We found 116 reasons to fall in love with the Mile High City all over again. From the tastiest scoop of ice cream to the most inviting patio for summer sips to the hippest new lodging in town, we tracked down the best of the best that the Mile High City has to offer. The result is a curated list of 37 editors’ choices that complement our 79 readers’ choice winners.
Somewhere between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, just off the coast of a tiny volcanic island called Raikoke, a small vessel bobbed in the chop of the Sea of Okhotsk. An assorted group of photographers, scientists, and filmmakers lined the boat’s railing and stared in disbelief as the landscape came into focus. The island, usually lush and green, smoldered in an ashy gray state of complete desolation. The air was heavy with sulfuric smoke tendrils, and flocks of birds circled in infinite loops overhead with nowhere to land. The sea-lapped shores, once home to a thriving sea lion rookery, had been reduced to smoking rubble.
A frothy sea rages beneath a moody sky along the coast of Panama. It's mid-February, the day after her thirty-third birthday, and Frisco's Bethany Hughes is perched on a driftwood log near the water's edge. Frustrated, she casts sidelong glances at the whitecaps rolling in on the horizon.
Colorado’s first family of running keeps it real on and off the race course.
Not long after her son was born 10 weeks premature, Carrie Meghie received an eye-opening credit card statement: She and her husband, Terry, had spent about $2,000 on parking in six weeks while visiting their newborn, Jackson Chance, at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital. Even with a good income—Carrie is copresident of her family’s company, Becker Ventures, which owns Hard Rock Hotel Chicago, and she and Terry own the Jamaican restaurant Mr. Brown’s Lounge—the bill was a shock.
Too often, people talk about our city’s power players as an elite cabal of the über-rich. But in an ancient town like Boston, family names are worth far more than any Forbes ranking. Power, at its core, is about having a lasting voice that effects change, whether you were born into a stately Brahmin house or got your start pushing a souvenir cart outside Fenway. Many families on this list—all include at least two successive generations—first made their mark here decades or centuries ago: a rags-to-riches tale of launching a business just to stay afloat only to reach unimaginable heights. Today, we know those humble beginnings as empires built on the inherited wisdom, work ethic, and ambition passed down from generation to generation. From our biggest money movers and development moguls to our most dedicated public servants and media pioneers, here are Boston’s power families.
How’s this for a branding achievement: In making the space-survival film of the year, The Martian, Ridley Scott turned to GoPro cameras as a key storytelling tool. As Quartz points out, “GoPros had more screen time than Kristen Wiig or Donald Glover.” Watching Matt Damon’s ill-fated astronaut log his every action with the small camera, you have to wonder at how GoPro has become synonymous with first-person video capture. One woman deserves much of the credit for that: Christina Anderson.
The multi-talented conservation biologist fears logging far more than bird-eating spiders, electric eels, or anacondas.
In the fall of 2014, Taylor Rees was part of a team of adventurers that spent two weeks slogging through the remote jungles of Myanmar, picking off relentless leeches and eventually abandoning more than half of their supplies to save weight—all before starting their climb up Hkakabo Razi to confirm that it was the highest peak in southeast Asia.
Life is pretty good when you’ve been crowned world champion in the sport you love, just a few days before starting your freshman year of high school.
Ayla Bystrom-Williams wants you to drink more beer. (We know, we like her, too!) But it’s not your garden-variety microbrew or local IPA. Instead, the founder of Santa Fe–based HoneyMoon Brewery suggests you start guzzling kombucha beer.
Most of the year, Kt Miller lives in “podunk [also known as Cooke City],” Montana. Population: 76. The nearest grocery store is an hour and a half away. In the winter, the only way to reach her one-room, 12-by-14-foot cabin is to drive down a one-way, dead-end road through Yellowstone National Park. And that's exactly how she wants it.
Izzi Gomez has seawater in her veins. Hailing from the beach town of Jupiter, Florida, the 15-year-old reigning stand-up paddlesurfing women’s world champion was catching waves practically before she could walk.
<< This digital story, no longer online, was a two-part scrolling feed with the latest update at the top; difficult to capture the dynamics in a PDF. >> The air had never been sweeter. The view never more sublime. At 13,824 feet above sea level, Eric Holle sat on a rock, drinking in the wind, laughing with the kind of joy that comes from the hardest fought accomplishment. The granite angles of Jagged Mountain cascaded to the earth beneath him as he inhaled the wild scent of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. He found the summit register—the running log of mountaineers who reach the summit and record their arrival—and signed his name. Beside it, he penned “100 / 100.”
From rockslide control and wildfire mitigation to livestock handling and aerial tram maintenance, Colorado’s labor market has more than its share of occupational hazards. We talked to eight people whose careers might make you love your nine-to-five desk job just a little bit more.
Their names may not often make headlines, but their power as catalysts for transformational work is indisputable. Meet six individuals who are crafting innovative solutions to our community’s most pressing social, educational, cultural, and civic needs.
<< This article was a finalist for the 2012 City and Regional Magazine Award in the personality profile category. >> Irene Vilar has survived personal trauma, family tragedies, and a shocking number of abortions to become a sought-after writer and scholar. But will her scandalous choices ever allow this devoted mother of two—or the rest of the world—to make peace with her past?
With Olympic gold and bronze medals, a couple of ESPY awards, and more World Cup victories than any other U.S. skiier, Vail's Lindsey Vonn is arguably America's best current skier. Here, 5280 caught up with the 26-year-old golden girl to talk about her best friend, being normal, and hometown skiing.
Most people don’t have a life story that ends up on TV—much less as a movie that wins seven Emmys. Most people will never land a spot on Time magazine’s “The World’s Most Influential People” list. Colorado State University’s Dr. Temple Grandin, 63, isn’t most people. She is autistic—and her unique visual thinking has rendered her one of the country’s most sought-after experts on livestock psychology.
Tired of listening to laments about the Great Recession, Dafna Michaelson set out with an ambitious goal last January: a 52-week tour of all 50 states to find motivated problem-solvers helping their troubled communities.
