California on the Plains
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5/8/2015
Denver is nothing more than a mid-size Midwestern city with mountains and a great marketing campaign which I fell for. What you pay for what you get is robbery. The attempts to make this place hip are tacky and pathetic. This is a very car centric city and don’t see that changing anytime in the future.
The people…Verbil Kent sums them up pretty well. I've never been around so many cowardly, passive aggressive, and aloof people in my life. Very few people here keep it real. You aren't going to fit in if you’re a Type A personality, which makes finding a job very difficult. People come here to get high, chill out, and enjoy the overrated outdoor recreation scene in the Front Range.
Almost all of the hikes here are the same thing…trudging up a mountain that is really just a massive hill. I don’t want to just hike up mountains. I want to scramble (non-technical climbing) up mountains. There is not a lot of scrambling because most of these peaks lack enough solid rock and or just aren't steep enough. I don’t care about skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, or technical rock climbing, so this area gets boring quickly. The only water activity is white water rafting, which is meh. You can hunt and or fish anywhere in America, so blah.
The job market is a mirage. For all of this propaganda about a low unemployment rate and numerous startups, most salaries are a joke when factoring in the cost of housing. Matthew from Lubbock, TX describes it best “The land of minimum wage opportunity.” The housing market is headed for a bubble. There is no way people can afford these houses on their salaries.
The weather is not that great if you like consistency. While the winter months are usually mild and sunny, the snow season runs from September to May with a real possibility to extend into June. Most of the snow is in the spring. There are not 300 days of sunshine. It is more like 270. The lack of humidity is the only really nice thing out here.
Ryan | Lakewood, CO