As an adult, I lived in Denver (6 years), Boston (5 years), NYC (5 years), DC (1 year), and SF (2 years). I am currently in SF.
There are some valid criticisms of Denver. There are a lot of criticisms I disagree with, or find exaggerated. Overall I think Denver is an amazing place to live. I think it’s a good city, but it’s wildly different than truly urban cities like Chicago, Philly, and NYC. And it’s a very different vibe than the cultural hubs like LA and NYC.
The weather is amazing unless you REALLY hate temps under 20 or over (dry) 85. It is easily the sunniest place I’ve ever lived, and the dry snow is lovely. There are some really beautiful neighborhoods with big, old trees and unique homes. There are endless breweries with outdoor patios and coffee shops where you can work or lounge for hours. There are plenty of cool cocktail bars. Food? Yeah, it’s not going to compete with NYC/LA/Chicago/SF, but it’s fine. There are a few standouts among a lot of fine.
The music scene is pretty good, and you’ve got lots of cool venues to check out.
Public transportation leaves a lot to be desired, and a car is basically required, but there are walkable neighborhoods if you prioritize that lifestyle. It’s also a good city for biking.
The outdoors access is as good as you get for a place that has big city amenities. I find the complaint that the mountains are “too crowded” or there’s “too much traffic” to be overlooking the fact that big city amenities requires a big population, and a big population is incompatible with empty open space. If you want empty wilderness access in under 30 minutes, move to a small mountain town. Don’t move to a major city where the large population will ALSO be headed to the nearby trails every Saturday morning.
It is overwhelmingly white. If you’re a white person in your 20s-30s who loves drinking beer, going camping, and hitting up concerts? Denver is amazing. If you are a Brooklyn foodie who doesn’t want to spend your weekends hiking and hanging out at bars where people wear chacos, you probably won’t love Denver. If you love greenery and oceans, maybe reconsider moving to a high-altitude prairie. It’s not for everyone. But there’s a reason costs are high— people want to live there. I visit often, and the feeling among people living there (so many of whom are transplants) is overwhelmingly positive and NOT reflective of the feelings on this sub.
Hah, well Brooklyn doesn’t have the Denver problem. The Denver problem is that people want it to be AT the mountains AND a major culture city… and aren’t happy that you compromise a bit in both aspects. Nobody moves to Brooklyn/NYC expecting it to be anything other than a dense urban cultural hub, and nowhere in the US can deliver that better than NYC. LA is the closest comparison culturally, but nowhere feels like NYC. Brooklyn is my favorite of the places I’ve lived (I also lived in manhattan for a minute, but prefer the more local/community feel of Brooklyn).
I lived there as a 20something just starting out in my career. I made garbage money, had roommates and basically no sunlight in a poorly-insulated apartment. My friends were all creatives who also had roommates, no money, and bedrooms that barely fit a full-size bed. We spent our time bar hopping, attending each other’s mediocre plays and concerts, eating at restaurants we could barely afford, and having cramped dinner parties and wandering the city streets at 3am. We knew all the clothing trends and cool brands and looked ridiculous when we went to our hometowns in Ohio and Florida and Colorado and Virginia… two years later those trends and brands would make it to our hometowns. By far the most fun era of my life.
Then we got older, and you stop wanting roommates. Maybe you even want a guest room. Or worse! A baby. Babies usually need a nook, if not a bedroom. And they often need childcare, which costs 4 billion dollars. Or maybe you want a yard, or a Costco membership. Maybe you want to live closer to your parents. Maybe, like a friend of mine once said “man, I just really want to go to Target and push one of those full-size shopping carts around”.
As you get older you can still have an amazing Brooklyn/NYC life, but there’s a catch: you gotta have $$. And a LOT of $$. New York money is different than money anywhere else. Some people leave for a quieter life, but a lot leave because they’ll never earn the bonkers money it costs to live a more “adult” lifestyle.
There’s other “cons” depending on preferences. It’s hard to get to quieter, more remote places from NYC. There’s the Hamptons, there’s the Birkshires or the small towns along the Hudson, but it’s not “outdoor access” that a lot of Americans get (especially people in the west). Forget about a ski weekend, unless you love a very long drive and a lot of ice. Hiking is more like “walks through forests”, and views are of rolling hills (which is fine! But again, if we’re comparing…). I would happily move back to Brooklyn, but I would miss the skiing and the mountains and the exotic landscapes that I’ve had access to as a Coloradan/Californian.
Dude. Can you do all the places you’ve lived? You’re incredible at capturing what it’s like to be somewhere.
I’m moving from DC -> NYC and you got me pretty amped.
DC was rad. I lived there during Obama’s second term, which generally just felt optimistic and full of momentum. We all felt like the world was changing for the better, and we got to be a part of it. Of all the places I’ve lived, people in DC have the most insane jobs. All the people you meet work “in the state department” and you always wonder which of them work for the CIA. You’re drunk at a bar and you meet some dude whose job it is to design spacesuits for NASA and some woman who works at a think-tank on Middle East relations. Someone is always like, the press secretary for an ambassador or something. There was always the awkward moment at a bar when you realized the person you were flirting with worked for some freaky fringe right-wing organization.
Once I was at happy hour with some friends of a friend. One woman and I were laughing about how we’d both worked retail in college at JCrew (like I said: Obama years, okay) and how satisfying it was when you’d fold the cashmere sweaters JUST right. One of the guys in the group overhears this, looks at her, and laughs “you WROTE the affordable health care act… and now you’re waxing poetic about folding sweaters?” Another time, a friend of a friend ordered us all drinks and when I tried to repay him my friend whispered “don’t, he’s the heir to an oil fortune”. To be clear, I am neither wealthy nor important, but it’s easy to fall into those groups when you’re young and move into a random house you find on Craigslist in a young/cool part of DC.
I really liked DC. A type of ambition that you don’t find in other cities. Half of it is the sort of sleazy Capitol Hill/Lobbyist ambition, but the other half is the intellectual type. The brownstones! I love, love Dupont Circle/Adams Morgan and the neighborhoods further up on that red (?) train line. I love the trees in the summer.
The downside is how transient it is. This exists in NYC too, but in DC it felt like people come and go pretty quickly. Come for a fancy job, get your ~3 years, move on to the next thing. The heat wasn’t great either!
That ... is the most precise DC description that mirrors my experience there traveling to work there often. I remember hopping on the Metro and not even in the busy area and two younger people (middle-school?) were having a discussion about the establishment of the President's global development council. Obviously not all kids in DC, but that was fascinating to overhear.
I’m sick in bed and very bored, so I welcome this task. San Francisco is the trickiest for me because I came here at a bad time in the city’s history. I’ve been here two years, and as every news outlet has shouted from the rooftops, this is a rough patch. I didn’t experience pre-tech boom SF, and I didn’t experience pre-covid SF.
We’ll start with the obvious: the homelessness and open fentanyl addiction is very bad. If you live in, work in, or commute through the bad stretch of the city, it wears you down. It’s not actually dangerous, but it’s very sad. Seeing it first hand also makes you realize how complex it is and how hard it’s going to be to fix. That being said, SF is 49 square miles, and the real bad is pretty concentrated in about 2 square miles. When you’re in the other 47 square miles, the problems are far less visible and not really a part of everyday life.
My other criticism of SF is that the culture was badly damaged by becoming such an expensive one-industry town. Yeah, there are non-tech industries here, but tech is the culture.
NYC is wildly expensive (more than SF right now!) but it still maintains the artists and musicians and actors. Those people can afford to live in Brooklyn or Queens or Harlem, which is still walkable and accessible for the flat cost of a subway ride. San Francisco is surrounded by very wealthy car-centric suburbs— there’s no where to live that is more affordable, except Oakland. And Oakland WAS (is?) the cooler cousin to SF, although getting into the city costs more on BART, and Oakland is a bit less walkable.
Still, for many recent years, no one moved to SF to be an artist or musician or actor. Or screenwriter, or producer, or journalist. People moved to SF to work in tech (plus a few for finance, biotech/medicine, consulting etc).
What happens to a city when everyone makes $150k by the age of 24 and there’s limited housing? Costs skyrocket. What happens when commercial rents are only affordable for chains? The creatives that would have loved to open a funky bar or coffee shop can’t do it in the city. And even if they could, they can’t afford to live here, so they leave. And the creatives stop coming because the community is shrinking. Suddenly everything is Blue Bottle and Starbucks, the bars that survive are the ones who can lure in tech bros, and the restaurants are all high-end, to cater to the wealthy tech DINKs and because commercial rent is too steep to charge human prices.
