The nonprofit River North Art District, founded in 2005, and the nonprofit street-art festival Crush Walls, founded in 2010, were virtually synonymous for a few years, married by contract and constantly collaborating. Even as artists complained about being gentrified out of RiNo and the surrounding neighborhoods involved with the district, the graffiti and murals multiplying on the walls every year ensured that the area’s reputation as an art hub kept growing. Along the way, founder Robin “Dread” Munro became a darling of the street-art world and developers alike. For more than a decade, he bridged the gap between testosterone-fueled graffiti crews around Denver and officials who were trying to stop an explosion of vandalism while empowering up-and-coming artists and also getting them paid. In 2017, the year Crush Walls won Mayor Michael Hancock’s Arts & Culture Innovation Award, Munro teamed up with the district; with the two working together, the festival attracted an estimated 150,000 people to RiNo in 2019. City boosters started touting the neighborhood as “the Street Art Capital of the United States” — a flight of fancy quickly shot down by anyone who'd spent time in Detroit or Brooklyn or Miami.