Street Smart

Street Smart

It wasn’t until I topped 80 mph that I considered the safety aspects of driving a pea-sized Smart in SUV-dense rush-hour traffic on Highway 36 between Denver and Boulder. I think it hit my 12-year-old son at about the same time; he suddenly became less concerned about looking like a fool in the passenger seat of such a tiny car and instead began scanning the shoulder for a soft spot to land if...

Love at First Site

Yosemite. 1979. Car camping with my family was a cross between the Brady Bunch and The Blair Witch Project. After sitting around the fire eating s’mores and listening to ghost stories, we climbed into the tent, exhausted from hiking. All except dad. He had to put out the fire and store food in our Pinto so any hungry bears would bypass our camp. Still a bit tense from the last scary story, my...

Colorado Summer Festivals

There’s a lot to love about summer. Not least on the list is the summer festival circuit, which brings bands through the state by the truck load and more meat on a stick than you can shake…well, a stick at. Sifting through it all can be a challenge, but that’s why I’m here, dear reader. Sit back, grab a highlighter and plan the rest of your volleyball games around this key collection of...

Roundhouse Punch

Alex Nelson’s “hobby” of making micro-distilled gin and Corretto coffee liqueur in a 2,200-square-foot Longmont warehouse has taken off to the point where he’s had to hire a full-time sales manager...

Can You Hear Me Now?

Music is changing. Do you have an iPhone? If you do, and you have an inkling to create music, there are a couple apps you should check out...

Challenging Elements: Zamparelli’s

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to watch Nancy and Jimmy Zamparelli together in the narrow galley kitchen of their restaurant, you’ve seen why they’re successful. They work so well together that sometimes they don’t even need words; Nancy will start a sentence, and before she’s even finished, Jimmy is nodding or making a face and she has her answer...

Simply Superb

I started taking French classes in the eighth grade, despite my parents’ suggestions that Spanish might be more useful. They might have had a point, but I precociously told them that French was the language of diplomacy. I became an instant Francophile and wanted desperately to go with my classmates when the French club planned a trip, but I didn’t end up visiting until my honeymoon...

A Seafood Star

When I go onto sites like Yelp and Chowhound, I’ve noticed a lot of user reviews that start out by saying things like, “Longmont is a culinary wasteland, but…” or “Even though most restaurants in Longmont suck…”...

Summer Lovin’

A few years ago, I was given an assignment to cover a romance novel writing convention in Thornton. The whole scenario had a “stranger in a strange land” quality to it: me in the waning half of my feminist rage phase and them with their mom jeans and ironic lack of ardor waiting for a knight in shining minivan to sweep them out of their Birkenstocks and socks...

You Want Justice? Be Justice.

One of those “ha-ha” emails landed in my inbox a couple of weeks ago. It was a notarized affidavit, hand-written by a guy named Erik from Montana, explaining why he should be excused from jury service...