So...I grew up in Colorado (Boulder and Denver) and I currently live here. I also have a website/podcast about Denver and the state. While I think what you're sharing are absolutely fair criticisms....you're no longer a resident so the connection that you would feel is difficult to cultivate if you're not having hard conversations with the people who love and care for the city and state on a weekly, etc. basis.
One thing I will say is that cities like Denver (cities with a lot of inbound migration from other parts of the US) have this distinct lack of cohesion. There are all of these people moving here but they don't have an EMOTIONAL connection to the cities that they've landed in. They can enjoy the city like a tourist and bitch about the bad stuff without putting in any work.
I think THIS is what you're noticing. Then-they leave.
For people like me who are civically engaged, have a regular local radio station spot, talk to people about the hard stuff-there is definitely a culture. How would you get a feel for it if you're not truly "here" (no shade-just asking)
You're wrong about the music. Denver is in the top ten for music cities and the breadth of variety and access. Great post.
Thanks for reading and rolling with my criticism as a current resident!
You're absolutely right that I can only scratch the surface of a city's culture as an outsider who is not a resident. And I think the influx of outsiders there has shaped a portion of my opinion. To answer your question though, when I visit any other city (showcased here or for personal travel) I walk away with some sense of the city's vibe and identity. Even if locals don't fully agree, I get a sense of place. Denver genuinely doesn't give me that. To me, that's on Denver. I don't think I should have to live in a place in order to understand the culture at a high level. There should be some characteristics that shine through if you're looking. I come up empty handed there.
As for the music, I gave love to many of the venues there, they helped shape who I am. I will always appreciate those places and I distinctly remember bands always saying Colorado crowds brought great energy to their shows. I agree the music scene is strong there. But, the music I pointed out is wholly separate from variety and access. That music being played in generic hangouts throughout the Front Range is a common thread I couldn't ignore.
Anyway, I genuinely thank you for reading and giving some push back (I was expecting that, and kind of hoping for it). And stoked to know there are locals still there getting in the weeds to make it stronger.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Portland and in Bingen-White Salmon, WA. I've spent time in Portland before and it was not an easy experience. Having conversations in real time with Portlanders gave a deeper understanding of what's going on in town. But, I'm not from there. I have an opinion...but, I'm not there everyday. Cities go through transitions and Denver, et. al. are currently in one. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Again, I actually think a lot of your critique is fair. I just think that you're not here for the hard stuff and so it's a very surface experience you're having of the city. Like my experience in Portland. Those folks are deeply invested. I am just a fly by night person coming and going with an opinion based on a very short amount of time in town.
Ultimately, I'm doing travel writing in my free time cause I love it. So, my weekend visits to cities will always be surface level to some degree. But I do try to put in the time to give the best view I can of a place, and at least give people a sense of what I understand a city to be about.
Unconnected with our previous exchange, Zach, but writer Isaac Simpson (another 'Zac') has a substack newsletter that studies the world through its propaganda (which I suspect may sometimes cover its aspirational semiotics -- its symbols of self-presentation.)
While it may not interest you in its own right, he lately wrote about three obscure cities in Montana undergoing what he sees as a tension over their character and future, and some issues seemed to resonate with your coverage of The Front Range in Colorado. The themes of change, values and urban character were strong enough that I thought you might enjoy this read. Perhaps one of these cities might someday lure you to visit and compare notes.
Excellent read - thanks for sharing. Definitely some similar themes, the sheer size of Denver and the Springs makes everything a bit more subtle in comparison to small town Montana.
It was, Cheyenne -- along with Big Sky and Three Forks. The author pits it as a newcomer bourgeoisie overclass vs a generationally-invested working poor underclass. He writes:
[quote]
Bozeman is [...] unrecognizable from even six years ago [...] The local spend on Patagonia and Lululemon alone must crack $10 million year. [...] Even at the dive bar it’s purple hair and tattoos. Baseball on the TVs. The only cowboy hats ironic. Not even a biker left. [...] A girl in Yeezies and a Prada purse window shops Twig and Whistle, her tall, impossible-jawline panama-hat boyfriend crinkles his tan crows-feet and attempts a Reaganite howdy.
Before, all this could be excused as the seasonal cycle of a ski town. The point is skiing, not culture, so who cares if the localism is real or the mask at the end of a proboscis tube feeding back to international banks. But that’s the old cycle, the old class, the old morality. Now, ski towns are town towns. People stay in Big Sky year round. The occupational class flees the city. I mean why not, honey? We can ski in the winter and just, like, chill in the Summer. It’s getting bad around here. We love hiking…why not just live in nature all the time?
[/quote]
What he's describing appears to be overtourism become gentrification, with a strong sociopolitical backlash. That's not what Zac described in The Front Range of Colorado but I wonder if it's on the same spectrum.