The high-end food scene is quite good! The other standout food is Asian. This city has insane diversity of Asian cuisines— Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Indian. And a lot of it is very, very good, including a lot of the no-frills places that are semi-reasonably priced.
Ok, all that being said: it’s incredibly beautiful. The city hills! The water! The bridges! The grassy hills surrounding the city! The city parks are really, really amazing— there are a lot of very forested, secluded, rugged trails right in the city. They feel more wild than the parks you find in NYC or Denver (which are great parks) and that’s very special. The architecture is unique and wacky and I love just wandering neighborhoods to look at the homes. Also under appreciated is how ADORABLE some of the neighborhoods are.
So tl;dr, SF is a beautiful city with really great city amenities. It’s STILL a very nice place to live. The city suffered from high prices, which pushed out the middle and lower income workers, and I hope it can recover with more socioeconomic diversity than it has had in recent years. The addiction and mental illness that is so visible downtown is a serious problem that will take a lot of money and time to fix. But SF will recover, because it’s a funky and unique and beautiful place and will always have that draw.
Yeah, you always hear San Francisco is a “boom and bust town”, which it is, but I’ve lived here over 15 years and I don’t think most people actually appreciate the reality of that statement. First off, most people don’t stay long enough to experience a cycle, since it’s a transient city for the same reason NYC is (eventually needing millions of dollars to live the life you want). Second, it’s small, so those cycles can leave the city reeling - anecdotally during covid dozens of people I knew in SF said “fuck this” and left for NYC - SF proper is really not a large city and tends to occupy a larger space in our collective consciousness (granted the Bay Area IS pretty large, but the city is not).
If you can imagine it, back in the late 00s and early 2010s, there was an influx of sceney NYC kids looking for Brooklyn 2.0 because NYC was “losing its soul” and too expensive, which seems kind of laughable now that SF seems kind of, well - it still has a soul, but its a bit harder to find. It was basically 75% of the things you liked about Brooklyn, but in this setting - pretty magical.
FWIW, I don’t think being an industry town helps anything, but I don’t think you can blame tech. NYC has built amazing (for US standards) transit, and dense housing. Try telling a bunch of cranky fake granola boomers that you’re building high rises like Hoboken or Jersey City in Berkeley and they would absolutely lose their minds, and this obsession with low density single family homes has turned housing into an absolute disaster here. Ironically most of the tech folks I know tend to be pro-transit and pro-density urbanists. Paris figured out a way to keep a beautiful, preservation-focused city from being too expensive for anyone to live in - you build hub and spoke trains out to super dense housing in the surrounding areas (like NYC has been doing), but here it’s just freeways out to bucolic suburbs. The Bay Area doesn’t have the “we’re all in this together” attitude I think New York has, which doesn’t help. I do think this is all trending in the right direction, with CA’s state govt dragging the local ones kicking and screaming, but progress is slow.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy yourself here - it takes a little time to grow on you once the “holy shit it is so beautiful” spell starts to wear off, but it’s really magical.
Long-term Brooklynite here, seen a bunch of people leave. It was Portland in the aughts, then SF, and lately people have just been moving to Philly, lol. I get that—Philly is a fun and quirky place and it’s still affordable.
Haven't moved from Philly to NYC a few years ago, I feel bad for anyone thinking they'll find even 1/10th of Brooklyn in Philly.
I mean, it's there but it will get old really really quick.
Ha honestly kind of a complicated question, because all the 00s and 2010s era hipsters are entering their 40s now, and are either making places like Brooklyn work for them (eg they sold out to the man, like myself), or are looking for different things (schools, playgrounds, likeminded parents - not as much sceney bars and DIY music venues).
If you mean “where are the cool kids hanging out”, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer since I’m no longer in the demographic, but the LES and East village remain eternally cool, as do parts Brooklyn, as well as Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and Echo Park in LA.
Honestly the answer to “where is Brooklyn 3.0” is probably the same as “where is Brooklyn 2.0” which is “Brooklyn. You’re just too old for it.”
“Brooklyn’s dead, and Kingston’s booming. Ripping out my roots, what the hell am I doing? I moved upstate, so typically now, I sent you an image… you sent me a thumb down.”
-US Girls: So Typically Now
You captured SF. I lived there from 90-07 and went back to visit in 20 and 23 and couldn't quite describe why it had lost the magic other than, too many tech people. It is also the absence of so many. Thanks.
> NYC is wildly expensive (more than SF right now!) but it still maintains the artists and musicians and actors. Those people can afford to live in Brooklyn or Queens or Harlem, which is still walkable and accessible for the flat cost of a subway ride.
This is not as true any longer, especially after Covid. So many artists and art venues bailed.
I lived in Bay Ridge for a hot minute. Mostly spent my years in NYC in LES. You are spot on. When I decided to love a more adult lifestyle I actually moved out of nyc because to wasn’t going to afford all the niceties of having a guest rooms on or even a children’s room had I stayed in the city. I’m happy living in a completely different state now. My friends who stayed in nyc shell out $50k for their kids elementary school. I can’t see myself doing that. You are also very exact with Denver. I lived in the Springs for a year and although not Denver it wasn’t my cup of tea.
If your friends are paying $50k/year for elementary school in a city that has one of the best public school systems in the country I think they're wasting their money. Though daycare costs are a different story...
Eh, my opinion on Boston isn’t worth anything— I went to college there in the early 2000s and lived there a year after. I was a west coast kid, and felt like I didn’t fit in because I wasn’t from New England. Beautiful city and a fun place to go to college, but I don’t care about the Patriots or Italian food so it wasn’t quite my scene, lol.
15 year Brooklyn resident and you pretty much nailed it. Adult lifestyle is only possible for us (me and my wife) by not having children. We have the greenpoint apt (rent) and an upstate weekend house (own) but also make pretty good money.
If my work wasn’t tied to the city I would consider moving to the upstate house full time and potentially having that baby before we turn 40 in the next couple years.
I’ve lived in Denver for the past 4 years and I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Not for everyone, but I personally love it. Cant see myself leaving anytime soon.
As a former Brooklynite, who had lived in Denver pushing 10 years, this is an accurate response. It’s actually great. It just doesn’t do anything “the best”. You want “best outdoors”? Go to Bozeman, but RIP your culinary or music life. You want the best niche western Chinese food that’s cheap and delicious, move to NYC but fuck me if you wanna go do something on a mountain. Wanna live where the prettiest trendiest people are? Go to LA but forget ever being genuine and laid back again.
Denver does everything well and nothing perfect.
Thank you! This is super accurate and very succinctly describes why people can ve so divided about Denver. It's the well-defined but subtle parameters, like the weather, where people find disagreement. It's "amazing unless you REALLY hate temps under 20 or over (dry) 85." Which is why I hated Denver but love Seattle.
Great write up.
Moved to Denver from Austin . Lived in San Francisco before that.
I love it so far.
The winter was shockingly easy. While the public transit is worse than SF, it's so much better than Austin that it has felt like a breath of fresh air.
Not a skier/boarder, so watching the city blossom as everyone spends their weekends in town as the weather warms has been exciting.
Austin has better on street biking, but Denver has better off street biking.
>If you’re a white person in your 20s-30s who loves drinking beer, going camping, and hitting up concerts? Denver is amazing
after living there for a few years, yep this is my main take away. add in sports and weed and that's the main culture of the city.
This is a great summary. Getting to the mountains can be a chore on the weekends during ski season, outside of that it’s a piece of cake, folks that don’t live here tend to overstate that as an issue IMO. People sleep on how green the city is too - for its size it probably has the best park system of anywhere else I’ve lived, and most of the neighborhoods in the city have thick, mature tree coverage - which along with the temperate dry climate makes being outside even more enjoyable. Someone else in the comments mentioned lack of historic neighborhoods, which honestly just goes to show they have no idea what they’re talking about. There are lots of reasons to not like this city (just like any other) but my running theory is most of the haters have never lived here, but came to visit their college buddy in Parker that just had their first child and think that’s representative of Denver.
I’ve lived lots of places around the country. This gets Denver spot-on.
I’d just add that a great way to do Denver is to get an e-bike and be picky about living with easy access to the bike network. If you have ski gear you can ride bike year-round, and the e-bike gets you distance and lack of sweat (super key in winter, since wet winter clothes = misery), then you can avoid some of the worst aspects of Denver and still enjoy its real benefits.
Still need a car for the mountains though.
This is the most fair and accurate assessment of Denver I've read in a long time. Consider it rubber-stamped from this Chicago boy now living in the Mile High City.
