I took the light rail train down to Denver's 16th Street Mall the Sunday before last to walk around and take a few photographs, and was happy to see the Christmas lights were still up. It definitely brightens the place up, especially when the streets are still wet from a recent snowstorm. The 16th Street Mall, by the way, is Denver's top tourist attraction. It has restaurants and tourist oriented shops, but not a single department store. When I first moved here, it had 5, but as their leases expired, they all left, and the hipsters gradually took over.
And so these days the 16th Street Mall and Lower Downtown are a big nightclub district. The bars all close at 2:00 A.M., and thousands of well-lubricated party animals pour into the streets at the same time, often starting fights, urinating in alleys and doorways, and sometimes having the occasional shootout. The rest of the time, the area is very safe, although last summer homeless transients made their home on the 16th Street Mall for a while, and in one notable incident, a homeless person started attacking passersby with a large pipe. Since then, there has been a significant police presence on the mall, since the tourist crowd gets all sensitive when they are chased by homeless people with lead pipes. Wimps.
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