What's your experience of this, Cheyenne? What sense do you make of it? What brought you to Zach's stack, and what's your interest in Bozeman?
I’d have to agree with the take on Montana. Very similar to the Front Range 40 years ago. Except for generational working poor, a lot of it is Ag based there - stuck on the land/don’t want to be on the land. And Bozeman and Belgrade both, 15 years ago weren’t even small cities. Three Forks is sad!
All three are a rapidly changing population dynamic, not well received either - significant gentrification, much of it not suited regionally, or environmentally. (Have ranches about an hour north of Yellowstone - it’s a back and forth between states.)
Colorado certainly has over-tourism too, I-70 is a regular testament to that 7 days a week.
I visited Denver twice for work this fall and I felt this exact same feeling of strange soullessness, I think you captured perfectly what I couldn't articulate. Denver seems like it should be cool, it has all the elements to be cool, but something just feels missing! I was also struck by how even at rush-hour, the Downtown felt so eerily empty! (I work in downtown Boston and it is absolutely packed and bustling at rush-hour so this was really striking to me.)
Denver Metro of old, before the present urban sprawl and transient migration was vastly different! Very certainly to, the Springs before an ultra conservative Christian Right landed on it full force in the ‘80’s. It was truly beautiful in the late 60’s and 70’s, even some areas 20 years ago. Sadly, really poorly planned subdivisions and urban developments dot the entire Front Range now — from Pueblo to Wyo state line. And still they keep coming, relocating to an area that is far more like SoCal now, most especially for chronic traffic jams going anywhere but east!
I don't doubt it. I was young when Colorado Springs was just a smaller military city with a North, South, East, and West Side of town. And I saw it balloon into new, made up neighbors, and never ending sprawl. I didn't fully understand it, but the change was palpably gross. I assume Denver would've felt similar to me.
As someone that grew up in the boulder area, lived in Denver I my early-mid twenties, only to leave to the east coast 4 years ago, this is strikingly accurate and one of the main reasons I left.
Thanks for writing this. I’ve been here longer than most transplants & have always sensed Denver’s soullessness and thought the “Colorful” Colorado slogan was a joke. (I used to call the eastern parts “porridge-colored-prairies”)
But because so many people *LOVE* Denver, and I don’t wanna rain on anyone’s parade, I usually keep these thoughts to myself. Of course there are cool people & memorable places - it’s just that, as a whole, the Front Range feels utterly vanilla/ basic / uninspiring. I think you nailed it in the head by saying it doesn’t have a cohesive identity. Even the small towns in Arizona, for example, have more character.
Haha, interesting! The colorful Colorado mention cracked me up. What keeps you there? Yeah, I didn't really want to do a negative piece, but I just felt compelled after my last visit. I wanted to know if anything I felt resonated with others. I think I got my answer. And thanks for reading!
Thanks for writing this. We moved to Denver 5 years ago from the Bay Area. Then moved to Berthoud/Loveland. I’ve never lived anywhere that was so unwelcoming. This state seems to have no defined identity. When you ask what defines Colorado food people point to things appropriated from New Mexico or Texas. The political beliefs in my area are just vailed white nationalism. It’s disappointing to say the least.
Tremendous work here man, great read. Only been to Denver a couple of times (& was blinded by my "beer tourism" lens), but reflecting on it post reading your piece I absolutely recall the disjointedness. Zero cohesion culturally as you say Had I not been in a near constant state of Great Divide / Odell / etc buzz, I'd have likely come away feeling the visit was far poorer.
The music, the shorts, so accurate. When I lived on the front range in 2012, I always told people it felt like Denver still shopped at The Buckle and Wet Seal.
Loved this! Phoenix boy here who’s spent a lot of time in your lovely state. I feel this. The 25 sprawl feels like ours, big and empty and soulless, and gazing at the mountains not at all. Many transplants who came to escape culture and just ski or golf, buy things, drive on freeways. Landscape is not enough to make a city’s soul, I guess. I will ride or die with the Gin Blossoms though! If anything they were even more bored than we were.
Oh man, I can't speak to Phoenix personally, but would guess there's a lot of similarities between the two. Do you, rock the Blossoms! Just maybe not all 20 of those bands on repeat haha. Thanks for reading.
Hey this has been a fascinating read as I’ve yet to visit Colorado - but almost moved there in 2020. I love the concept of this substack, thank you for investigating places that are a little under esteemed!
Many trips through DIA, and I must say, BEST TSA in the nation. Polite , good humor, patient with idiots. After a while I started going to Colorado Springs airport. My ultimate destination was the worst (“most secure”) dungeon/prison in the nation: Administrative Maximum, where deprivation of everything is considered justice. I had clients there, whose tenacity and good humor always surprised me. Then I’d get back on a plane to LA, seated next to some born again evangelical claiming to know the difference between good and evil. So Colorado holds no allure for me; it’s cold remoteness emblematic of the lack of soul you just beautifully described.
