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Across the street, in front of The Vixen, the slick-looking modern apartment complex that moved onto the block last year, a man in an orange shirt bangs a 2x4 against the curb and screams, calling on a man in gray.

Approaching the man in orange, crossing Downing, Gray begins to swing a flail-like weapon in front of his face. I can’t tell what it is exactly—a chain or a flexible black tube with a heavy butt end. He looks medieval—his DIY mace stirring the air in wide arcs. Orange begins to backpedal, still knocking the sidewalk with his 2x4 but with more urgency. I wonder if they picked up their weapons at the construction site next door, where more apartments are being built.

Finally, both are in striking distance—only neither man seems physically capable of hurting the other. They swing their weapons wildly, clumsily. Missing or just grazing. And both men have a limp.

Then Orange draws a pistol from his waistband and aims it right at Gray’s face. Gray hesitates, but only for a second, then takes another swipe. Orange pulls the trigger.

He pulls it again and again, but there’s no sound. And even though Gray seems to be reacting, flinching, he’s largely unfazed, still shambling forward, still swinging. Is it a pellet gun? Airsoft? Is the gun misfiring? I watch Gray joust Orange down the block. Then the light turns green, and I keep driving.

–

I’ve always wanted to talk to someone at that Papa John’s. Or Papa Johns, I should say, since the company officially dropped the apostrophe from its name in 2021 in an apparent effort to distance itself from founder John Schnatter. How bad grammar accomplishes this I have no idea—unless the corporation wants us to think of a plurality of random Papas, random Johns. Who knows how many Johns there are on Colfax.

Fortunately, the weather-beaten sign at our particular location hasn’t been updated with this change, and it may never be if the property is sold off (which could be happening very soon if my sources are correct).

I stop by on a rainy day, at odd hours. The parking lot is empty, and, after a chat, I’m finally granted an interview with one of the workers. They’d prefer to be anonymous, they tell me. Let’s call them John.

We talk outside in front of the order window. In 2021, while corporate was fretting over an apostrophe, this location was forced to stop allowing people to walk inside the store for security reasons. John points out the cameras under the eaves of the building that have been sabotaged with spray paint.

“Maybe two years ago, there was a murder right there at that bus stop,” John says. “There was a stabbing over there. There’s so much that has happened in this parking lot. Just the other day, there was a lady, an old lady. She wasn’t wearing clothes, really. She was wearing a dress, but she… she just took a shit right there on the sidewalk, man. And then she saw me recording her, and so she flashed the camera. Do you want to see the video? It’s ridiculous.”

John pulls out their phone and shows me a video of a gaunt woman dancing nude in front of the pizza establishment.

“There’s obviously drugs and crime and sex and violence around here,” John says.

“Why this spot?” I ask.

“I’m not sure why. I mean, the mix between the liquor store and Papa John’s,” they say, referring to Paul’s Liquors next door. “It turned into a marketplace for the underground. Whatever you wanted, you could get it here.”

Self-described as an “urban outdoorsman,” having spent a short time living in a tent on Denver streets, Shorts McGraw agrees it’s a rough area.

“I’ve been sucker-punched at that bus stop. I mean, no conversation, no eye contact,” he tells me. “I try to avoid it when I can.”

However, according to John and an employee over at Paul’s Liquors, things are beginning to change. There’s been more security on the block than usual. New cameras have been installed, and the police have started paying more attention to the block. And a lot of this, I learn, is the direct result of Papa’s new neighbor.

–

Across the street, inside the scented lobby of The Vixen, a high-gloss red accent wall reaches up to the ceiling—patterned with a mixture of baroque floral tiles and patches of faux crocodile leather. A young couple is finishing a tour (they seem happy), making their way through a lounge where the word “COFFEE” cascades down the wall with slanted lettering.

A promotional flyer rests on the counter, printed on luxe stock. “A vibrant addition to Denver’s cultural history with an unapologetic perspective and lifestyle,” it reads. And then below, in larger font, “UNAPOLOGETICALLY COOL,” it says, before listing some of the amenities, which include a 24-hour health club, bike storage rooms, electric vehicle charging stations, and, notably, a pool and hot tub situated on the outdoor deck, with a nice view of the city skyline and, if one chooses to approach the railing, the Papa John’s and bus stops below.

Opening last August, The Vixen began dealing with vandalism on a regular basis, according to David Thomson, vice president of client relations for Kairoi Residential, the developer behind the property. “They’d break windows, and they’d steal stuff. Maybe three weeks ago, we had someone smash a window and come in and take something out of the lobby. We had someone smash a window maybe two weeks ago, and they went in and took tools out of the open space where they were building the new coffee shop,” Thomson says, referring to the Doppio coffee shop planned for the building. He points to all of the drug-related criminal activity on the block as the source of these headaches.

“What made you want to develop that specific block then, given all those challenges?” I ask.

“It’s a good question. It’s the same thing I was asked 23 years ago: ‘Why would I want to do a race down Colfax Avenue?’” answers Thomson, who helped found the Colfax Marathon, which has indeed brought significant economic benefits to the corridor since the first event two decades ago.

