My best friend moved out to Denver a few months ago. She loves it, absolutely adores it. She wants me to move out there with her.
I vacationed in Denver years ago and absolutely had the worst time ever. However, we went on a week that was really (apparently unusually) bad weather and I was with my ex-husband who, by that point in our marriage, I hated. So, naturally my opinion of Denver is skewed.
Naturally, I’m going to go out there and visit her before I make any final decisions. But, tell me, what’s Denver really like? The good and the bad. Can a New York girl find happiness in Colorado? Inquiring minds want to know.
Well, the first thing to remember is that there’s Denver, and then there’s the Denver metro area. The population of Denver proper is something like 500,000, but when you add in all the other cities in the same area that are technically independent cities (a distinction without a difference, as far as I’m concerned) like Golden, Aurora, Littleton, etc., you get up to over 2 million. Frankly, Denver is a bit too big for me, but it’s not a bad place and I’d go there if I had a good job lined up or something.
I live in Utah, but visit some friends in Broomfield, near Denver, from time to time.
It’s pretty unremarkable, I guess. About the same as most big cities. It gets cold during the winter, so I hpe you’re not averse to snow.
Pearl Street has some neat bookstores and restaurants. The Denver zoo is pretty nice. The biggest thing that gets on my nerves are the combination of lousy drivers -and- lousy pedestrians. Make sure those car brakes are in good shape.
Denver is built on the plains, but real close to the Rocky Mountains, which form a constant backdrop west of the city. The foothills start nearby… think Red Rocks and Golden. Go to a concert in the Red Rocks Amphitheater, a unique venue, must be seen to be believed. I lived there in the 80s and miss it a lot. The main advantage of being there is you can head into the mountains any time, if you love the mountains. There is some cultural life to speak of too.
The weather is remarkable for one thing: There is always a west wind blowing out of the mountains across the plains. Late in the afternoon as the sun dips behind some peaks, the thin air in the mountains cools quickly. This causes rainclouds to form out of whatever moisture was in the air there. The rainclouds blow across Denver, drop a little rain, and are quickly gone. So the city gets about 10 minutes or so of rain each day, and is sunny the rest of the day. Doesn’t that sound like perfect weather?
One night in June there was an unusual wind, must have been ionized air, that blew out of the mountains into the city and down into my basement apartment where I had the outside door open. It was scented with pine and was heavenly refreshing. I sat up painting while this pine-scented ionized mountain wind blew into my living room and gave thanks for being in Colorado. I really miss there.
This ought to be a private message, but the Dope doesn’t allow them. So just let me say, Jomo, that while I’ve appreciated the scholarly posts you’ve made in GQ immensely, this was one of the finest pieces of moving, emotion-conveying writing ever to grace this board. I want to see more stuff where you have feelings invested in the content – your writing is like a Hokusai print to me.
I’ve lived in Colorado for close to 20 years and in Denver for the last 5 or so. In my opinion’s it’s probably one of the best cities of its size to live in you can find anywhere. I’ll try to be objective and break it down into the good and the bad though.
The good:
The weather, at least 90 percent of the time, is amazing. We have more days of sunshine then almost any other state, I think right around 300 a year. The air is dry as well, so even though the temperature can climb in the summer (Average of 90’s although you’ll see 100 once or twice) its not muggy and oppressive like a place with higher humidity. It does snow in the winter, and we do have our cold snaps, but the snow doesn’t usually stick around. Many times if it snows on Monday its gone by Wednesday. It’s entirely possible to play a round of golf in February.
Activites abound. Living so close to the mountains there are always a million things to do and even more places to go, and not just for the uber athletic types. Sure there’s kayaking, mountain climbing and white-water rafting, but there’s also old mining towns, cozy mountain resorts, and the national parks and forests. And skiing. If you like to ski, this is THE place to do it.
Don’t care much for the mountains? Downtown is full of great breweries, restaurants, and nightclubs. You’ll find we’re really into our beer here, with an amazing variety of beers dreamed up by local microbreweries in the area to choose from. We’re also a melting pot for nearly every kind of food you can think of from Thai to Mexican to organic and everything in between.
Sports! Check any survey and you’ll see that Denver is one of the best sports towns anywhere in the USA. We’re rabid about our sports teams here and have invested heavily in recent years to build new baseball, basketball, hockey and football stadiums. (okay, so basketball and hockey are played in the same place, but it’s still a really NICE place). There’s also more intermural sports opportunities than you can shake a stick at, with various leagues going all year round.