Thanks for reading. I'll have to keep a mental note about the DIA TSA, never really thought about each airport having vastly different experiences with security.
I fully second this essay; I too grew up in Colorado near Denver in Evergreen, and went to college in Golden. I left nearly 25 years ago and my return visits played out just as you described.
What a soulless, nothing of a place full of boring, unhappy people. I too thought I was jaded from growing up there, but every visit back I’m quickly confronted with the suck that is culture free Colorado.
Your treatment is designed to inform and entertain rather than persuade so it doesn't really have to defend, but nevertheless I feel impelled to ask: how much of what you're describing is absence of culture, and how much of it is your own learned cultural cringe?
Not all culture is entertainment. A lot of it is the serious business of community-building, youth-growing and inter-generational bonding. You won't necessarily see that unless you're a permanent part of the community, and you may not know if it's changing.
As a visitor, you're now a consumer of domestic cultural export more than a participant in local cultural practice. You might be right that they have nothing to sell you, but is there some reason that this should be their principle concern?
The most interesting cultural activity isn't always visible to casual visitors because it doesn't always take place in public spaces. Are you sure that nothing of interest is happening in backyards or garages today? Even if it wasn't happening five years ago, how would you know that it's not happening now? Consider how many innovations have begun without warning in unlikely places. As a visitor your awareness might be lagging by five years simply because you don't know where to look.
I think too that it's a mistake to equate military-base culture or protestant fundamentalist culture to lack of culture -- perhaps rather, it's culture that you both dislike and take for granted. If animism is curious to a cultural tourist then these can be too -- and they're not necessarily static, although they can feel that way generationally.
For disclosure I'm not defending Colorado or any part of the US. I spent my teen years in Sydney Australia, which has sea to the East, mountains 50km to the West, and a massive, unrelenting suburban sprawl across river plains between. In my youth it was all tessellated football fields, three bedroom, three-car fibro houses and roast-chicken takeaways, peppered with drive-in cinemas to keep our teenage pregnancies vibrant. You'd see the beach or the mountains once a year if you were lucky, and never felt that you belonged in either place.
Change can feel slow in such places, and yet it's happening all the time. When I look at the architecture today it feels much the same, and yet what's happening in the high-schools is now very different. The change is just slower than is convenient for me to see, and I'm blinkered by my own confirmation bias. I now feel that a good way to understand it is to try and take a broader historical view.
So what might you have written if you *hadn't* grown up in similar places? And more pertinently: if it 'doesn't have to be like this', then how else could it be? Who'd be introducing what changes? How? And for whom, noting that the chief beneficiaries of cultural development should be the people living in the culture?
Thanks for reading, and glad you enjoyed. I think you're right about a lot of what you're saying. For instance, there is bias from own learned cultural cringe. But that's fine, in the sense that this is an opinion piece. There also is, I suppose, culture in something like in protestant fundamentalism (you're right too, not culture I like). However, a lot of the religious aspects I note are groups actively imposing on other groups' rights, and I don't see a lot of cultural need for something that's trying to take away from others. I'm also from a Army family - parents and grandparents, and a sibling too. I'm not against it as a career choice, etc. But a heavy military presence does add an interesting element to city!
Agreed too that I can't possibly know a culture through and through as an outsider, but as I said to another reader, when I visit any other city (showcased here or for personal travel) I walk away with some sense of the city's vibe and identity. Even if locals don't fully agree, I get a sense of place. Denver genuinely doesn't give me that. For me, as a visitor who can't know it all, that's problematic. But yes, I'm sure there's some good things cooking that I can't know as the outsider.
I appreciate the thoughtful note and pushing back a bit here! It helps me think about how I'll write other pieces and investigate and uncover more to get closer to a full view.
I read your whole write-up over the phone to a friend, and then my reply, and then we spent 45 minutes discussing how hard it is to review a town that you found oppressive in childhood (as we both had those experiences.) So if part of the purpose of writing is to provoke conversation, then this article did it for us.
In any case, although you described it as 'push back', I don't think I can advocate for anything here. On more reflection, it might be hard to get past identity politics in places that shaped our identities. Developing an outsider's eye sometimes means forgetting what we think we know and looking at how it might be for someone else.
Such descriptions can only be impressions anyway and since you wrote such a nice note, I did some research of my own. Living as I now do in a mountain town of similar size (Canberra, Australia, 457K -- a government town with five university campuses), here's what would get me out if I were accidentally teleported to Denver, CO overnight.
1. Its huge number of kayak outfitters. Canberra doesn't even have one.
2. The 2h15 trip out to Gore Canyon for kayaking and kayak camping. (If Denver weren't my preferred base of ops, then where would you say is better?)
