Glass, Moon, Brick

These are from downtown Denver, Fall 2006. The area around the pedestrian mall is pleasant yet artificial, making it the perfect place for a Starbucks.

Every American city these days seems to have a tourist zone or convention zone: A lively area stocked with chain stores to bring in the money, where locals fear to tread. There is about a two-block radius around the Verizon Center in D.C. that is now as crowded as Times Square. People go there to see a hockey game, or view Lincoln's final resting place, or visit an Irish pub that spells its name out in Chinese characters because it is in Chinatown.

What I like more about Denver, though, is how within what is mostly an anodyne urban setting, you can see traces of an old-fashioned Western settlement.