Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i 5280 Magazine

I got my first Top of the Town assignment in 2010. A fresh college graduate, recent Colorado transplant, and overeager 5280 intern, I was to be responsible for choosing the very best eyebrow wax in the city. I panicked. I was a lifelong tweezer with a modest expense budget and only a couple of months till my deadline. What makes one hair-removal service markedly better than another, anyway? If the first two I got were bad, would I have any eyebrows left for a third? And who was I to dole out 5280’s prestigious annual designation, which I’d seen businesses all over town proudly displaying on plaques and window decals? Then, I calmed down and started doing what journalists do: research. I asked well-groomed friends and colleagues where they went.…

The sugary scent of batter caramelizing on a hot press wafts half a block up and down 16th Street where it crosses Larimer Street. Follow your nose to the cheery Ichigo Matcha tea kiosk and prepare yourself to utter the words “fish” and “waffle” in the same sentence, because that beckoning aroma is a warm waffle shaped like a sea bream—complete with fins, scales, eyes, and a wide-open mouth. Its hollow, chocolate-lined body is where soft-serve ice cream (matcha, strawberry, or the all-but-mandatory swirl of both) goes. You can also call the waffle taiyaki, as it’s been known in Japan for more than 100 years, if you prefer, but don’t walk away before owner Emma Lkhagvajav bedazzles your frozen treat with Pocky sticks (think crunchy, chocolate-dipped chopsticks) and a colorful…

Rainer Newberry never published his Fun Scale—or even wrote it down—but others have done it for him over the years, including Boulder’s Matt Samet, the author of 2011’s Climbing Dictionary: Mountaineering Slang, Terms, Neologisms & Lingo. Samet says he first heard of the Fun Scale in the early 2000s, and by the time he began writing his reference book, the terminology had become widely used. To include it in his pages, he enlisted help from well-known Estes Park climber Kelly Cordes, who heard about the Fun Scale from Peter Haeussler, a geologist who’d gotten it directly from the source during a 1993 scouting trip in southeast Alaska. Below, our interpretation of Newberry’s Fun Scale, tweaked for Colorado. TYPE I FUN DEFINE IT Easy-breezy, truly enjoyable activities that are delightful when…

I’ve been on Everest seven times—I’ve summited six times. The first time was the scariest, because I was helping guide Erik Weihenmayer, a blind climber, up the peak. Well before we even made a summit push, he and I were walking into Camp 1 when he stepped into a tiny crevasse. We both fell, and my trekking pole hit him in the face, giving him a bloody nose. I remember looking up at this gigantic mountain in the distance and thinking, How are we gonna get this done? The answer is grit and tenacity. There’s been a death of grit and tenacity in our society, and I think it has a lot to do with the rise of technology. The more electronic our lives become, the more we have to…

Politics, crime, the environment: As a longtime staff writer and current senior contributor for alt-weekly Westword, Alan Prendergast has reported on many of Denver’s power players. So when we called to ask if he knew about Mountain States Legal Foundation, a niche nonprofit law firm that champions conservative causes, we weren’t surprised that he said yes. In “Right Place, Right Time” (page 66), he asks if President Donald Trump’s second term will elevate the firm—or make it obsolete. “I wanted to do a story that delved into the rich history of the group without demonizing or pontificating,” Prendergast says. If he could do one thing differently? “I wish I could have spent time with the attorneys outside the office,” he says. “Do they hike in national parks or fish in…

At the Colorado Renaissance Festival each summer, crowds flock to watch Sky Quackenbush lead daily bird-of-prey shows starring some of the planet’s most charismatic avian species: majestic bald eagles, graceful peregrine falcons, and the spooky, ghost-faced barn owl. But she’s especially fond of a bird that most people overlook, if not downright detest. “Vultures are some of our most social birds,” says Quackenbush, an animal care specialist for Nature’s Educators, a Florence-based nonprofit. “They’re very intelligent, and they prevent the spread of disease. Their stomach acid is comparable to battery acid, so it kills everything.” Of the 33 rescue birds in the group’s flock, one of Quackenbush’s favorites is Sashimi, a turkey vulture who was found as a chick in a cardboard box in St. Louis. “To earn a…

When Fathima Dickerson turned over the keys to her family’s Welton Street Cafe in Five Points in 2022, she couldn’t breathe. “It’s like moving out of your childhood home,” she says. “A location like that is where all your memories are.” Lease issues forced the beloved cafe out of the space it had occupied for 23 years. It took nearly three years after that for Fathima and the family members (her mother, Mona; her father, Flynn; and three of her siblings, Fathim, Cenya, and Chereka) with whom she runs the restaurant to secure a new location a block north on Welton and get it spiffed up and ready for service. The Southern and Caribbean neighborhood staple reopened in late 2024, and for a while, the new dining room and kitchen…

