This time last year I was plotting to kill a man. I was going to walk up to him, reintroduce myself and then blow his balls off. I was going to watch him writhe like a poisoned cockroach for a few seconds, then kick him onto his stomach and put…

Last July 3 was a gorgeous day, about 85 degrees by early afternoon, and the 37-year-old park visitor was dressed for a spirited summer outing. He wore a hot-pink tank top over a woman’s black, one-piece bathing suit filled out nicely by the pair of latex breasts strapped to his…

Amid the nourishing chaos of city life, we urban dwellers find ourselves brain-deep in startling juxtapositions. Mid-morning one Tuesday, a formation of squawking geese sweeps its shadow across a used-bookstore window, dimming the dog-eared covers of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, and Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol. An instant later,…

All day and all night, I stand here, never moving, on the same sad patch of trampled grass while strangers use me. Eight minutes for 35 cents. A lot of the folks in my ‘hood don’t even pay; they just stick their grubby fingers in my slot and root around…

The two tickets in the scalper’s hands are so hot he should be wearing oven mitts. They read: “Oakland Raiders v. Denver Broncos, Monday, September 22, Section 104, Row 8.” Way down low, on the forty-yard line. Face value: $78 each. The scalper is demanding $500 for the pair. And…

Downtown/Capitol Hill/Denver/Any corner/Any alley/Light posts/Sidewalks/Brick walls/Graffiti or art?/Artists or criminals? Either way it’s poetry to me. That verse is the prologue to Laura Russell’s book Urban Poetry, a collection of images of stencil graffiti in central and downtown Denver that Russell, a photographer from Bellingham, Washington, shot over a one-year…

He is a radical in Republican’s clothing: khakis, loafers, blazer over crisp button-down shirt. Completing the look is the golden retriever trotting merrily beside him as he strolls down Pennsylvania Street between 12th and 13th avenues. The hour is odd, nearly 3 a.m., but he doesn’t look out of place…

Thirty minutes before kickoff on the night of the much-hyped Monday Night Football game between the Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders, the concrete pavilion outside Invesco Field at Mile High was invaded by tens of thousands of football fans in uniform. Mixed in with the middle-aged, open-beer-can-carrying, potbellied rival…

It comes wrapped in red foil and purple tissue, this intricate figurine molded in the form of a Japanese demon, with clawed feet, a mane of fire and a thick tongue jutting from a bloodthirsty smirk. Transparent, the size of a child’s fist, it looks like a tiny ice carving…

After last call at the Church, where techno legend Carl Cox had just rocked a sweaty, stylish crowd, laughing throngs of Fourth of July weekend revelers buzzed past both ends of the alley running behind the club. Deep in the shadows, hidden behind a fort of blue recycling bins, Bear…

It must be Sunday, because Sword of the Lord is faith-healing on the 15 bus. “I’m Sword of the Lord,” he proclaims upon boarding RTD’s East Colfax line. “I’ve come to save souls and heal the sick. Amen!” Like his faith, Sword of the Lord’s afro is big and wild…

You are an RTD bus driver, and like all of RTD’s 2,397 employees, you have recently completed a federally mandated anti-terrorism training course titled “System Security Awareness for Transit Employees.” Now you are pulling a graveyard shift on route 15, the notorious, endless traverse of East Colfax Avenue. You see…

Somewhere at the bottom of Grasmere Lake is an Egyptian-made assault rifle with an empty clip. It was manufactured in Cairo and then shipped to Scottie’s Guns & Militaria on East Colfax Avenue, just a short walk from the elegant Park Hill home where Justin Green grew up and where…

Twenty minutes ago, I popped a pair of tiny white pills, each containing 25 milligrams of pure ephedrine. And right about now, I’m channeling the Latter-day Saints of the Wild West. I’m kicking back frontier-style with a steaming cup of Brigham Tea, and I’m thinking to myself: Fuck coffee. This…

The drive-thru outside the McDonald’s on Colorado Boulevard just south of Bruce Randolph Avenue is a typical fast-food express lane in every way but one: Planted next to the squawking speaker box, in the shadow of the Golden Arches, is a strange green sign. “Welcome to Our Backyard Habitat,” it…

I was never afraid of elevators until I rode in the elevators at the Regency Hotel. There are three of them, equally spooky, lit with bare white fluorescent bulbs. Carved swastikas and gang symbols scar the wood-paneled walls. The emergency-phone compartments hold dangling wires, pistachio shells, cigarette butts, scorched pizza…

He had the camera, the studio and the guns. She had the tribal tattoos, the icy blue eyes and the desire. They met on the Internet in May 2000 in a chat room for Colorado singles. They volleyed flirtatious notes. She told him her name was Katica, pronounced “Kah-tee-kah.” It’s…

The multi-ethnic rap group Black Eyed Peas went gold in 1998 with “Joints and Jams,” a celebration of diversity among urban party-music fans. The song’s most popular chant-along refrain has been so heavily sampled in subsequent club hits that it’s become a sort of sonic manifesto for the United Nations…

Every night at seven, sixty-year-old Naim Amini calls his eldest daughter from prison. It’s been their ritual since Amini was incarcerated three years ago. During their conversations, he’s often told her, “After every darkness, there is daylight. Allah will answer our prayers.” On Thursday, January 16, his daughter picked up…

As a Florida schoolboy, Gary Nurkiewicz used to take his dad’s Nazi propaganda films for show- and-tell. “They’re 16-millimeter, so it was easy enough to just throw them on the classroom projector and go for it,” he says. Four decades later, Nurkiewicz realized that the reels he’d nonchalantly lugged around…

God said, “Love thy neighbor.” He did not say, “Love thy neighbor…unless you live in Lakewood.” Somebody wasn’t playing by God’s rules one morning last month when they left a blue plastic bag on Diane Caoua’s driveway. Inside was a hate letter, pasted onto Colorado Christian University letterhead. Small type…

The voice in his ear kept whispering, “This is only a formality.” It whispered other things, but they were mostly gibberish. The one phrase he could understand was “This is only a formality.” The voice whispered it while he worried whether the judge would ever ask him to explain his…