“If you read about Colfax, there’s so much history about that street,” Thomson says, before outlining larger goals to revive the area. “So we took a big risk, and I hope that it’s a positive risk.”

With The Vixen’s cost of construction totaling $95 million, Kairoi couldn’t afford to take the block’s problems lying down. Thomson explains that when they first started developing the property, he’d hoped the management of the Papa John’s and some of the other businesses across the street would take a more aggressive approach to cleaning up the block, attracting new residents and shoppers to the area. But when that didn’t happen, Kairoi decided to start working with the police directly.

“We’re the one that led that conversation,” Thomson answers when I ask about increased surveillance on the block. “I started that about August of last year. Maybe July… That’s when I got the police chief to literally come in and just stand there for an hour. Just look down on it.”

The visit made an impression. As they approached The Vixen’s opening, Thomson and Kairoi cultivated a closer relationship with the police, pushing for the removal of fixtures used to hide drugs, while instituting a trespassing program that would grant the Kairoi team access to a quick line to connect with police when things went south on the block.

“We actually gave one of our units at The Vixen for 50% off to a police officer, so we have a police officer in our building,” Thomson says. “And he drives in and out with his car, and he’s in uniform, and he’s the one that’s made busts already there.”

Doing a little recon, I stand on the pool deck of The Vixen one Thursday afternoon. The leasing agent giving me the tour is suspicious. They think I’m some secret shopper working for Kairoi because of the questions I’m asking. I’m posing as someone from Thornton who wants to move into the city. It should be an easy act since I’ve been that guy before. I also have a special relationship with this block. My very first nights in Denver were spent right here over a decade ago, back when it was the Ramada, or the “Rockmada,” as Shorts McGraw calls it, remembering the raffish old bar that operated by the lounge—a local favorite known for its jukebox, $2 PBR, and Big Buck Hunter arcade cabinet.

The Vixen is a different vibe. On the pool deck, the agent and I pass a pair of young women in magnificent shape doing some weekday afternoon tanning. The tinkling of the pool’s fountain features joins the noise of Colfax traffic and the construction of additional apartments next door, a complex called Route 40, scheduled to open in 2027. “NOT JUST A PLACE TO LIVE. A PLACE TO LAUNCH,” reads its website, the copy sitting alongside a picture of a young bearded man in a slouchy beanie and an open button-down shirt, smiling as a bulldog licks his face.

I stand at the railing and look down at the street, perhaps with the same vantage the chief of police had last year. I decide to fish a little and tell the leasing agent I’m concerned about living across from the Papa John’s.

“They’re actually selling that lot,” they tell me. “Who knows what they’re going to do with it. Maybe more apartments. I know people in the area really want a parking lot.”

I feign ignorance (poorly; the leasing agent is definitely on to me), but I’d already heard about a potential sale of the Papa John’s property from real estate platform Naked Denver back in April:

“Inside sources indicate that a prominent Denver developer, active across the city and with projects in proximity, is in the process of purchasing 1111 E Colfax Ave. The site is currently home to a 1,483 square foot Papa John’s on a 15,625 square foot lot. The property, built in 1979, is owned by Anderson, John V; Archdiocese of Denver.”

My first thought was that Kairoi was the potential buyer in question—finally having the chance to pave over this blight that’s plagued the company since erecting The Vixen. However, Thomson denies this. “We would never buy it,” he says. “It’s very difficult to do a retail site there or anything. It just doesn’t work. To tear that down and do something, the financials do not work.”

I hear a similar line talking to Frank Locantore, executive director of the Colfax Ave Business Improvement District (a current Denverse sponsor, it must be noted). “Because it’s a small lot size, it just comes with more challenges. It’s just more difficult to build. I mean, you can build something there, but if you want to make your money back, you’re going to have to charge a lot for the units,” says Locantore. He compares the Papa John’s parcel to the one at Williams and Colfax, soon to be the site of affordable housing designed to attract health care employees, as outlined by developer Kentro Group.

The Papa John’s lot could have a similar fate, if the sale goes through and future developers are able to secure Low-Income Housing Tax Credits from the city. According to Locantore, whoever takes charge of the lot will still have to be prepared for the challenges of operating within the small urban space. Of course, there’s also the problem of crime in the area, but here Locantore is optimistic, citing an analytical approach to tackling the lot’s security issues, with the Archdiocese working with police to implement crime prevention through environmental design, or CPTED, ahead of the potential sale (an example would be the added fencing on the alley side of the property, which cuts off potential escape routes for criminals encountered by police).

Locantore also believes that the completion of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Project will play a major role in the block’s transformation. He talks about larger goals of increasing foot traffic and attracting more active storefronts, contrasting the vision for Colfax with how the Papa John’s is working. “With the BRT, there’ll be more people that are able to access the area. The other part is around vacancies at the storefronts and activating the spaces,” he says. “Papa John’s, it’s not Voodoo Doughnuts… It’s not Doppio or Good Bones Coffee where people are walking in and out constantly. You can’t walk in. They’ve locked the door.”

