the long and winding road

Playboy magazine has called Colfax Street in Denver “the longest, wildest street in America.” It’s long, all right – 26 miles, which makes it the longest city street in the country. But wild? Well, kind of seedy in some parts; but like Denver itself, it’s all things to all people.
It’s an east-west road that actually goes through four cities – Golden, Lakewood, Denver, and Aurora. (I’ll save the bizarre “flowing grid” system of urban planning, which makes this place so confusing, for another day.) The western end of the road is near Lookout Mountain, where Wild West icon Buffalo Bill Cody is buried. Past Colfax, you have the sensational drive into the mountains or down into Morrison and Red Rocks Amphitheatre. But stay on Colfax, and you go past the very upscale Colorado Mills mall on the edge of Lakewood. It’s kind of like Triangle Town Center, with outparcels for high-falutin’ chain restaurants splattered helter-skelter all over the place. Like Denver, this stretch of road is a microcosm of everything west of the Mississippi. Looking for a bit of the old west? There’s a diner, complete with a fake horse on top, that offers “chuckwagon breakfasts” for a reasonable price. If the Southwest is more your thing, there’s plenty of adobe, Mexican restaurants, Spanish-tailored businesses, and stands on the side of the road selling “real ancho chilis from New Mexico.” Or if your idea of “Western” goes along the lines of “California hippie,” there’s Heads of State, which sells, um, alternative tobacco products; Vitamin Cottage, the natural food store; and a few herbalists and earth-goddess-type joints.
For you jingoistic “We’re number one” types, there’s a run-down hotel with a huge sign that says, “PROUDLY OWNED AND OPERATED BY AMERICANS.” There are a few strip clubs. You go right past the Colorado capital and the city offices of Aurora. It’s also home to Denver’s best record shops, music clubs, one great used bookstore, and several funky boutiques. Unfortunately, this is also the stretch where Colfax earns its reputation because, as everyone in Denver knows, this is where you go to buy smack. Or where you go to use smack. Or where you go to prostitute yourself for smack. Or where you go to die from using smack. As much as I love peeking into the shops during the day, I confess I’m way too much of a chicken to visit them at night.
Once you’re on the other side of Aurora, closer to Denver International Airport, the claustrophobic city detritus falls away, you look around, and you realize: Once you got into Aurora, this road was pretty flat. And now you can see that there’s just nothing around you. This is why, before it was known as the Mile High City, Denver was called the Queen City – because it was (and is) the largest city in the Great Plains. It’s easy to forget once you’re in town. But travel ten minutes or so east and you realize, this place is frickin’ flat, just an expanse of tan grass and blue sky. And then Colfax dumps you, without warning, onto Interstate 70. The End of the Road.

So, to sum up: Long, yes. Wild, well, OK, but obviously Playboy hasn’t visited Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville. Now, that’s wild.