Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i 5280 Magazine

Like many people, senior staff writer Robert Sanchez remembers hearing about Billy Barr during the pandemic. As the world grappled with social distancing, news outlets across the country tapped the Coloradan, who spends his winters isolated in a handbuilt cabin on Gothic Mountain, for tips. While the sun is up, the 75-year-old meticulously records precipitation and temperature data and clicks into cross-country skis to observe wildlife; at night, he watches movies from his extensive collection. It’s easy to stereotype Barr as a recluse or hermit, and he indeed relishes his time alone with the land. But as Sanchez found out when he visited Barr for “Winter Is Coming” (page 50) this past fall, the creator of one of the West’s most comprehensive and important climate logs isn’t a loner. Through…

Pedro Cueto could have hit the brakes at any time. Like in 2021, when doctors diagnosed the then-sixyear-old with a rare bone cancer in his right femur. Or during the 14 rounds of chemotherapy required before his doctors could say there was no more evidence of the disease. Or after two titanium prostheses were surgically implanted to replace most of his femur and stabilize his tibia. Throughout the ordeal, however, the Arvada Formula 1 fanatic continued to push himself toward the finish line. For Christmas in 2022, his parents rewarded his perseverance with a go-kart—and Cueto quickly put it to good use. Racing up to 35 mph around hairpin turns, Cueto won the next year’s Colorado Karting Tour championship. “I was unbelievably happy,” Cueto says. But despite his success on…

Many writers fantasize about someday publishing a novel or seeing a script come to life onstage. Nina McConigley is about to realize both of those dreams in a single week, with the release of her debut novel, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, on January 20 and the opening night of her play, Cowboys and East Indians (adapted from her PEN Award–winning story collection), on January 23 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The 50-year-old, who is of Indian and Irish descent, was born in Singapore and grew up in Casper, Wyoming. Still, she considers the Mile High City her second childhood home. “I went to Denver once a month as a kid,” says McConigley, whose father worked as a geologist. “It was the closest place we had…

Suburban first, urban next isn’t typically the order of operations in the restaurant business. Niche, independent eateries tend to open in city centers first—and for good reason. Historically, the suburbs and their more economical families (like mine) haven’t been as lucrative an audience as younger, childless urban dwellers more willing to spend $28 on birria ramen. So I was surprised to see Teocalli Cocina—my favorite modern Mexican spot, which opened just up the road from my Broomfield home in Lafayette in 2019 and has since added outposts in Arvada and Longmont—move into LoHi this past summer. What’s surprised me even more is that every time I’ve gone, the dining room at the corner of Boulder andTejon streets (the former home of Lola Coastal Mexican and the Post Chicken & Beer)…

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It happens slowly. The years pass, responsibilities pile up; maybe you get married, have children. Then one day, you look in the mirror and realize: You’re addicted to history podcasts. The arcane trivia you glean becomes the currency of your conversations with other (usually male) adults. The emerging subgenre of historical solo travel, then, in which people re-create the itineraries of famous wanderers, seemed like an ideal way to uplevel my talking points. Almost immediately, I thought of Leadville. While many Colorado places boast rich backstories, Cloud City has everything a history hound could want: big names (Doc Holliday had his last gunfight there), scandal (local 19th-century silver baron Horace Tabor and his much-younger second wife, Baby Doe), and famous foreigners (Oscar Wilde gave lectures there in 1882). Shootouts and…

As far as wildlife sightings go, a septuagenarian climbing a ladder is the last thing you’d expect to see in the Rocky Mountains. But here he is, Colorado’s longest-tenured naturalist, balancing in the early afternoon sun outside his hand-built cabin. Billy Barr is preparing for his 54th winter in Colorado’s Gunnison National Forest, where he’s lived full time since graduating from New Jersey’s Rutgers University in the early 1970s. Even by local standards of remoteness, the 75-year-old lives way out there, alone in his 2,000-square-foot off-the-grid home on a patch of land tucked beside the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL)—a research station built in 1928 on the remains of Gothic Mountain’s eponymous, abandoned silver-mining town. Over the decades, Barr has held various roles on the lab’s campus. These days, he’s…