It is difficult to imagine the notorious Papa John’s and its self-deprecating marquee persisting if the Colfax revival goes as planned. Standing at the intersection after my tour, I look back and forth from the pizza chain’s dumpy green-and-white awning to the giant geometric red fox face across the street. A sheet of plywood covers a presumably smashed window near the entrance. But in about five minutes, I’ll be purchasing a latte.

I did a triple-take, groggy from the night before. Up to that point, I’d been sleepwalking, reluctant to embark on my paper route, but in three blinks, a crisis! Thousands of magazines. Thousands of dollars. They were all gone!

The concrete floor of the 5x10ft caged area was completely bare. I stepped into the space, thinking I was hallucinating and that any moment I’d trip over the stacks, but no.

Someone at the complex must have cleaned the thing out by mistake!

I rushed from the storage area to the office, panicked, cursing, pissed. Admittedly, it was nice to feel alive that morning though. A punch in the nose! A splash of bright red in a world gone dark. As an old teacher of mine used to say, I like the action.

Once in the office, I assumed the posture of a wronged but dignified American–a stern but reconcilable customer, confident he would be made whole because he was worth it.

I crossed my arms. I puffered my fish. “Yes, I know it’s not your fault, but it’s absolutely crucial I speak to someone in management today. This is an emergency.”

I added “CEO” to the signature of my emails as I fired them off to upper staff. Calls were made, Saturday calls, which would test and confirm the limits of my perceived value as a resident and citizen. There was no response.

The next day, getting desperate, our entire inventory plundered, I dug around for cell numbers. I can get anyone’s cell number, I like to say.

I called a number associated with the name of the leasing agent who’d given me a deal on the storage unit. A Sunday call. Another test of my power.

“Hello?” a voice answered drowsily on the other end.

“Hi, —, this is Paul French in Unit —. I was wondering if you’d been getting my emails.”

“About what?”

“About the inventory taken from my storage unit.”

“Oh fuck you.”

He hung up.

For a second, I was on the verge of becoming a victimized and angry American customer, truly an ugly sight, but I realized the voice on the other end had sounded nothing like my guy, who has one of those clear, bourbony baritones, like our radio host Anthony Elio. I found out there was a local lawyer with the same name, and “fuck you” must have been his way of saying “wrong number.” What kind of fish was he?

I filed the police report and told our creative director Shane what happened. We began puzzling through the case. The apartment complex was still suspect #1, but, if not them, could it really have been theft? Who steals roughly 4,000 magazines, and why?

The issues were in strapped bundles, so it wasn’t as if the person taking them was playing some mystery box game. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, paper is heavy! When we pick up the magazines from the printer, we usually have at least three people and three vehicles helping. I almost totaled my truck, in fact, when I let one of the dock guys load an entire pallet (over 3,500lbs) into the bed (it sank the whole thing almost flush with the wheels). All of that loading and unloading, of course, takes a long time. This would have been quite an operation.

By this point, we’d already circulated most of the copies of the spring issue to subscribers and participating businesses, so it wasn’t the full 10,000 we print–just the 4,000 remaining. But that’s still a ton of magazines (literally), enough to take at least half an hour or so to porter to a necessarily heavy-duty vehicle.

All this to say, whoever took the magazines had to do so very intentionally.

I began questioning my original theory of the apartment complex, as who in their right mind would commit such an undertaking without sending an email? Stranger things have happened, but still.

Shane and I theorized some options in order of likelihood. It was either:

1. A mistake by the apartment complex’s storage team. Likely: because it was the simplest answer. Unlikely: because of the effort involved and (one would hope) communication protocols preventing staff from throwing away residents’ belongings en masse by mistake.

2. Attempted sabotage by a competitor. Likely? Well, not really at all, I would think. Media can be a petty and smarmy business. Even so, it would be a massive reputational risk for some competitor to do something like this, and what would they even gain? We can print more magazines. Yes, it’s a hit, but unless they knew that we were one theft away from being irrevocably destroyed, it would be a bad idea to try to burgle us. Also, they would have to know where I live, where I stored the magazines, etc. Finally, for all of the self-deprecating trash talk I spit at the media, I do think many of us are conscientious folk, who at least want to believe we’re doing the right thing.

3. Attempted sabotage by a slighted article subject. Likely? Also no, for many of the same reasons above. It’s a lot of trouble to do something like this. And besides, we’re not really a gossip rag. Most of the critical views our writers have leveled at people, places, things are usually tempered with an exploration of the other side (ours being a more longform journalistic enterprise, and not exactly packed with editorial hot takes on issues). I’m sure someone’s been irritated by something one of our writers penned (that’s just unavoidable), but you’d have to have quite an axe to grind to commit this kind of theft, and, again, it’s so high-risk! When I talked to Patty Calhoun over at Westword about this (longtime supporter/advisor, by the way; she’s the real deal), she said she was aware of cases like this sparked by miffed subjects. However, being a regular reader, she admitted that she hadn’t seen anything in our publication that would arouse such contempt.

