The Crypt, Denver’s beloved adult store and sex shop, has closed its doors. On September 30, both of the locations on Broadway were shuttered; they’d been seized by the City of Denver because of “unpaid taxes.” Along with a notice from the city regarding the tax seizure, the door of…
Forty years ago, the big crime news in this wide-lapel cowtown had nothing to do with six-year-old pageant queens, high-school shooters or feuding gangbangers. The obsession of the moment was the 1975 murder of businessman Hal Levine, and the prosecution of Michael Borelli, a supposedly mobbed-up former New York police…
If books inspire us to flex our intellectual muscles, looking back on who we are and how we got that way, this is the week to dive into self-exploration. The calendar includes appearances by authors of every stripe, from cartoonists and poets to contemporary novelists. Here are just three of…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. The Mobile Museum of American Artifacts is Laurelin Kruse’s touring museum of…
This may be National Moment of Frustration Day, but there are many moments of free fun ahead this week. Take in a horror movie, let out plenty of laughs, and then find out how conservation can be entertaining at a major festival. Check the online Westword calendar for more activities, and drop us…
“I took a break from standup due to lack of skill and ability,” went a typical Michael Carter opener, “but I’ve decided that I’m not going to let that stop me.” While the archetype of the self-deprecating comic is so well-established that it’s become something of a ready-made persona, nothing…
Little free libraries — tiny houses where you can leave a book or take a book — are popping up all over town. Some efforts are modest, like the library my father installed in front of my house; others are more elaborate — history-making, even. The Design and Production team…
From a magnificent solo by Joel Swanson at the Museum of Outdoor Arts to a deadly beautiful tribute to plants that go bump in the night in Aurora to a celebration in a rare survivor of that dying breed, the RiNo art-studio warehouse, this weekend is shaping up as a…
Our nation’s movie boogeymen have been around for a long time. We’ve seen some of the classic movie monsters – Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and the Mummy — so many times they just aren’t scary any more; with no element of surprise, the bogeymen are now our buddies. We’ve…
An all-black outfit may be stylish, but when you’re dressing in a single color palette, you have to pay attention to the details. We spotted fellow blogger and stylist Merida Teot — who describes her style as “color meets local chic” — at the Whorl Imprints fashion show in Cherry…
There’s nothing like when the whistle blows on Friday and you get to welcome the weekend with open arms. The calendar is full of tours to take, beers and pigs to eat and drink, and plenty of movies to keep you busy and in good company. Check out the Westword…
An art exhibit about love doesn’t always have to be heart-shaped Valentine’s Day fodder — though hearts might still be part of the equation. Tasked with developing a group show that celebrates the entire spectrum of love, Emmanuel Gallery curator Jacquelyn Connolly crafted Love is Love, working with an eye-opening,…
When I was nineteen, my mother-in-law (the first one, I’ve had a couple more since) asked if I’d ever seen Psycho and I said something stupid: “No, but I know the whole deal, so I don’t really need to.” I will never forget the look she gave me in response;…
October is the month of madness. The month to pull out all the stops and go over-the-top with all your fashion, and one outfit in particular: your Halloween costume. Although a couple of our favorite costume stores have closed — RIP, Flossy McGrew’s — there are still some fantastic spots…
We’ve come to trust the Denver Center’s Off-Center@The Jones when it comes to offbeat theatrical entertainment. Any show put on by Off-Cente – whether it’s improv or performance art – pretty much promises to make folks in the audience laugh and/or cry, sometimes at the same time, all while getting…
As a writer who covers local issues in art, social justice and city growth, I use the word “community” on a regular basis to describe both tangible settings and loose associations between people. This past weekend, as I made hundreds of laps around DIY space Dryer Plug Studios, where I…
Although dance is considered a feminine pursuit by many people, it’s surprising to see how much of a boy’s club dance can be. Even hip-hop, one of the freest and expressive channels of the art form, seems to have a disproportionate number of men at the helm. But the Janes,…
When Jill Hadley Hooper, ace director of the Ironton Gallery, first told me about Mind Over Matter: Teresa Booth Brown, I knew I wanted to catch it, because I admire Brown’s abstract paintings — which were what I was expecting to see. But it turns out that this elegant and…
Peg is a sketch artist for the police, and her apartment is filled with charcoal portraits of criminals, both petty and murderous. As Good on Paper opens, she’s celebrating a birthday with her sister Sandy, a romance writer, and explaining the end of her latest affair: She broke up with…
You’d have to be a monster not to be sniffling by the end of Peter Sollett’s Freeheld, a weepy/rousing retelling of a real-life gay-rights triumph that serves as a helpful reminder that the dark ages were just, like, ten years ago. It’s love that lights up that darkness, of course,…
Friendships between women have the ambiguous vitality of growing vines: They can either strangle or nurture, and at times it can be hard to tell the difference. That’s particularly true for young women first stepping into the puzzling gray area of rivalries and loyalties. How best to support your friends…
A documentary about a magazine is doomed never to capture the thing it’s documenting. The best that can be said for Douglas Tirola’s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is that it captures, at times, the heady disbelief of paging through its subject, the National Lampoon, the headwaters of much of American…
