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To combat rising rates of gambling addiction and financial fallout, Colorado lawmakers have passed new sports betting regulations. Tuan placed his first sports bet on his 21st birthday. Within a week, it consumed his daily life. Legal online sports betting launched in Colorado in May 2020. A young basketball fan in Aurora, Tuan spent the following year inundated with gambling ads promising hundreds in bonus bets for depositing just a few dollars. It seemed like “free money,” he says.

If you grew up in the United States in the 1980s or ’90s, chances are you remember The Oregon Trail. For many like me, it was our first computer game and our first introduction to wilderness survival. We hunted buffalo, forded rivers, broke wagon wheels and, of course, learned about dysentery years before Google even existed, all while hoping our group would make it to Oregon City alive. Lately, the game has found a second life.

One of Colorado’s early adopters of the unlicensed psilocybin space wants to take the state to federal court for trying to shut down his operation. Darren Lyman has been a Denver-based psilocybin purveyor since 2023 out of his studios at 800 W. Eighth Ave., but his business, Lyman Support Centers, has existed in a gray zone.

Joyl Watkins has spent 31 seasons selling hot dogs outside Coors Field on the corner of 19th and Wynkoop. When the Colorado Rockies play their final home game of 2026 on Thursday, Sept. 24, the Diamond Dawgs owner plans to serve his last one. “This is my last season,” Watkins says. “I’m excited about it. I don’t really have a specific reason for retiring other than it’s just become a lot of work.

New venues don’t typically come with much history. But CityAud, a 4,000-seat showcase currently being assembled in Colorado Springs, is a significant exception. The CityAud building, located at 221 E. Kiowa St., opened to the public in 1923 under the Municipal Auditorium moniker. In more than a century since, it has hosted events ranging from ballets and Shakespeare plays to grain-and-feed expositions and boxing matches.

You don’t have to spend money to have fun in Denver. This list is updated multiple times every week with free events going on around the Mile High City. Dot Days Community Festival Events through Sunday, Sept. 13 Colorado Springs University of Colorado Colorado Springs celebrates nature with a variety of free events and courses from Sept. 3 to Sept. 13. See the events and register for free here. Colorado Minerals, Fossils & Gems Show Friday, Sept. 11, through Sunday, Sept.

Order a soju bomb at Good Luck Club, and the bartender will hand you a shot of pineapple or lychee-flavored soju and a beer. The uninitiated often pause there. “People are confused,” says Ben Hamilton, general manager of the Platt Park bar that opened in May. “They’re going to take the shot and then drink the beer separately, and we’re, like, no, no, no.” The shot glass goes into the beer glass. Then the whole thing goes down. Soju is one of the best selling liquors in the world.

Colorado was very green and growing in 1977, but not because of any chamber of commerce campaign. In 1977, the country was high on Colorado … and not because of any tourism campaign. Instead, people were drawn to the state by all those nature-loving songs coming from John Denver, who’d changed his name from Deutschendorf to that of the state’s capital city in the 1960s, moved to Colorado in 1970, penned “Rocky Mountain High” in 1972, and became the state’s poet laureate in 1974.

Donald Trump, who gained national fame (and, god help us, credibility with some voters) as the star of “The Apprentice,” has never won an Emmy. But thanks to the creators of “South Park” (who grew up in Colorado), he just got his. On Sept. 6, at the 78th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, the Comedy Central show won its fifth Outstanding Animated Program honor for “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” a Trump-centric episode that started the 27th season.

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