The digital clock in the dashboard of the black Nissan Maxima read five minutes after five in the morning as Frank Lontine took a swig from the bottle of Bacardi Limón he’d been working on since midnight. It was Friday, August 11. Lontine pushed six bullets into the cylinder of…

In April, Derek Empey, vice president of development in the San Diego office of the Morgan Group, released an intriguing memo to his co-workers. A sort of Sun Tzu’s Art of War for hawkish developers, it’s titled “How to Play the Game: 10 Lessons Learned From Infill Developments.” Lesson number…

Fifteen-year-old Denver School of the Arts sophomore Charly Lewis refers to his most recent bust for illegal skateboarding as “the alleged trespassing incident.” It happened last month. Summer vacation had just begun. “It was a beautiful day,” Lewis recalls. “It was the kind of day where I didn’t care what…

The beggars of Denver call it “flying a sign.” The endeavor’s only requirements are a scrap of wood or cardboard, a magic marker, and a willingness to stand all day like a scarecrow in the sun, washing down the taunts of strangers with the exhaust from their cars. Get a…

Sunday morning, coming down, Charles Caesar raises the dusty left cuff of his blue jeans to show off the burn scar on his leg. “Passed out on a steam grate,” he explains. Caesar is 43, homeless, and addicted to alcohol. “People look at me and think ‘drunk Indian.’ Really, I’m…

For a casino in Colorado to demand that its housekeepers stop speaking Spanish on the job would seem as plausible a management decision as requiring poker dealers to wear mirrored cufflinks. Even so, the management of Colorado Central Station Casino stands accused of enforcing an illegal “English-only” policy in the…