There probably are plenty of places in Denver where you can see a clump of tourists, all in navy-colored polo shirts, cameras smashed against their faces, crane their necks and tilt their heads skyward in unison like a pack of flamingos.

It’s not hard to find a homeless guy dragging a suitcase on wheels or to spot children playing in fountains or twirling in circles so their pink fairy costumes billow. You could maybe even find a shirtless man playing a green upright piano for tips.

But odds are there is only one place in the city where you can see all that. In the same day.

That place is the 16th Street Mall.

Colfax may be longer and Federal Boulevard may be a multicultural bazaar, but the 16th Street Mall is where we get a taste of the gritty, big city. It is the mile-long cultural buffet where our collective achievements and our societal shortcomings stand side by side.

As the mall approaches its 30th birthday next year, it is maturing and has very nearly realized its creators’ vision.

Every day, before the morning cool bakes away and office workers come stalking caffeine, a purple-shirted army bearing dustpans and brooms deploys.

Like Indy pit crews, the Downtown Denver Partnership workers swarm the trash bins, rouse the snoozing street campers, and sweep and power-wash away the previous 24 hours’ sins and stains.

By about 10 a.m., the crowds start to materialize. And about that time, a sidewalk gauntlet forms. There are the Voice vendors, the homeless or recently homeless trying to work their way back to at least stability, by selling newspapers about homeless issues.

There are coupon guys and the “cause solicitors.”

In T-shirt uniforms, wielding spiral notebooks and custom come-ons, troops of college-age people solicit cash support for nonprofits from Greenpeace to Planned Parenthood.

“Do you have a minute for the environment?”

Often as not, the response is “NO.”

Most of them remain cheerful, even when cursed, mocked or ignored.

Nikki Higgins asks 10 to 20 strangers every hour to help a child in need, on behalf of Children International.

Standing on the mall from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the past several months has given her some insight into the human condition.

“People are just angry,” she said. But “there are kind-hearted people who make up for the mean ones.”

It helps, too, that Higgins is paid by the hour.

As Higgins chatted, she missed the scene unfolding behind her.

A pair of stiff white arms stretched toward the sky began gliding into a Denver Pavilions courtyard.

Closer inspection revealed that the arms were attached to a plaid-shirted torso, which, in turn was connected to a blue- jeaned set of legs being propelled on a rolling cart.

The cart was pushed by Connie Brown, who is not a ghoul or mannequin thief, but the marketing coordinator for Denver Pavilions.

It was the first of the month — time for a costume change, Brown explained.

So goodbye Trendy Tourist — as the pale headless gentleman was known — and hello Stylish Student.

Tourists, trendy and otherwise, were all over the place in July, Brown said later. “The tourist market has really, really come back.”

Mall tax revenues are tallied with all of downtown. Last year, downtown sales-tax collections were just shy of $32 million, or about 7 percent of all sales taxes collected in the city, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership.

All on the mall

Around noon on any given day, 7,100 people pass by the Pavilions at 16th and Glenarm streets, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership, the authority on most things mall-related.

And, on any given day, there’s a chance one of those folks might be Storm Foster.

He would be hard to miss.

One sunny August morning, Foster said, “I woke up, went out on my balcony, looked over the city and asked myself, ‘What do I want to wear today?’ “

Foster responded: Red suspenders, a black leather motorcycle cap, a studded leather choker around his neck and miniature versions around each wrist. He carried a pink “Girls Rule” bag and a rainbow-striped golf umbrella. Blue surgical scrubs were his pants.

Foster, 53, grew up mostly in Denver, one of 13 children of an Air Force father. He worked in restaurants from one end of downtown to the other before he got sick. Now on disability, he lives in a subsidized apartment and is a fixture in the subculture of mall regulars.

Strolling south toward Colfax, where he had a lunch appointment, Foster kept an eye out for mall acquaintances, most of whom were absent.

“Oh, I know,” he said, finally. “They’re all out cashing their checks.”

First of the month, he explained is when the disability checks come, and many of the mall regulars are off cashing them, and most likely shopping and celebrating.

They probably don’t have to go far to find whatever it is they need.

On the mall you can get:

• Your caricature made;

• Driven around in a horse- drawn carriage;

• A dental exam;

• Chocolate-covered “moose droppings”;

• Hauled away to one of the few “drunk tanks” in the area.

