best Club Night Revitalization

Lipgloss

After debuting Lipgloss as an indie-rock, '80s-underground dance night in 2001, co-founders Michael Trundle (aka boyhollow) and Tyler Jacobson slowly built their once-monthly dance night into an award-winning weekly Denver institution, one of the first to embrace the dance-punk craze of the mid-2000s. More recently, however, Trundle felt the night's original theme was being eclipsed by the dubstep and hard electro sounds of the modern scene, so last spring he moved Lipgloss to Beauty Bar, where it's returned to its original, more rock- and punk-fueled sound.

Best Club Patio

Vinyl

You'd be hard-pressed to find a dance-club patio in Denver with a better view of the mountains and the skyline than Vinyl's indoor/outdoor rooftop patio. And the view here isn't the only amenity. This patio, one of the biggest in town, has heaters, fire pits and comfortable booths and chairs, making it a great year-round spot to sit and chat, have a smoke or just chill.

Best Club Smoking Area

Herman's Hideaway

Eric Gruneisen

If you haven't been to Herman's Hideaway in a while, it's high time that you headed over there to see the renovations that have taken place, from swanky bathroom makeovers to sound upgrades. The most startling change, however, is the addition of a new outdoor smoking area — more like a patio, really — just adjacent to the stage. With floor-to-ceiling windows (and a garage door that will open during the warmer months), you don't have to miss any of the action when you step outside for a quick smoke. And you don't have to freeze when it's cold outside, either, since a massive area heater keeps things relatively comfortable.

Best Collaboration

Buntport and Screw Tooth

Musician and multimedia artist Adam Stone played Ariel as a gray shadow in Buntport's phenomenal play Wake, and provided a haunting and evocative soundscape as well. Stone has composed music and songs for several of the group's best shows. Now Buntport has announced it will be sharing its theater space with Stone's new company, Screw Tooth. Starting in August, the two companies will alternate program slots — and who can predict what the melding of these fertile imaginations will bring?

Best Collaboration

DeVotchKa and the Colorado Symphony

As any rock historian could tell you, teaming up with an orchestra can sometimes be a thin attempt to disguise a creative lag. But in the case of DeVotchKa and the Colorado Symphony, the pairing has produced an inspired, brilliantly structured melding of two aesthetics that relies less on contrast than it does on similarities. With DeVotchKa's sentimental landscapes and the Symphony's climactic rises and powerful, sweeping descents, performances make for a kind of epic storytelling, supplanted with enough heart to afford the grand housing of so many instruments without sounding bombastic. After offering a preview of the material at Boettcher Concert Hall, the players reconvened at Red Rocks last fall, and the results were captured for a live album, which was released in December.

Best Colorado Movie Tie-In

Argo

Argo, the Ben Affleck flick about a real-life CIA scheme to rescue six Americans from Iran by disguising them as a fake movie crew, won big at the Oscars, snagging statuettes for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, among others. But there was one important fact left out of the Hollywood retelling: the daring rescue's Colorado connection. The script that the CIA used to persuade Iranian officials — and the gullible local press — that the Americans marooned in Iran were a film crew for a movie called Lord of Light was actually slated to be filmed at Science Fiction Land, a planned Aurora theme park that was to include a holographic zoo and a 1,000-lane bowling alley attended by robots. But when that project fell apart, the CIA grabbed the script, changed the name to Argo...and rewrote history.

Best Combination of Two Passions

The Catamounts

Theater is great. Food is great. Both are forms of artistic expression. So why are the snacks at most theatrical performances so bad — nothing but stale chips and candy bars and a cup of popcorn if you're lucky? At the opening night of the Catamounts' hip tragicomedy Jon, vodka was served in glasses with a rim of blue Kool-Aid and cherry-juice ice cubes. Afterward, a lights-strung cart pulled up in front of the theater to serve sliders and mac and cheese. Directors Amanda Berg Wilson and Lauren Shepard Wilkinson plan to continue exploring Boulder's rich food culture and offer special dinners in which each course is paired with a performance piece and a drink. It's a wonderful thing when passions collide.

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