Nightlife

The anchor of Denver's performing arts scene, an important part of this increasingly sophisticated city, is the 4-square-block Denver Performing Arts Complex, located downtown just a few blocks from major hotels. The complex houses nine theaters, a concert hall, and what may be the nation's first symphony hall in the round. It is home to the Colorado Symphony, Colorado Ballet, Opera Colorado, and Denver Center for the Performing Arts (an umbrella organization for resident and touring theater companies). In all, Denver has some 30 theaters, more than 100 cinemas, and dozens of concert halls, nightclubs, discos, and bars. Clubs offer country-and-western music, jazz, rock, and comedy.

Current entertainment listings appear in special Friday-morning sections of the two daily newspapers, the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. Westword, a weekly newspaper distributed free throughout the city every Wednesday evening, has perhaps the best listings: It focuses on the arts, entertainment, and local politics.

You can get tickets for nearly all major entertainment and sporting events from Ticketmaster (tel. 303/830-TIXS [8497]), which has several outlets in the Denver area.

The Bar Scene

The first permanent structure on the site of modern Denver was supposedly a saloon, and the city has built on that tradition ever since. Today, there are sports bars, dance bars, lots of brewpubs, outdoor cafe bars, English pubs, Old West saloons, city-overlook bars, Art Deco bars, gay bars, and a few bars we don't want to discuss here.

Appropriately, the newest Denver "in" spot for barhopping is also the oldest part of the city -- LoDo -- which has been renovated and upgraded, and now attracts all the young partiers and upwardly mobile professionals. Its trendy nightspots are often noisy and crowded, but if you're looking for action, this is where you'll find it.

Other popular "strips" are along Broadway (centered on 10th and Ellsworth aves., respectively), and along East Colfax Avenue from about Ogden to Monroe streets. For those who prefer caffeine to alcohol, there are also a number of good coffee bars throughout downtown Denver, as well as in the Capitol Hill and Uptown neighborhoods.

The following are among the popular bars and pubs, but there are plenty more, so be sure to check out the publications mentioned at the beginning of this section.

Bottoms Up! -- More beer is brewed in metropolitan Denver than in any other city in the United States.

Brewery Tours -- Whether or not you drink beer, it can be fun to look behind the scenes and see how beer is made. Denver's first modern microbrewery, the Wynkoop Brewing Co., 1634 18th St., at Wynkoop Street (tel. 303/297-2700; www.wynkoop.com), offers tours every Saturday between 1 and 5pm. Housed in the renovated 1898 J. S. Brown Mercantile Building across from Union Station, the Wynkoop is also a popular restaurant. At least 10 beers are always on tap, including a few exotic recipes -- the spicy chile beer is my favorite. If you can't decide which one to try, the "taster set" provides a nice sampling: nine 4-ounce glasses of different brews. For non-beer drinkers, the Wynkoop offers some of the best root beer in town. On the second floor is a top-notch pool hall with billiards, snooker, and darts.

Also downtown, Great Divide Brewing Co., 2201 Arapahoe St. (tel. 303/296-9460, ext. 26; www.greatdivide.com), has a terrific taproom and free samples. Tours are offered Monday through Friday at 3pm and on the hour on Saturdays from 2 to 7pm. Great Divide is known for being a beer-lover's brewery, crafting such favorites as the rice-based Samurai and the aptly named Yeti Imperial Stout.

Since it opened in 1991, Rock Bottom Brewery, 1001 16th St. (tel. 303/534-7616; www.rockbottom.com), has been one of the leading brewpubs in the area. Tours, which are given upon request, offer great views of the brewing process, plus a sampling of the product.

A mile south of downtown, Breckenridge Brewery, 471 Kalamath St. (tel. 303/623-BREW [2739]; www.breckenridgebrewery.com) also lets you see the brewing process. Free brewery tours are given by appointment. In addition to its award-winning ales, the brewery serves traditional pub fare.

East of downtown in the Uptown neighborhood, the same folks behind Mountain Sun in Boulder opened Vine Street Pub & Brewery in 2008; it's at 1700 Vine St. (tel. 303/388-2337) and has a fun and funky neighborhood vibe with a healthful bent to its menu. In Cherry Creek, Bull & Bush Pub & Brewery, 4700 Cherry Creek Dr. S. (tel. 303/759-0333; www.bullandbush.com), produces about 10 handcrafted ales and will give tours of its facilities upon request.

For a look at the other side of the coin, take a trip to nearby Golden for a look at Coors, one of the world's largest breweries.