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5 jazz festivals to hit this summer in Colorado’s high country

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

It’s just about time to gas up (or charge your EV) and head to the Colorado mountains for this year’s round of jazz celebrations. It’s exciting to see so many of the festivals that are back in full force this summer, and there’s something to appeal to just about everyone, at altitude.Aspen-SnowmassThe JAS June Experience takes place in venues across Aspen June 22-25. Headliners include New Orleans’ Galactic featuring Anjelika Jelly Joseph; Greyboy Allstars with saxophonist Karl Denson; vocalist Veronica Swift; pianist-singer Eliane Elias; Rebirth Brass Band and more. (It’s a deep list this time around.) Tickets are available for single events up to weekend passes, and can be purchased through jazzaspensnowmass.org.Winter ParkThis is impressive: The Winter Park Jazz Festival celebrates 40 years July 15-16. That’s quite a landmark in any facet of the music business. This year’s lineup includes smooth crowd-pleasers Jeff Lorber, Everett Harp, The Dave Koz Summer Horns with Candy Dulfer...

Federal Boulevard’s Asian food bounty is constantly overflowing | Opinion

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we will offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems). Denver’s Federal Boulevard spans an Asian and Latino cuisine paradise that only occasionally gets the high praise it deserves.Longtime Denverites know it, as do chefs, foodies and the occasional tourist. But the diverse, working-class corridor just south of Colfax Avenue seems to fall under the radar for some younger transplants, and they’d do well to diversify their eating while getting a more balanced view of the city.In this case, that’s a less polished, less bourgeois one where the people who make and deliver your food can actually afford to live. (See also: the Korean, Ethiopian and Mexican-food paradise of Aurora.)Brisket pho from Pho Duy.There, newcomers will realize that toothsome vegetarian food is more af...

Explicit Streetwear shop owner bringing bakery chain to Aurora, Colorado Springs

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

For 14 years, Annie Song has been selling graphic tees and edgy jeans.Now she hopes you’ll try her croissants and quiches.The owner of Explicit Streetwear, which has operated in The Town Center At Aurora since 2009, is preparing to expand the Paris Baguette bakery chain’s presence in the Denver area.Song, 40, has signed a deal allowing her to open four Paris Baguette locations in the region, the first of which she plans to open at 10601 E. Garden Drive in Aurora in July.After Song’s store had to temporarily shut down during the pandemic, she said she realized she needed to expand her business portfolio. So, last February, she applied to become a Paris Baguette franchisee.“Food was an essential business during COVID, so it kind of just opened up my eyes,” Song said. The bakery and cafe sells pastries, cakes and breads, as well as salads and sandwiches. It has roughly 150 locations in the United States, including one in Park that opened under separate ownership in March. Song, whose f...

Pickleball players call fault on Denver’s plans to remove courts from two city parks

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

Pickleball players are calling fault on a Denver Parks and Recreation plan to ban courts at two city parks and are accusing a parks official of making arbitrary decisions about where the sport should be played in the city.The players believe they are being targeted because their sport is louder than tennis and basketball and is growing ever more popular with city residents, who wait in lines to play the game on public courts that stay busy from dawn to dusk.“Denver Parks and Recreation has shown clear animosity and hostility toward pickleball,” said Hollynd Hoskins, a Denver attorney who is representing the pickleball community in its battle with the city’s parks department. “I don’t understand why.”In a 37-page appeal filed Monday to the Denver Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, Hoskins wrote that canceling plans to build new pickleball courts and ban the sport entirely at Congress Park and Sloan’s Lake were arbitrary decisions made by a ...

Disability lawsuits: Advocacy or shakedowns?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

Kate Bonnaud, operations manager of a Costa Mesa wine bar called Wine Lab, remembers clearly when a letter arrived a few months ago from an Orange County man with a bone to pick.The letter said Wine Lab’s website was inaccessible to visually impaired people like himself because it wasn’t equipped to handle screen-reading software. This meant the site wasn’t in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act."We took it very seriously -- seriously to the point that we took the website down so we could improve it immediately," Bonnaud told me.Not long after, however, the letter writer, Dominick Martin, filed a lawsuit against Wine Tribe, Wine Lab’s parent, seeking up to $75,000 in damages and legal costs.The lawsuit said Martin is a “tester” who seeks to ensure that businesses are in compliance with accessibility rules. It acknowledged that he has filed “multiple lawsuits” in this regard and intends to keep doing so."Generally speaking, we tend to see the same serial plaintiffs ov...