3. Various gravel-bike, fat bike, and road-bike climbing events -- none necessarily out of Denver, but all within a 2h drive. That's an overnighter at worst!
4. Denver has a craft beer festival. I'm already there, but apparently Denver is huge at brewing too.
5. There's apparently a tequila festival. Assuming there's as much craft in tequila-making as there is in (say) rum- or whiskey-making. I'd go to learn what I don't know. (I'd especially be interested in tequilas that I could cook with.)
6. Ice castles festival. It sounds cheesy, but which other towns have one? (I'd especially want to see how foreign and out of town visitors react to this.)
7. Denver's underground music scene features a style called Queercore. It sounds too 'core' for my tastes, but I'd still need to know about it -- especially the people who build their lives around that music.
8. Denver is home to Nathaniel Rateliff. I've cycled 80miles of gravel to his 'S.O.B' song, and would love to hear him and the Nightsweats in a small venue.
9. Denver's colonial history only goes back to 1858, which means almost all of it will be well-documented -- not just civic records and newspapers, but family biographies and memoirs. Denver will have its slew of colourful characters that nobody knows about because every such place does. I'd need to find out what is documented where. (Also: did you know that Denver had at least two very progressive eras?)
10. Denver sees 300 days of sunshine per year. Why spend your time in urban dive-bars when the interesting people will often be out doing interesting things somewhere else?
11. There's still a Denver book festival. I'd need to know the local Denveronian writers, and also what Denverinos read.
12. Denver attracts businesses who want to split the difference on US timezones and overlap an hour with the UK timezone. I'd love to talk to people from outside Denver, to make sense of how they cope with being from someplace else.
I might never travel to Denver to do any of those things, Zach, but I believe that's a sketch of what I'd be doing if I were there anyway.
And perhaps I'd meet forlorn, rootless military-brats, zealous evangelists, too many polo bros, and young locals like your former self, trying to get a handle on the culture shaping them. But with the list above, I expect I'd often meet them doing things that stretched -- even overstretched them. Or stuff they're proud of doing, beyond whatever gets national media coverage. For me, these can be the best times to see who someone really is.
This is definitely meant to provoke conversation, so that's awesome to hear you and your friend had a deep dive on it. I appreciate the detailed view of what you might do while there, but for me and this writing, it's simply a different approach. It's about what I can uncover while exploring solo and trying to understand the city itself. And for this piece in particular, it was about sharing what I feel to be true of my home state - it was both a therapeutic exercise and a conversation starter to see where other people land on it.
Exactly, Zach. That's why it doesn't need defense. But I also wonder if you have more awaiting you here?
When I left high school in the western suburbs of Sydney, exactly three students of my high school graduation year matriculated to college (myself among them), and one dropped out in the first six months. Naturally, when I started studying in tertiary there was nobody in my classes who had come from the places I'd come from, who had experienced what I had. Rather than talk about that, I spent my undergraduate years in libraries or listening to music and struggling to find the confidence to perform academically when I felt certain that I didn't fit any accepted template.
The limitations of place that I felt as a teen had become actual limitations as a young adult, so they didn't evaporate as soon as I moved: I carried them with me. In the first five years after high school, had I gone back to address the class I could only have talked about the benefits of leaving, and how to do so.
I didn't do what you have: return as a solo traveler and try to unpick it. (That wouldn't have occurred to me, and I'm glad that it did to you.) But the conversation I had with my friend about your article was about the inherent challenge in looking at it from the outside-in with any hope of objectivity.
What we tried instead was to do it from the inside-out: in a parallel world where you had grown up somewhere else, what would that version know? How could he advise you? And perhaps beyond that, what do *you* know in consequence that your parallel self couldn't possibly know?
Looking back I still believe that mine wasn't the best place for me to grow up in. However, it also wasn't a wasted place because I can still 'code-switch' across social boundaries that most people can't span. I also have skills and attitudes that I've found increasingly valuable, and which date from the things I learned back then.
Glad to hear it! I don't know a lot about Trinidad, except that as a kid, it was known as the sex change capital of the world. I wonder if that's still the case?
So...I grew up in Colorado (Boulder and Denver) and I currently live here. I also have a website/podcast about Denver and the state. While I think what you're sharing are absolutely fair criticisms....you're no longer a resident so the connection that you would feel is difficult to cultivate if you're not having hard conversations with the people who love and care for the city and state on a weekly, etc. basis.
One thing I will say is that cities like Denver (cities with a lot of inbound migration from other parts of the US) have this distinct lack of cohesion. There are all of these people moving here but they don't have an EMOTIONAL connection to the cities that they've landed in. They can enjoy the city like a tourist and bitch about the bad stuff without putting in any work.
I think THIS is what you're noticing. Then-they leave.
For people like me who are civically engaged, have a regular local radio station spot, talk to people about the hard stuff-there is definitely a culture. How would you get a feel for it if you're not truly "here" (no shade-just asking)
You're wrong about the music. Denver is in the top ten for music cities and the breadth of variety and access. Great post.