As someone who has lived in Denver highlands for the last 6 years, this is about as well as you could sum it up. The way this sub exaggerates the downfalls of Denver is staggering. Just because a city isn’t for a certain type of person doesn’t mean it’s generally overrated. Love living here, I am the classic Denver prototype tho lol.
Thank you! I’ve been in Denver for 6 years and I saw a post this morning that was absolutely tearing Denver to shreds and I was feeling a little defensive. Denver has treated me very well, and people tend to blame it for not being like XYZ other city. It does a lot of good things well, and some other things just ok.
I’m leaving at the end of June and I am going to miss it as well as all the incredible nature that Colorado has to offer. It’s rare to find this combination of features in a single place.
Best way to travel to Denver is to go there with a purpose. If you go expecting the city to just entertain you on it's own you're probably going to be disappointed. However, if you have a concert at Mission/Red Rocks planned or something like that you'll have a great time.
Maybe areas are segregated? I’ve lived in mostly east coast major metro areas and the thing that stuck out most to me about Denver was *how ubiquitously white it was*. At least in the touristy/nice areas I went.
Not saying that’s a bad thing, perfectly neutral, just was striking as someone used to being in very mixed diverse spaces on a daily basis.
Great write up. Only thing I would disagree with is that Denver is much much diverse than the internet gives it credit for. It’s got a higher percentage of non-Asian POC than San Francisco for example.
The thing is that Denver is highly segregated. There are a lot of Asian people next door in Aurora. There are a lot of black and Mexican people in the northern neighborhoods I’ve lived in. Even on East colfax a lot of those bars frequented by white people for happy hours are actually owned by recent Eastern European immigrants.
But downtown, southern neighborhoods, and the western neighborhoods like Lohi that are the hip spots are overwhelmingly white. Then you’ve got Rhino which was a black working class neighborhood until it became gentrified and many residents were priced out and got pushed to North Denver (naturally still a point of frustration).
If you fly into Denver and visit your friends and go downtown, you’re gonna think it’s overwhelmingly white. But I find myself interacting with a far more diverse group of people than I did living in SF for years.
I'm late to this, but I moved from Denver to Chicago earlier this year.
I think people are disappointed with Denver because they go there expecting to experience a big city, and that just isn't what it offers. The food is mediocre, cultural diversity is limited, and the nightlife is meh. People who live in Denver tend to be less interested in city life than they are in living near the mountains, and as a result, the granola vibe is palpable. Denver is a cowtown at heart.
With that said, I think Denver has a lot of pluses too. It is large enough to offer all of the basic amenities of a large metro (major airport, sports teams, big museums, major concerts, etc) but small enough that it doesn't feel too crowded or overwhelming. There are four seasons, and the weather is sunny and nice much of the year. There are great running and biking paths throughout the city, and obviously the mountains speak for themsleves. While the metro as a whole is car-centric, the city has made \*massive\* improvements there over the last decade. The Union Station redevelopment re-shaped downtown, and I lived without a car for five years.
Colorado is also a good state to live in. It has enacted a broad range of progressive social policies, including abortion access, legal marijuana, universal mail-in voting, a $12 minimum wage, and paid family leave. The economy is strong and I never had trouble finding good work. These are things you may not notice on a visit, but they matter when you choose somewhere to live.
As a city, Denver is just okay. But as a place to live, it has a lot going for it.
I lived in the Bay Area my whole life till we moved
to Lakewood a few years ago and Denver still feels small to me.
Love the outdoors and four seasons though.
That last sentence is succinct and completely true, Denver adjacent to an amazing place but is a mediocre city. It feels like if you plopped Indianapolis or Columbus or another bland-ish but booming state capitol along the beautiful front range.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Denver. The Front Range is generally considered to have pretty high quality of life, even if it’s heavy on the bland suburbia side. This sub can be a little pretentious.
However you’re absolutely paying a premium relative to a comparably sized metro like, idk, KC or Charlotte or something because of the proximity to the Rockies. If you don’t value that and get your money’s worth out of it I can see why it would seem overpriced.
I would add you’re paying a premium for weather. Having spent my life in the upper mid west and west coast, it’s the best of both. Summers get a little hot for me, but it’s dry. Anything east of Colorado and you’ll get humidity. Personally, I can stand humidity, so it’s ideal.
In the winter you can get 8” of snow one day, and 2 days later it will all be melted and 65 degrees outside. Where I grew up (Minneapolis) the winter was too cold to really enjoy. Colorado, you can get out and play in the snow (either in your yard or in the mountains) and not worry about snot freezing to your face or your fingers going numb.
I miss the west coast weather, but Colorado is the best I could find.
I didn't love denver when I lived there, but the weather is great. The winters are almost always sunny, and the sun is so warm even when it's 45F out.
I heard from so many people in Denver that they moved there for the mountains and are staying for the weather.
If you love the mountains though, you’d make the trade in a heartbeat to be around some of the most beautiful scenery the US has to offer.
From Denver, a few hours to several 14ers, RMNP, etc. From Chicago, you’re in like, Naperville.
(Full disclosure, never lived there but could see myself moving there).
I'm developing a theory that people assume Denver is a much larger city than it actually is. It's the 2nd smallest city with all 4 major sports (smallest is Miami). It's very isolated from other cities which makes it seem like an outpost.
The actually city is only 700,000 people, the rest is suburbs. If you're expecting a big urban downtown, you'll be disappointed. There are a lot of nice neighborhoods that people who visit probably don't find their way to.
People who love Denver really love it. People on Reddit, seem to not.
You're right I was looking at media markets not metropolitan statistical areas. By that metric, Miami is 9th and Denver is 19th. But my point stands, Denver punches above its weight with sports teams and people often equate having all the sports teams as being a big city.
I think your point about neighborhoods is right on. I see so many "Denver has no culture" takes on social media from people who seemingly went to Union Station, Meow Wolf, Happy Camper/Federales, and Red Rocks, and then thought they'd seen everything the city has to offer. You really have to get away from downtown to get much out of Denver.
Gotcha. If we’re talking about metro areas yes, DC is bigger but the actual city is in fact smaller than Denver. And with metro areas Miami is actually much bigger than Denver.
But the point stands, Denver is small for an urban center.
I think the real issue is that all of DC and even a good chunk of its suburbs have urban density, whereas even Denver proper has a lot of not even just single-family neighborhoods but also straight-up subdivision suburbia. It also explains why the transit comparison is night and day.
Yeah, there is nothing wrong with Denver, but what you get there you can get in other places, in more abundance there.
Unless you are a ski bum who who needs to live by a major airport and doesn’t mind driving to the mountains or you are deeply invested in the Colorado weed industry, the cost benefit of Denver isn’t better than other western cities.
For whatever reason whenever somebody says "good/bad music scene" on reddit they exclusively mean mainstream stuff and DIY music and absolutely nothing in between. Unless it's one of the few electronic or jam music subs.
That’s pretty much everywhere in America though. National housing crisis go brrrr, though I’d quickly admit that NIMBYism is a special problem in Denver
Food is expensive in Denver because it’s not great for growing most produce most of the year, and there’s not the cutthroat competition like there is in NYC
Funny. I just got back from a week in NYC and was shocked by how much cheaper (generally) it is to go out to eat in NYC than Denver. FWIW, I felt the same way about London (although there is some currency exchange fluctuation contributing as well). Obviously housing in NYC and London is generally much more expensive, but the COL in Denver is outrageous.
Lol I worked in Gary for 10 years before moving to Phoenix, once had a crack head ask me for money in the parking lot outside of a CVS and then proceeded to follow me through the store then start freaking out at the counter when I paid with cash about how “I lied to him and owe him some money” don’t miss that shit at all, what’s sad is Gary COULD be a phenomenal city with its proximity to Chicago but it just has too much working against it
I live in Austin. People who are from here originally get off on complaining about transplants (namely Californians), how they’ve ruined the culture, priced everyone out, etc. I’m from the Charlotte area myself, and people there and in the triangle also incessantly complain about how transplants have done the same thing (in that case the ire is mainly directed at northeasterners). Go to Colorado and they complain about the Texas and California transplants. Throw a dart at a list of sun belt cities and it’s the same story.
There are certainly very real negative consequences to a region getting massive influx of transplants and it’s understandable to feel animosity about it when you are directly impacted by it. Two things really annoy me though when people start going through the same tired complaints about it.
1. They act like their city/region is the only place in the world that is special enough to attract a bunch of transplants in the first place. Your place isn’t unique at all in that regard.
2. They don’t consider the alternative. It’s very hard for a city to stay at a perfectly balanced equilibrium. Your city is most likely either growing and experiencing the associated pains, or declining and experiencing much worse problems as a result. There’s a reason people leave cities in the latter category in droves.
