Hidden, weird date ideas in Denver
130 genuinely offbeat spots — like Lincoln's, Cat Alley (Alley Cats by Kelly Monico), Crawford Hotel Lost & Found Wall — the local secrets even locals miss, hand-vetted and sourced. You didn't hear it from us.
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Lincoln's
There's no sign, no ads, and the owner flat-out refuses to tell you how to get in because 'that takes the mag…
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Cat Alley (Alley Cats by Kelly Monico)
Wander into the right unmarked alley off Larimer between 14th and 15th and you'll start noticing them — cats.…
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Crawford Hotel Lost & Found Wall
When crews restored Union Station they pulled apart the original wooden waiting benches and found a century o…
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Wynkoop Brewing Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout
Denver's oldest brewpub keeps a stout on the board brewed with 25 pounds of hand-sliced, roasted bull testicl…
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Oxford Hotel Room 320
The Oxford is the city's grand old 1891 hotel, but almost no one books knowing what 320 is. In 1898 a woman s…
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Hell or High Water Tiki
Behind an unmarked door on Walnut sits a haunted gay-pirate-ship tiki bar where a shimmering phallic 'Disco D…
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RUMTUM UV-Reactive Mural
RiNo is wall-to-wall murals, but this RUMTUM piece has a second painting hiding inside it that daylight never…
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One River North (MAD Architects canyon floors)
A 16-story RiNo apartment tower with a literal canyon torn through its middle: floors 6 through 9 are split o…
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Rocky Mountain Land Library at the Puritan Pie Co.
A 1911 building that used to crank out pies for the Senter Pie Company is now stuffed with one of the strange…
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Cassady's — Neal Cassady's Barbershop Site, 2558 Champa St.
A 400-square-foot shack wedged between two houses on Champa was once a two-chair barbershop where a young Nea…
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Black American West Museum & Heritage Center
Tucked into a Victorian on California Street is the museum almost nobody tells you about: it argues that one…
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Welton Street Cafe
The Dickerson family has been feeding Five Points since 1986, and Welton Street Cafe is the last Black-owned…
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Denver Story Trek — Five Points Phone Audio Tour
Free and almost invisible: you dial up audio recordings tied to spots in Five Points that look like nothing a…
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The Learned Lemur
Set inside a restored Victorian house on East Colfax, the Learned Lemur is Denver's longtime oddities dealers…
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Cheesman Park Pavilion & Its Buried Dead
Cheesman Park looks like any leafy Denver green space, but it was the city's first cemetery — and when it was…
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Bar Max
A craft cocktail bar on East Colfax that throws out the menu entirely: instead of ordering a drink, you descr…
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Saint Germain Foundation "I AM" Sanctuary
Take up nearly a full acre of Capitol Hill: a 14,000-square-foot Colonial Revival mansion (the 1915 Blackmer…
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Kilgore Books & Comics
A narrow, hand-curated used bookstore wedged into the row next to Wax Trax on 13th, with no flashy storefront…
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Potager
Denver's original farm-to-table restaurant, running quietly out of a brick Cap Hill rowhouse since 1997, year…
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The Shakespeare Elm
In the southeast corner of City Park stands an ordinary-looking elm that is secretly a piece of Shakespeare.…
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Park Hill Treasures
An antique and artisan market crammed into a former bank branch on a stretch of East Colfax most people only…
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The Art Garage
It's a working nonprofit art studio crammed into an old converted mechanic's garage on a Park Hill corner — f…
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The Cherry Tomato
An old-school, friends-run Italian room that's barely changed since 1997, hidden in a little retail pocket am…
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Prismatic Electric Fountain (Ferril Lake)
By day it reads as a plain fountain in the middle of Ferril Lake. Come back after dusk and it becomes a diffe…
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Vaultaire
Beneath La Foret's woodsy dining room on South Broadway, a cellar door drops you into Vaultaire — no sign abo…
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The Oddemporium
An oddities shop crammed floor-to-ceiling on Antique Row, with arguably more items per square inch than any o…
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Rebel Bread
A naturally fermented, small-batch bakery tucked into the gray stone buildings of the Denver Design District,…
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Invisible City
Behind an unmarked door on Santa Fe Drive is a private immersive lounge stuffed with artifacts the founder ha…
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Timeo's Theatre Bar
Tucked inside the 1928-era Aztlan Theatre is a bar that looks less like a business and more like a corner of…
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Black Sky Brewery
Denver's only heavy-metal brewery, shredding away in a black-walled warehouse off South Santa Fe since 2013.…
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Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center
The oldest theater company of any kind in Denver — founded in 1972 by CU-Denver students as a protest against…
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910Arts (former 7-Up bottling plant turned artist live-work complex)
Most people only hit the Santa Fe Arts District on First Friday, when it's mobbed — so almost no one knows yo…
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Room for Friends … a wine bar!