4. Pure theft. Likely? Not at all, unless the thief was either a complete moron or insane. Unless you can sell the magazines through a website or other means (which you couldn’t do without getting caught pretty quickly), there’s no way you could get any value from these copies. It’s not as if there’s a robust black market for print publications out there. I’ve seen people selling stray copies of past issues on Ebay (and I really don’t care about that; it’s quite flattering), but there’s no way you can just sell 4,000 copies of Denverse on the street (if you can, please send notes).

My mind was still set on option 1. After two days, the management at my apartment complex finally got back to me. I had a sit-down meeting with them. They weren’t the culprit, they stressed, adamantly after lots of grilling. Nobody on staff had removed anything from the storage containers, and, as I imagined, there was a rigid protocol about removing items from the units. It was theft, they said. The only question was whether the cameras at the facility had caught a glimpse of the perps.

I waited for word from the Denver Police. There was none. I waited for information from the surveillance company contracted by the apartment. After a week, they sent a curt email saying that, despite multiple cameras being nearby, there were no visuals. Since this was patently absurd (no way someone could have gotten all of those magazines out of there without being on camera), I tried pestering the police to see if they could request the footage. I received a reply saying that our case had been marked inactive. When I asked why it had been labeled inactive, the police told me that they needed information from me. And when I asked what information they needed from me, they requested much of the information I had sent in my original report. I sent the info again, along with some paperwork from the recent purchase we’d made to reprint the magazines we lost. Then I waited again.

Finally, someone from the district (without providing a name) said they were reaching out to the apartment manager, but that they were on vacation…

And, alas, Dear Reader, that is where things sit at the moment. Hopefully, the footage can be retrieved and will reveal something about the perps. I’ll keep you updated if anything interesting happens.

Naturally, I was tempted to use this case as fodder for our next print edition. However, I don’t think lingering on this woebegone topic is good for us, and I have other interests I want to pursue for the next edition. We’ve got to press forward.

That could change if the case gets interesting though, of course. We’ll just have to see. I’m very grateful for all the interest this caper has brought us though. Not exactly free press, but I’ll take it! Subscription rates are looking great! Not nearly enough to compensate for the loss as yet, but, hey, that’s business. I have no doubt that if we stick to the fundamentals and keep putting out great work from talented locals, we’ll make up for it in the long run.

As always, thanks for being part of this adventure in independent media. It’s fascinating, personally, seeing how tricky this entire enterprise is. But so far, so good. And, if our print pirate is reading this, you should know there’s a song in our hearts:

Yours,

Paul M. French, editor

At first glance, Denver might seem a million miles from the tropical beaches of Polynesia, both geographically and culturally, but the Mile High City has a surprisingly rich history of tiki bars dating back to the 1950s. Our introduction to tiki is all thanks to two titans of the tropical cocktail named Donn Beach and Trader Vic Bergeron, who birthed a craze that swept across midcentury America before succumbing to the merciless fate of all fads.

However, this is a tale of redemption. Tiki culture rose from the ashes, and the scene today overlaps many other underground subcultures, including old-school punk, burlesque, hot rods, pinups, goth and rockabilly. Tiki’s aesthetics challenge the notions of high- and low-brow culture by elevating what bourgeois tastemakers dismiss as kitschy, gaudy, and polarizing.

–– • ––

The word “tiki” is derived from Māori creation mythology. Like biblical Adam, Tiki was the first man to walk the earth and the father of all humanity.

Fast-forward to 1945 when American GIs returned home from the Pacific after WWII and brought with them tales of tropical islands and half-naked women in grass skirts. Thanks to the booming post-war economy, a full-blown tiki craze soon engulfed the nation. Sometimes referred to as Polynesian-Pop, tiki snuck its way into popular music, television, movies, architecture, home decor, dining, and cocktails. Polynesian-themed restaurants opened from coast-to-coast, offering patrons an escape from the drudgery of the American rat-race.

These were high-culture establishments, where one could don their finest attire and dine like a jetsetter, sampling delicacies from far-flung tropical lands while swigging down potent rum concoctions with menacing names like the Cobra’s Fang, Shark’s Tooth, and Scorpion Bowl. Tiki bars soon became the go-to stomping ground for the biggest celebrities of the day, including Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Howard Hughes, and even President Nixon.

Although tiki is heavily inspired by the Pacific Island peoples, it doesn’t pretend to represent authentic Polynesian culture. It’s a midcentury American invention whose aesthetic is an exaggerated tropical fantasia. During the Cold War’s ever-present atomic threat, tiki bars served as a technicolor panacea for the woes of modernity. A getaway to the Garden of Eden with cocktails. To this day, any tiki bar worth its salt is based around this fundamental idea of escapism.

–– • ––

In 1954, the legendary creator of the Mai Tai cocktail, “Trader Vic” Bergeron, chose Denver’s Cosmopolitan Hotel on Broadway and 17^th as the site for his newest tiki bar. Vic was a larger-than-life character, with a pungent vocabulary and ribald air. He had a penchant for weaving colorful tales and, on more than one occasion, let customers stick an ice pick into his wooden leg.