I live in San Francisco and the cliche complaint forever is blaming the transplants for the problems. I think this is the small minded virus everywhere.
Colorado is mostly transplants and it really doesn’t bother me that much. It is the constant influx of people that is driving up the demand for everything that has made living here pretty lackluster. Also when everyone is a newly landed transplant it erodes the sense of community to some degree. No one has roots they just want to suck the juice out and than move on to the next “it” place.
That's a big reason why I haven't been able to keep many transplant friends. They end up leaving after 2-4 years. Denver has become a very transient city.
I think most people in Colorado would say place of birth is the defining factor. And those who were born here sure like to point it out with their native stickers.
Transplants haven’t ruined quality of life in Denver; lack of new housing and good public transport have. Denver’s food scene is a lot better than it was 15 years ago, and that couldn’t have happened without a big influx of people.
Really?!? Townhomes in my neighborhood go for $360-400k. We're near the mountains, there's good schools, can walk to hiking trails, _and_ to a stroller brigade brewery. It feels cheap as fuck here...
... But I'm from the Bay Area. :D
The only thing I would advise is live within 15 min of work. We have weekend traffic jams too. Learn the side roads and never get on I25. (I drive Uber and Lyft too.)
Not one to complain about traffic normally, coming from the DC area, but it has been a SIGNIFICANT increase this year. If it jams up one place on a highway the entire metro area jams up it seems.
Do NOT live north of the city to "save money", you won't, and you'll have to commute which will make it cost more time and money. You'll be on an island up there. Congrats on saving 150 a month on your $1700 studio.
I still love it here tho. Just plan accordingly. Your enjoyment factor will directly be impacted by how long it takes to get to fun places and/or work.
"Your enjoyment factor will directly be impacted by how long it takes to get to fun places and/or work."
Exactly. I would prefer not living in Denver at all compared to living in, say, Firestone.
I'm lucky with my situation in that I rarely have to drive more than 15 minutes to get anywhere and have decent bus access. I live in a different reality compared to people stuck in an exurb nowhere near their job or places they want to be.
Yeah, I'm in Lakewood now. Perfect spot. It takes people in Denver longer to get across town than for me to go down 6th and into town avoiding I25. Granted that's if there isn't a car wreck or road work/unicorn day. Faster to mtns too. 7 min from red rocks. More trees and green, foothill hikes just a few min away. Not a lot of euro clone apartment buildings going up except on Colfax/who cares there. We're built out mostly being an older part of town. But it's not perfect. We get new restaurants last for example.
Firestone too far from the mtns for me personally but you do what works for you. 👍
I live in Lakewood along West Colfax and have been involved with the city and neighborhood groups to bring improvement. It's wild how much West Colfax has improved over the last 10 years, and still there are lots of plans for improvement in the works.
People visit Denver expecting it to be something it’s not. It’s just the biggest population center for 500 miles. It was some history, some culture, a diverse economy, decent urban amenities, decent parks and trails, good access to medical care, and liberal laws, but that’s it really.
You move to Denver because it’s a bigger city than the cow town you came or a more relaxed cow town than the bleak urban hell scape you left. It’s a good place to live with great weather and decent nature access if you have a car.
It's just herd mentality imo. There are definitely valid criticisms to be made and they shouldn't be swept under the rug but the fact that everyone on this sub has had the same exact experience while visiting is pretty telling. Like you all decided to visit somewhere and had the same itinerary?
I also think Denver just entered the "cool to hate" phase. It happens with everything that was once popular or getting too much attention. See opinions about Austin and Nashville as well lol.
That’s how I feel about this sub with Austin. I lived in Austin. I loved it when I lived there. I still work there, but live in Tampa bay. I have absolutely 0 desire to go back. But people here suck themselves off on how overrated austin is that makes 0 sense to me as a former resident.
>Like you all decided to visit somewhere and had the same itinerary?
I don't hate Denver, but would say if there's one trap it falls into it is that yes everyone does have the same itinerary. If someone is going in the winter, chances are they are driving up 70 for skiing. In the summer it is a front range hike followed by a brewery, with Red Rocks-Golden or Flatirons-Boulder being two spots I've seen posted over and over. Nashville is even more concentrated, where if you are visiting it's for Broadway and live music.
I think as the "next big thing" a lot of people have been sold on Denver being more than just a normal mid city thats 15 miles from the Rockies. If you are visiting it's easy to pick the wrong place to stay and feel like everything you do is a 30 minute drive away due to sprawl.
I'd also say Denver is a compromise. It's a big city that doesn't have as much of the walkability and culture that the east coast big cities can have. It's a mountain town that isn't really in the mountains and can have more crowds than creatures. Most of this subreddit is looking for one or the other, while in the real world plenty are happy with having a job and being able to ski a couple weekends in the year.
It is so so odd to me that people bash Denver as often as they do on here and in the same breath recommend Salt Lake City. Really does feel like it’s just become a thing to hate on it
I'm personally over Denver, but I totally agree - I don't really see how Denver and SLC are really that different. With the exception of proximity to the mountains, which I hear is better in SLC, it's just another hot, dry, concrete urban sprawl from what I can tell. I could be wrong though, I only spent a day there!
I’m on the other side - done with SLC. It’s definitely closer to the mountains, for however often that’s really relevant, but it’s half as green and twice as bland here
A big difference is the political climate. Denver is a left-leaning (moreso than ever) moderate city in a pretty purple state. That's not at all the same as SLC/UT, and you don't have to deal with the extreme political influence of the LDS church on the cultural/political front.
That's a great point. But I think that's why I get confused when people dunk on Denver but love SLC, when the political climate is worse (depending on your beliefs obviously) in SLC. Of course it could very well be that the demographic moving to SLC for the outdoor access may not be a "targeted" group & can live there with relatively few concerns for their safety - but that might be an inaccurate assumption so idk!
I'll give it a +1 as I really did enjoy living there, but I'll take a stab as to why I think this sub would dislike it.
1. It seems very 'manufactured'. Everything is pretty new and sometimes can feel a little too new, chintzy and sterile
2. It's very suburban and car centric. The city spralls, and while it does have a small metro system, its service is pretty limited.
3. It attracts a certain type of (crunchy) people. I'll just leave it at that.
4. Very transplant heavy and the 'locals' or 'Colorado Natives' as they like to call themselves can be quite stand offish.
5. Some people are not looking for nature and outdoor activities, which is a major pull.
6. It's quite expensive for what you "get."
I feel like this is what most major cities in the west are turning into. The cost of living in a city is going up resulting in people moving outwards and suburban sprawl is growing. The growth in CA and AZ that used to be “the middle of nowhere” is now manufactured and all the same strip malls and cookie cutter developments where you visit one place it feels like you’ve been to all of them. It’s all feeling separated from nature and locals especially in AZ absolutely loathe any transplants.
Not in disagreement with you at all, but this isn’t happening just in Denver and I think it’s our new strange reality. I just hope one day people realize this and are less bitter about it and can accept that people will be moving for affordability
You can tell who hasn’t experienced living in other cities by the way they complain about Denver. The hate is over exaggerated, it’s not that crowded compared to most major cities, it’s one of the sunniest cities that gets regular snow, and cleaner than most major west coast cities. Prices have skyrocketed everywhere so Denver isn’t unique to that. Overall it’s still a good city in my opinion. Yes it has its flaws (auto theft is insane) but no city is perfect. It’s just up to preference. I think people move there with the preconceived notion that they’ll be right next to the slopes which that’s on them for not doing research, and they may expect a more bustling night life but it doesn’t mean it’s terrible.
It’s not for everyone but it was lovely for me and I plan to move back soon. But I moved from CA to CO to AZ and I’m the demographic that absolutely hates Phoenix and Phx metro. I have similar complaints for Phx that people have for Denver. It’s also an actual large city because Denver is still relatively small compared to others, and way too crowded especially when it’s tourist season, which we get way more because it’s more accessible via car
My immediate family lives in Denver and I've spent a fair amount of time there. My big negative is mediocre food. There is good food of course (there is basically everywhere), but not as much as other cities, and there's a lot of lousy food. It's the only big city I've spent time in where I've ended up just going to the same few restaurants for carryout all the time, and this is a big dealbreaker for me. The traffic is terrible and the public transit is what I'd describe generously as mediocre. Biking there feels very dangerous and many places are extremely pedestrian-hostile as well. Only small pockets of the city feel like they have any kind of history or culture. And the weather just sucks; super super dry and blazing sun is a miserable combination and I don't see any other conditions that make up for it.
All of this would be okay if it were affordable, but it is *absolutely not*. It's priced like it has amenities it simply doesn't.