Thanks for reading and rolling with my criticism as a current resident!
You're absolutely right that I can only scratch the surface of a city's culture as an outsider who is not a resident. And I think the influx of outsiders there has shaped a portion of my opinion. To answer your question though, when I visit any other city (showcased here or for personal travel) I walk away with some sense of the city's vibe and identity. Even if locals don't fully agree, I get a sense of place. Denver genuinely doesn't give me that. To me, that's on Denver. I don't think I should have to live in a place in order to understand the culture at a high level. There should be some characteristics that shine through if you're looking. I come up empty handed there.
As for the music, I gave love to many of the venues there, they helped shape who I am. I will always appreciate those places and I distinctly remember bands always saying Colorado crowds brought great energy to their shows. I agree the music scene is strong there. But, the music I pointed out is wholly separate from variety and access. That music being played in generic hangouts throughout the Front Range is a common thread I couldn't ignore.
Anyway, I genuinely thank you for reading and giving some push back (I was expecting that, and kind of hoping for it). And stoked to know there are locals still there getting in the weeds to make it stronger.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Portland and in Bingen-White Salmon, WA. I've spent time in Portland before and it was not an easy experience. Having conversations in real time with Portlanders gave a deeper understanding of what's going on in town. But, I'm not from there. I have an opinion...but, I'm not there everyday. Cities go through transitions and Denver, et. al. are currently in one. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Again, I actually think a lot of your critique is fair. I just think that you're not here for the hard stuff and so it's a very surface experience you're having of the city. Like my experience in Portland. Those folks are deeply invested. I am just a fly by night person coming and going with an opinion based on a very short amount of time in town.
Totally. That's funny, Portland is where I live!
Ultimately, I'm doing travel writing in my free time cause I love it. So, my weekend visits to cities will always be surface level to some degree. But I do try to put in the time to give the best view I can of a place, and at least give people a sense of what I understand a city to be about.
Unconnected with our previous exchange, Zach, but writer Isaac Simpson (another 'Zac') has a substack newsletter that studies the world through its propaganda (which I suspect may sometimes cover its aspirational semiotics -- its symbols of self-presentation.)
While it may not interest you in its own right, he lately wrote about three obscure cities in Montana undergoing what he sees as a tension over their character and future, and some issues seemed to resonate with your coverage of The Front Range in Colorado. The themes of change, values and urban character were strong enough that I thought you might enjoy this read. Perhaps one of these cities might someday lure you to visit and compare notes.
If so, I'd gladly read it.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-63957049
Excellent read - thanks for sharing. Definitely some similar themes, the sheer size of Denver and the Springs makes everything a bit more subtle in comparison to small town Montana.
Bet I can guess that Bozeman is one of those 3 cities.
It was, Cheyenne -- along with Big Sky and Three Forks. The author pits it as a newcomer bourgeoisie overclass vs a generationally-invested working poor underclass. He writes:
[quote]
Bozeman is [...] unrecognizable from even six years ago [...] The local spend on Patagonia and Lululemon alone must crack $10 million year. [...] Even at the dive bar it’s purple hair and tattoos. Baseball on the TVs. The only cowboy hats ironic. Not even a biker left. [...] A girl in Yeezies and a Prada purse window shops Twig and Whistle, her tall, impossible-jawline panama-hat boyfriend crinkles his tan crows-feet and attempts a Reaganite howdy.
Before, all this could be excused as the seasonal cycle of a ski town. The point is skiing, not culture, so who cares if the localism is real or the mask at the end of a proboscis tube feeding back to international banks. But that’s the old cycle, the old class, the old morality. Now, ski towns are town towns. People stay in Big Sky year round. The occupational class flees the city. I mean why not, honey? We can ski in the winter and just, like, chill in the Summer. It’s getting bad around here. We love hiking…why not just live in nature all the time?
[/quote]
What he's describing appears to be overtourism become gentrification, with a strong sociopolitical backlash. That's not what Zac described in The Front Range of Colorado but I wonder if it's on the same spectrum.
What's your experience of this, Cheyenne? What sense do you make of it? What brought you to Zach's stack, and what's your interest in Bozeman?
I’d have to agree with the take on Montana. Very similar to the Front Range 40 years ago. Except for generational working poor, a lot of it is Ag based there - stuck on the land/don’t want to be on the land. And Bozeman and Belgrade both, 15 years ago weren’t even small cities. Three Forks is sad!
All three are a rapidly changing population dynamic, not well received either - significant gentrification, much of it not suited regionally, or environmentally. (Have ranches about an hour north of Yellowstone - it’s a back and forth between states.)
Colorado certainly has over-tourism too, I-70 is a regular testament to that 7 days a week.
