2026 Feb. 14 Chinese/ Lunar New Year Events Review

George Washington High School 

This is one of the events that I try to get to each year. Like most years, this event was running a bit behind. Some of the tables were still setting up a half hour after the event was supposed to start. There was a mix of tables selling products, companies and banks drumming up business, food vendors, and a kids area. 

They had this group in the food area singing. I didn't catch the name of the group. I wish they would have been mictrophoned better. You could really only hear one person when they randomly stepped forward to the microphone.

Some of the many different things you could buy. They had items like clothes, toys, cultural goods, beauty products, and more. I was sad that the plushie seller wasn't there this year. First time they missed the event in at least 3 years. Some of the vendors have been doing this event as far back as I can remember.

1st Bank was one of the booths running super late. They also limited there give aways to one per family instead of 1 per person. This was something that I would notice at other tables as well. There was a massive reduction in what was being given away for free. It shows how the bad economy is impacting communities and celebrating holidays.

This back corner led to where the pay to view performance is. I have never seen the performance, so I can't give any info on it.

One of the things I found cool was one of the tables had this poster in front highlighting a historic Asian American woman. Super cool and I intend to try and learn more about her when I get the chance.

Food is also a part of a lot of New Year Festivals.

The prices were hit or miss this year. Like Latea was selling small cups for the same price that other vendors had larger cups that included Boba (Latea was charging extra for boba). So look around the festival first to make sure that you don't loose money from vendors just raising their prices.

Also another sign of the times is the main food vendor also super raised their prices from last year. 3 items last year was $12 where as this year it was $14, then the 4 items did an even bigger jump from $15 to $18. Due to both the higher prices and them taking so long to set up, we didn't get anything from them this year. The food that we did get, I will post a review of on the In My Mouth Colorado Blog.

Aurora Mall (Aurora Town Center)

The first performance of the day was U.S. Taekwondo doing a martial arts demonstration.

Guiding Mountain was also there to do a lion and dragon dance. We didn't stay for that one since it was also a Pokémon Go special day and we had to get to Park Meadows.

They had these cute balloons around their sign.

They also had a kid area with activities. 

Last year they had more then just coloring sheets. They had cool kits like a snow globe you could put together. This against shows how places were having to cut back the funds they put into events.

They were giving away some Lego sets which was cool.

This event is OK. I think there is a lot they could do to expand this event. I wish that they would add tables/vendors and have some type of market. Also there wasn't any food. They should have had some type of food offering since food is so important to celebrating most holidays. I hope in the future that they will make this event bigger instead of just being performance focused.

2026 Lunar/Chinese New Year Events in Colorado

January

31st 

The Asian Pacific Alliance of Longmont, 2-5pm, Silver Creek High School, 4901 Nelson Rd., https://www.apalconnect.org/lunar-new-year-2026/

Feburary

7th

Colorado Springs Chinese New Year Festival, 5225 N. Nevada Ave., Colorado Springs, 10am-4:30pm, https://www.cscci.org/CNYF

Picture From: https://www.cscci.org/CNYF

14th

Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration, George Washington High School, 10:30am-3:30pm, 655 S. Monaco Pkwy., https://denverchineseschool.org/cnyc.php?lang=en

Town Center at Aurora, 2-5pm, 14200 E. Alameda Ave., Aurora, https://www.towncenterataurora.com/events/lunar-new-year

15th

Lunar New Year, Presented by On Havana Street, 12-6pm, The Stampede, 2430 S. Havana St., Aurora, https://bonfireeventco.com/market/lunar-new-year-on-havana-street-festival-2/

21st

Highlands Ranch Chinese New Year Celebration, Southridge Recreation Center, 12-4pm, 4800 McArthur Ranch Rd, https://hrcaonline.org/Events/Details/lunar-new-year

Lunar New Year, Loveland Aleworks, 2pm, 118 W. 4th St., https://www.lovelandaleworks.com/new-events-1/2026/2/21/lunar-new-year-celebration

Picture From: https://www.lovelandaleworks.com/new-events-1/2026/2/21/lunar-new-year-celebration

21st-22nd

Far East Center Lunar New Year, 11-4pm, 333 S. Federal Blvd., Denver, https://www.facebook.com/events/1801429284578955

