Posessed to Party

YS’s Annual Halloween Scene

We love Halloween: the anticipation of dressing up in something new and Spandexy; spreads of candy; children bundled up in puffy costumes; the feeling of sugar rushing through your veins and fear creeping up to grab you… And of course, the parties. In this year’s Halloween Scene, we meet three people who have made the paranormal into a profession. We also help you throw a wicked cool...

The Curious Skeptic

J. Allen Danelek isn’t a ghost hunter or a UFO conspiracy theorist or a hypnotist specializing in past life regressions, but he has written the book on the subject. All of them, in fact...

The Monster Hunter

Jack Hanley wants to believe. Hanley is not exactly spooky. Friendly and genial with a booming voice made for radio (or in this case, TV), Hanley is a graduate student at CU focusing on folklore and European History. And in his spare time, he chases ghosts...

The Empowered Psychic

When Rosemary came to Colorado in the mid ’90s, she started having dreams of a place she had never heard of. She felt strongly that she had to move there. One morning over breakfast, she asked her husband if there was such a place as Estes Park, or if she’d just dreamed it...

Posessed to Party

Halloween is a time for celebration—for sugar-fueled giggling, for face paint-covered revelry and for otherworldly fun. It’s pretty much the perfect time for a party. To help you conjure inspiration for a ghoulish gathering, here are a few apparitions of our own. Bob for apples next year; this Halloween, it’s all about chic yet casual ways to spend time with friends and family and to...

2009 Election Endorsements

Some say local politics is boring. Ha! Between the lines of each ballot are mayoral face-offs, city council battles between pro-growth or anti-business, partisan trickery mapped out in hate-filled blogs, and ballot issues that are outcomes of council micromanagement and fiscal panic. One year after a historic election and a continued economic crisis, municipalities have to swim with all their...

Seven Campaign Promises from 2008

Jared Polis 1. While Rep. Jared Polis never really ran on a platform of gay-rights issues, he did vow to fight for gay marriage and anti-discrimination laws. In September, Polis co-sponsored legislation that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies recognition of gay marriage and allows states to ignore same-sex marriages legally attained in other states. 2. In his race...

Peeps: Chris Ray

Chris Ray looks outdoorsy and rugged even as she sits in a bustling Boulder coffee shop, peering into the depths of a laptop. She’s busy. Very busy. More busy than she thought she’d be when she set out, years ago, to study a little mountain creature known as the pika. She also wasn’t expecting the political skirmishes, the spotlight and the requests from other researchers and biologists...

The Curious Skeptic

J. Allen Danelek isn’t a ghost hunter or a UFO conspiracy theorist or a hypnotist specializing in past life regressions, but he has written the book on the subject. All of them, in fact...

The Monster Hunter

Jack Hanley wants to believe. Hanley is not exactly spooky. Friendly and genial with a booming voice made for radio (or in this case, TV), Hanley is a graduate student at CU focusing on folklore and European History. And in his spare time, he chases ghosts...

The Empowered Psychic

When Rosemary came to Colorado in the mid ’90s, she started having dreams of a place she had never heard of. She felt strongly that she had to move there. One morning over breakfast, she asked her husband if there was such a place as Estes Park, or if she’d just dreamed it...

Seven Questions with Comedy Duo Michael & Michael

The new Comedy Central show Michael and Michael Have Issues reunites Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter at their bickering best; a latter-day Odd Couple more like the I’m-a-PC-I’m-a-Mac guys than Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. The duo first exposed themselves (ahem) on the short lived, critically-acclaimed cable comedy The State, and Black became a mainstay in VH1 Pop-Culture lampoons...

Burrus at the Bar: Dry Dock Christened Brewery of the Year

As much as anything, medaling at the Great American Beer Festival is about bragging rights. Putting together a beer that fits a particular style—especially when that style is being attempted by another four or five dozen brewers around the country—and having it judged to be among the top three imparts a clank and swagger to a brewer’s step. So imagine running a popular homebrew supply...

Duly Noted: For the Record

I went into a music store yesterday. An honest-to-God, brick-and-mortar music store. It’s a lot like going into a museum, except the whole thing’s the gift shop. In fact, this particular music store even sold records...

The Tatanka Tribe

Football is a rough game—as a profession and as a pastime. It’s a game of titans, of hard knocks, of long spiraling passes that are watched with breath held, and of stadiums erupting into rapturous glee. It’s a game of men (and women), of beer and barbecue served off a tailgate. It’s a game of passion and anger and fans so devoted they will curse friend and foe when the going gets tough...

It’s A Jungle Out There

It can be said that the ecosystem known as municipal politics is similar to that of the wild kingdom...

Elections are Report Cards

Challenging an incumbent in a primary election is a clear signal that A) the extreme fringe of the party is upset about said incumbent tracking to center or B) severe incompetence or grievous moral lapse has chummed the waters...

Challenging Elements: Cantina Laredo

A few months ago, Robbie Wright, the general manager of Cantina Laredo at the 29th Street Mall in Boulder asked us why we don’t have a challenge for bartenders. We didn’t have a good answer for him, so we decided to let him and his bartenders be our test case...

Pie in the Sky

Walking down the Pearl Street Mall, I’d never paid much attention to 14th Street Bar and Grill. Its patio tables always seemed packed beneath its cheerful yellow awnings, but I never looked past the façade. How wrong I was to pass it by...

Inspiring Italian

It used to be that “mall food” was about the lowest insult you could sling at a restaurant. Mall food was synonymous with a food court, a wasteland consisting mostly of soft-serve ice cream, pizza slices as big as your head and corn dogs on a stick. People seeking healthy fare counted themselves lucky to find a storefront dishing out scoops of greasy beef with broccoli...

Nibbles: Want Fries With That?

I’m starting to feel like I’ve moved to Swallow Falls, the mythical town in the film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs where cheeseburgers rain down from the sky...