Denver’s Trader Vic’s was an immediate hit—elaborately decorated with giant shell lamps, South Seas mosaics, a two-man outrigger canoe suspended from the ceiling, and other tropical curios Bergeron personally collected from Tahiti, Pago, Samoa, Tonga and New Guinea. Denver’s hoopleheads packed the place every night. Whenever Vic passed through Denver, he would hold court with local journalists—regaling them with colorful tales to fill the society pages.

By 1978, Trader Vic’s moved to the Denver Hilton on 16th (now the Sheraton Downtown). The building’s mid-century modern design and swanky location kept the clientele happy for the next few years, but by the 80s, America’s love affair with Polynesian-Pop had waned. The Greatest Generation, with their memories of the Pacific during WWII, were supplanted by cocaine-snorting Yuppies, and, in 1984, the Denver Trader Vic’s shuttered its doors forever.

–– • ––

When Trader Vic moved his Denver operations to the Hilton in 1978, the vacated space in the Cosmopolitan was immediately snatched up by the Don the Beachcomber restaurant. Donn Beach, born Ernest Raymond Gantt, lived an extraordinary life of adventure. He worked odd jobs on steamships across the Pacific during the Great Depression, amassing a treasure trove of Polynesian collectibles along the way. Washing ashore in California during Prohibition, he became a rumrunner, supplying speakeasies with bootleg hooch from Hawai’i.

On the day when Prohibition ended in 1933, he “officially” opened Don’s Beachcomber bar in Hollywood, decorating it with his Polynesian collection. Seeking to distance himself from his bootlegging arrest record, he legally changed his name to Donn Beach. Thus was born the legend of Donn the Beachcomber—inventor of the world’s first tiki bar and Polynesian-Pop culture.

Before Donn, cocktails consisted mostly of alcohol with a splash of flavor. But Donn’s signature drinks, collectively dubbed his Rhum Rhapsodies, were something unique. Previously considered a cheap intoxicant, Donn elevated rum to be respectable. By blending rums and mixing them with fresh juices, he invented most of the classic tropical cocktails we still love today, including the Pearl Diver, Navy Grog, and Zombie.

Briefly, from 1978 to 1984, Denver cocktail enthusiasts had the enviable choice to imbibe the world-renowned tropical elixirs of either Trader Vic Bergeron OR Donn Beach—the two most iconic names in the entire history of American tiki culture. But, just like Vic’s, Don’s would not survive the 80s. Without much fanfare, Don the Beachcomber closed its Denver location in 1986.

–– • ––

Whereas Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s featured top tier cuisine and cocktails in an upscale setting, the Tiki Kai Supper Club in Denver was something a bit more proletariat and, dare I say, lascivious.

The Tiki Kai attracted customers by serving up a glitzy dinner show along with the meal. These were full-blown luau performances replete with jungle drums, hula dancers, and flaming machetes. But the Tiki Kai’s real claim to fame was a scandalous sexcapade which pushed the boundaries of Denver’s mid-sixties puritanical decency standards.

In 1966, management struck upon the idea to add “topless waitresses” and immediately ran afoul of Denver’s Vice Squad. The police bust was front page news for months and waitress Elizabeth Madrid was eventually fined $100 for “performing a lewd act while serving drinks clad only in red tights and a baby-doll sheer pajama top with pasties.”

Reverend Donald O. Larson of the Denver Association of Evangelicals responded to the hullabaloo by demanding a ban on all topless performers in Denver.

“The relaxation of the norms of dress for waitresses, barmaids and topless strippers is not only a flagrant display of exhibitionism and vulgarity, but it also is an assault upon the dignity of womanhood,” the honorable reverend pontificated. “The forces of immorality have initiated a brazen and blatant attack on the major cities of America.”

The Tiki Kai carried on for a few more years before finally closing its doors in 1969.

–– • ––

By the 80s, the Polynesian craze had fizzled and most of the original tiki bars were demolished. But a curious thing happened in the 90s—punks, hot-rodders and lowbrow artists rediscovered the handful of surviving tiki bars and kickstarted a tiki resurgence. Everyone from John Waters to David Lynch to the Cramps began sneaking tiki references into their work. By the mid-aughts, it became an underground trend for Gen X hipsters to roadtrip across the country and hit as many of the golden-age tiki lounges as they could before they vanished forever.

Thanks to the present-day craft-cocktail movement, we’re in the midst of a third wave of tiki. There are over a dozen tiki festivals across the U.S., and the Denver-Boulder area has 5-9 tiki bars, depending on how hard you gatekeep. Adrift, Hell or High Water, the Electric Cure, Swalo’s and Bernard’s Tiki Room are all sure to wet your whistle. There’s a Denver Tiki Tribe Facebook group with around a thousand members, a local chapter of a tiki secret society called the Fraternal Order of Moai, and plans are in the works for Denver’s first goth-tiki festival in 2026.

I reached out to Lexi Healey, impresaria of Denver’s Hell or High Water and the Electric Cure tiki bars, to get her take on the scene today:

Denver’s tiki scene makes about as much sense as a beach in a snowstorm, yet here we are—mixing Mai Tais a mile high like it’s the tropics. With a new wave of wildly creative bartenders shaking things up, a die-hard tribe of eccentric tiki enthusiasts, and national collaborations fueling the momentum, Denver’s tiki revival has officially arrived.

