Top Things To Do In Denver

After seeing a similar list at a festival last weekend, my girlfriend and I (both Denver natives) decided that we could do better, so we put together our own authoritative list of the best things to do Denver.

Presented in no particular order:

RESTAURANTS AND SUCH

1. Casa Bonita - Legendary national landmark. It is known that the food is terrible. Go anyway.
2. Bonnie Brae Ice Cream - The overall best ice cream anywhere ever.
3. Duffy's Cherry Cricket / My Brother's Bar / Park Burger - One of these places has Denver's best burger, but we're not sure which, so you may have to try all three.
4. House of Kabob - Denver's best Middle Eastern food.
5. Kaos Pizzeria / Cosmo's Pizza - Now that Beau Jo's is gone, one of these places has Denver's best pizza.
6. Kokoro (Colorado) - My favorite place for Japanese food.
7. Banzai Sushi - Cailin's favorite place for sushi.
8. Pete's Kitchen (Colfax) - One of Denver's last remaining old-school diner-type places. The University location is also good.
9. Lucille's Creole Cafe - Denver's best breakfast. Either location.
10. Uno Mas / Adelitas / Los Chingones - One of these places has Denver's best tacos.

BARS AND THE LIKE

1. Platte Park Brewing Co - Denver's best brewery.
2. Williams and Graham - Supercool speakeasy in the Highlands.
3. Mile High Spirits - Cool distillery, located downtown. Nice place to play cornhole.
4. Grizzly Rose - There is a mechanical bull. Also lots of country music. Sometimes line dancing.
5. 1-Up - Two Denver locations. A classic video game arcade that also serves drinks.
6. The Pioneer - The best of the DU bars. Great nachos and a nice rooftop patio.
7. Pint's Pub - They have every kind of whiskey. Also a brewery. Also there's food.

MUSEUMS AND WHATNOT

1. Museum of Natural History - Dinosaurs.
2. Denver Zoo - Animals.
3. Denver Art Museum - Art and historical artifacts.
4. Denver Botanical Gardens - Plants.

EVENTS AND SO ON

1. A beer festival (i.e. GABF, Denver Winter Brew Fest, etc.) - All of Denver's beer festivals are good -- some are even Great.
2. South Pearl Street Farmers' Market - Better than the one in Cherry Creek because you don't have to pay to park. (summer)
3. Cinco De Mayo / Peoples' Fair / Taste of Colorado - These three free events are all basically the same thing.
4. National Western Stock Show and Rodeo - This is why Denver exists.
5. Oktoberfest - Outdoor festival. (fall)
6. Christkindl Market - Outdoor market and (heated) beer tent on 16th Street Mall. (holiday season)
7. City Park Jazz - Free outdoor concerts. (summer)
8. Broncos Game - Mile High Stadium. Be absolutely quiet for the offense and make as much noise as possible for the defense. (football season)
9. Rockies Game - Coors Field. Peanuts and cracker jacks. (baseball season)

OTHER THINGS

1. The Wizards Chest - Awesome store for toys, games, magic tricks, costumes, props, etc.
2. Tour of the Capitol - The best State Capitol -- the dome is made of gold!
3. Tour of the 4-Mile House - Historical old house.
4. Cherry Creek Trail - One of Denver's many excellent trails for biking, walking, rollerblading, etc.
5. Washington Park - Denver's best park.

NEIGHBORHOODS, PLACES, ETC.

• 16th Street Mall - A place downtown with restaurants and stores and stuff.
• Larimer Square - Also a place downtown.
• The Highlands - A fancy-shmancy neighborhood with restaurants and stuff, built on the site of a formerly crappy neighborhood.
• RiNo - Short for "River North," some cool restaurants, breweries, art galleries and stuff, built where there used to be just train tracks and warehouses.
• Santa Fe Arts District - Art galleries, restaurants, etc.
• Old South Gaylord Street - Restaurants and stores. Sometimes they close the street for outdoor events.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Vine Street Pub - Brewery with good food.
• St. Mark's or Stella's or Corvus - If you like coffee houses.

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As an added bonus, here are some additional things that WOULD have made the list, but for various reasons (i.e. they no longer exist, or they used to be a lot cooler than they are now, or they are an out-of-town chain, or they aren't actually in Denver):

1. Celebrity Sports Center - Formerly the greatest place ever, destroyed in 1995 to build a parking lot.
2. Elitch Gardens - The old location was actually a gardens and was awesome.
3. Tattered Cover Book Store - The old location was awesome.
4. Beau Jo's - Denver location recently went out of business (you can still visit the original location in Idaho Springs).
5. Bonnie Brae Hobby Shop - Where nerds used to go for nerd stuff, before the internet and before being a nerd was mainstream.
6. Caboose Hobbies - No longer in Denver.
7. The Old Spaghetti Factory - Out-of-town pasta chain. The Denver location is awesome. Ask to eat inside the train car. Order the "Homer".
8. Voodoo Doughnut (sic) - Out-of-town donut chain. Good donuts.
9. Torchy's Tacos - Out-of-town taco chain.
10. Red Rocks Amphitheatre - The world's greatest concert venue, unfortunately not actually located in Denver.