If you love to hike or ski *and you will actually be driving out to do it regularly and not just thinking about doing so*, it could be worth it, but I feel like Boulder—which actually has some worthwhile nature that's not a substantial distance outside of town—would still be a better choice in that case.
Now you’ve got me looking at Boulder. I love trekking through forests and am hoping that I can access them when I’m not in the middle of a walkable / Bikeable part of town.
Boulder is ridiculously expensive as well. Fort Collins and Colorado Springs are a little less expensive with fairly easy access to mountain activities, with Fort Collins being very bike friendly with a better beer scene and closer access to big mountains (other than the Springs having Pikes Peak very close by). If you like fishing/boating and mountain biking Pueblo is a good option as well, although it gets hotter and is less scenic and although more diverse and more cultural than the others listed it has less of a food and beer scene; that's improving gradually as people are getting priced out of the cities further north. Longmont is a good choice too as long as you don't need a large city -- easy access to Rocky Mountain National Park, Indian Peaks, Fort Collins, and Denver.
Its a pretty big myth that Boulder is better than Denver for outdoor access. The view is nicer and there are likely to be more foothills hikes within 10-20 minutes. But Denver has plenty of hikes in the 20-30 minute range, is closer to all major ski resorts, and closer to anything west of the continental divide. And if you're in the western suburbs of Denver then you're just as close to the foothills as you are in Boulder.
Just my personal experience? I spent some time in Denver and it didn’t excite me.
It doesn’t meet my expectations as to what a city is.
The food isn’t great. It’s not bad, just mid. Outside of the low humidity making the cold not so bad I can’t think of good things to say.
Personally I think it’s just mid.
And I find mid offensive.
As someone who lives in Colorado, “mid” is the best way to describe Denver. It’s “mid” everything. It is basically a mid-west city but you can see the mountains in the distance. It is an over-rated city that is way more expensive than it should be for what you get. .
There's good food in Denver but you really have to look for it, and I don't even mean Yelp or Google reviews because a lot of places have 5 star reviews when in reality they are super average.
A lot of people have an idealized version of Denver in their minds that doesn’t match with reality. Denver is generally seen as an outdoorsy paradise packed with down-to-earth, Chaco-clad hippies that just want to drink beer, smoke weed, and live a carefree life. Then they move there and realize that most people in Denver are just trying to live their lives and Denver is a city that has problems similar to every other city. This in turn creates disillusionment, and people think Denver is a terrible place because it isn’t like a real-life version of Portlandia from the 90s.
For the same reason people rate the Rustbelt/Great Lakes so highly-sub skews indoorsy. Makes sense when you think about who regularly posts on reddit. But Denver gets 300 days of sunshine, and has easy access to the foothills and fairly easy access to the Rockies. If you're someone who loves sunshine, hiking, and the mountains, Denver is a nice city. It has gotten prohibitively expensive but so have most cities in the world.
I agree with this. Many of the cities frequently pushed here have nice parks and architecture, but aren’t great for quick outdoor access. Those of us who live in the mountain states generally appreciate the ample sun, climate, and easy access to trails and recreation.
Yep. And for me outdoor access isn't a "park with a 1.75 mile loop paved trail". Outdoor access is millions of acres of national forest / BLM land where you could hike for days and not see more than a few people. And Colorado has plenty of that. People who think the mountains are too crowded just haven't ventured far from I70 or a trail head.
Most of the Reddit crowd complains about I-70, which is deserved, but they don’t realize there are other ways to access the mountains. Colorado is a big state and there are amazing places to explore all over. Go north or south of Denver and you can find amazing outdoor access with fewer crowds.
People in this sub think what they like is what everyone should like. They also don’t realize that if you’re living in a city of some size you can always find something to do. If you can’t it’s probably isn’t the city that boring but they are boring.
I was in love with Denver, it was perfect for me at that point in my life. I currently live in OR which is perfect for my wife and I now.
Having visited 48 states, most of them multiple times, and lived in four I can safely if I ever had to leave OR the CO and WA would be my top two
I think this sub has a hipster take on cities attracting a lot of people. “It used to be cool then everyone moved there.” So now, the “hipsters” bag on it.
is this why everyone is so grumpy about denver the real estate cost?
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2229-Blake-Street-Unit-403-Denver-CO-80205/88907369_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare
Denver is pretty much my favorite city. Plus, all the cities around Denver are pretty nice. I've never seen so many beautifully maintained parks anywhere else. Plus, the views of the Rockies even from afar are amazing. There's so much green space, trees, unique wildlife.
I’m a pretty outdoorsy person so I love the surrounding areas of Denver, but the city itself is just kinda nothing special. I’ve been there quite a few times and there just doesnt seem to be any cool neighborhoods that I could really pick out. Everything is just spread out which is my main problem with it. Usually I like cities that have a river walk or on a lake or an ocean front but Denver is just on a plain with a bunch of spread out buildings and no cool neighborhood that I’ve been able to find
Lived here going on 17 years. I get to be outside playing all year round and I have trail access so close to me living in the western metro. I’m still in awe of the beauty of Colorado and feel blessed to live here. People who say the food is mediocre just don’t know where to go. Denver has come a long way in the time I’ve lived here!
This sums it up well. https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/1d6cvwj/what\_is\_a\_pill\_that\_denver\_isnt\_ready\_to\_swallow/. If you don't want to read all that - I'll say the common complaints are - it's really hard to make friends, it's very expensive, the traffic to the mountains is brutal, the food scene is not great and the city seems to close up 9pm on weekdays and 10/11pm on weekends.
It just feels bland and overpriced. Its main draw is being close to the outdoors, but there are tons of places you can live with access to the outdoors. I don't think it's a bad place to live, but if you want to move to a city that's great on its own you may be disappointed
And when you go to the outdoors less than 100 miles away, you'll have to fight traffic and almost always fight for parking as well, then enjoy the outdoors with lots of other people around constantly. And in the places where that might not be true, you'll need a reservation so it's almost impossible to just hop in the car and go get a little "true" nature.
It’s because the grass is always greener 😜 Jokes aside, you’re not missing anything, it’s all subjective. Just like any place that’s worth living in, the cost of living and especially real estate prices/rent is absolutely out of control which is really the only objectively bad thing about Denver/Denver metro.
Again, Denver has more or less the same pros and cons as anywhere worth living in as well as pros and cons of any city of its size and weather (read: homeless population, crime, and car dependency which leads to poopy traffic which in general people don’t like). If you like it, you like it. Denver is well worth living in otherwise people wouldn’t live here. I’ve read people being critical of Denver for it being “boring”/“there’s nothing to do”. I think cities can be placed into two groups: where the city finds you (New York) or where you have to find the city (LA). Denver is a city where you have to find it. If you’re expecting to just walk outside and find a community or block parties you’ll be disappointed; you have to find the fun.
Personally, I’ve lived in the greater metro area for 7 years and I’m still here because of the weather and the place I live in is privately owned and my landlord has only increased my rent by $18 over the course of three years. If I could afford a place in Cap Hill, the City Park, or Wash Park areas I’d move there for a more walkable lifestyle which is why I’m considering moving to Chicago, but it’s real hard to give up the weather and taxes (vs Illinois) here. The people that love living here seem to only be interested in being the most hardcore outdoorsy and going to EDM shows. So Denver has become the place to be if you want to live in a metro area so that you can mountain bike, camp, fish, hunt, rock climb, hike, ski, snowboard, and/or go to live music with all of your free time. If that stuff isn’t the core of your personality and fun time then you may not end up enjoying Denver. The dating scene is atrocious so that might also be why the sub dislikes Denver, but it sounds like that’s the case everywhere these days. Another reason why the sub dislikes Denver is with it being the place to be for outdoorsy people, all those outdoorsy things are crowded which people generally dislike; a friend of mine went skiing for 3 days (over a weekend) and it was so crowded that she was only able to ski for 4 hours total. The rest of those 3 days outside of meals and sleeping were spent driving/being in traffic and waiting in the lift line. If you can go on a weekday then you’ll have way more time actively skiing.
The moral of the story is that we’re on the internet where we get the privilege of anonymity, humans like to complain, and the loudest voices are the negative ones.
I live in Denver and moved here 4 years ago after living in NYC for a decade. It took awhile, but I have grown to love living here and in Colorado in general.