Thanks for sharing, Ruv. Cheers
I visited Denver twice for work this fall and I felt this exact same feeling of strange soullessness, I think you captured perfectly what I couldn't articulate. Denver seems like it should be cool, it has all the elements to be cool, but something just feels missing! I was also struck by how even at rush-hour, the Downtown felt so eerily empty! (I work in downtown Boston and it is absolutely packed and bustling at rush-hour so this was really striking to me.)
Thanks for reading! Interesting about rush hour, that is not something I had picked up on.
Denver Metro of old, before the present urban sprawl and transient migration was vastly different! Very certainly to, the Springs before an ultra conservative Christian Right landed on it full force in the ‘80’s. It was truly beautiful in the late 60’s and 70’s, even some areas 20 years ago. Sadly, really poorly planned subdivisions and urban developments dot the entire Front Range now — from Pueblo to Wyo state line. And still they keep coming, relocating to an area that is far more like SoCal now, most especially for chronic traffic jams going anywhere but east!
I don't doubt it. I was young when Colorado Springs was just a smaller military city with a North, South, East, and West Side of town. And I saw it balloon into new, made up neighbors, and never ending sprawl. I didn't fully understand it, but the change was palpably gross. I assume Denver would've felt similar to me.
As someone that grew up in the boulder area, lived in Denver I my early-mid twenties, only to leave to the east coast 4 years ago, this is strikingly accurate and one of the main reasons I left.
Thanks for writing this. I’ve been here longer than most transplants & have always sensed Denver’s soullessness and thought the “Colorful” Colorado slogan was a joke. (I used to call the eastern parts “porridge-colored-prairies”)
But because so many people *LOVE* Denver, and I don’t wanna rain on anyone’s parade, I usually keep these thoughts to myself. Of course there are cool people & memorable places - it’s just that, as a whole, the Front Range feels utterly vanilla/ basic / uninspiring. I think you nailed it in the head by saying it doesn’t have a cohesive identity. Even the small towns in Arizona, for example, have more character.
Haha, interesting! The colorful Colorado mention cracked me up. What keeps you there? Yeah, I didn't really want to do a negative piece, but I just felt compelled after my last visit. I wanted to know if anything I felt resonated with others. I think I got my answer. And thanks for reading!
Thanks for writing this. We moved to Denver 5 years ago from the Bay Area. Then moved to Berthoud/Loveland. I’ve never lived anywhere that was so unwelcoming. This state seems to have no defined identity. When you ask what defines Colorado food people point to things appropriated from New Mexico or Texas. The political beliefs in my area are just vailed white nationalism. It’s disappointing to say the least.
Damn, sorry to hear that. Are you still in Colorado? If so, I hope you can find the good pockets to immerse yourself in, they are there.
We are still in NoCo. We really like Fort Collins and Estes Park. One of these days we will explore the Southern part of the state.
Tremendous work here man, great read. Only been to Denver a couple of times (& was blinded by my "beer tourism" lens), but reflecting on it post reading your piece I absolutely recall the disjointedness. Zero cohesion culturally as you say Had I not been in a near constant state of Great Divide / Odell / etc buzz, I'd have likely come away feeling the visit was far poorer.
Thank you! Hey, I'm glad you got to enjoy it through some quality beer goggles. Maybe beer tourism will be the ace up my sleeve during my next go.
The music, the shorts, so accurate. When I lived on the front range in 2012, I always told people it felt like Denver still shopped at The Buckle and Wet Seal.
Haha, I can see that.
Loved this! Phoenix boy here who’s spent a lot of time in your lovely state. I feel this. The 25 sprawl feels like ours, big and empty and soulless, and gazing at the mountains not at all. Many transplants who came to escape culture and just ski or golf, buy things, drive on freeways. Landscape is not enough to make a city’s soul, I guess. I will ride or die with the Gin Blossoms though! If anything they were even more bored than we were.
Oh man, I can't speak to Phoenix personally, but would guess there's a lot of similarities between the two. Do you, rock the Blossoms! Just maybe not all 20 of those bands on repeat haha. Thanks for reading.
Hey this has been a fascinating read as I’ve yet to visit Colorado - but almost moved there in 2020. I love the concept of this substack, thank you for investigating places that are a little under esteemed!
Thanks for reading!
Many trips through DIA, and I must say, BEST TSA in the nation. Polite , good humor, patient with idiots. After a while I started going to Colorado Springs airport. My ultimate destination was the worst (“most secure”) dungeon/prison in the nation: Administrative Maximum, where deprivation of everything is considered justice. I had clients there, whose tenacity and good humor always surprised me. Then I’d get back on a plane to LA, seated next to some born again evangelical claiming to know the difference between good and evil. So Colorado holds no allure for me; it’s cold remoteness emblematic of the lack of soul you just beautifully described.
