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The UMS is short on pricey headliners — that’s what makes it special

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

For all its noise and fury, The Underground Music Showcase has always been a friendly place.Colorado’s biggest independent music festival, which returns Friday, July 28, through Sunday, July 30, is a feast for live-music fans, with 200 or so bands playing at a dozen indoor and outdoor South Broadway venues over three days and hundreds of shows.But it’s also a community hang and summer reunion that in the past has hosted acts ranging from Denver’s Nathaniel Rateliff and Tennis to indie rock royalty (Real Estate, Blonde Redhead) and trailblazers such as N3PTUNE — a wildly magnetic singer, dancer and rapper who is this year’s buzziest local artist.Casey Berry, left, majority owner of The UMS, with Youth on Record executive director and co-owner Jami Duffy, outside the Hi-Dive at 7 S. Broadway. (Provided by The UMS)No other Colorado festival gives a platform to so many honest-to-God locals, eschewing pricey headliners for diverse pop, indie rock, hip hop, f...

Grabowski’s Pizzeria reopening in former Lakewood pizza joint

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Grabowski’s Pizzeria in the River North Art District and Rocca’s Pizza & Pasta in Lakewood closed within 10 days of each other this year, and Grabowski’s owner Jared Leonard wasn’t looking for a new space to reopen his tavern-style pizza joint right away.But when Alex Seidel, the well-regarded chef behind Rocca’s, Mercantile, Fruition and Chook, asked him about taking over the building at 13795 W. Jewell Ave., he couldn’t say no.Grabowski’s Pizzeria, which closed its space in RiNo this May, will reopen in the former Rocca’s Pizza & Pasta space in Lakewood in September. (Provided by Grabwoski’s)“It wasn’t the end of our story because Grabowski’s has such a loyal following,” said Leonard, who closed his spot in The Source Hotel + Market Hall in May.Leonard, who owns several other local restaurants himself, including AJ’s Pit Baar-B-Q and Campfire, a Neopolitan pizza and BBQ spot in Lakewood, is already familiar with the neighborhood.“L...

“Forever chemicals” flowing from Suncor into Sand Creek spike as Colorado weighs renewal of key water-quality permit

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

COMMERCE CITY — Along the Sand Creek Regional Greenway outside the Suncor Energy oil refinery, a single pipe spills water over a rock pile into Sand Creek, where it ripples and swirls before flowing through the stream toward the South Platte River.Egrets fly past looking for their next meal as butterflies flit over the brushy banks. If you’re not looking for it, the pipe is easy to miss underneath the vines and branches draping over its edges.But more than 1,000 gallons of water a day flow from that pipe — known officially as Outfall 20 — and mixed in that water are poisonous chemicals that pour downstream to where Sand Creek merges with the South Platte River, the source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in Colorado and an important supply for agriculture in the northeastern part of the state.There are 10 locations around Suncor’s 3.4-mile perimeter in Commerce City where wastewater and stormwater are released into the community, bu...

Disney’s new “Haunted Ride” film adaptation fails to move the spirit

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Perhaps in 2043, Disney will make a top-notch movie based on its Haunted Mansion theme park ride.Powered by a typically engaging performance by its star, Eddie Murphy, 2003’s “The Haunted Mansion” performed pretty well at the box office, but it is a rather meandering affair.The second “Haunted Mansion” — in theaters this week, a few months shy of 20 years later — weaves a mostly different tale but is a similarly slightly scary-meets-family-friendly romp boasting a highly appealing ensemble led by Rosario Dawson, LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish and Owen Wilson.It’s also similarly ho-hum.That’s disappointing given not only its cast — which also features Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jared Leto — but also its flavorful New Orleans setting and its director, Justin Simien, who wrote and directed 2014’s “Dear White People,” as well as episodes of the TV series of the same name.Things start out well enough, with our introduction to Ben (Stanfield), an astrophysicist, w...

Security guard licenses are no longer the most popular in Denver as residential rentals takes top spot

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Denver has issued more than 7,800 residential rental property licenses, making it the top business license type in the city and county.The number of residential rental property licenses now surpasses the No. 2 license type, which is for security guards at around 7,700. The rest of the top five includes licenses for short-term rentals at 2,800, for retail food establishments at almost 2,500, and for combined – “addresses that have multiple licenses at one location,” like a hotel – at 1,800.“It demonstrates that we’re making a lot of progress in this overall city effort to raise the minimal housing standards across Denver with this new licensing requirement,” said Eric Escudero, spokesperson for the Denver Department of Excise and License.Unlike a lot of other Colorado cities, Denver doesn’t mandate that all businesses obtain licenses – typically just those with health, safety and welfare concerns. For example, bookstores and dress shops aren’...

