Reviews & Comments
Denver, CO
Vastly Overrated -
7/19/2015It cracks me up to hear people get so fussy and worked up (akin to the manner that an 11 year old girl does when someone tells her that her favorite boy band lip syncs) when you make a slight criticism of Denver for being overcrowded, expensive, or simply dirty. Perhaps that is coming from people that have never ventured outside of the borders of Colorado?
Denver used to be an interesting place to live decades ago. Anymore it lacks an identity or culture of it's own. How many things here are influenced by California, Texas, Washington, and Oregon? Quite a bit. There isn't much Denver culture left to speak of sadly. Denver has become a conglomerate of other cultures (good and mostly bad) almost like a shopping mall. A little of this and a little of that but a whole lot of nothing terribly original and organic to Denver itself when you tally it up at the end of the day. Now the culture has been defined by legalized pot. I keep hearing about the great music scene here...say what? A city with a great music scene is Austin TX...not Denver.
Denver has become dirty. Yes, dirty. I see more and more trash and crud littering the streets. There seems to be little civic pride among the population to not be an a-hole and empty your ashtray, fast food wrappers, or beer bottles on the curb. The air quality is dismal. Too many cars at altitude makes for that lovely brown haze around Denver and the surrounding areas. Like a mini-Los Angeles.
As for the people...there are some very nice and down to earth folks here in Denver. Sadly the ratio is tilted too far toward the loud, obnoxious, highly intoxicated, rude, and self-absorbed masses that are slowly taking over this city. These aren't all people in their 20s and 30s that I am talking about. As much as people want to pretend that Denver is a tolerant place it simply isn't. There is a very subtle form of racism and bigotry here that gets swept under the carpet. Even better are the morons that come here for legalized weed without bothering to check on how much it costs to live in the Amsterdam of the Rocky Mountains. I know why the locals in Vegas hate the tourists that come to their city and make a mess of it only to leave on the next flight out.
As for housing and employment...I keep hearing about job growth but do service industry jobs pay enough to keep people in food and rent? Hardly. Salaries for professional fields are not what they used to be despite the local propaganda about how great the local economy is. Minimum wage jobs shouldn't count as job growth.
The cost of renting is an utter joke compared to what you earn on a decent local salary. If you seek an apartment close to downtown or what you feel is a trendy area be prepared to fork over $1200-1400 for a small apartment with no parking.
To own a smallish 2 BR ranch style house with a postage stamp sized yard in Denver proper requires at least $350-450K which means you are going to live in a less than nice area. How are these housing prices deemed acceptable? What do you think will happen when people can no longer afford to buy or keep homes in Denver/Colorado and start leaving for less expensive locations outside of the state? Do you really think that your $650K townhouse will hold that value when it becomes a buyers market again?
Traffic here is dismal. It isn't Los Angeles but it is getting there. I-25 is short for I can go half a mile in 25 minutes. The highway system (like any city) is a disaster unless you are driving at 3 or 4 AM when most of the locals and professional athletes have already driven home drunk. If you are stuck in highway traffic between the hours of noon and three in the afternoon you can get a lovely contact high from our many motorized weed enthusiasts. Even the local streets require some quick thinking and shortcuts to just get from one place to another within a reasonable amount of time.
The sad thing is that Denver was once a fun and decent city and now it has grown too bloated with people, cars, and has become so vastly overpriced. To borrow from a Woody Allen quote from Annie Hall..."I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light and buying legalized weed."