Thanks for reading. I'll have to keep a mental note about the DIA TSA, never really thought about each airport having vastly different experiences with security.
Great stuff...I read it all.
I fully second this essay; I too grew up in Colorado near Denver in Evergreen, and went to college in Golden. I left nearly 25 years ago and my return visits played out just as you described.
What a soulless, nothing of a place full of boring, unhappy people. I too thought I was jaded from growing up there, but every visit back I’m quickly confronted with the suck that is culture free Colorado.
Haha, I knew I'd resonate with a few people in similar situations to mine.
Zach I love your focus and enjoyed this write-up.
Your treatment is designed to inform and entertain rather than persuade so it doesn't really have to defend, but nevertheless I feel impelled to ask: how much of what you're describing is absence of culture, and how much of it is your own learned cultural cringe?
Not all culture is entertainment. A lot of it is the serious business of community-building, youth-growing and inter-generational bonding. You won't necessarily see that unless you're a permanent part of the community, and you may not know if it's changing.
As a visitor, you're now a consumer of domestic cultural export more than a participant in local cultural practice. You might be right that they have nothing to sell you, but is there some reason that this should be their principle concern?
The most interesting cultural activity isn't always visible to casual visitors because it doesn't always take place in public spaces. Are you sure that nothing of interest is happening in backyards or garages today? Even if it wasn't happening five years ago, how would you know that it's not happening now? Consider how many innovations have begun without warning in unlikely places. As a visitor your awareness might be lagging by five years simply because you don't know where to look.
I think too that it's a mistake to equate military-base culture or protestant fundamentalist culture to lack of culture -- perhaps rather, it's culture that you both dislike and take for granted. If animism is curious to a cultural tourist then these can be too -- and they're not necessarily static, although they can feel that way generationally.
For disclosure I'm not defending Colorado or any part of the US. I spent my teen years in Sydney Australia, which has sea to the East, mountains 50km to the West, and a massive, unrelenting suburban sprawl across river plains between. In my youth it was all tessellated football fields, three bedroom, three-car fibro houses and roast-chicken takeaways, peppered with drive-in cinemas to keep our teenage pregnancies vibrant. You'd see the beach or the mountains once a year if you were lucky, and never felt that you belonged in either place.
Change can feel slow in such places, and yet it's happening all the time. When I look at the architecture today it feels much the same, and yet what's happening in the high-schools is now very different. The change is just slower than is convenient for me to see, and I'm blinkered by my own confirmation bias. I now feel that a good way to understand it is to try and take a broader historical view.
So what might you have written if you *hadn't* grown up in similar places? And more pertinently: if it 'doesn't have to be like this', then how else could it be? Who'd be introducing what changes? How? And for whom, noting that the chief beneficiaries of cultural development should be the people living in the culture?
Thanks for reading, and glad you enjoyed. I think you're right about a lot of what you're saying. For instance, there is bias from own learned cultural cringe. But that's fine, in the sense that this is an opinion piece. There also is, I suppose, culture in something like in protestant fundamentalism (you're right too, not culture I like). However, a lot of the religious aspects I note are groups actively imposing on other groups' rights, and I don't see a lot of cultural need for something that's trying to take away from others. I'm also from a Army family - parents and grandparents, and a sibling too. I'm not against it as a career choice, etc. But a heavy military presence does add an interesting element to city!
Agreed too that I can't possibly know a culture through and through as an outsider, but as I said to another reader, when I visit any other city (showcased here or for personal travel) I walk away with some sense of the city's vibe and identity. Even if locals don't fully agree, I get a sense of place. Denver genuinely doesn't give me that. For me, as a visitor who can't know it all, that's problematic. But yes, I'm sure there's some good things cooking that I can't know as the outsider.
I appreciate the thoughtful note and pushing back a bit here! It helps me think about how I'll write other pieces and investigate and uncover more to get closer to a full view.
Zach thank you for your kind response.
I read your whole write-up over the phone to a friend, and then my reply, and then we spent 45 minutes discussing how hard it is to review a town that you found oppressive in childhood (as we both had those experiences.) So if part of the purpose of writing is to provoke conversation, then this article did it for us.
In any case, although you described it as 'push back', I don't think I can advocate for anything here. On more reflection, it might be hard to get past identity politics in places that shaped our identities. Developing an outsider's eye sometimes means forgetting what we think we know and looking at how it might be for someone else.
Such descriptions can only be impressions anyway and since you wrote such a nice note, I did some research of my own. Living as I now do in a mountain town of similar size (Canberra, Australia, 457K -- a government town with five university campuses), here's what would get me out if I were accidentally teleported to Denver, CO overnight.
1. Its huge number of kayak outfitters. Canberra doesn't even have one.
2. The 2h15 trip out to Gore Canyon for kayaking and kayak camping. (If Denver weren't my preferred base of ops, then where would you say is better?)
