Toni Tresca

Reporting

My Latest Work

Denver Westword •

Diplo’s Run Club brings a 5K and daytime rave to Denver

Diplo’s Run Club will make its Denver debut this weekend, and for once, the city’s overlapping obsessions with running, parks, DJs and doing something aggressively active before brunch will all fit into one event. According to Sam Hunt, executive vice president at Wasserman Music, who works closely with Diplo on the event, Denver has been on the Run Club wish list for a while.
“We tried to do it last year and thought we had a site in Boulder that would have been perfect, but then, not at the las...
Estes Valley Voice •

Inside the Sundance Directors Lab at the Stanley Hotel

For two weeks in June, the Stanley Hotel became a working film lab.

“Michelle Satter, who is the founding director of the program, always says is your worst day at the (Directors) Lab will be your best day at the lab,” Ilyse McKimmie, who led this year’s Directors Lab in Estes Park. :That’s because It means that you have learned something or tried something that didn’t work, that informed you, that was a discovery, but you did it in this safe, protected space. And that means that you’re hopeful...
Estes Valley Voice •

Your guide to the 2026 SnowyGrass Music Festival

The SnowyGrass Music Festival is back, which means Stanley Park is about to become a small village of banjos, fiddles, low-back lawn chairs, friendly dogs, mountain views, and people who absolutely brought a cooler but somehow still forgot sunscreen.

The 11th annual festival, presented by Upstream Concerts and RiverPointe Vacation Condos, runs July 9-12 at Stanley Park, 380 Community Drive. The four-day festival brings Colorado and national bluegrass and Americana acts to Estes Park, featuring...
Denver Westword •

Haus of Other’s NEBULA turns sci-fi spectacle into immigrant support

When guests walk into NEBULA on July 11, Haus of Other wants them to feel as if they have stepped through a portal.
“When you first walk into the space, the plan is to have a sort of warp area,” explains organizer and Haus of Other founder Gary Adrian Randall. “Then when they first emerge, we’re going to separate the space into different areas. So there’ll be an area that kind of feels like deep space, then there’ll be an area that kind of feels like an alien jungle and then we’re hoping to crea...
Denver Westword •

Colorado Black Arts Festival celebrates 40 years in Denver

Jaleesa McIntosh can still recall one of her earliest memories of the Colorado Black Arts Festival: The sound of the drumming, the dancing and the feeling of meeting a larger African diaspora in real time.
“I have been going to the Black Arts Festival since I was young, I would say probably seven or eight,” McIntosh says. “My mom took me and my cousin there every year, and I loved it.”
That childhood tradition has since become part of her adult work. The executive director of the Colorado Black...
Estes Valley Voice •

The Big Bang Concert will go on without July 4 fireworks

The Big Bang Concert began with a simple observation: Every Fourth of July, people crowded roadsides, parking lots, and other makeshift viewing spots around Estes Park, looking for a place to watch the fireworks over Lake Estes.

Joshua Collins thought the town could do better.
“I see all these people pulled over on the side of the road and waiting for fireworks,” Collins said. “I came up with the idea to provide a place for people of all ages and capacities to enjoy the fireworks. I rented the...
Estes Valley Voice •

Rooftop Rodeo rides into Estes Park for 98th year

When a visitor to the Estes Park Wool Market asked whether the Rooftop Rodeo takes place on an actual roof, Cindy Schonholtz had an answer ready.

“No, that would be dangerous,” Schonholtz said.
The name is easier to remember than to explain. It dates to the 1940s, when Estes Park’s rodeo was promoted as a rodeo with altitude, staged at 7,522 feet above sea level. It may not be the highest rodeo in the country — that honor goes to the Cripple Creek Gold Rush Rodeo at 9,640 feet — but it is still...
Estes Valley Voice •

Estes Valley Community Center goes all in on National Pickle Month

Julie Bunton does not consider herself “a pickle person.” Her son’s girlfriend, on the other hand, is, which drew Bunton’s attention to pickles.

“Because of my son’s girlfriend, I’ve started to learn to look out for all things pickle for her,” Bunton said. “For whatever reason, I stumbled across National Pickle Month as a thing and thought it would be perfect to do in Estes.”
The result is a monthlong series of pickle-themed adult programs at the community center, 660 Community Drive. The first...
Denver Westword •

A cultural beacon: Morning Star American Indian Village to open at Cheyenne Frontier Days

When dancers step into the new Morning Star American Indian Village during Cheyenne Frontier Days, they will enter the performance space from the east. That may seem like a minor design aspect in a project that encompasses 3.8 acres, including a sunken dance arbor, artisan booths, storytelling spaces, a permanent teepee, native plants, educational signs and a veterans memorial, but to Bill Oates, chairman of Cheyenne Frontier Days’ Indians Committee, that element speaks volumes about the thought...
Load More