Nashville hotel manager enters guest's room, sucks on his toes: Police

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

A manager at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Nashville has been charged with aggravated burglary and assault after he reportedly entered a guest's room and sucked on his toes.According to Metro police, 52-year-old David Neal was the night manager at downtown Nashville's Hilton Hotel, located in the 100 block of 4th Avenue South. PREVIOUS: ‘Why is this person touching me’: Texas man files lawsuit accusing Hilton Nashville employee of sexual assault Police said Neal made a key card and used it to enter the guest's room on March 30 at around 5 a.m. The guest, Pete Brennan, told police he woke up and found Neal sucking on his toes. He immediately confronted Neal and recognized him as the person who had come into his room the day before with another employee to address an issue the guest was having with his TV, according to investigators. Officers arrived at the hotel and spoke with Neal who allegedly admitted to entering the guest's room but said he did so after he allegedly smelled smo...

Lakers-Warriors rivalry on display at Crypto.com Arena for Game 4 of Western Conference Semifinals

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

The L.A.-Bay Area feud was in full display Monday night outside Crypto.com Arena where the Los Angeles Lakers were hosting the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals.  For some fans, it was more than just bragging rights at stake.  “You have the Bay Area that comes down thinking they own Southern California, but really, SoCal is the spot to be,” Lakers fan Jeremy Dinkin told KTLA. “When you think of California, you think of Southern California. It’s a conflict of power in the state.”  The rivalry between the two teams is even enough to test some marriages.  “All time Lakers fan forever,” Lamarr Boudreaux said.  “The girls are Warrior fans and the boys, they’re Laker fans in our house,” his wife, Ebony Boudreaux, responded. “It’s a house divided.” Then there’s the battle between LeBron James and Steph Curry.  “It’s like the battle of California,” Bakersfield resident James Davidson said.  James and his dad, Ryan, drove ...

Imran Khan, Pakistan's ex-prime minister, arrested in court

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested Tuesday as he appeared in a court in the country’s capital, Islamabad, to face charges in multiple graft cases. Security agents dragged Khan outside and shoved him into an armored car before whisking him away.The arrest, which marks a dramatic escalation on Pakistan's political scene, drew nationwide condemnation from supporters of the popular opposition leader and former cricket star turned Islamist politician. Khan was dragged outside the Islamabad High Court and pushed into a police vehicle by agents from the National Accountability Bureau, according to Fawad Chaudhry, a senior official with Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. Chaudhry denounced the arrest as “an abduction.” Pakistan’s independent GEO TV broadcast images of the 72-year-old Khan being pulled by security forces towards an armored vehicle, which took him away. Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022. He has claimed his ouster was illegal and a...

Confused getting to downtown Mountain View? Access and signage getting an upgrade: Roadshow

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

Q: I often drive on Central Expressway from Palo Alto toward Mountain View, and can’t believe they haven’t fixed traffic flows into downtown Mountain View yet.I miss the ease of turning onto Castro Street on a whim, with its great shopping and dining. Instead, I pass, intending to turn around, then give up and continue on my way to another south/west valley opportunity.Are there plans to fix this quagmire, and improve downtown Mountain View access?If the goal is to continue the “no cars on Castro” policy, one solution is to resolve restrictions at Evelyn and Castro. Only a few restaurants there would be impacted, along with pedestrians going to or from the Caltrain station. It’s highly fixable. A more permanent solution is to limit parking on Castro to 20 to 30 minutes, rather than zero parking and no cars.More and better expressway signage before Shoreline advising about access to downtown Mountain View would be helpful, in any case.E. H.A: With the pe...

Massive snowpack’s summer bonus: Clean, cheap electricity for California

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:51 GMT

The huge snowpack that has blanketed the Sierra Nevada this winter has done more than end California’s drought and extend ski season. It’s also changing how Californians keep the lights on.With reservoirs full across the state, hydroelectricity generation from dams is expected to expand dramatically this summer, after three dry years when it was badly hobbled.In 2017, a wet year similar to this one, hydropower made up 21% of all the electricity generated in California. But by 2021, in the middle of California’s most recent drought, it provided just 7%.This year, billions of gallons of water are once again spinning turbines in power plants at huge dams like Shasta, Oroville and Folsom, and will be all summer and into the fall as the snowpack melts.More hydropower means more clean electricity, less need to burn natural gas and other fossil fuels, less risk of blackouts during heat waves, and less smog and greenhouse gas emissions, experts say.“It gives us more ...