On the Latest Word, we’ve been counting down some of Denver’s best moments over the past decade. But this city did not start 2000 with a bang. In fact, while the rest of the world threw a huge party to welcome the millennium, Denver officials — with visions of Y2K…
Yesterday I visited Phil’s Place, the great dive at 35th and Larimer — which suddenly boasts a fancy new back bar. From the photo, several readers thought I was at Don’s Mixed Drinks — which has also undergone an unexpected upscaling that did not stop at the bathrooms, as promised…
Visit Denver spent $50,000 creating a city-boosting window for New York City’s Times Square last Christmas season. It was unveiled on Good Morning America by holiday-sweater Mayor John Hickenlooper, who cut the ribbon and subsequently cut up with the GMA team. The display — already a historic relic, since it…
Think the lines at the airport are long? They’re nothing compared to the lines at the Denver Treasurer’s office, where would-be dispensary operators are lining up to get their sales-tax licenses before any city ordinance might put limits on dispensaries. But the dispensaries will definitely keep coming. Although on Friday…
What’s growing faster than the number of medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado? The number of proposals to regulate them. But while it now looks like competing concepts will collide at the Colorado Statehouse when it convenes the second week in January, Denver’s keeping its steady pace toward regulation, with the…
How do you know it’s December? Not just by the holiday lights popping up all over town. No, you know the end of the year is near because as you exit your favorite Mexican restaurant — El Tejado, Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe, Mexico City Lounge — you get a calendar,…
Give North High School extra credit for its graduation rate, which increased 12.1 percent in 2009 — compared to the overall Denver Public Schools increase of 3.2 percent, up to a sad 52.7 percent of high school students graduating on time this past year. I came down hard on Ed…
Twenty-seven businesses entered the first annual LoDo Aglow: Scenes of the Season window-decorating contest, lighting up for the holidays (and through the Stock Show, like the Denver City and County Building). And the winners, announced this week by the LoDo District, provide a very delicious reason for a trip to…
Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown has spent the last three months thinking about medical marijuana — perhaps this city’s only real growth industry — and it showed yesterday, when council’s safety committee approved his proposal for regulating dispensaries in Denver. The proposed ordinance will go to the full council on…
“People unfamiliar with the Asian culture are often unable to comprehend how much the joy of the Asian peoples revolves around the preparation, sharing and discussion of food.” That’s from the website of India House, the upscale Indian restaurant that replaced Delhi Darbar at 1514 Blake Street. And this week,…
Cowboy-hatted Charlie Brown looked right at home in Teddy’s, the bar in the north Denver Holiday Inn, where the decor is Western (complete with a Willie Matthews print) and the Broncos game was playing on Sunday. But he marched resolutely past the TV and into the Cannabis Holiday Health Fair…
Alamos Verdes doesn’t have bad Mexican food, but the venerable Arvada restaurant has the “Worst Boss of 2009,” according to eBossWatch.com, which just ranked the 25 worst bosses. Coming out on top: Paul Martinez, co-owner and manager of the restaurant at 5304 Vance Street that his parents, Emma and John…
The former Dick’s Hickory Dock, a river-side restaurant on Highway 74 between Morrison and Evergreen, was sold at auction by Sheldon Good & Company on December 12. Dick’s, which opened back in the ’70s and snagged a Westword readers’ choice award for Best Barbecued Ribs in the Best of Denver…
“I was thinking I’ve got five minutes to go and no one has asked me about medical marijuana… that’s a good thing,” Governor Bill Ritter said. And then, just five minutes before the governor had to leave Monday’s legislative briefing, it came: the inevitable question about medical marijuana. No conversation…
Every December, my parents would pack the family into the station wagon and head to downtown Chicago, where we’d look at the displays in the department-store windows and all the Christmas lights that glowed brighter than the tail-lights in the traffic jam around us. Downtown department stores have gone the…
The Walnut Room brought new life — and cash — to NoDo, the area northeast of Coors Field. But for its next venture, it’s taking on an area that’s already ground zero for hipsters: Broadway. And at 9 a.m. today, Walnut owner John Burr will be at the Denver Department…
Denver International Airport has the money to start planning a transformation of the Jeppesen Terminal into a massive mall (and move security screening to the perimeter) — but it’s put the Scrooge to its annual holiday entertainment, blaming budget constraints for the $50,000 cut. For twenty years, the International Performance…
Time magazine is out with the Top 10 of Everything in 2009 — and Jason Sheehan’s Cooking Dirty makes the list of the top ten non-fiction books of the year, coming in at #9. Here’s what Time says about Sheehan’s book in its round-up: “It’s a paradox of the post-Bourdain…
Last month’s Kumbaya moment, which featured most of Colorado’s top GOPs uniting behind gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis and the Republican Party’s Platform for Prosperity, did not resound in southeastern Colorado. They’re singing a different song near Pinon Canyon, a stunning swathe of ranchland east of Trinidad, because the platform is…
With new dispensaries opening daily across Colorado, the prime names are getting snapped up faster than the docs who are willing to prescribe medical marijuana. Now to worry, though; with this handy medical marijuana matrix, you can devise a new dispensary name faster than it takes to light up a…
State senator Chris Romer could have used some medical marijuana last night, to soothe the headache of dealing with all of yesterday’s complaints over his just-released, 63-page bill to regulate the industry. Among its provisions: creating a state licensing authority to handle licenses for both clinics and growers and setting…
He missed a court date at the end of November — but disgraced developer Erik Osborn showed up in plenty of time for his trial in Denver District Court, which got under way on Monday. The crux of this case is Osborn’s involvement with One Lincoln Park, and how he…