A husband-and-wife pair of ex-United Airlines folks turned this skinny Santa Fe storefront into a wine bar th…
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Denver Art Society
A registered nonprofit co-op where the gallery is run entirely by its artists — 100-plus members log voluntee…
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Highland Park / Scottish Village Historic District
Denver is a relentless grid until you turn off Zuni near 32nd and the streets suddenly start curving, with na…
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Diebolt Brewing Company
A father-and-son team (Dan and Jack Diebolt) quietly brews French-style ales out of a former meat-packing war…
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The Monkey Barrel
From the corner of Tejon in Sunnyside it looks like any other neighborhood building, but inside is a music-an…
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Alley Brews
There is no street door — the only way into Alley Brews is from the alley between 43rd and 44th, tucked behin…
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Old Elitch Carousel Dome (with floor labyrinth)
On the corner where Berkeley meets Tennyson sits a 12-sided, bell-roofed pavilion built in 1926 that most peo…
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Manhattan Beach Historical Marker
Thousands of people loop Sloan's Lake every week and walk straight past a 1953 bronze plaque bolted to the no…
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Future Drawn oneLINE Gallery — Easter Art Hunt
A working line-art gallery on Tennyson runs a hunt almost nobody catches: framed, signed original oneLINE ink…
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BOWS — Patrick Marold Steel Arch Installation
On the wooded eastern edge of Cranmer Park, a run of reflective steel inverse arches lines the passageway bet…
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Revampt
A furniture-and-goods shop on a Cherry Creek corner where literally everything is built from somebody's trash…
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Fairy Doors of South Pearl Street
There are roughly two dozen fairy-sized doors, shrunken storefronts, and mossy hobbit hideaways tucked into t…
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Buried 1893 Streetcar Tracks Under South Pearl Street
The entire South Pearl commercial strip exists because the Denver Tramway Company ran a streetcar line up it…
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Fort Greene
There's no sign. You'll walk past it, double back, and second-guess which door in this Globeville industrial…
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Riverside Cemetery History & Mystery Tours
Denver's oldest cemetery (1876) sits forgotten on 77 acres of dry, overgrown ground in Globeville — National…
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Contreras Market & Panaderia
What started in 2000 as the Contreras family knocking on doors selling bread wholesale now eats an entire Mor…
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El Tianguis de Westwood
On a stretch of Morrison Road most Denverites only know as a traffic corridor, BuCu West built a real Mexican…
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B&GC (Boys & Girls Club)
Beneath the Halcyon Hotel in Cherry Creek — in a former post office — sits a 44-seat cocktail room that does…
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Trybal African Speakeasy
There's no sign downtown — you're looking for an African mask on the door, and you won't get in unless you've…
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The Terrorium Shop
Tucked into a little brick storefront in Berkeley, this is the place that makes 'terroriums' — living-plant t…
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Dikeou Collection Pop-Up: Colfax
From the sidewalk it reads as a shuttered old record store on a gritty stretch of Colfax — which is exactly w…
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HORRID (Denver's Horror Shop)
Started in a spare bedroom in 2018, HORRID is now a full 'House of Horrors' complex tucked behind the Brutal…
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That Witch Apothecary
That Witch is a queer- and trans-owned ritual-goods brand by founder Rory, a practicing witch of 10+ years, a…
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Noctavia Obscure
A barely-a-year-old occult shop tucked into a storefront on Santa Fe Drive, with a full in-house apothecary w…
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Alchemy Ritual Goods
BIPOC- and women-founded ritual shop in the historic Savoy building that hides something most shoppers walk r…
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Botanica Yemaya
A floor-to-ceiling cavern of candles, incense, oils, charms, and devotional statuary on Federal, serving Afro…
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Botanica Caridad Del Cobre
Since 1984 this has been the mother church of Denver botanicas, hiding in plain sight on a stretch of Federal…
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Botanica Ochun
Most people would never guess that a fully stocked Santeria botanica is hiding in an Aurora strip mall off 6t…
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HORRID
Tucked down S. Acoma behind the Brutal Poodle, HORRID started as one woman's spare-bedroom horror brand and h…
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The Wytch's Brew
On gallery-row Santa Fe Drive, this woman-owned tea house quietly fuses Persian tea culture with a working me…
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Galapago Space
It's a literal residential garage on Galapago Street that someone hung gallery walls inside, and you get in t…
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Understudy
Inside the Colorado Convention Center, in a 700-square-foot wedge under a stairwell that was too small and we…
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Dateline Gallery
Founded in 2013 by curator Jeromie Dorrance and artist Adam Milner, Dateline sits at the awkward, deliberate…
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Spectra Art Space