Gordy Megroz has investigated shady race organizers, ski crossed through gnarly rock formations, and reported on the heroin epidemic in mountain communities. “The Hot Springs Cure” (page 32) presented a new challenge. “I felt like I needed to spend as much time as possible in as many Colorado hot springs as I could,” Megroz says. “I know that everybody who reads that will feel terrible for me.” Just as important as the fieldwork was Megroz’s deep dive into the growing body of scientific research that supports hot springs as something of an elixir. “There are very effective homeopathic remedies for lots of problems,” says the Basalt-based writer, who is a regular contributor to GQ, National Geographic, and Wired. “Other countries have embraced those remedies for a very long time, but…

A Yemeni feast starts with rice, but not just any rice. At chef-owner Hussein Rahma’s two metro locations of Yemen Grill & Cafe, a generous mound of long basmati—stained in shades of yellow and orange from turmeric and saffron and perfumed with cardamom, clove, and other warm spices—serves as the centerpiece of several family-size platters. First-timers often opt for the shawarma or, for a group, the large mixed grill (pictured) with ground and cubed lamb and chicken skewers punched up with garlic and herbs. The latter comes with impossibly creamy hummus drizzled with olive oil and dashed with brick-red sumac, a fresh salad, and a stack of warm pita. On your next visit, try the traditional chicken mandi, a roasted half bird rubbed with Rahma’s tantalizing (and secret) spice blend…

When Peter Ho, former chef at Larimer Square’s Rioja and Boulder’s Oak at Fourteenth, started his own restaurant in 2024, he traded haute cuisine for hot pot. Sorry Umma (“umma” means “mom” in Korean) is a heartfelt ode tucked next to Westminster’s H Mart. Peruse a wall of wide-ranging add-ins (from mushrooms to corn cobs to Asian greens) to enhance bubbling pots of all-you-can-eat broths. 5028 W. 92nd Ave., Westminster Just off 104th Avenue and Huron Street, you’ll find Itacate Mexican Food, where the tacos punch way above their strip-mall surroundings. The cochinita pibil tatemada—charred pork marinated in achiote paste and citrus—might become your favorite taco in the metro. 1006 W. 104th Ave., Northglenn The 10-plus-page menu at Tu’s Kitchen may be overwhelming, but somehow, every selection at this spacious…

White sneakers, Taylor Swift, the internet—I was slow to all of them. I take a lot of pride, then, in being able to say: I was into solo travel before it was cool. It was 2018, and my wife and I wanted to spend the holidays with my parents in Dallas. But plane tickets were expensive, and we couldn’t drive because she had to work the day after Christmas. We decided to split the difference. We’d drive there together, she’d fly back to Denver, and I’d follow in the car. After dropping her off at the airport, however, I thought, Why rush? I had the week off, my wife would be busy, and I was all caught up on The Great British Baking Show. I pulled up a map, spotted…

The corpse lying on the mattress might be Mickey Mouse. It has his billowy white gloves and his trademark two-button shorts, but the face is all wrong. The head is a skeleton framed by tufts of hair on the sides, like a clown. Or maybe those are his withered ears. Whoever it is, they’re definitely dead—the X’s painted over the eyes are difficult to misinterpret. Is the artist bemoaning the passing of his childhood? Maybe the sculpture is a comment on Disney and, thus, capitalism? Wait, is that poor, lifeless cartoon me? I don’t usually probe this deeply into something I spot while window shopping. I don’t have the bandwidth, not with my phone lighting up with Slack alerts, my thoughts running through recipes I can whip up for dinner,…

It’s simply a fact of life that even the least litigious among us will need a lawyer at some point. When you find yourself in that position, though, navigating the complicated legal world can be overwhelming, especially when you consider that the law has been split into dozens of categories: Everything from criminal law to bankruptcy to workers’ comp necessitates specific expertise. That’s why we put together Denver’s Top Lawyers 2026, our 12th annual compendium of the best attorneys in the region in more than 45 legal categories. AGRICULTURAL/RURAL Justin D. Cumming WOMBLE BOND DICKINSON 1601 19th St., Suite 1000 Denver 80202 303-628-9526 womblebonddickinson.com/us John O’Brien SPENCER FANE 1700 Lincoln St., Suite 2000 Denver 80203 303-839-3800 spencerfane.com ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION Margot Alicks ADR LAW 1745 Shea Center Drive, Floor 4…