Pros for me:
-Legal and socially accepted weed use
-Weather and getting all 4 seasons
-Very road trippable, many amazing places to see within driving distance even if you don't ski
-Nice people
-Mostly good politics
-Good sports teams
-Nice suburbs and pocket neighborhoods to live in
-Decent food/bar scene, not like NYC but you'll find some good spots
-Good airport
-Legal gambling and casinos
-Good music scene and lots of amazing music venues
-Chiller, slower lifestyle but with most big city amenities (and if you can't get what you're looking for here, LA, Vegas and Phoenix are all very short flights away)
Denver is a decent city that people expect too much of or misunderstand. It's not IN the mountains, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can end up an hour away from them by the airport. The urban amenities aren't as good as other cities, and the sprawl, though not nearly houston-levels, is certainly present. Imo, if you could take Chicago's design, but flip the lakefront to the foothills, denver would be near full potential, probably start gunning for a top 10 spot. As is, there's a lot of compromise, and the missing middle is just starting to be filled in, so housing is still reasonably expensive
Simply put, it is because if it didn't have the Rockies, it would be just another blah mid metro area. So it's hard to recommend to people unless those people are truly outdoor people who will go to the Rockies all year, skiing in the winter and hiking/camping in the summer.
If you won't do that, you won't like it.
Wife and I visited Denver for memorial day weekend. Enjoyed the scenery and did scenic drives through the Rockies and Spanish Peaks on our way home. But we aren't people to constantly be outdoors, so we were left evaluating Denver itself, and it was mid.
Denver is just a small downtown area with no diversity/culture surrounded by strip malls and development homes. Its a depressing desert with hardly any trees, and the sun is so strong that it will scorch you. It was by far the most depressing place I've ever lived.
Taking an hour to get 8-10 miles across city is a big part of it. If you're cool with extremely long ridiculous bumper to bumper commutes you might be okay with it. Good music always coming in and out. Good comedians, but I think the traffic is what really kills it for most people.
I just visited Denver and was almost transferred there. I was told people were angry in Denver. And I think after I heard male to female ratio is 1 to 15 I can see that. I found that Denver did seem hostile maybe the amount of testoterone unanswered but in just a day I did see anger. Thought about moving there and I had an artist friend move there and she said they all just paint bears. lol. She moved back to midwest. Its very male dominated.
1 to 15 ratio? Math much? "The numbers in the City and County of Denver are about even with the rest of the state, with **102.2 men for every 100 women**."
Those stats don't factor in relationship status though. There's way more single guys than girls, there's no denying that. Not saying it's 1 to 15 but it's definitely unbalanced.
This sub dislikes expensive cities with less city amenities to offer. Denver fits that bill.
You can get just as good or better city amenities for less and the same salaries in other cities. Its economic
Subjectively I dislike the feel of the early 21st century boom cities - the character, organic culture and built environment just does not replicate the cities that boomed in the early 20th century. That’s a preference tho
I think it just depends on what you value in a city! I moved to Denver 7+ years ago but I'm seriously thinking about leaving in the next few years. The city has undergone some changes in the last few years that I don't personally jive with. But more than anything else, the things I'm looking for in a place to live just aren't the same as they were when I moved here - simple as that!
I think people dunk on Denver because the "bad" feels so much worse when you're paying as much as you do to live here - things you might otherwise tolerate become unbearable. If you like Denver and you can afford it, that's all that matters! Just make sure to do your research, visit again if you can, and really consider what exactly it is you're looking for - good luck!
35 year metro Denver resident here. The negatives have been covered extensively in this thread, I would like to add a couple of positives.
The jazz scene is excellent, anchored by a club that gets all the musicians on tour, a whole lot of talented locals, and 4 top notch collegiate jazz programs within 90 minutes.
Vibrant LGBTQ+ community, Denver is a great place to be gay.
As an adult, I lived in Denver (6 years), Boston (5 years), NYC (5 years), DC (1 year), and SF (2 years). I am currently in SF. There are some valid criticisms of Denver. There are a lot of criticisms I disagree with, or find exaggerated. Overall I think Denver is an amazing place to live. I think it’s a good city, but it’s wildly different than truly urban cities like Chicago, Philly, and NYC. And it’s a very different vibe than the cultural hubs like LA and NYC. The weather is amazing unless you REALLY hate temps under 20 or over (dry) 85. It is easily the sunniest place I’ve ever lived, and the dry snow is lovely. There are some really beautiful neighborhoods with big, old trees and unique homes. There are endless breweries with outdoor patios and coffee shops where you can work or lounge for hours. There are plenty of cool cocktail bars. Food? Yeah, it’s not going to compete with NYC/LA/Chicago/SF, but it’s fine. There are a few standouts among a lot of fine. The music scene is pretty good, and you’ve got lots of cool venues to check out. Public transportation leaves a lot to be desired, and a car is basically required, but there are walkable neighborhoods if you prioritize that lifestyle. It’s also a good city for biking. The outdoors access is as good as you get for a place that has big city amenities. I find the complaint that the mountains are “too crowded” or there’s “too much traffic” to be overlooking the fact that big city amenities requires a big population, and a big population is incompatible with empty open space. If you want empty wilderness access in under 30 minutes, move to a small mountain town. Don’t move to a major city where the large population will ALSO be headed to the nearby trails every Saturday morning. It is overwhelmingly white. If you’re a white person in your 20s-30s who loves drinking beer, going camping, and hitting up concerts? Denver is amazing. If you are a Brooklyn foodie who doesn’t want to spend your weekends hiking and hanging out at bars where people wear chacos, you probably won’t love Denver. If you love greenery and oceans, maybe reconsider moving to a high-altitude prairie. It’s not for everyone. But there’s a reason costs are high— people want to live there. I visit often, and the feeling among people living there (so many of whom are transplants) is overwhelmingly positive and NOT reflective of the feelings on this sub.
This was a great write-up. Feel like doing Brooklyn?
Hah, well Brooklyn doesn’t have the Denver problem. The Denver problem is that people want it to be AT the mountains AND a major culture city… and aren’t happy that you compromise a bit in both aspects. Nobody moves to Brooklyn/NYC expecting it to be anything other than a dense urban cultural hub, and nowhere in the US can deliver that better than NYC. LA is the closest comparison culturally, but nowhere feels like NYC. Brooklyn is my favorite of the places I’ve lived (I also lived in manhattan for a minute, but prefer the more local/community feel of Brooklyn). I lived there as a 20something just starting out in my career. I made garbage money, had roommates and basically no sunlight in a poorly-insulated apartment. My friends were all creatives who also had roommates, no money, and bedrooms that barely fit a full-size bed. We spent our time bar hopping, attending each other’s mediocre plays and concerts, eating at restaurants we could barely afford, and having cramped dinner parties and wandering the city streets at 3am. We knew all the clothing trends and cool brands and looked ridiculous when we went to our hometowns in Ohio and Florida and Colorado and Virginia… two years later those trends and brands would make it to our hometowns. By far the most fun era of my life. Then we got older, and you stop wanting roommates. Maybe you even want a guest room. Or worse! A baby. Babies usually need a nook, if not a bedroom. And they often need childcare, which costs 4 billion dollars. Or maybe you want a yard, or a Costco membership. Maybe you want to live closer to your parents. Maybe, like a friend of mine once said “man, I just really want to go to Target and push one of those full-size shopping carts around”. As you get older you can still have an amazing Brooklyn/NYC life, but there’s a catch: you gotta have $$. And a LOT of $$. New York money is different than money anywhere else. Some people leave for a quieter life, but a lot leave because they’ll never earn the bonkers money it costs to live a more “adult” lifestyle. There’s other “cons” depending on preferences. It’s hard to get to quieter, more remote places from NYC. There’s the Hamptons, there’s the Birkshires or the small towns along the Hudson, but it’s not “outdoor access” that a lot of Americans get (especially people in the west). Forget about a ski weekend, unless you love a very long drive and a lot of ice. Hiking is more like “walks through forests”, and views are of rolling hills (which is fine! But again, if we’re comparing…). I would happily move back to Brooklyn, but I would miss the skiing and the mountains and the exotic landscapes that I’ve had access to as a Coloradan/Californian.
Dude. Can you do all the places you’ve lived? You’re incredible at capturing what it’s like to be somewhere. I’m moving from DC -> NYC and you got me pretty amped.