A women-run gallery on a nondescript stretch of South Broadway that builds two completely different walk-thro…
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Sidewalk Joy Free Little Art Galleries
Tiny plexiglass-roofed gallery cabinets bolted to the sidewalk in front of people's homes, stocked with origi…
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OddKnock Test Kitchen
Three New York actors who cut their teeth at Sleep No More took over an empty 3,700-square-foot storefront at…
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National Wildlife Property Repository
Tucked inside the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge sits a 16,000-square-foot federal warehouse…
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NSF Ice Core Facility
On the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, behind unremarkable government doors, sits a walk-in freezer kept a…
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Dikeou Collection (Pop-Up: Colfax)
Two Denver siblings, Devon and Pany Dikeou, have quietly built a 45-artist international contemporary collect…
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Cussler Museum
Adventure novelist Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt, 'Raise the Titanic') spent decades quietly hoarding rare automob…
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Forney Museum of Transportation
A 70,000-square-foot warehouse on a forgettable industrial stretch of Brighton Blvd holds 800-plus vehicles,…
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Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys
The cutesy name undersells it: this is a serious collection of 20,000+ objects dating back to the 1680s, cram…
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Laughing Escalator
Ride the escalator down from the exhibit-hall level at the Colorado Convention Center and you'll start hearin…
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Retrograde
Walk into Sweet Action Ice Cream, ignore the cones, head for the walk-in freezer door, flip the light switch…
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Rocky Mountain Punk Nature Art & Oddities
A completely unremarkable Wadsworth strip-mall storefront hiding handmade bone jewelry, pinned-moth-and-butte…
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Chicky the Prairie Dog
In the Gems and Minerals hall sits a roughly nine-foot Brazilian amethyst geode, and if you crouch and look i…
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Carpio-Sanguinette Park (Former Sewage Treatment Plant)
On the north bank of the South Platte in Globeville sits a park almost nobody visits, built directly on top o…
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Impossible Winterbourne Steampunk Street Sculptures
Since 2010 an anonymous artist calling himself The Impossible Winterbourne has been bolting tiny rusted steam…
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Riverside Cemetery Block 12 — Denver's Forgotten Potters Field
Riverside is Denver's oldest operating cemetery (1876) and a National Historic District, but almost no one kn…
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Historic Elitch Theatre
Everyone thinks 'Elitch' means the Six Flags coaster park on the Platte — almost no one knows the original 18…
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Lumber Baron Inn & Gardens
This ornate 1890 Queen Anne looks like any restored Highland mansion, but by 1970 it was a carved-up flophous…
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The Espinosa Brothers' Heads at the Colorado State Capitol
Everyone sees the gold-domed Capitol; almost no one knows it once warehoused two severed human heads. In 1863…
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John Chivington's Grave at Fairmount Cemetery
Fairmount is Denver's beautiful Victorian garden cemetery — heritage roses, a Gothic chapel, pioneer notables…
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Henry Treat Rogers Mansion Site — Where 'The Changeling' Was Born (Now Summer House Condos)
Stand at 13th & Williams and you're on the footprint of a vanished mansion that birthed a horror classic. In…
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Riverside Cemetery — Neglected Pioneer Cemetery Losing Its Dead to Industrial Decay
Hemmed in by rail yards, industrial lots, and the roar of I-70, Denver's oldest operating cemetery is quietly…
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Recollect Records
Open barely three afternoons a week out of a little row-house storefront on Delaware, Recollect is a crate-di…
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Invincible Vinyl
There's no sign you can read from the road. Invincible sits at the corner of 1st and Kalamath in a half-indus…
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City Records (City Records, Comics & Toys)
Two of the people behind this 2023 East Colfax shop met working at Mutiny Information Cafe, the cult undergro…
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Chain Reaction Records
Run by brothers Josh and Justin Lent - longtime fixtures of Denver's hardcore scene via their band Clusterfux…
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Sold Out Vinyl Records
Westword crowned this Best Suburban Record Store in 2025 and called it 'easy to miss but well worth discoveri…
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Little Horse Vintage (and the Electric Room)
Upstairs it's Mike Price's decades-deep warren of mid-century furniture, rare books, and 10,000-plus records…
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Denver Ecstatic Dance
Every Sunday morning a roomful of sober strangers in the Highlands move however they want — no booze, no phon…
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The Sexploratorium
Two former Red Rocks Community College professors (one taught human sexuality, the other erotic literature) b…
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B&GC
Built into the bones of the former Cherry Creek post office in the basement of the Halcyon Hotel, B&GC takes…
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Little Bodega
A true NYC-style corner bodega dropped into one of Denver's historic Black neighborhoods: laundry detergent,…