28th

Lunar New Year Celebration Parker, 8am-1pm, Pace Center, 20000 Pikes Peak Ave., Free-but registration needed, https://parkerarts.org/event/lunar-new-year/

Aurora Public Library "History of the Lion Dance", 3:15pm, free-but registration needed, https://auroraco.libnet.info/aurora-public-library/event/15368166

March

1st

Lunar New Year Celebration, Not free, 3pm, 4424 Innovation Dr., Fort Collins, https://www.visitftcollins.com/event/2026-lunar-new-year-celebration/39819/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21188735475&gbraid=0AAAAAqKz43WamtDEkdMwTQone9ohewmrQ&gclid=CjwKCAiAncvMBhBEEiwA9GU_futyp2zI5PhpuBYUcDFYSNODC7Slzs7jej6rssvpG93hrsIItcywjhoC2MQQAvD_BwE

7th

Lunar New Year Celebration: The Year of the Horse, 10am-2pm, 215 S. Tejon St., Colorado Springs https://www.visitcos.com/events/lunar-new-year-celebration-the-year-of-the-horse/

Picture From: https://www.visitcos.com/events/lunar-new-year-celebration-the-year-of-the-horse/

Top Picture From: https://www.avenidas.org/event/2025-accc-lunar-new-year-celebration-2/

Denver Museum Shamelessly Destroys Native American Representation

 

Found this job posting today where the Denver Museum is looking for someone to help them dismantle, clear out, and basically destroy the Native American Exhibit. This exhibit like they said had been open for nearly 50 years and they decided to destroy it against the community wanting to keep it open. Do not support the Denver Museum in any shape or form. We are calling on our donors to hold the staff and president of the museum accountable for their actions against Native American culture!

Accessible Costumes 2025

 This year I have noticed many differences in how the geek and accessibility world have been impacted by our current political climate. One of the forms that this is taking during the Halloween shopping season is that in stores I have found no accessible costumes or things that could be easily adapted to fit accessibility needs. Even last year Target had a few things, but with their pull back on DEI/JEDI it looks like they even pulled back on support the needs of the communities that they are supposed to be serving. It feels like we have traveled back in time where people have to make their own stuff again because retailers don't acknowledge their existence.  

It looks like this year if you do need to buy things the internet is the only option you have. This kind of shopping is not always the best you can't try on things to back sure that they work for you. Also shopping online can be really bad when trying to get anything of quality. You could end up paying big bucks for thin fabric and weak seams. Most of the costumes I also saw online this year were the same offerings from past years.

One of the few new costumes that I could find for this season. Wicked is currently popular, but finding the costume to work for this set up may be difficult. For wheelchairs you need dress bottoms that won't get stuck in the wheels or drag on the ground. Picture from: https://www.target.com/p/kids-adaptive-wicked-elphaba-wheelchair-cover-costume-accessory/-/A-1005524209#lnk=sametab

List of websites to check out:

https://www.halloweencostumes.com/adaptive-costumes.html
https://www.target.com/c/adaptive-halloween-costumes/-/N-66yhm
https://www.walkinrollin.org/
https://www.halloweenexpress.com/costumes/adaptive-a1-560518+3435-1.fltr

https://www.rollingbuddies.com/collections/halloween-costumes

https://www.amazon.com/adaptive-halloween-costume-kids/s?k=adaptive+halloween+costume+kids

Additional Reading/Resources:

"MDA Ambassador Guest Blog: Helpful Tips for Accessible Halloween Costumes" https://mdaquest.org/mda-ambassador-guest-blog-helpful-tips-for-accessible-halloween-costumes/

https://www.pinterest.com/opfsn/wheelchair-halloween-costumes/

Havana Street Night Market (6/28/25)

This month's theme for the Havana Street Night Market was pride. I swung by the Aurora History Museum's booth to see how things were going. Right now the City of Aurora Historic Preservation Commission is trying to get community feedback on what locations are important to the community to try and preserve. Both historic and cultural sites can be saved, and with all of the construction in Aurora many of these locations may be in danger of being lost forever. If you have anywhere you would like to save, you can find more at https://engageaurora.org/historicplaces .

This time the give aways were both a fan and banana/plantain chips. The drink came from Banned Boba that is in the same parking lot. The boba drinks there are cheap, but they are not very good any more. Most of the things on the menu are usually sold out, the drinks are bland, and my mom's drink was missing about an inch worth of drink in her cup.

