Best Place to Work Out Like Nadia Comaneci 2015 | Awaken Gymnastics Inspired Fitness | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Place to Work Out Like Nadia Comaneci

Awaken Gymnastics Inspired Fitness

Awaken is not your average gym. It doesn't feature rows and rows of treadmills, sweaty exercise bikes and back-to-back episodes of House Hunters International playing on wall-mounted TVs. Instead, the sunny studio on Santa Fe is filled with rings, bars and a pommel horse, and offers classes such as Handstand Strength and Gymnastics Foundations. If you've ever dreamed of sticking the landing like Olympian Nadia Comaneci, or of building rock-hard abs and Michelle Obama arms in a fun atmosphere with no HGTV, Awaken is your spot.

Best Place for a NERF War

PATH Movement

By day, PATH Movement is the country's only fully customizable parkour gym, offering patrons new ways to jump, swing and climb on its movable obstacle course each day. But on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, the place becomes a NERF war zone, a fully stocked tactical training facility offering guns and ammo of the foam variety for hours of fun-infused combat. Learn battle strategies through PATH's NERF Madness sessions and then take that knowledge into its NERF Warz, where sixteen-person teams go head-to-head in glorious, all-out foam-ammunition-loaded scrimmages.

8000 S. Lincoln St., Littleton
720-443-1164

Best Bowling Alley for Everyone

Elitch Lanes

Elitch Lanes attracts everyone from weekday pizza-and-beer leagues to late-night bowling aficionados. Business and blue-collar types, high-schoolers and senior citizens have bowled alongside each other for years as the booze and sodas flowed. A North Denver institution from a bygone era when its namesake family ruled this part of the city, Elitch Lanes will close this May, but there's still time to come in for a few frames, stay for the buffet and cocktails, and hang with your Denver neighbors.

Best Sports Bar for Watching Games

ViewHouse Centennial

Flush with its success in the Ballpark neighborhood, ViewHouse opened a second outpost last September right off I-25 in Centennial — and it turns out that residents of the southern suburbs had been hungering to get in the game. From almost the moment it opened in a transformed Trail Dust Steak House, this ViewHouse has been packed at all hours, with groups gathering to drink and chat, linger over weekend brunch, party late into the night — and maybe even watch some games. ViewHouse is filled with big screens where you can watch just about every sporting event imaginable live, and there's room to stretch out while you do (and plenty to snack on off that expansive menu). But on the rare occasion when there's nothing to catch on television, you can watch all the action as suburbanites meet, greet, eat and possibly cheat. Or you can just gaze off to the west at that stunning view of the mountains, from both the ground-floor windows and the rooftop deck. Bonus: When you leave this ViewHouse, you don't have to worry about running into the LoDo let-out crowds.

Readers' choice: Blake Street Tavern

Best Sports Bar for Playing Games

Blake Street Tavern

The winner and still the champ! Since 2003, Blake Street Tavern has been scoring big with sports-bar fans — and the best got better when Blake Street opened Underground Social, the ultimate solution for a big basement space that now features its own bar, jukebox and photo booth, along with plenty of games: shuffleboard, ping-pong, darts, cornhole, Giant Jenga, Giant Connect 4 and many more. Of course, there are big-screen TVs down here, too, in case you want to watch games as well as play them. And upstairs, Blake Street remains as accommodating as ever, with another game arcade, private rooms that groups can claim for watching their favorite sporting events, big booths and tables that are perfect spots for taking on some of the big offerings on the menu — like the green chile cheeseburger and the Blake Street nachos — and a huge rectangular bar from which you can catch the action on TV, or just around the rest of the room. Score!

Readers' choice: The 1up

Best Sports Bar for Food and Drink

Highland Tap & Burger

When Highland Tap & Burger opened in September 2010, it was a sports lover's secret spot for catching a game. Not only could you walk in and grab a seat at the bar (where there are five TVs alone) or a table without a hassle, but the staff was more than willing to tune in to whichever obscure sporting event you were searching for. But word soon got out about the Tap's top-notch burgers, sinful bacon-topped mac and cheese, and standout smoky Stranahan's wings with a sticky, crackling glaze perfect for nibbling on with one of the bar's many local beers. These days, the joint is always hopping, and often too crowded for people who like to watch games in relative quiet — but for most fans, that crowd just means more friends to help you cheer on the home team. There may be better bars for watching a pitcher's every move or capturing the hushed whisper of the Masters at Augusta, but you won't find a better menu at any of this town's other sports-crazed bars.

Readers' choice: Highland Tap & Burger

Best Old-School Summer Night

Lakeside Amusement Park

There is no place in this state quite like Lakeside Amusement Park. On a perfect Colorado summer evening, a stroll through the grounds reveals a gathering place shaded by mature trees and lit by thousands of twinkling bulbs, all accentuated by the sounds of the rattling Cyclone roller coaster and a chorus of happy screams and hollers. The turn-of-the-century amusement park wears its age well and with pride. From Victorian-era buildings to the art-deco additions of the '30s, Lakeside is just as much a place for fun as it is a home for those who appreciate beautiful historic architecture.

Best Summer Activity on a Ski Slope

High Mountain Ropes Challenge Course at Adventure Ridge

As the snow melts, Vail's Adventure Ridge swaps out tubing, ski biking and a kids' snowmobile course for zipline tours, a climbing wall, a primo disc-golf course and other activities. The best of these is a pair of ropes challenge courses. You'll start with a ground-school lesson to make sure you know how to operate the can't-fall, can't-fail harness system, then spend thirty minutes up in the air on the North Course or sixty minutes on the more challenging South Course, quivering in that harness as you attempt to traverse a series of increasingly difficult obstacles. Don't sweat it when some adventurous little girl shows you up. Happens all the time.

Best Colorado Landmark You Can Climb

The Flatirons

With their name and image plastered on everything from T-shirts to car dealerships to street signs, it's easy to forget that the Flatirons are more than just a cool logo. But they're definitely real: majestic slabs of sandstone, punching up a thousand feet or more out of the ground just a scant few miles from Boulder's Pearl Street Mall. The best way to properly appreciate them is to rope up and scale one of the formation's many moderate lines, like the Direct Route on the First Flatiron. Climbing the Flatirons is far from a wilderness experience: The parking lot at Chautauqua Park is packed with dog walkers and hikers shortly after sunrise, and on game days you can watch instant replays on Folsom Field's jumbotron from halfway up the face. But convenience has its benefits: When you're done, you can hike straight off the summit and into the Chautauqua Dining Hall for a post-climb drink.

Best Place to Kayak Inside the City Limits

Confluence Park

It may be rimmed by concrete and smell like feet on its best days, but for city-bound kayakers, Confluence Park is the best place outside of a swimming pool to sneak in an hour or two of after-work paddling. The park is located in the shadow of REI's flagship store, where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte River, and the water's waves and eddies give paddlers a convenient way to practice the basics before striking out on wilder rivers like the Arkansas or the Animas. Confluence Kayaks, located on Platte Street just a block and change from the park, offers beginner lessons in the water for $149 a pop, equipment included.

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