3. Various gravel-bike, fat bike, and road-bike climbing events -- none necessarily out of Denver, but all within a 2h drive. That's an overnighter at worst!
4. Denver has a craft beer festival. I'm already there, but apparently Denver is huge at brewing too.
5. There's apparently a tequila festival. Assuming there's as much craft in tequila-making as there is in (say) rum- or whiskey-making. I'd go to learn what I don't know. (I'd especially be interested in tequilas that I could cook with.)
6. Ice castles festival. It sounds cheesy, but which other towns have one? (I'd especially want to see how foreign and out of town visitors react to this.)
7. Denver's underground music scene features a style called Queercore. It sounds too 'core' for my tastes, but I'd still need to know about it -- especially the people who build their lives around that music.
8. Denver is home to Nathaniel Rateliff. I've cycled 80miles of gravel to his 'S.O.B' song, and would love to hear him and the Nightsweats in a small venue.
9. Denver's colonial history only goes back to 1858, which means almost all of it will be well-documented -- not just civic records and newspapers, but family biographies and memoirs. Denver will have its slew of colourful characters that nobody knows about because every such place does. I'd need to find out what is documented where. (Also: did you know that Denver had at least two very progressive eras?)
10. Denver sees 300 days of sunshine per year. Why spend your time in urban dive-bars when the interesting people will often be out doing interesting things somewhere else?
11. There's still a Denver book festival. I'd need to know the local Denveronian writers, and also what Denverinos read.
12. Denver attracts businesses who want to split the difference on US timezones and overlap an hour with the UK timezone. I'd love to talk to people from outside Denver, to make sense of how they cope with being from someplace else.
I might never travel to Denver to do any of those things, Zach, but I believe that's a sketch of what I'd be doing if I were there anyway.
And perhaps I'd meet forlorn, rootless military-brats, zealous evangelists, too many polo bros, and young locals like your former self, trying to get a handle on the culture shaping them. But with the list above, I expect I'd often meet them doing things that stretched -- even overstretched them. Or stuff they're proud of doing, beyond whatever gets national media coverage. For me, these can be the best times to see who someone really is.
I hope that may help. ;)
This is definitely meant to provoke conversation, so that's awesome to hear you and your friend had a deep dive on it. I appreciate the detailed view of what you might do while there, but for me and this writing, it's simply a different approach. It's about what I can uncover while exploring solo and trying to understand the city itself. And for this piece in particular, it was about sharing what I feel to be true of my home state - it was both a therapeutic exercise and a conversation starter to see where other people land on it.
Exactly, Zach. That's why it doesn't need defense. But I also wonder if you have more awaiting you here?
When I left high school in the western suburbs of Sydney, exactly three students of my high school graduation year matriculated to college (myself among them), and one dropped out in the first six months. Naturally, when I started studying in tertiary there was nobody in my classes who had come from the places I'd come from, who had experienced what I had. Rather than talk about that, I spent my undergraduate years in libraries or listening to music and struggling to find the confidence to perform academically when I felt certain that I didn't fit any accepted template.
The limitations of place that I felt as a teen had become actual limitations as a young adult, so they didn't evaporate as soon as I moved: I carried them with me. In the first five years after high school, had I gone back to address the class I could only have talked about the benefits of leaving, and how to do so.
I didn't do what you have: return as a solo traveler and try to unpick it. (That wouldn't have occurred to me, and I'm glad that it did to you.) But the conversation I had with my friend about your article was about the inherent challenge in looking at it from the outside-in with any hope of objectivity.
What we tried instead was to do it from the inside-out: in a parallel world where you had grown up somewhere else, what would that version know? How could he advise you? And perhaps beyond that, what do *you* know in consequence that your parallel self couldn't possibly know?
Looking back I still believe that mine wasn't the best place for me to grow up in. However, it also wasn't a wasted place because I can still 'code-switch' across social boundaries that most people can't span. I also have skills and attitudes that I've found increasingly valuable, and which date from the things I learned back then.
Might those milestones still be ahead for you?
With best wishes, RD.
Appreciate the inside-out approach! I did that somewhat, but it's hard to separate from what you already think.
That's the 'therapy' part of 'therapeutic' though, yes?
Self-soothing reinforcement is easy, but as an endurance runner you already know that's what people do when they *can't* go the distance. ;)
FWIW, I had a pleasant visit to Trinidad many years ago. But I guess that's hardly the "Front Range" in the same way Colorado Springs and Denver are.
Glad to hear it! I don't know a lot about Trinidad, except that as a kid, it was known as the sex change capital of the world. I wonder if that's still the case?
Huh. That’s … not what I would have taken it for when I was there in 2010? (Which I wrote about a bit here at the time: http://domesticleft.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-buried-veins.html and here in retrospect: https://open.substack.com/pub/domesticleft/p/domestic-left-42-going-solo)