Denver Graffiti Tour

Our Original Tour is year round on Saturdays and Sundays, starting at 10:00 am from March 15th to November 30th and starting at 12noon from December 1st to March 14th. We also offer a Happy Hour Tour on Saturdays starting at 3:30pm during the Spring, Summer, and Fall. This tour has a longer midway stop where you can purchase a drink if desired. Our new North RiNo tour is currently year round on Saturdays starting at 10:00 am from March 15th to November 30th and starting at 12noon from December 1st to March 15th.

Private tours and custom times are also available at any time throughout the week. During the summers and holidays, we add extra public tours -- so keep an eye on our social media and on our booking page.

The Original Tour (weekend mornings at 10:00 am from March 15th to November 30th and at 12noon from December 1st to March 14th) starts in the *private* (not owned by us, so do not park there) parking lot at 2314 Broadway, under the big "DENVER" mural, known as “Denver - Love This City”. It ends a few blocks away at Denver Central Market, where you can grab a drink or bite to eat at this upscale food hall.

The Happy Hour Tour (Saturdays at 3:30pm during the Spring - Summer - Fall) starts at the SE corner of 27th St and Walnut St beneath the large mural wrapping the corner of the building there (currently a turquoise mural). It ends at Improper City on 32nd St and Blake St. The NEW North RiNo Tour (Saturdays at 10:00 am from March 15th to November 30th and at 12noon from December 1st to March 14th) starts at the corner of the *private* RiNo Beer Garden parking lot at 38th + Walnut Sts. This is just a block from the 38th + Blake Sts RTD Station. It ends across the street at the Catbird Hotel.

We recommend parking on the streets nearby. Street parking is usually easy to find during the mornings and daytimes when the tours start, just be sure to look for the parking that is NOT limited to 2-hours.

Most streets in the area are 2-hour limited on only one side of the street with the other side being not limited to 2-hours, and tour-goers never seem to have a problem finding a spot within walking distance. (Or take an Uber or Lyft to make it super easy.) NOTE: Also be sure to check for street sweeping signs during the spring, summer and fall!

RiNo is an Art District, which is an organization (and an area) that supports the arts. It was founded in 2005 by two artists and is now also a Business Improvement District, a General Improvement District, and an arts educational nonprofit (Keep RiNo Wild). A big part of its goals are the cultivation of Denver's best and densest collection of street art and murals.

The most important fact about the RiNo Art District is that it is also overlaid over the original historical neighborhoods of Globeville, Elyria-Swansea, Cole and Five Points.

Our tour is as much about what’s going on in the community as it about the street art.

We are not the arbiters of issues like gentrification and don’t pretend to be. We do, however, feel strongly that those coming to enjoy the art should be exposed to issues affecting the art and the community in which it's made.

To that end, we spend time on the tour raising issues like:

How a city as rich as Denver can have so many people experiencing housing vulnerability.
Why city policies have exacerbated the problems of housing affordability.
How artists who created a culture in RiNo are being priced out by those coming in to enjoy that culture.
Why murals are considered “art”, but graffiti is considered “vandalism”.
How the mainstreaming of street art can serve corporate interests.
The conflicted feelings of some artists. They’re getting paid more and more often for work than they did just 10 years ago. But they’re getting paid by the people who contribute to the increase in property values that push out studios, galleries, and long-time residents.

Nick was born and raised in metro Denver. He lived in the heart of the RiNo Art District for years before moving next door to Whittier when he had a family.

Jana is originally from Washington DC and first moved to Denver in 2006. She then moved up to the mountains for several years, and after a couple of years in another state, moved back to Denver in 2019. Jana lives in Cole, one of the original neighborhoods that makes up the RiNo Art District.

Nick is high school Spanish teacher who is a self-described “patron of the arts” and likes to explore new art whenever possible. Working in such close connection with the vibrant art of the RiNo Art District is a great honor for him.

Jana is a freelance writer, who besides ghostwriting professionally, also writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She also dabbles in art, mostly with colored pencils. She also recently took over the Denver Arts Festival.

Having just taken over the business, we’re still unsure of its finances yet -- or of our own finances having put our savings into it! But we do support the artists by purchasing their stickers/art at a premium to hand out for free on our tours and by actively promoting them and their work on our tour and on our social media. This is how we are able to share some of our gross profits with artists every year (a quarter of the total in 2024). Not only do we only exist because of the artists, but the world needs more art, and we want to support its creation.

We do. This is something we love to do, but it is also a LOT of work, so it is a business for us. A lot of our revenue goes to offsetting the costs of the business, such as fees, dues, taxes, insurance, marketing, and of course our time -- in client services, constantly researching the art and the artists, and in conducting multiple tours a week. But as mentioned In these FAQs, we also put a good portion of the money back into the community through supporting the local street art festivals, artists, nonprofits, discounting tours for schools and nonprofits, and more.

Absolutely. Right at the beginning of the tour, one of our first points of order is how important it is to tag the artist in any social media post, as well as to go to the artists’ websites and support them through purchases, no matter how small. We then seek out social media posts made after our tours of art in RiNo to tag the artists. And of course, we try to be active on our on social media to call attention to artists and their artwork.

In addition, we have created a new page on our website where we feature artists with a link to their Instagram pages with a request to support them by buying their art: https://www.denvergraffititour.com/artists

In modern vernacular, “graffiti” has a specific connotation as a criminalized art form. In that way, our name may be mis-chosen as we talk a lot about murals.

From an art history and linguistic perspective, however, “graffiti” has a very specific meaning. “Graffiti” is from the Italian word “graffiato”, which means “scratched”. For this reason, the term “graffiti” is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface.

Related to this is the word “sgraffito”, which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it -- a technique primarily used by potters.

Original graffiti, from ancient times, was carved onto walls with a sharp object, though occasionally chalk or coal might be used. Therefore, the additional etymological history includes the Greek word γράφειν -- graphein -- which means “to write”.

It is for this reason that we chose to name our tour not the “Denver Street Art Tour” or the “Denver Mural Tour” but instead in honor of this history and of these beautiful scratchings on public walls.

We are working to create an entire business model that is centered around the community we live in plus work in and with, as a way to give back to those around us: ~

We've created special highly discounted rates for schools, non-profits, and other educational institutions to make our tours accessible, as we want to share art and arts education with more people;

We donate gift certificates to organizations to use in fundraisers, with the dual purpose of raising money to help their cause as well as share the arts with more people;

We also do straightforward donations, to different organizations such as local street art festivals and arts nonprofits. And, as mentioned elsewhere in the FAQs, we support the artists by purchasing their stickers/art at a premium to hand out for free on our tours (totaling a quarter of our gross profits in 2024); this serves as a way to both financially support them and promote them, and of course we also actively promote them on our social media. ~

We our passionate about our community as we live right here. What impacts the community, impacts us.