Please leave a comment if you feel something doesn't belong or we've left something out!

Guster Set List - Red Rocks, CO 2017-06-16

• Long Night
• Happier
• Doin’ It By Myself (during which, while walking through the crowd, Ryan commented "This is a long cable!")
• Come Downstairs And Say Hello
• Amsterdam
• Airport Song
• Ruby Falls
• Happy Birthday (singalong with audience, directed to Ryan's kids Lionelle and Dash via FaceTime)
• Satellite
• Demons

Guster Set List - People's Fair, Denver, CO 2017-06-03

• Hang On
• Careful
• Doin’ It By Myself
• This Could All Be Yours
• I Spy
• Satellite
• Never Coming Down
• "American Birthday Song" (improvised)
• Come Downstairs And Say Hello
• Do You Love Me
• "Beer Yeti" (improvised, featuring a guest appearance by a guy in a yeti costume who danced around and gave out some free beer to the people in the front row)
• One Man Wrecking Machine
• Either Way
• Simple Machine
• Ramona
• Bad Bad World
• Airport Song (after which Ryan commented, "I'm glad we played that song -- otherwise you would have brought a bunch of ping pong balls for no reason.")
• Amsterdam
• Long Night

("Encore" break, maybe five seconds)

• What You Call Love
• Demon

Facts vs. Opinions: The Spectrum of Validity

Epistemology can be a very tricky subject. Like other difficult-to-grasp concepts, or you might say "like training wheels", we teach our children a dumbed-down version that they will (hopefully) one day replace or refine with a more complex, more accurate understanding as their cognitive abilities mature.

Most adults grasp the notion of what a fact is (even if they are republicans and pretend not to). In the technical jargon, a positive statement is an assertion that can be proven objectively either true or false. If it is true, it's a "fact," and if it is false, it's "incorrect" (or possibly even a "lie" in the case that the person making the false assertion intends to deceive or is a republican).

Opinions are more tricky. Opinions are not positive statements -- they are normative statements, that is, they reflect "norms." Opinions are not objectively verifiable; rather, they are subjective. Unlike positive statements, which are either valid (that is, true) or invalid (that is, false), normative statements exist along a SPECTRUM OF VALIDITY, which is to say, some of them are more valid than others.

The Spectrum of Validity

This is where people tend to get hung up. "But isn't everyone's opinion just as valid as anyone else's?" they ask.

"No," I will answer. "That is obviously stupid."

"But if you cannot prove objectively whether an opinion is true or false, who is to say whether it is 'valid'?" they retort.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked," says I. Here's the thing: unlike facts, the validity of opinions is based on (a) the evidence backing them up and (b) the expertise of the person holding them.

Ergo, to use a hypothetical, the opinion of a child that "Frozen is a great movie!" is not as valid as that of a professional film critic who asserts otherwise. The hypothetical child has almost no expertise -- she has only seen four or five films in her life. The hypothetical professional film critic, on the other hand, holds an MFA in Film Studies from a reputable university and has seen thousands of films. In layman's terms, the film critic "knows what she is talking about"; the child does not. When pressed for evidence to back up her opinion, the child cannot offer anything more than one or two sentences about liking this or that character, or liking this or that moment. The film critic, on the other hand, must provide five or six paragraphs of evidence to back up her opinion (and must get them to her editor by 11:00 or she'll be fired).

After hearing it explained in this way, most people understand. "But," they will ask, "what about the case of two film critics who disagree?" Indeed! This is perhaps the trickiest aspect of the Spectrum of Validity. Since the validity of opinions is derived from the weight of the experience and expertise behind them, two opinions can be in dispute while still having equal validity!

Another way of phrasing this concept is that facts are mutually exclusive, whereas opinions are not. Two opinions may disagree with one another and yet both be just as "right." This allows for a never-ending dialogue between equally valid (if mutually dissenting) opinions, for a recognition and discussion of the differing norms / values / criteria that form the basis of those opinions, and also for a never-ending "arms race" in the pursuit of evidence and expertise to lend increased validity to those opinions.

What this DOES NOT mean is that everyone gets to chime in with their own opinion and that it will be accepted and respected regardless of how stupid or invalid it may be. While everyone is certainly entitled to his opinion, not every opinion is equally valid. Likewise, if your opinion cannot be justified or defended, you may not actually be expressing an opinion so much as just passing gas.