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Riverside Cemetery
Denver's oldest operating cemetery (1876) got swallowed by the city it served — today it's boxed in by indust…
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Cranmer Park Sundial Terrace
Hidden in the residential streets of Hilltop is a hundred-yard WPA-built terrace anchored by a giant quartzit…
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Fairmount Cemetery Arboretum & Heritage Rose Garden
This is Colorado's largest and most diverse arboretum — over 4,000 trees and shrubs first planted in 1890 by…
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Grave of Silas Soule
Silas Soule was the Union cavalry officer who, at Sand Creek in 1864, ordered his men to hold fire and refuse…
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Sand Creek Regional Greenway Trail
A near-13-mile creek-and-cottonwood corridor that threads straight through Denver's industrial north — past r…
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Ninth Street Historic Park
Tucked into the middle of a sprawling commuter campus is one intact block of 1870s-1900s Victorian houses — m…
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Castlewood Canyon Lucas Homestead Ruins
Most people drive out to Castlewood Canyon for the collapsed-dam ruins, never realizing a second, weirder rui…
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Ubisububi Room (at the Thin Man Tavern)
Below the narrow Thin Man bar in Uptown there's a 35-seat cave lined with tapestries and Christmas lights tha…
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Squirm Gallery
This small brick warehouse on Brighton was Rhinoceropolis — one of the most mythologized DIY spaces Denver ev…
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Ante Up
Opened January 2026 by a husband-and-wife team, Ante Up is a totally substance-free all-ages punk/hardcore/em…
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The DMV (Denver Music Venue)
A queer-run warehouse on a forgotten industrial block of Elyria-Swansea, the DMV exists for the sounds no LoD…
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Creepatorium
A 4,000-sq-ft Baker warehouse the regulars call the Haus of Horrors, built by and for Denver's alt, horror, a…
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D3 Arts
A nonprofit community arts-and-music space on Morrison Road in Westwood, one of Denver's most overlooked and…
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Walker Mansion Ruins and Unfinished Summer White House
On Mount Falcon, tucked off the Castle Trail, sit the lightning-gutted stone bones of John Brisben Walker's 1…
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Morrison Natural History Museum
This storefront-sized museum south of Morrison is so small you'd drive past it on the way to Red Rocks, but i…
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The Electric Cure
Two service-industry veterans built a rum-and-tiki bar that answers the question 'what if a tropical bar fell…
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Tower of Memories
Drive past Crown Hill Cemetery on Wadsworth and you'll see a 158-foot Gothic tower most people assume is off-…
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African Grill and Bar
Tucked into a Kipling Parkway strip mall you'd blow right past, this is one of the few places in metro Denver…
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Piggin' Out Smokehouse
From the road it's just a small red house on Morrison, which is exactly why people drive past quality brisket…
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The Bardo Coffee House
A coffee shop open until midnight is rare enough; one that also pours beer and wine and feels like a mid-cent…
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Garibaldi Mexican Bistro
Yes, the good Mexico City street food is inside the Conoco station next to an automated car wash on South Bro…
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Alferd Packer's Grave
Colorado's only convicted cannibal is buried in plain sight in a front row of Littleton Cemetery, marked with…
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Urban Burma
Tucked in a corner of the Mango House — a shared food hall built for resettled refugees on East Colfax — Urba…
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Havana Street Night Markets
Once a month from late spring through September, the parking lot around Leezakaya on South Havana turns into…
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Cold War Horse
On a lonely stretch of Highway 72 northwest of Denver, a life-size horse stands in an electric-red hazmat sui…
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Bernard's Tiki Room
The Arvada Tavern is Olde Town's original cocktail bar, but the real secret is upstairs: Bernard's Tiki Room,…
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National Eagle Repository
Inside the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge sits a nondescript federal building that is the on…
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Odd Aly-Kat Emporium
Brighton's most unexpected new storefront: a 5,800-square-foot antique mall packed into a century-old Main St…
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Edgar Experimental Mine
This isn't a tourist gold mine with fake gunfights — it's the Colorado School of Mines' actual working resear…
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Georgetown Energy Museum
Tucked at the end of a Georgetown side street sits a hydroelectric plant that's been spinning since 1900 and…
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Hamill House Museum
Everyone photographs the silver baron's restored Victorian mansion; almost no one clocks the real story out b…
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Bread Bar
Take Exit 226 off I-70, one of the corridor's most-ignored, and you land in Silver Plume, population ~200, wh…
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Hiwan Heritage Park & Museum (Hiwan Homestead)
Tucked in an old-growth ponderosa grove off a quiet Evergreen street is a 25-room log lodge that grew like a…