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It’s Monday evening and I’m parked illegally on Colfax, walking through cones and rubble with a heavy bundle of paper in each hand—what gym rats call a farmer’s carry. In theory, publishing this magazine would be a glamorous enterprise. In reality, it’s a paper route at age 37. Being a small business owner, as folks along this street will tell you, is a…

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I think the war is already lost. I think we’re doomed. Let’s… Let’s win a few battles along the way.”

I listen as Todd Madison, 11-12th grade English teacher at East High School, utters a swan song for his profession.

“We always hear about those Japanese soldiers after World War II who kept fighting for years or even decades, not knowing it’s over. And that’s what I feel about myself right now,” he says. “The war’s already over, but I’m going to keep fighting while I can… have a few victories.”

Meanwhile, right down the hall from Madison, fellow teacher Jason Sternberg sings a different tune. “I call it my friend Chad,” he says, referring to ChatGPT. He elaborates that, while he’s opposed to students using these tools for significant assignments, he’s more optimistic about AI in the classroom. In fact, he’s quite open about employing the technology himself. “I can just be like, ‘Hey, can you take this information and put it into a handout for a kid?’” he says. “Then I look over it, make sure that everything is legit, because I definitely recognize the limitations and the fact that it could make things up. But I just find it to be a tool for convenience.”

Madison and Sternberg represent a broader division on AI in education. The technology’s introduction—or imposition, depending on your view—has led to a Wild West scenario where rules and philosophies diverge dramatically from classroom to classroom. And as educators wrestle with the new reality, lines are being drawn, with neither side certain of what’s to come and students caught in the middle.

“I don’t think the administration knows what to do,” reported K, a senior at the Denver School for the Arts. “And I honestly think that has backed them into a corner, because I don’t think they can talk about it.”

K explained that, during their sophomore year, teachers and administrators took more of a hardline approach to AI. “There was a no-tolerance policy,” K said. “If you were caught using AI, it would be an automatic zero, things like that. But since then, things have softened, and I think it’s because teachers can’t really do anything about it. I was talking to my film studies teacher last year, and he said that he knows a lot of the work is written by AI, but that it’s just too out of hand.”

Interviews with other students and teachers in Denver confirmed K’s account. At the beginning, AI-assisted homework was treated like plagiarism. After all, a student using AI is passing someone else’s work for their own—even if that “someone” isn’t a someone in the traditional sense.

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The leasing professional (let’s call her M) had decided to be honest with me. We were sitting in the offices of one of Denver’s many new luxury apartment complexes—“luxury” a byword of the real estate world as meaningless as “premier” or “premium.” But it looked nice enough. Stainless steel fixtures and cream-white walls. I imagined turning the knobs of a kitchen faucet and unleashing a fat high-pressure stream instead of the sad, spindly dribble I was used to.

But beyond the amenities, M lamented, the place was cheap in the ways that mattered. “Whenever the people upstairs walk from their bed to the living room, I can hear every step,” she said.

She started venting about the market, explaining how some developers and contractors would cut corners in build quality, or rely on cheap, shortsighted gimmicks to attract tenants. There were complexes with built-in bars and clubs with rotating DJs—part of a movement to create a 24/7 party atmosphere in the place where you were supposed to rest your head, with varying degrees of success.

The prime example was X Denver—a complex opened in 2021 in the Union Station neighborhood west of Coors Field. Originally outfitted with a built-in restaurant, a large gym, a bar, workspaces, and a yoga studio, X Denver was marketed as a social paradise for young, attractive tenants who wanted to live the high life downtown, even if they had to be packed into co-occupied living spaces, with four or more residents sharing a single living room and kitchen. When I visited the complex to see the experiment myself, a different leasing pro (let’s call him K) gave me a tour and informed me that the experience was similar to living in a dorm.

“I think there was a bunch of trust fund kids drunk at dinner who thought of this,” K said, as we entered the complex’s abandoned dining area. It turned out that operating a full-service restaurant on the 12th floor of an apartment complex was a difficult enterprise. No longer serving meals, the space had been converted to yet another workspace. It was completely empty—like the pool area, also on the 12th floor.

K guided me outside. The bar by the pool was closed, as was the pool itself, under maintenance, K said. The vacant cement deck radiated with afternoon heat, and it was dead quiet as I looked around the giant slab, trying to imagine the party.

“That looks a little treacherous,” I said, gesturing to a sheer edge by the pool area—a sudden drop, with decorative concrete tiers and hard edges below. No railing.

“Super treacherous,” said K. “I think they were building this during COVID, and they maybe weren’t getting those same regulators coming through. I’m not exactly sure, but I totally agree.”

Fortunately, nobody was out poolside getting tipsy. As K and I took the elevator down, I wondered how someone could live in this building and call it home.

“You have no idea what’s coming down the pike,” M told me in her office, citing a new complex down in Phoenix—an entire building themed after the Mario Kart franchise. Developers, it seemed, were going to extreme ends to attract qualified tenants.

“But who would live in places like that?” I asked. “I can see someone in their early twenties maybe living there for a year or two as a goof, but you’re not going to stay long-term.”

