Coloradical Is Closing Up Shop on Colfax

Colfax is about to get a little less cool.

Coloradical, a go-to store for all things cool (and a perennial Best of Denver winner for the best Colorado T-shirts), is closing its brick-and-mortar this weekend.

"After almost eleven years on the ’Fax, we must call it quits at this location," says founder Adam Sikorski. "As we all know, Colfax is a two-way street. And after an awesome run, the times are creeping into unsustainable even with me working the shop myself."

After years of designing and printing T-shirts, Sikorski started Coloradical in 2010, leaving the pizza job he'd worked in high school and through college. He opened the shop in a storefront at 3109 East Colfax Avenue in 2013, remodeling every inch himself and stocking it with cool things, many of which he made. "Since then, it has been a long, scrappy journey," he says. "I had never previously held a job in retail. But I had worked a good number of events and hung around the back of Blackbook Gallery and Andenken for years. I learned as I went, and it somehow worked and lasted a lot longer than I expected. ... It was a great place for a shop until it was not."
COVID was part of the problem, of course, and the general business malaise that's affected the city since the pandemic, spilling over from the still-closed 16th Street Mall. But Coloradical items will still be available there, at the invaluable I Heart Denver store that Samuel Schimek runs in the Pavilions. "He's been carrying my stuff since before Coloradical," notes Sikorski. His items are also stocked at Jolly Goods, Talulah Jones, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Fashion Truck. And on the web, of course, at coloradical.com.

But you've still got a chance to say goodbye to the physical store: Coloradical will host a moving sale from noon to 3 p.m. Thursday, August 29, and Friday, August 20; it will continue on Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. While the sale will spill onto the website, there will be "deals too good for the Internet" at the shop, Sikorski says. "I'll also be selling a collection of vintage Coloradical tees going back to 2010."

The sale started last weekend, and it "was probably the busiest we've ever been," he recalls. "I didn't know how it was going to go. I was mentally prepared for nothing to happen. But everybody really showed up. People have been really, really sad...or looking at me like I should feel really sad."
But Sikorski insists that he is not. "I'm opening a new chapter of my life," he says. "I'm kind of glad it got bad enough to push me out." And that it got bad enough to push him out before he had to deal with the major construction project coming to Colfax Avenue.

"I’m not sure what the future holds," he continues. "But I am hoping to become more of a kooky home artist and part-time drifter. I will keep the website and socials updated with new Coloradical designs and future side projects."