This is a pic before it started bleeding.

This event had something really bad happen to me. I had left my mother sitting on a black bench since she is currently in a medical boot and couldn't walk around with me as much. When I got back I braced my knee on the bench as I helped her up. Once she was standing, but before I could move my leg, the bench collapsed. I went down hard. One knee was not only skinned up, but it kept wanting to go out on me when I tried to walk on it. (The next day I would also see black and blue marks on my other leg). Luckily the main table had a first aid kit and they were nice about it. The main lady wondered if it collapsed because it had not been set up right since they use a third party company to help with the set up of the event. I would later find out that a child was also hurt at this event from a table collapsing within an hour of me getting hurt. I just hope that they either change companies that help with set up or hold the third party accountable for what happened.

I think moving forward we will bring our own chairs and not trust theirs. They had very few seats for people anyway and this is something that they need to address anyway for both people with disabilities and older adults. I would recommend if you go to this event, bring your own chairs.

Because of what happened we had to leave early (I was in a lot of pain and the knee kept not wanting to bear weight on it), we missed the main entertainment for the night which was a drag show to celebrate pride month. Sorry that I didn't get any videos from this event, but sometimes you have to make yourself the priority.   

2025 March News

 

Local

3/2: "The Colorado Springs Korean community celebrates independence from Japanese rule"- As someone that loves Japanese culture it is important to also be aware of all of the negative things that have also happened in Japanese history. https://www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/the-colorado-springs-korean-community-celebrates-independence-from-japanese-rule

National

3/7: "The Medal of Honor Recipient Erased in the Pentagon's DEI Purge"- https://www.military.com/history/medal-of-honor-recipient-erased-pentagons-dei-purge.html?amp

2025 On Havana Street Lunar New Years Celebration 1/26/25

The event had both an indoors and outdoors section to it. When you first walked in you were given a free pack of ramen. On the inside there were vendors selling everything from desserts to 3D printed items to Lunar New Year goods. There were also a couple of companies giving out free goodies to advertise their businesses. Labubus could even be found for $50, but I wasn't sure if they were knock offs or not. The high price does not guarantee that they were not knock offs and the place selling them I have actually bought knock off products from them for my con knock of panel. I just do not know enough about Labubus at the time of this writing to day if the ones they had were real or not.

Their opening act this year was Miki Saito performing on a traditional Japanese flute. Many of the songs were from either animes or video games.

People were not really focusing on her performance. A few people I did see make big twitches when she hit the high notes and one guy even covered his ears. I think the had the mic up too high and were not switching the sound levels between when she was talking and when she was playing.

I personally enjoyed her performance.

Upstairs they had a kid section and some additional vendors. They were also trying to advertise a charity that supports the event.

They had cute paper dragons you could put together.

Most of the food options were outside and their was a diversity of prices and quality.

This vendor had ube products that of course I could not pass up trying.

For $7 you could get an ube had pie. I will say that the price to quality ratio of this one was totally off. There was hardly any ube flavor. The problem of this was caused because the inside had two different creams/custards in it. One ube and one plain. I think the product would have been better if they would have just used the ube filling. Then the size was the same size as the box hand pies that you can find everywhere from $1.25 to $3. Since there wasn't really any ube flavor there was no reason to up charge $4 for a lack luster product. It was also very dry.

The ube butter mochi bars was the opposite experience. They had a good ube flavor and the right amount of chewyness. 

The other thing I tried I had been wanting to try since the summer night markets were the tea eggs from 10 Seconds Yunnan. They are a good restaurant on Havana street, but when they were at the Night Market they never had the eggs ready even though they advertised them.

This time they actually had the eggs ready. I had been hoping that they would be a nice flavor bomb like ramen eggs, but once cracked open they were just eggs with no special flavor. Since this was my first time trying a tea egg I do not know if this was a good representation of what one should be like. It has given me the inspiration to try and make my own version of tea eggs. When I do I will share it on the YouTube channel.

For a $1.75 it was ok and was a good protein snack.

Not a lot of people were doing things outside because of how cold it was. The sun did eventually come out, but we were leaving at that point. I think that this year the event just didn't have the same feel as last year due to the weather. It was ok.