Reviews & Comments
Denver, CO
Sad to witness -
7/13/2018I grew up in Colorado and moved back from Seattle after the Dotcom bust. Denver was a a quiet urban oasis with great restaurants + plentiful jobs + and proximity to the mountains. It was a dream... a dream that too many people shared. With heavy hearts we moved on earlier this year to preserve our health and sanity. Not saying where because, no offense, but it’s great and we don’t want to give anyone ideas about coming here.
First of all, Denver stinks, and I mean it smells bad. The smog and forest fire soot in the air actually leave a thin black coating that covers everything, including your lungs. And the smog is no wonder because traffic has become outrageous (this is coming from someone who lived in Seattle, remember). Public transportation is an absolute joke—whether no not the light rail is running is actually a running joke on a local news station. So you and everyone else must drive. Everywhere. Always. Plenty of Denver’s recent transplants are obviously new to driving in winter conditions and will take you out with their ignorance and bald tires. The restaurants, admittedly, are still great. Alas, after crawling through traffic, you will wait for hours to get a table. And then there’s the mountains... you won’t be seeing those unless you want to drive for hours in stop & go traffic then fight for parking and trail space with literally hundreds of other folks (and their obnoxious kiddos and dogs that they don’t clean up after). Also, there’s no more “quiet” in Denver: traffic of course always, construction is everywhere and starts at the crack of dawn, and WTF with the obsession with leaf blowers and illegal firecrackers?!?
The jobs are still plentiful but you’re competing with entitled new grads with Ivy League degrees. And let’s face it, many of these CO newbies are Mommy-funded kids and can work for nothing. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living and employees are completely expendable. If you didn’t buy a house 10 years ago (or just sell a house in CA) you will never ever ever own a home in Denver. So maybe you’ll live in one of those new “modern” apartment/condo boxes with no outdoor space and no parking (for the car you must have). You can nourish the nodules on your lungs, thinking about the skiing you can’t afford while listening to the sirens, jackhammers, and leaf blowers ... Yah, Denver: Not a dream anymore.