Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
I'm not saying Austin is Vermont but it's a vibrant city set in a prettier area compared to Houston or Dallas and people are more connected to local natural amenities...unlike Houston and Dallas. Even Denver which is known for the Rockies is actually flat and bland and quite a bit away from the actual mountains.
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I moved from Dallas to Denver in 2006 and the Denverites played up their city like it was some kind of utopian paradise. They made it seem like the mountains were all right outside every doorstep. They tend to talk about the climate as comparable to Southern California. They compared the urbanism and nightlife to San Francisco or Miami. They described the traffic is far better than Los Angeles or Atlanta. They described people as friendly as Mississippians but as cosmopolitan as New Yorkers.
Virtually none of that was true. As you mentioned the city itself is flat and the undeveloped areas are largely treeless, barren plains. The mountains can be SEEN in the distance and they do indeed look pretty when there is snow on them, but to get to them involves an hour or so of bumper-to-bumper on I-70. The climate is NOTHING like SoCal, otherwise Denver would be crawling with palm trees, jacarandas, and flowers blooming in January. Denver has a nice day here or there in the winter, but they also have BITTER cold days where the high temperature is below zero fahrenheit. What good is a sunny day when it's 9 degrees outside? Are you going to go biking or have a picnic in THAT kind of weather? Give me a break. The urbanism is solid and there are a few vibrant areas like Cap Hill and LoDo, but again, Denver does not compare to top-tier cities as far as their nightlife and cultural scene. The traffic was every bit as bad as Los Angeles (where I lived for 4 years after I left Colorado). The people ranged from nice, cultured, progressive folk to the worst kinds of arrogant Status Quo Warriors imaginable. Typical of an average city with average metrics.
I've lived in other cities that sat near the middle of a lot of these qualities before, but none of them contained anywhere near the same amount of people who pretend their city is the best place on Earth as Denver. Even Dallas, famous for being full of people who think it's better than it is, does not compare. And where I live now, in Houston, people are so much more down to Earth. They know the pluses and minuses of their city. They love it despite its warts. They don't care if YOU like it or not, they are who they are. I'd love to see Denverites adopt more of this attitude.
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