“Places like that don’t care about you being there long-term,” she said. “If you move out after a year or two, it gives them a chance to hike up rents on the next person.”

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The voice on the line shocks me. For weeks, I’d been tracking down the person responsible for a message I couldn’t escape. I saw it in Baker. I saw it in Cap Hill. Behind a high fence rolled with razor wire, in the upper part of RiNo where the mural-rich neighborhood relapses into grit, there it was: OHURT.

A message. But also a name, a persona. Self-promotion is rampant in graffiti culture. The more your name is “up,” the better. As I’m later told, “It’s like marketing without a college degree.” Graffiti artists compete for wall space the same way corporate brands muscle for airtime—one of these isn’t trying to sell you something, and that’s the one that’s illegal.

So when I started exchanging messages with Ohurt, it was a criminal I pictured—an image my mind and the world’s penal systems mostly code as male. But speaking to me late at night, from a blocked number, is the bright voice of a young woman. She laughs at my confusion and agrees to let me tag along.

A month later, Ohurt and her husband pick me up in an SUV en route to zones of vandalism. It’s about midnight, and I’m wearing dark clothes, as instructed. The weeds in the planters outside my complex bend with late winter gusts. I feel the chill enter my fingers and worry I didn’t layer properly, as instructed.

“Are you excited?” Ohurt’s husband asks me from the driver’s seat. The whole sequence makes me feel like a kid. In Ohurt’s world, that’s what I am though—despite her being about a decade my junior.

Ohurt is in her mid-twenties, and there’s absolutely nothing about her appearance that strikes me as tough. As she turns her head, I notice a bow in her hair, white ribbons falling down her back—ostentatiously girlish, the kind of thing you’d see a fourth grader wear on a field trip to the state fair.

“Yeah, I’ve never done anything like this before,” I admit.

We joke a bit about the risks of journalism. The SUV and the good humor of my subjects put me at ease, but I’d sent screenshots of my interactions with Ohurt to a close friend before heading out, just in case. “Writing is a contact sport,” Ohurt’s husband had said after joining us on that first phone call. In this context, “writing” meant graffiti, with artists referring to themselves as “writers.” By “contact sport,” he meant that violence is always a possibility.

We’re heading south on Broadway, on our way to fix a diss. A local crew (a band of graffiti artists) has been messing with Ohurt’s tags, sometimes crossing her name out, sometimes writing their handle over hers. Despite its illicit nature, graffiti is rife with protocol. It even appears to have its own class system. If someone has already tagged a spot, especially if the artist is established—and not a “toy,” a derogatory term for graffiti newbies and dilettantes—it’s considered an insult to tamper with their art.

In this case, a crew using the tag “KE” (short for “Kill Em All” according to Ohurt) has sabotaged Ohurt’s tags on some shipping containers off Santa Fe. KE is a bigger and more intimidating operation, Ohurt says, with dozens of people in the crew, and they’re not just claiming walls as canvas; they’re marking territory.

“A lot of writers come from gangs,” says Ohurt. “But I don’t think you have to come from a gang to do graffiti.”

Ohurt comments on how her background makes her an anomaly in the culture. First, of course, she’s a woman. While female writers do exist, Ohurt says, it’s rare that they’re involved with the riskier streetside vandalism of tagging billboards and rooftops. Second, she’s middle class. Her father is a local business owner, and she doesn’t have a criminal background beyond her current endeavors. Third, she’s an independent artist—not part of a crew. And, according to Ohurt, this is what has led to the beef with other artists in the area.

“If you get up enough, crews will ask you to get with them and throw them up so that they’re more seen,” Ohurt says, explaining that she’s declined every offer she’s received. Ohurt has been writing for about four years, but, after a skateboarding accident where she broke her arm and her jaw, her tagging routine became constant and her work began catching the attention of established crews.

Up to that point, Ohurt had been using graffiti to express inner pain—her battles with anxiety and depression. “It was definitely an outlet to feel…seen,” she says. However, with her jaw wired and her arm in a sling, Ohurt found even more reasons to turn to the streets for therapy, and her tagging accelerated to a breakneck pace. “We’d be walking probably five to ten miles a night in the summer. For like six hours. Till the sunrise sometimes,” says Ohurt.

It wasn’t long before Ohurt’s tags were everywhere, and local crews began calling on her to work with them. “It’s like a sales company hiring a really good marketing agent,” her husband explains.

However, Ohurt wanted to remain independent, and it was when she began rejecting the advances of these crews, she says, that resentment began to build and she started receiving threats online.

“There’s a lot of politics in the graffiti world. The threats are crazy. They go deep,” says Ohurt, claiming that she has received pictures of guns from taggers who think she’s edging in on their turf. Most alarming was a recent incident where a picture of her in a bikini circulated among members of a crew.

“It got scary,” Ohurt says. “Graffiti is supposed to be really anonymous. But these people got pictures of me and were sending them around.”