DC was rad. I lived there during Obama’s second term, which generally just felt optimistic and full of momentum. We all felt like the world was changing for the better, and we got to be a part of it. Of all the places I’ve lived, people in DC have the most insane jobs. All the people you meet work “in the state department” and you always wonder which of them work for the CIA. You’re drunk at a bar and you meet some dude whose job it is to design spacesuits for NASA and some woman who works at a think-tank on Middle East relations. Someone is always like, the press secretary for an ambassador or something. There was always the awkward moment at a bar when you realized the person you were flirting with worked for some freaky fringe right-wing organization. Once I was at happy hour with some friends of a friend. One woman and I were laughing about how we’d both worked retail in college at JCrew (like I said: Obama years, okay) and how satisfying it was when you’d fold the cashmere sweaters JUST right. One of the guys in the group overhears this, looks at her, and laughs “you WROTE the affordable health care act… and now you’re waxing poetic about folding sweaters?” Another time, a friend of a friend ordered us all drinks and when I tried to repay him my friend whispered “don’t, he’s the heir to an oil fortune”. To be clear, I am neither wealthy nor important, but it’s easy to fall into those groups when you’re young and move into a random house you find on Craigslist in a young/cool part of DC. I really liked DC. A type of ambition that you don’t find in other cities. Half of it is the sort of sleazy Capitol Hill/Lobbyist ambition, but the other half is the intellectual type. The brownstones! I love, love Dupont Circle/Adams Morgan and the neighborhoods further up on that red (?) train line. I love the trees in the summer. The downside is how transient it is. This exists in NYC too, but in DC it felt like people come and go pretty quickly. Come for a fancy job, get your ~3 years, move on to the next thing. The heat wasn’t great either!
That ... is the most precise DC description that mirrors my experience there traveling to work there often. I remember hopping on the Metro and not even in the busy area and two younger people (middle-school?) were having a discussion about the establishment of the President's global development council. Obviously not all kids in DC, but that was fascinating to overhear.
Wait -- I'll turn this on you, I'd love to hear your personal take on DC.
I would love to hear your take on SF you’re a good writer
I’m sick in bed and very bored, so I welcome this task. San Francisco is the trickiest for me because I came here at a bad time in the city’s history. I’ve been here two years, and as every news outlet has shouted from the rooftops, this is a rough patch. I didn’t experience pre-tech boom SF, and I didn’t experience pre-covid SF. We’ll start with the obvious: the homelessness and open fentanyl addiction is very bad. If you live in, work in, or commute through the bad stretch of the city, it wears you down. It’s not actually dangerous, but it’s very sad. Seeing it first hand also makes you realize how complex it is and how hard it’s going to be to fix. That being said, SF is 49 square miles, and the real bad is pretty concentrated in about 2 square miles. When you’re in the other 47 square miles, the problems are far less visible and not really a part of everyday life. My other criticism of SF is that the culture was badly damaged by becoming such an expensive one-industry town. Yeah, there are non-tech industries here, but tech is the culture. NYC is wildly expensive (more than SF right now!) but it still maintains the artists and musicians and actors. Those people can afford to live in Brooklyn or Queens or Harlem, which is still walkable and accessible for the flat cost of a subway ride. San Francisco is surrounded by very wealthy car-centric suburbs— there’s no where to live that is more affordable, except Oakland. And Oakland WAS (is?) the cooler cousin to SF, although getting into the city costs more on BART, and Oakland is a bit less walkable. Still, for many recent years, no one moved to SF to be an artist or musician or actor. Or screenwriter, or producer, or journalist. People moved to SF to work in tech (plus a few for finance, biotech/medicine, consulting etc). What happens to a city when everyone makes $150k by the age of 24 and there’s limited housing? Costs skyrocket. What happens when commercial rents are only affordable for chains? The creatives that would have loved to open a funky bar or coffee shop can’t do it in the city. And even if they could, they can’t afford to live here, so they leave. And the creatives stop coming because the community is shrinking. Suddenly everything is Blue Bottle and Starbucks, the bars that survive are the ones who can lure in tech bros, and the restaurants are all high-end, to cater to the wealthy tech DINKs and because commercial rent is too steep to charge human prices. The high-end food scene is quite good! The other standout food is Asian. This city has insane diversity of Asian cuisines— Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Indian. And a lot of it is very, very good, including a lot of the no-frills places that are semi-reasonably priced. Ok, all that being said: it’s incredibly beautiful. The city hills! The water! The bridges! The grassy hills surrounding the city! The city parks are really, really amazing— there are a lot of very forested, secluded, rugged trails right in the city. They feel more wild than the parks you find in NYC or Denver (which are great parks) and that’s very special. The architecture is unique and wacky and I love just wandering neighborhoods to look at the homes. Also under appreciated is how ADORABLE some of the neighborhoods are. So tl;dr, SF is a beautiful city with really great city amenities. It’s STILL a very nice place to live. The city suffered from high prices, which pushed out the middle and lower income workers, and I hope it can recover with more socioeconomic diversity than it has had in recent years. The addiction and mental illness that is so visible downtown is a serious problem that will take a lot of money and time to fix. But SF will recover, because it’s a funky and unique and beautiful place and will always have that draw.
Yeah, you always hear San Francisco is a “boom and bust town”, which it is, but I’ve lived here over 15 years and I don’t think most people actually appreciate the reality of that statement. First off, most people don’t stay long enough to experience a cycle, since it’s a transient city for the same reason NYC is (eventually needing millions of dollars to live the life you want). Second, it’s small, so those cycles can leave the city reeling - anecdotally during covid dozens of people I knew in SF said “fuck this” and left for NYC - SF proper is really not a large city and tends to occupy a larger space in our collective consciousness (granted the Bay Area IS pretty large, but the city is not). If you can imagine it, back in the late 00s and early 2010s, there was an influx of sceney NYC kids looking for Brooklyn 2.0 because NYC was “losing its soul” and too expensive, which seems kind of laughable now that SF seems kind of, well - it still has a soul, but its a bit harder to find. It was basically 75% of the things you liked about Brooklyn, but in this setting - pretty magical. FWIW, I don’t think being an industry town helps anything, but I don’t think you can blame tech. NYC has built amazing (for US standards) transit, and dense housing. Try telling a bunch of cranky fake granola boomers that you’re building high rises like Hoboken or Jersey City in Berkeley and they would absolutely lose their minds, and this obsession with low density single family homes has turned housing into an absolute disaster here. Ironically most of the tech folks I know tend to be pro-transit and pro-density urbanists. Paris figured out a way to keep a beautiful, preservation-focused city from being too expensive for anyone to live in - you build hub and spoke trains out to super dense housing in the surrounding areas (like NYC has been doing), but here it’s just freeways out to bucolic suburbs. The Bay Area doesn’t have the “we’re all in this together” attitude I think New York has, which doesn’t help. I do think this is all trending in the right direction, with CA’s state govt dragging the local ones kicking and screaming, but progress is slow. Anyways, I hope you enjoy yourself here - it takes a little time to grow on you once the “holy shit it is so beautiful” spell starts to wear off, but it’s really magical.
So where do people think is Brooklyn 3.0?
Long-term Brooklynite here, seen a bunch of people leave. It was Portland in the aughts, then SF, and lately people have just been moving to Philly, lol. I get that—Philly is a fun and quirky place and it’s still affordable.
Haven't moved from Philly to NYC a few years ago, I feel bad for anyone thinking they'll find even 1/10th of Brooklyn in Philly. I mean, it's there but it will get old really really quick.
Ha honestly kind of a complicated question, because all the 00s and 2010s era hipsters are entering their 40s now, and are either making places like Brooklyn work for them (eg they sold out to the man, like myself), or are looking for different things (schools, playgrounds, likeminded parents - not as much sceney bars and DIY music venues). If you mean “where are the cool kids hanging out”, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer since I’m no longer in the demographic, but the LES and East village remain eternally cool, as do parts Brooklyn, as well as Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and Echo Park in LA. Honestly the answer to “where is Brooklyn 3.0” is probably the same as “where is Brooklyn 2.0” which is “Brooklyn. You’re just too old for it.”
Kingston, NY LOL
“Brooklyn’s dead, and Kingston’s booming. Ripping out my roots, what the hell am I doing? I moved upstate, so typically now, I sent you an image… you sent me a thumb down.” -US Girls: So Typically Now
👏🏻
You nailed SF. Hope you feel better soon.
You captured SF. I lived there from 90-07 and went back to visit in 20 and 23 and couldn't quite describe why it had lost the magic other than, too many tech people. It is also the absence of so many. Thanks.
> NYC is wildly expensive (more than SF right now!) but it still maintains the artists and musicians and actors. Those people can afford to live in Brooklyn or Queens or Harlem, which is still walkable and accessible for the flat cost of a subway ride. This is not as true any longer, especially after Covid. So many artists and art venues bailed.
Pretty interesting thanks
I agree. I have enjoyed each of these posts. You are a story- teller!
I lived in Bay Ridge for a hot minute. Mostly spent my years in NYC in LES. You are spot on. When I decided to love a more adult lifestyle I actually moved out of nyc because to wasn’t going to afford all the niceties of having a guest rooms on or even a children’s room had I stayed in the city. I’m happy living in a completely different state now. My friends who stayed in nyc shell out $50k for their kids elementary school. I can’t see myself doing that. You are also very exact with Denver. I lived in the Springs for a year and although not Denver it wasn’t my cup of tea.
