DENVER — Colfax Avenue is often described as one of America's wickedest streets. Jack Kerouac wrote of its tawdry watering holes in "On the Road." In the movie "Every Which Way But Loose," Clint Eastwood's character and his pet orangutan, Clyde, came here looking for action.

The broad, bustling thoroughfare is Denver's most famous and notorious drag - a refuge for poets, addicts, hipsters and hustlers that has been the Rocky Mountains' answer to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York. But while those neighborhoods have become gentrified, Colfax Avenue has largely retained its hardscrabble soul.

But there are signs the avenue is changing, particularly the Capitol Hill section, where ambitious new zoning laws and an increased police presence are drawing businesses and driving down crime. And some residents worry that the resurgence will sanitize Colfax Avenue's legendary grit.

"People always say they're trying to establish a sense of community here, as if it didn't already exist," said Walt Young, who has been cutting hair for 38 years at the Upper Cut, an old-time barber shop on the avenue.