denver

centennial, co

i am proud to be from denver, even if i no longer necessarily want to live there. i may even embody the city far more than i'd care to admit. while i seek to avoid succumbing to the adage, i can't help but add that you can take the boy out of denver, but you can't.....you get the rest. denver is a city that talks about aspiring for greatness, but seems content enough to have solid sunsets and carefully crafted beers. denver is a city that tries to stand tall and handle its grace when the big folks come through, but still has its local news anchors as permanent fixtures in its gossip columns. denver is a city that wants to rival chicago in the big city department, but doesn't fully understand that the nation's eyes tend to go over its shoulder to the parks and ski resorts beyond. denver is like the cute enough sister who is friends with all the hottest guys, never fully realizing that they just want to get with its far more attractive sister and her beautiful, majestic mountains. denver thinks it gets thought about, but is really just like the innocent and benevolently ignored character from an 80s brat pack film. denver is like the junior high student who had been home-schooled through elementary: close enough geographically as to appear assimilated, yet so culturally removed as to be innocent where others would be insecure. nobody has yet informed denver of this status, and, frankly, i just don't have the heart to do it myself.

the fact is that denver is a fine place and is just shy of being wonderful. denver is a lot like portugal, that handsome stepchild of the european union: if it could accept the fact that it cannot compete with the big cities (or countries, for metaphor preservation sake) in their big city games and instead took ownership of its more natural attributes, it would have a real shot at an appearance on the international radar. i think that the biggest detraction to the city is that so many men walk around with cell phones attached to their blue jeans. seriously? as we all know that first impressions are so important, it would help to 86 the geriatrics who greet new arrivals at the airport wearing cowboy hats. on that note, why don't we just scrap the whole cowboy motif altogether? yes, i know, this was an integral part of the wild wild west and the setting for dr. quinn, medicine woman, but there are no cowboys here. people in denver drive suv's and their guns are stored in suburban dens, so it's time to at least move one century forward in accoutrements. this is not so much about redefining denver's image, but about releasing the city from the image that it (mistakenly) thinks others want it to hold. though i know it has already been mentioned, the severity of the situation bears repetition: chill out about the newscasters. no other city will take you seriously so long as you continue to focus on how poorly ron zappolo tips or where kathy sabine took her last shit.

all that being said, it need be stated that there is more to know and love about denver each time i go back. on this visit, i went back to the broadway that used to be strewn with trash and adorned with adult movie theaters (in a bad way) to find that it was populated with dive bars, drunks, and small dealers of gothic ephemera (in a good way). i nearly had to sneak a tear when i took the light rail from nine mile to downtown to catch a rockies game last night. was this my hometown, my denver, with its very own mass transit system? i could only ponder the difference to my high school and college days in the past imperfect subjunctive had this system been around. and then there's the latest green industry. medical marijuana has been legal in the state since 2000, but since the feds have no longer enforced its own archaic laws, dispensaries have grown like, well, weeds over the past couple years. in fact, dispensaries now outnumber starbucks by a ratio of 2-to-1 in the city of my birth. not only do the fair minded citizenry exhibit a tolerance for the latest growth industry, but it appears that its' flourishment will attract people of a 'fair-minded' persuasion. when you factor in that the mayor is great, the people are open and friendly, and the city has a healthy supply of mexican, vietnamese, and ethiopian immigrants (among others) and their cuisines, i feel comfortable ponying up for my hometown.

despite all its beauty and the fact that it is still home to the people closest to my heart, it still pains me to say that i cannot live in denver. dorothy said that there is no place like home and she was right. a small caveat that the tin man could have added was that some of us are not meant to live in our hometowns. some of us were born in nests thatched with and by infinite love, but with the knowledge that our destiny was flight. some of us have to spread our wings and fly, not away from a past, but towards something that may not necessarily be known and could certainly never be articulated. so i am proud to say that i was and am and always will be a colorado kid. nothing could ever change that. consider it a compliment to the soil that the roots have grown strong enough to support a plant that seeks and finds, not necessarily better, but certainly different atmospheres through the course of its sweet time on earth.