Of course, Denver Cares, a Denver Health program, doesn’t refer to itself as a “drunk tank.” It is a cost-saving alternative to jail, where the publicly inebriated have a secure place to sleep and an indoor spot to urinate. They also can get food, and, if necessary, medical care.

Through July, Denver Cares had taken more than 4,000 intoxicated people off city streets. And along with the Colfax corridor and Lower Downtown, the 16th Street mall is a major supplier of guests to Denver Cares, said Denver Health spokeswoman Julie Lonborg.

Cultural cross-section

You can also get directions, information about the mall or downtown from Jay Wozney or one of 12 other yellow-shirted mall ambassadors who are on duty in warmer months.

You could also get directions from Foster. If he has time, he’ll even walk the floundering tourist to his destination.

“I don’t want anybody getting lost,” he said, tapping his giant umbrella on the sidewalk.

Ten feet from where Foster stood, a blond woman sat on a bench, conversing. Hers was not the high-volume blast downtown regulars learn to identify with people trying to drown out unseen voices.

Her words came in a steady up and down cadence, rising in spots as if asking a question, becoming forceful then trailing off, in the manner of apparent gently scolding a child.

Most people, when they get physically ill, like to crawl into bed and pull the covers over their heads for the duration.

“With the mentally ill, it’s the opposite,” said Rick Durity of the Mental Health Corp. of Denver.

Instinctively, the mentally ill seem to sense that going out into the community of downtown allows them more security.

Of the homeless who are disabled, nearly 20 percent are mentally ill, according to the latest survey by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative.

Two grants that pair MHCD with Denver’s Road Home to help the mentally ill who are homeless have gotten 15 people who had been living on the mall into treatment and housing over the past five years, said MHCD project coordinator Chris Christner.

In the first two quarters of this year, arrests among MHCD downtown clients were down 83 percent, detox stays down 83 percent and ER visits down 93 percent, he said.

As budget cuts threaten social programs, MHCD hopes it can convince merchants and city leaders that treating the mentally ill is good for downtown, Christner said.

Infusion of life

That the mall would become a de facto shelter for the homeless and mentally ill was not what its creators had in mind.

What they envision was an infusion of life — and commerce of the legal variety — into a threadbare city center.

The first step was to put the brakes on an “urban renewal” juggernaut that bulldozed many turn-of-the-20th century buildings. Then, in the late 1970s, the city began to rezone.

This was the heyday of the concrete skyscraper movement. And going against that grain produced a lot of hollering around city hall, said City Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman, who was then on the planning board.

When the fighting ended, the mall was one of the few places where the term “sunshine law” is meant literally.

“You can imagine property owners had visions of building high-rises, but we were worried that it would look like the canyon on 17th Street,” Susman said. “We wanted sunlight on the mall.”

To ensure that sunlight, new buildings on the southwest side of 16th Street can’t be higher than four or five stories.

The mall visionaries, led by urban planner and Downtown Denver Inc. founder Phil Milstein, also insisted that buildings hug the sidewalk and that ground floors have windows.

“We wanted to create that historic downtown feel,” Susman said.

Winding downtown

That downtown feel is what draws Frankie Einstein to the mall. That and the painted, upright pianos that appear each summer.

To the question of how old he is, Einstein answers, “I like to think I’m ageless.”

He also likes to think that shirts are constraining and inhibit the free-flow of improvised melodies that are a big part of his bread and butter.

Einstein insists he’s had no formal music training, save a handful of lessons.

He lives in Aurora, but takes the bus downtown most days “to play music, to give people something from my heart. And maybe they’ll put a little something in in exchange.”

Next to him on the piano bench sat Belinda DeMario, a self-proclaimed music lover who 10 minutes before had been a stranger, but by all appearances was becoming an Einstein acolyte.

“I just love music,” she explained.

It’s easy to imagine Phil Milstein loving the music, too.

It seems unlikely, though, that the late Mr. Milstein would get much kick from the urine-scented cloud wafting from certain alleyways.

He might, though, find pleasure in seeing tourists ambling unescorted and unafraid, from restaurants to their hotels.

As the hot afternoon melted into evening, the mall’s harder edges softened. A horse-drawn carriage pulled five wide-eyed kids and their parents past a young woman playing the violin.

And on the northeast side of the street, Einstein, still shirtless, led DeMario by the hand toward a mall shuttle.

Karen Auge: 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com