Author: By John Moore Special to The Denver Gazette
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Golden to get first-ever performing arts center
GOLDEN – Miners Alley Playhouse, which has operated in the heart of downtown Golden since 2003, has entered into a contract to purchase the nearby shuttered Meyer Hardware store for $4.95 million and turn it into Golden’s first-ever performing arts center. The iconic store, which closed in September after 48 years at 1103 Arapahoe St.,…
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The meaning of ‘Wicked’ won’t go away
It has now been 26 years since novelist Gregory Maguire first suggested that some are born evil, some achieve evilness, and some, like the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West, have had their evil identities unfairly thrust upon them like a bucket of burning mop water. Maguire, author of 40 fiction books that often imagine…
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Stacey Abrams a star at Paramount Theatre
For Colorado Democrats who worry their national party is squandering its historic opportunity to pass Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure agenda, Stacey Abrams’ visit to Denver last week could not have been better timed. The rising political star dropped the mic — and a book’s worth of self-help gems — on a capacity crowd at the…
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Cultural organizations facing a ticking clock
I started this column intending to use this space to remind readers that, despite some hopeful evidence to the contrary, the economic devastation of the pandemic shutdown to our creative community is not over. Not by a long shot. After a year of calamitous data quantifying just how bad this has all been on arts…
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In praise of Cheese Frenchees
In praise of Cheese Frenchees {child_byline}By John Moore Special to The Denver Gazette {/child_byline} When I heard that a food truck is serving up Cheese Frenchees on Saturdays outside a brewpub in Timnath, the memories immediately started deep-fat firing – and my arteries instinctively began clogging – at the very thought. Two days and a…
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Theater comeback: DCPA releases post-pandemic schedule of shows
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts announced its eagerly awaited plans for a return to live indoor programming Tuesday with an emphasis of delivering shows it had previously promised audiences before the pandemic brought one of the nation’s largest nonprofit arts organizations to a virtual standstill in March 2020. “The DCPA is getting back…
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“DANNY SAVES DENVER”
Danny Newman is a bit of a unicorn. He’s a self-made tech entrepreneur. And a cultural preservationist. And a full-on superhero to lovers of all things Denver cool. Or what’s left of it, anyway. “I want to make ‘DANNY SAVES DENVER’ T-shirts,” said Collin Parson, the Arvada Center’s Director of Galleries. “He saves these local…
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New owners give “The Merc” a fresh start
The endangered Mercury Cafe, a culinary and cultural Denver mainstay at 22nd and California streets since 1990, is not going the way of El Chapultepec, Racines, the Denver Diner and dozens of other iconic haunts that did not outlast the pandemic. “The Merc” has a new lease on life under a new ownership group that…
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COLUMN: Celebrating Juneteenth with a birthday bonus
donnie L. betts cq stopped the party the day he came into the world on the family farm in the small rural community of De Kalb in northeast Texas. The shindig had begun that June 19 day as the family’s annual Juneteenth celebration, marking the date back in 1865 when African Americans in Texas were…
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No punches pulled in Denver Klan exhibit
When History Colorado recently published its long-sealed registry of local Ku Klux Klan membership from the 1920s, it blood-tied two longtime Denver cultural institutions to the most vile supremacy group in American history. And they did not duck, cover, spin or pivot. Instead, they chose radical transparency. The 1,300-page roster included George Figgis, the first…