PEOPLE & PLACES

part 1 of 2 Best Guess for When Denver International Airport Will Open November 23, 1994 It’s easy–just take the number of Wellington Webb’s buddies who got fat airport contracts, divide by the number of cracks in the runways, multiply by Federico Pena’s shoe size, add Dan Caplis’s legal bill…

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

part 3 of 4 Best Musical Minimalists Arkestra Pirata Arkestra Pirata’s members are performance artists, combining poetry, dance, singing and acting with acoustic and electronic instrumentation. The group, which draws heavily from the pool of local post-avant-garde experimenters, puts its own spin on everything from John Cage, Sun Ra and…

FOOD & DRINK

part 2 of 4 Best Outdoor Shmoozing The Market Larimer Square In a town where pedestrians are the exception rather than the rule, it follows that there aren’t many places offering casual sidewalk seating. The break in tradition continues to be the Market, in Larimer Square, which offers the urbane…

GOODS & SERVICES

part 1 of 4 Best Star Trek Paraphernalia Starland 8770 Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada 8400 E. Iliff Ave., Aurora Beam me up, Scotty! Business is out of this world for Stephen and KathE Walker, who’ve turned their obsession with Star Trek–all generations–into two local stores and a booming mail-order trade. Customers…

GOODS & SERVICES

part 2 of 4 Best Place to Buy a Creche Galeria Mexicana 3615 W. 32nd Ave. Galeria Mexicana carries imported handmade pottery, needlework and wood carvings all year long, but it’s especially fun shopping there at Christmastime, when owners Rod Wagner and Kim Newberry stock up on nativity scenes of…

GOODS & SERVICES

part 4 of 4 Best Place to Get Free Fertilizer Echter’s Greenhouse and Gardens 5150 Garrison St., Arvada Echter’s has acres of trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials, plus a knowledgeable, helpful staff. Now there’s another reason to go–free fertilizer for your houseplants. Next time you stop in, bring along an…

SPORTS & RECREATION

part 1 of3 Best Rockie Andres Galarraga No one expected the Big Cat to reproduce his spectacular 1993, in which he won the National League batting title with a .370 average. So he hasn’t. Instead, the Venezuelan slugger hit 18 home runs by June 1 this year (he had 22…

SPORTS & RECREATION

part 2 of 3 Best Late-Spring Ski Trip Quandary Peak West side of Hoosier Pass For those who didn’t get enough skiing in during the season and have the energy to climb a 14,000-foot-plus peak for one more run, Quandary Peak is the place. The mountain is between Hoosier Pass…

FOOD & DRINK

part 3 of 4 Best Cheap Burgers Nick’s Cafe 777 1/2 Simms St., Lakewood For $2.50, the modest Nick’s will cook you up a fabulously greasy half-pounder, stash it on a fresh bun with all the trimmings and throw in a huge batch of fat fries. Eat it there or…

FOOD & DRINK

part 1 of 4 Best Asian Deli Mekong Market 1076 S. Federal Blvd. Most of Mekong is your standard Asian market, with cheap produce and lots of canned and packaged specialties you don’t know what to do with. The real attraction here, though, is the deli, with its huge selection…

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

part 2 of 4 Best Reason Not to Complain About the Moody Blues Coming Back to Town This Summer Charitable Donations by Fey Concerts The Summer of Stars concert lineup by Fey Concerts may not be chockablock with fresh new talent; many of the performers scheduled to visit Red Rocks…

FOOD & DRINK

part 4 of 4 Best Dessert Fondue La Bonne Soupe Writer Square The word fondue is French for melted, which doesn’t even begin to describe what La Bonne Soupe does to good-quality Swiss chocolate once it starts adding the Cognac and honey. The rich, sweet brew arrives in a big…

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

part 4 of 4 Best Real-Life Adventure for Grown-Ups Inner Reality After all the hype about last year’s “summer of violence,” Dave Stalls, former recreation director for the Denver Department of Parks and Recreation, decided it was time for a reality check. Specifically, an Inner Reality check, Stalls’s invaluable, adult-oriented…

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

part 1 of 4 Best Place to Watch The Simpsons The Sink 1165 13th St., Boulder Tired of sitting at home on your butt every Thursday night watching The Simpsons? Then why not sit on your butt and watch The Simpsons at the Sink instead? The beer, Bart burgers (complete…

GOODS & SERVICES

part 3 of 4 Best Place for a New-Age Cat South Penn Cat Clinic 311 S. Pennsylvania St. Cats whose owners follow holistic lifestyles may want to stock up on vitamin treatments and herbal remedies, too. Many of them find their way to the South Penn Cat Clinic, where Linda…

SPORTS & RECREATION

part 3 of 3 Best Lowdown on Lowriders Royalty Car Club James Quintana, president of Arvada’s Royalty Car Club, wants to elevate lowriders to a higher calling: keeping kids out of trouble. “Nowadays kids are just trying to find something to do,” he says. “We’ve got something that interests them…

LETTERS

She-Mail As a regular reader of Denver’s other daily newspaper, I was unaware that the Rocky Mountain News was socially and sexually insensitive. Unaware, that is, until I read Patricia Calhoun’s June 15 column, “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room,” on the paper’s efforts to clean up its act. I don’t…

THE FARM TEAM

part 1 of 2 Allah-who-akbar. At the call to prayer, the Brown family assembled in the living room of their home near the tiny town of Mosca, in the San Luis Valley. Rolling out their prayer rugs in rows–the males in front of the females–they faced northeast, having determined that…

PRINTS CHARMING

part 2 of 2 Three generations is what passes for old money in Denver. So it’s not surprising that along with the Hirschfeld name and the family’s tremendous wealth comes a great deal of accumulated power and influence. Much of that influence has been used in the traditional ways of…

THE FARM TEAM

part 2 of 2 In the spring of 1991 Tony entered an Alamosa pawn shop carrying his television. The family had moved to the San Luis Valley almost a year before, and things weren’t going so well. He’d been reduced to selling his possessions in order to feed his children…

PRINTS CHARMING

part 1 of 2 When the 100 or so members of the Graphic Communications International Union who staffed the production facilities at A.B. Hirschfeld Press decided to go out on strike two months ago, they would have been well advised to look up a fifteen-year-old lawsuit filed against the company’s…

OFF LIMITS

In living color: If the new Rocky Mountain Magazine recalls the go-go early Eighties, the new Colorado magazine echoes the early Sixties–blocky type, “colorful” slogan, lace-up ski boots and all. But at least publisher Merrill Hastings is cribbing from himself: He founded the original Colorado in 1964, then went on…