Amazon gives Dish Wireless a boost as it builds the country’s fourth cellular network

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Amazon began selling SIM kits for Boost Infinite cellular service on Wednesday, greatly expanding the potential customer base for the monthly plan offered through Englewood-based Dish Network.“Amazon is the perfect place to offer this Boost Infinite exclusive deal, making it easy for Prime members to purchase our SIM kit online, with an exclusive 20% discount, and activate their postpaid wireless service without setting foot in a store,” said Jeremy McCarty, head of Boost Infinite, in a news release.Dish acquired Boost Mobile, a prepaid service provider, from T-Mobile, in August 2020 for $1.2 billion. The purchase was part of a larger deal that allowed T-Mobile and Sprint to merge. But Dish Wireless has lost more than a million prepaid subscribers as it rushes to build out its own state-of-the-art cellular network.In December, Dish Wireless rolled out Boost Infinite to tap the larger and more loyal postpaid part of the market — consumers who prefer to receive a bill each month...

Sky-high plans for Bounce Empire push EDM legend Brad Roulier to innovate

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Brad Roulier flung his arms wide atop a 13-foot-tall hydraulic platform, its base wreathed in fog and multicolored LED lights. Surveying his 50,000-square-foot empire from such a perch is not something the typically soft-spoken, behind-the-scenes Denverite relishes for a photo shoot. But he knows that his lofty plans won’t succeed without a bit of puffed-up promotion.“Let’s take the tour!” he said after the platform descended and he stepped onto the spongy gray floor. “I see you have the magic socks.”The grip-soled footwear is required to explore Bounce Empire, the newly opened “inflatable theme park” in Lafayette that Roulier says is the largest of its kind in the world. It’s an upscale, bounce-house paradise for kids and their parents that also offers DJ nights and other 21-and-up nighttime programming. Attendees can crowd around the circular hydraulic stage to see artists perform, or they can rent out a “VIP bounce house...

Denver’s best burgers, Avery Brewing’s 30th, rooftop yoga and more things to do in Denver this week

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Denver Burger BattleThursday. Denverites enjoy access to a miraculous selection of classic hamburgers, from the urban Cherry Cricket and My Brother’s Bar to the further-afield Bud’s Bar in Sedalia. But what about delicious innovations in the state at large?Denver Burger Battle, which returns on Aug. 3, will pit more than 20 Colorado restaurants and food trucks against one another in the ultimate red meat championship — including off-menu burgers, organizers said, along with new contenders such as Hickory & Ash, Edgewater Beer Garden and Slater’s 50/50.“A team of burger experts and enthusiasts carefully vet and hand select each competing burger so that guests have the chance to taste and vote from an impressive, curated bracket of local restaurants,” they wrote. (Full disclosure: Denver Post dining reporter Lily O’Neil is one of the judges.)Belly up for the patty battle starting at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at the Auraria Campus Tivoli Quad, ...

Shohei Ohtani is off the trade block; Angels add top starter Giolito: Report

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

Good news Angeles fans, not only has the club removed Shohei Ohtani from the trade market but the club became buyers ahead of the upcoming trade deadline. Despite receiving multiple offers for their star slugger and pitcher, the team has decided not to trade its megastar, Sports Illustrated reported. Los Angeles Angels' Shohei Ohtani talks to members of the Chicago White Sox as they sit in their dugout after hitting a single during the eighth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, June 28, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)Considered by many to be the most valuable player in baseball, Ohtani has slugged 36 home runs and sports a 3.71 ERA into late July.Further showing that they are all-in on a run at the playoffs, the Angels added starting pitcher Lucas Giolito in a trade with the Chicago White Sox. Disneyland expanding alcohol options, bringing beer, wine and cocktails to new restaurants In addition to Giolito, the Angels added White Sox reliever Reynaldo López in...

Even in Berkeley, the disabled community faces new challenges in a post-ADA world

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:11 GMT

This week marks 33 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in workplaces, schools and a host of other aspects of public life.While the 1991 federal law has drastically improved the quality of life for many in the disabled community, modern barriers to the accessibility it promised still abound — particularly amid the Bay Area’s housing crisis, emergency disaster planning and rapidly changing technology in the digital age.Locally, Berkeley is widely credited as a birthplace of the disability rights movement. In the 1970s, disabled residents began transforming both urban landscapes and cultural assumptions, spurring everything from the installation of the nation’s first curb cuts to the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.But in the wake of the passing of two of the city’s pioneering activists, Hale Zukas and Judy Heumann, in the last several months, many of the city’s disabled residents are left ref...