Most people do the Grand Traverse—this one’s in Wyoming’s Teton Range—in two or three days. It’s 15.5 miles of trail plus 2.5 miles of alpine climbing and has 12,000 feet of elevation gain. On a topo map, it kinda looks like an EKG. But it was 2002, and I was with Rolando Garibotti, who’d set the speed record for the traverse in 2000. So, we did it in one day. If I’d done it myself it could’ve turned into Type III Fun—I was dehydrated, my legs were heavy, and at one point we had to hunker down in a talus field because of a thunderstorm. In that moment, I was tired and scared and cold. Today, I can look back on that day and say to myself, “Wow, that was…

I’m a relatively good natural athlete, but I was really bad at kayaking when I first tried it after high school in Aspen. I was with all these guys who were way better, and it was embarrassing. But it also intrigued me, because it was the first time I met something I really sucked at. It’s a difficult sport. When you’re on land with your head above water, you can try to learn and visualize, but then in the water you invert yourself and you can’t breathe, and it’s really an unnatural thing to practice. Everything about it is stupid and counterintuitive. But now I love it, and it has taught me many things. My biggest takeaway has been how to overcome adversity on the river and then learning how…

They don’t call us Colorful Colorado for nothing. From May through early August, the Centennial State is painted in pastel petals as native wildflowers bloom, with the peak for high-altitude species typically coming early this month. Nowhere is the show more spectacular than in Crested Butte, which will host its annual wildflower festival (featuring everything from guided hikes to photography classes) July 11 to 20. But if you don’t want to drive four-plus hours to enjoy nature’s pyrotechnics, a slew of beauties blossom right here on the Front Range. To help you find them, we asked Maggie Gaddis, executive director of the Colorado Native Plant Society, where to go looking for lupines, Indian paintbrushes, and more, all within a two-hour drive of Denver. 1. Rocky Mountain Columbine To discover our…

For CherryArts, the nonprofit that produces the Cherry Creek Arts Festival (July 4 to 6), turning the curious into collectors is the mission. That begins with programming that serves around 40,000 Colorado students annually. “We look at it as a full-circle deal,” says Tara Brickell, the executive director and CEO of CherryArts, which runs a mobile gallery, distributes art supply kits, and raises money that allows students to purchase pieces for their schools at the festival. “We’re out in the community, trying to get art to the masses and create new art appreciators and artists, to continue what we do at the big event.” But even if your classroom days are behind you, it’s not too late to become a connoisseur—at least when it comes to your own decor. Which…

1986–90 Flynn and Mona Dickerson open Caribbean Fast Food at 31st Avenue and Downing Street. The demand for their food is so strong that they move into a larger space on 26th Avenue just six months later. 1990–93 The Dickersons pull up stakes for a more favorable 26th Avenue spot (where Birdcall is now) and then make their first appearance on Welton Street, just off 23rd Avenue, a year later, changing the eatery’s name to Sadie’s. 1993–94 Forced off Welton Street by light-rail construction, the restaurant moves back to 26th, this time as Wings and Tings. 1994–99 Welton Street beckons again, so the Dickersons relocate to the 2700 block, and the eatery becomes Mona’s Wings and Tings. 1999–2022 The Welton Street Cafe is born when the large space at 2736…

The weather window was looking good. It was August 2024, and almost on a whim, I decided to climb Longs Peak, the broad-shouldered, flat-topped sentinel of the Front Range. It may have been impulsive, but I wasn’t entirely unprepared: I’d trained for and planned to hike 14,259-foot Longs one year earlier, in September 2023, only to be thwarted by a late-summer snowstorm that hit on my summit-push day. Rationally, I knew those kinds of things happened all the time. Emotionally, I was sort of devastated. It was as if the mountain was trying to tell me something, and what it seemed to be saying was, Hey, old man, maybe this isn’t your thing. There was a good chance, I thought, Longs was right. When I turned 50 five months later,…

PRICE KEY Average Entrée $ under $15 $$ $16 to $20 $$$ $21 to $30 $$$$ $31 and higher SYMBOL KEY Indicates a restaurant featured in 5280 for the first time (though not necessarily a restaurant that has just opened). Indicates inclusion in 5280’s 2024 list of Denver’s best restaurants. These selections are at the discretion of 5280 editors and are subject to change. A5 STEAKHOUSE $$$$ LoDo/Steak House This rarified chophouse by the team behind Tap & Burger features a range of specialty steaks, eclectic sides with Asian influence, and draft cocktails. Never pass up the beef tartare katsu sando and the chickpea fries to start your meal. Reservations accepted. 1600 15th St., 303-623-0534. Dinner AFRICAN GRILL & BAR $$ Lakewood/African Explore Africa at this warm and inviting restaurant run by the Osei-Fordwuo family. Peanut…