There’s many more things I could think of for sure, but those are the big three that come to my mind.
Now, to be fair, some of the bad.
Mass Transit, or lack of it. We have one of the best busing systems in the nation, but are sorely lacking in areas like lightrail. This has begun to change in recent years, but we’re still a long way from competing with other cities for ease of getting from point A to point B.
Traffic. Partially caused by bad thing number 1. Rush hour can be a pain although I wouldn’t say its any worse then a lot of other cities of similar size I’ve been to and it’s certainly not LA or DC sized traffic. As with mass transit, things are in the works to hopefully make this better.
There IS weather, and when we have it its often brutal. 300 days of sunshine aside, its is still going to rain and hail like gangbusters occasionally and we do get those huge blizzard-like dumps of snowfall a couple of times a year. You’ll quickly be surprised to find that people who you would assume would be used to this kind of thing quickly prove to be highly inept at navigating their vehicles when this happens.
So there you have it, an off-the-cuff review of Denver. Personally, I think the only thing its missing is beachfront property. If you have any specific questions, drop me a note here and I’ll be happy to try to answer.
Also, as will all reviews this is my personal opinion, YMMV, does not include tax and dealer prep, void where prohibited by law.
Looks like LastCall covered it pretty well. It’s a great, young, fun city. Decent levels of everything you’d except in a city(we even have an expensive big-ass new 6 venue performing arts center, ) and the mountains right out your window.
But,
The job market is really crap, particularly in tech. I have had many friends who loved it here have to move on to find anything to pay the bills. Check into your field and the prospects before any commitment.
LastCall, thank you for all that great info. I had no idea there was so much to do there. I can live with traffic. Snow I could do without - but I am willing to compromise if the rest is as great as you make it sound. I am a HUGE baseball nut (Yankee fan). The Yanks will always be my #1 team, but close proximity to baseball (and hockey) is a huge plus
Woflman, thanks for the heads up about the job market. My friend says that the job market seems pretty good, however, she’s an accountant and I’m not. Definitely something I will keep in mind before making my final decision.
Jomo, what can I say? Your post makes me want to just pack a bag and leave tonight.
I was already leaning towards the move in the abstract, but I think I may actually go through with it. (Provided, of course, that the ol’ shamrock chicken-out doesn’t kick in at the last minute :eek: ).
I’ve got a close friend who is a New York Gal who found life and happiness in the Denver area. Well, the Boulder area, but still. I was in Denver about 2 weeks ago, after many years away.
There is a true rawness to a lot of the surrounding environs. The city is not gargantuan, one can get around. The traffic sucks around rush hour- like one would expect it not to?
If I could make a living out there, I’d move there. Or at least think dearly about it. You should move there. My two cents.
Polycarp and Shamrock, thank you very kindly. You know what, wolfman, if the job market is crap today, it was also crap 20 years ago when I was there, so I never found real employment, so I eventually left. But I still miss it to this day.
My soul pines for the West, and the only time I’ve been back West since then was a trip to northern New Mexico. I would love Santa Fe better than just about anywhere, except I bet you really really can’t find a job there.
Yeah, That term “Real employment” is the kicker, and exactly what I’m talking about. Denver has never really had any commercial/industrial identity(well except maybe in the silver mining days of the 1800s) It has always been a bit of this and that. Some oil money, some cattle money, some state Gov money as the capital, some federal money with Lowry and the Federal Center, some tourism, some wherehousing with it’s central location, etc. The rest of the city is a support web for itself.
About 10 years ago Tech Center and Interlocken, and Boulder. A whole bunch of tech people moved here for the oportunities. Then with the dot com bust it all evaporated. And all of those people are unemployed and leaving. It’s back to where it was 20 years ago. When I say the job market is crap, I don’t really mean that it’s terrible, and certainly not like any of the true bust cities of the 70’s. Just that it’s hard to find a job that feels like it’s a start to being established and permanent. Denver is kind of a starter city. People move here after college to have some fun and enjoy life. But at the end of the day when it’s time to get married and get down to real adult life, it’s a tough place to get a serious foothold, and people eventually move on to somewhere else. But the support web is pretty much constant forever. And by support I mean everything from Groundskeepers to grocery store workers, to cops to doctors and lawyers. But for ambitous or growth-industry type workers it’s just not heppening.
Your term ‘lack of real employment’ is the crap job market I was talking about, and it’s back.
But I still love the city, I just hope I don’t have to love it from a box in an alley of Colfax.