In 2007, development was skyrocketing across Breckenridge. New residences sprang up near the historical downtown. Condos and commercial buildings rose around the ski resort. And with each new, exterior-light-fixture-clad structure, locals got a little closer to joining the 80 percent of Americans unable to see even a wisp of the Milky Way. So town leaders took steps to begin reversing the trend—using, for example, warmer-hued LEDs in covered, downward-facing casings. The efforts paid off this August when Breckenridge became the first mountain ski resort town in Colorado to earn Dark Sky Community certification from the Arizona-based nonprofit DarkSky International. This month is a stellar time to give that celestial canvas a gander: Although average nighttime temps hover around 14 degrees, darkness falls earlier and lasts longer, and winter skies tend…

JEFFERSON “SOAPY” SMITH The late 19th century grifter sold soaps (he claimed a $100 bill was hidden in some wrappers) in Denver and charged admission to see a prehistoric man (a 10-foot-tall statue) in Creede. LOU BLONGER His syndicate, which from the 1890s to the 1920s used everything from loaded dice to phony stock schemes to prey on Denver tourists, inspired Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting. ELI REGALADO A Denver pastor, Regalado and his wife recently swindled followers out of $3.3 million through a cryptocurrency scam, spending thousands on home renovations because “the Lord told us to.”…

A culinary continuum of thick but tender griddled rounds of masa de maíz (cornbased dough) unites the diverse cuisines of Latin America. Colombian and Venezuelan arepas, Salvadoran pupusas, and Mexican gorditas share a common shape and cooking method, but each is distinct. “For most households, it is a daily meal,” says Venezuelan native Manuel Sucre, chef and co-owner of Catira in Greenwood Village. Here’s how and where to enjoy all three styles in Denver.…

I’m the only one here eating gelato alone. The small shop I ordered my hazelnut, chocolate, and banana scoops from is less than a mile from Rome’s grandest site, the Colosseum, which explains why, on a sunny Tuesday evening, the cobblestone square is filled with chatty students, friends, and couples. They’re all mingling with others as I lean against a wall. I’m not lonely, though. In fact, I feel a weight lifting from my shoulders. I’ve been in Rome for just 28 hours, but it’s one of the first days in eight months—since I gave birth to my first child—that I’ve been guided by my own desires. And at this moment, as the golden hour between afternoon and evening settles over the city, that’s gelato. Despite its growing popularity, particularly…

I exhaled when I saw the text. “Made it just before the hail,” my wife, Larissa, wrote. “Now in the tent, reading with a mai tai. I love you.” It was mid-July: thunderstorm season. She had left three hours earlier on foot, carrying 40 pounds on her back, headed to a wild basin above our house south of Breckenridge, where an elk herd grazes at 12,000 feet and the nighttime sky looks like fireworks. Each summer, Larissa and I give each other one evening to ourselves to hike up and camp. I was relieved to know she was safe from the storm that was now pelting our roof with ice balls. And I knew I likely wouldn’t hear from her again until tomorrow, time apart that fuels us both individually…

PRICE KEY Average Entrée $ under $15 $$ $16 to $20 $$$ $21 to $30 $$$$ $31 and higher SYMBOL KEY Indicates a restaurant featured in 5280 for the first time (though not necessarily a restaurant that has just opened). Indicates inclusion in 5280’s 2025 list of Denver’s best restaurants. These selections are at the discretion of 5280 editors and are subject to change. AFRICAN GRILL & BAR $$ Lakewood / African Explore Africa at this warm and inviting restaurant run by the Osei-Fordwuo family. Peanut soups, fried fish, samosas, and jollof rice are just some of the deeply flavorful options that cover Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and more. Reservations accepted. 955 S. Kipling Parkway, Lakewood, 303-985-4497. Lunch, Dinner ALMA FONDA FINA $$$ LoHi / Mexican This Michelin-starred contemporary Mexican restaurant wows with its creative, shareable…