A “gaudy spectacle of Americana” is one description I’ve seen of Denver’s Colfax Avenue, a thoroughfare that Playboy magazine saw fit to dub the country’s “wickedest street”.

The just-starting-out Bob Dylan and Smothers Brothers worked the avenue, while more recently “South Park” has made its Casa Bonita Mexican restaurant infamous. At the Ogden Theater on East Colfax, seen above, Houdini once performed, probably not long after it was built in 1919.

Harry was here with vaudeville, but here as elsewhere the stage yielded to the movie screen, then closed, and then was reopened, in the Ogden’s case in 1993 — as a popular concert venue, with the likes of Green Day, the Allman Brothers, Smashing Pumpkins and the Goo Goo Dolls making good use once more of the stage.