Gay sports bar Tight End on East Colfax assures customers it’s open despite road construction. | Photo by Bret Thorn
I don’t use the word “notorious” very often, because it’s awfully dramatic, nor the word “authentic,” because what does that even mean?
But East Colfax Avenue in Denver is both of those things, and I’ve been strolling down the 40-block stretch between Broadway and Colorado Boulevard for 50 years now.
Yes, I have lived in New York City for the past 27 years, but I grew up two-and-a-half blocks from Colfax, and every single visit to the city requires a stroll along this crazy strip of shops. They range from natural product stores to tattoo parlors, cannabis dispensaries to used record emporiums to sex shops, liquor and convenience stores. There are dive bars and trend-forward cocktail bars, concert venues, hotels of questionable repute, and also East High School, which I attended, the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, and the state capitol.
And of course there are lots of restaurants, from Mexican restaurants to Greek diners to the first Ethiopian restaurant I ever went to. There’s also a Popeyes and a Taco Bell — and a McDonald’s right next to the cathedral (seriously), and assorted other chains that come and go.
My favorite block at the moment is East Colfax between Franklin and Humboldt streets. That’s where a gay sports bar called Tight End is located, across the street from a tattoo parlor, a sushi bar and Voodoo Doughnut. So many worthwhile places within a few paces of each other. 
I’ve been walking down Colfax since, well, child protective services could easily have been called on my parents. But I was fine. Five decades of strolling, people watching, head scratching, 17 viewings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Ogden Theatre before I turned 14 (why they let me in is beyond me) and I’ve had many funny incidents, but no dangerous ones, and lots of great food.
And also drinks — I’ve started writing this at a coffeehouse called Hooked on Colfax.
A scruffy man just walked in asking if I was looking for “cheap artwork.” I politely declined.
Many efforts have been made to gentrify East Colfax, and the street just laughs and shrugs it off. The drifters who wander down it from the bus station downtown, the people of middling sanity who seek like-minded souls there, and, I suppose, those of us who simply like a bit of weirdness, anchor the place.
Currently the street is torn up with construction for a dedicated bus lane with elevated platforms, due for completion in 2028, but Colfax is muddling through.
And efforts at gentrification continue. The space that once was Rocksbar, a chaotic place that I never visited (and from what I gather, many people who have don’t quite remember what they did), is now Fino. It opened about a month ago in the refurbished All Inn, a former motel that’s now a boutique hotel.
I had Fino’s Medi Nachos — kettle chips topped with prosciutto, garlic, toum, a northern Italian tonnato sauce and Reggiano cheese — charred Savoy cabbage with cauliflower, brown butter, crispy capers and lemon, and extraordinary squares of Japanese sweet potato topped with coconut almond dukkah, vanilla, labneh and herb salad.
Cocktails there are equally ambitious, including a list of “freezer pours” that included The Long Dusk with Olmeco Altos reposado tequila, Vago Elote mezcal, Benedictine, sweet vermouth, cacao and hojicha tea.
Not far away at Ma’s Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant that opened in February, I had an expressive cocktail of reposado tequila, pandan liqueur, demerara sugar and cold brew coffee. That followed a salad of wood ear mushrooms with sesame in a tangy dressing accompanied by tender fried chicken bites in a Sichuan peppercorn sauce washed down by a nice Pinot Grigio.
And at Uptown Banh Mi & Grill I had a pho-bánh mì-French dip hybrid — the fixin’s of pho on a roll with a side of beef broth with Vietnamese aromatics.
Scary, right?
A lot of people certainly think so. Coloradans who haven’t taken the time to visit Colfax express shock and horror at people who do. Visitors to Denver are warned away from it on no uncertain terms.
What can I say? I certainly can’t guarantee your safety as you walk by comic book stores and bars with axe throwing, let alone Kavasutra, one of the only bars in the country specializing in the Polynesian stimulant kava, or the place that offers something called “probiotic dentistry.”
But I, personally, have no regrets about the time I’ve spent there.