And while the politics and the threats haven’t stopped Ohurt from writing, they have had an impact on the way she views graffiti. “I got involved way more than I wanted to be involved,” she says. “I didn’t want to be this known, I guess. It just kind of happened. It was really compulsive for me. But I never expected to piss so many people off. It was such a joy for me and felt so special, and then when other people got involved, I just didn’t want to paint anymore.”

We pull up behind a car wash. Ohurt and her husband take a telescoping metal ladder, along with a few spray cans, out of the back of their car, and we walk up an embankment until we reach an array of derelict shipping containers. Gravel crunches beneath our shoes, mixing with the soughing of sparse late-night traffic on the road behind us.

“Have you ever encountered another person tagging while you’re out?” I ask.

“It does happen,” says Ohurt’s husband. “Most of the time people will just ask you what you write and leave you alone. One night we ran into three guys from this group called RGK, but that was really chill. But then later, as internet politics started to unfold, they reached out to us and said that if they ever saw us again, they’d take our paint, which is like a big diss. You have to fight for your paint.”

“This is people’s life,” adds Ohurt. “It means everything to them.”

“Some people are really territorial, but other people like Ohurt just want to get really good. And there’s people in Denver who have been doing this for like 50 years, and they don’t fight because they have nothing to prove. They’re just really talented,” says her husband.

After examining the diss she received from KE on the side of a shipping container, Ohurt scales her ladder and begins working on a “throw”—a more elaborate form of graffiti denoted by large bubbly lettering and often stylized to the point of illegibility. Ohurt’s husband steadies the ladder while she focuses on writing. The work is hard, especially during the colder months when the can gets icy in your hand and scaling billboards, fire escapes, and other urban features becomes more treacherous. “Those billboards wobble a lot. It’s terrifying. But it’s exhilarating, you know, Ohurt tells me.

In the graffiti world, the harder-to-reach a spot is, the more impressive tagging it becomes. Ohurt cites a throw across from the downtown Warwick Hotel as one of her favorites. “She can get anywhere. She’s so small,” says Ohurt’s husband, who will encourage his 5’ 4” wife to reach riskier spots, despite her fear of heights.

Originally bonding over skateboarding, Ohurt and her husband, who writes under the handle “Fewer,” eventually discovered a shared love of graffiti when they started dating. “We just had all the same interests, knew the same artists. So I started pushing her to get into it. Sometimes I pushed her too hard,” says Ohurt’s husband. “I had friends who’d really succeeded in the graffiti world. Not that there’s money in it. They were just very known.”

Since then, on their mission to “be seen,” the pair estimates that they’ve done over 1,000 tags throughout the city, with hundreds of throws. “Throws are harder,” says Ohurt. “It’s a lot of paint, and in Denver not every spot has longevity. All the spots are getting buffed a lot, so it makes it harder to paint or to want to paint.”

“Buffing” refers to the cleaning up of graffiti by the city or by property owners. I question Ohurt about the damage graffiti might pose to small businesses, and she explains that, among established writers, churches, schools, and small businesses are considered off-limits.

“I was out by the library, and I saw ‘Ohurt’ on a mural on the side of City O’ City,” I mention.

“That was me,” says Ohurt’s husband. “I was going over someone I didn’t like. They were already there.”

“If you’re a real writer, you won’t go out and do that stuff,” says Ohurt. “It just makes you look bad to other writers if you’re out there breaking the rules.”

“When we passed Book Mall, was that you breaking the rules?” I ask, referring to a tag the pair had pointed out earlier on the side of the Broadway bookstore’s roof.

“Not really, because it’s just on the roof and it’s small. If I had done a throw or something on the windows, writers would think it was shitty,” Ohurt replies.

“I have an interesting take on that,” Ohurt’s husband breaks in. “Hers is probably right. Like, Book Mall is cute. You’re like this liberal bookstore probably, and, like, there’s some lesbian chick working there, and I should respect that, but also they’re white, rich-ish people that have probably kicked Mexicans out of that business, or blacks out of that business, or natives out of that business or something. I think, like, fuck every business.”

“I don’t think that at all,” says Ohurt.

“It sucks because her dad owns a small business,” continues her husband. “But as a business owner, I would expect that—whether it’s a heroin needle or a tag on the side of the building.”

***

We end the night at the Evans Yard, a trainyard Ohurt and her husband describe as a legendary site for Denver graffiti, with writers coming from all over the nation to throw their name on the wall that runs beside the train tracks.

The proof is apparent. As we walk together, following the bend of cold light reflecting on the tracks, hundreds of names come into view, thousands maybe. Suddenly absorbed, Ohurt and her husband begin speaking in a private language: “There’s Hofcrew! Damn 4get just clipping Lower with the ‘G’… God, I love him. He changed the style… That’s a Voice throw! I’ve never seen a Voice throw… It’s really good. It might be from the 90s. I don’t know.”

I’m lost in the jargon, scanning the wall of names—each one a coded broadcast of a writer’s existence, a more artful “I was here” ironically inaccessible to the masses, mingling instead with other voices of the underground—communicating, competing. All of these names, all of these hours of work done in the dark at great personal risk. No profit and no popular acclaim. Just this deep need to write, to be seen. We turn around and head back to the car, but we could have kept going. The wall stretches on out of sight.

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