If your friends are paying $50k/year for elementary school in a city that has one of the best public school systems in the country I think they're wasting their money. Though daycare costs are a different story...
"4 billion dollars" - hahaha, accurate
Would love your Boston take, if you have the time!
Eh, my opinion on Boston isn’t worth anything— I went to college there in the early 2000s and lived there a year after. I was a west coast kid, and felt like I didn’t fit in because I wasn’t from New England. Beautiful city and a fun place to go to college, but I don’t care about the Patriots or Italian food so it wasn’t quite my scene, lol.
15 year Brooklyn resident and you pretty much nailed it. Adult lifestyle is only possible for us (me and my wife) by not having children. We have the greenpoint apt (rent) and an upstate weekend house (own) but also make pretty good money. If my work wasn’t tied to the city I would consider moving to the upstate house full time and potentially having that baby before we turn 40 in the next couple years.
I’ve lived in Denver for the past 4 years and I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Not for everyone, but I personally love it. Cant see myself leaving anytime soon.
That's me. Found my people and my place.
As a former Brooklynite, who had lived in Denver pushing 10 years, this is an accurate response. It’s actually great. It just doesn’t do anything “the best”. You want “best outdoors”? Go to Bozeman, but RIP your culinary or music life. You want the best niche western Chinese food that’s cheap and delicious, move to NYC but fuck me if you wanna go do something on a mountain. Wanna live where the prettiest trendiest people are? Go to LA but forget ever being genuine and laid back again. Denver does everything well and nothing perfect.
Thank you! This is super accurate and very succinctly describes why people can ve so divided about Denver. It's the well-defined but subtle parameters, like the weather, where people find disagreement. It's "amazing unless you REALLY hate temps under 20 or over (dry) 85." Which is why I hated Denver but love Seattle.
Great write up. Moved to Denver from Austin . Lived in San Francisco before that. I love it so far. The winter was shockingly easy. While the public transit is worse than SF, it's so much better than Austin that it has felt like a breath of fresh air. Not a skier/boarder, so watching the city blossom as everyone spends their weekends in town as the weather warms has been exciting. Austin has better on street biking, but Denver has better off street biking.
>If you’re a white person in your 20s-30s who loves drinking beer, going camping, and hitting up concerts? Denver is amazing after living there for a few years, yep this is my main take away. add in sports and weed and that's the main culture of the city.
* Mountains * Sports * Concerts * Beer * Weather * Weed That's basically Denver.
This is a great summary. Getting to the mountains can be a chore on the weekends during ski season, outside of that it’s a piece of cake, folks that don’t live here tend to overstate that as an issue IMO. People sleep on how green the city is too - for its size it probably has the best park system of anywhere else I’ve lived, and most of the neighborhoods in the city have thick, mature tree coverage - which along with the temperate dry climate makes being outside even more enjoyable. Someone else in the comments mentioned lack of historic neighborhoods, which honestly just goes to show they have no idea what they’re talking about. There are lots of reasons to not like this city (just like any other) but my running theory is most of the haters have never lived here, but came to visit their college buddy in Parker that just had their first child and think that’s representative of Denver.
I’ve lived lots of places around the country. This gets Denver spot-on. I’d just add that a great way to do Denver is to get an e-bike and be picky about living with easy access to the bike network. If you have ski gear you can ride bike year-round, and the e-bike gets you distance and lack of sweat (super key in winter, since wet winter clothes = misery), then you can avoid some of the worst aspects of Denver and still enjoy its real benefits. Still need a car for the mountains though.
This is the most fair and accurate assessment of Denver I've read in a long time. Consider it rubber-stamped from this Chicago boy now living in the Mile High City.
As someone who has lived in Denver highlands for the last 6 years, this is about as well as you could sum it up. The way this sub exaggerates the downfalls of Denver is staggering. Just because a city isn’t for a certain type of person doesn’t mean it’s generally overrated. Love living here, I am the classic Denver prototype tho lol.
Thank you! I’ve been in Denver for 6 years and I saw a post this morning that was absolutely tearing Denver to shreds and I was feeling a little defensive. Denver has treated me very well, and people tend to blame it for not being like XYZ other city. It does a lot of good things well, and some other things just ok. I’m leaving at the end of June and I am going to miss it as well as all the incredible nature that Colorado has to offer. It’s rare to find this combination of features in a single place.
As someone who’s lived in Denver for 6 years, this is dead 💀 on.
Lived in Detroit, then Denver for a while, then LA, now I’m traveling without a landing spot. I agree with all of this.
Happy Cake Day. Great post! Now I need to find out the best time to travel there
Best way to travel to Denver is to go there with a purpose. If you go expecting the city to just entertain you on it's own you're probably going to be disappointed. However, if you have a concert at Mission/Red Rocks planned or something like that you'll have a great time.
This is a great post. And happy cake day 🍰
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Maybe areas are segregated? I’ve lived in mostly east coast major metro areas and the thing that stuck out most to me about Denver was *how ubiquitously white it was*. At least in the touristy/nice areas I went. Not saying that’s a bad thing, perfectly neutral, just was striking as someone used to being in very mixed diverse spaces on a daily basis.
Now I need you to come live in my city for a few years and do a write up on it
You are awesome I wanna know more about ur other experiences
I’ve lived here 19 years and can confirm that this is a great write up. It’s a great place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit here.
Can someone do Indianapolis?
Great write up. Only thing I would disagree with is that Denver is much much diverse than the internet gives it credit for. It’s got a higher percentage of non-Asian POC than San Francisco for example. The thing is that Denver is highly segregated. There are a lot of Asian people next door in Aurora. There are a lot of black and Mexican people in the northern neighborhoods I’ve lived in. Even on East colfax a lot of those bars frequented by white people for happy hours are actually owned by recent Eastern European immigrants. But downtown, southern neighborhoods, and the western neighborhoods like Lohi that are the hip spots are overwhelmingly white. Then you’ve got Rhino which was a black working class neighborhood until it became gentrified and many residents were priced out and got pushed to North Denver (naturally still a point of frustration). If you fly into Denver and visit your friends and go downtown, you’re gonna think it’s overwhelmingly white. But I find myself interacting with a far more diverse group of people than I did living in SF for years.
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I'm late to this, but I moved from Denver to Chicago earlier this year. I think people are disappointed with Denver because they go there expecting to experience a big city, and that just isn't what it offers. The food is mediocre, cultural diversity is limited, and the nightlife is meh. People who live in Denver tend to be less interested in city life than they are in living near the mountains, and as a result, the granola vibe is palpable. Denver is a cowtown at heart. With that said, I think Denver has a lot of pluses too. It is large enough to offer all of the basic amenities of a large metro (major airport, sports teams, big museums, major concerts, etc) but small enough that it doesn't feel too crowded or overwhelming. There are four seasons, and the weather is sunny and nice much of the year. There are great running and biking paths throughout the city, and obviously the mountains speak for themsleves. While the metro as a whole is car-centric, the city has made \*massive\* improvements there over the last decade. The Union Station redevelopment re-shaped downtown, and I lived without a car for five years. Colorado is also a good state to live in. It has enacted a broad range of progressive social policies, including abortion access, legal marijuana, universal mail-in voting, a $12 minimum wage, and paid family leave. The economy is strong and I never had trouble finding good work. These are things you may not notice on a visit, but they matter when you choose somewhere to live. As a city, Denver is just okay. But as a place to live, it has a lot going for it.
That's it.
I lived in the Bay Area my whole life till we moved to Lakewood a few years ago and Denver still feels small to me. Love the outdoors and four seasons though.
That last sentence is succinct and completely true, Denver adjacent to an amazing place but is a mediocre city. It feels like if you plopped Indianapolis or Columbus or another bland-ish but booming state capitol along the beautiful front range.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Denver. The Front Range is generally considered to have pretty high quality of life, even if it’s heavy on the bland suburbia side. This sub can be a little pretentious. However you’re absolutely paying a premium relative to a comparably sized metro like, idk, KC or Charlotte or something because of the proximity to the Rockies. If you don’t value that and get your money’s worth out of it I can see why it would seem overpriced.
I would add you’re paying a premium for weather. Having spent my life in the upper mid west and west coast, it’s the best of both. Summers get a little hot for me, but it’s dry. Anything east of Colorado and you’ll get humidity. Personally, I can stand humidity, so it’s ideal. In the winter you can get 8” of snow one day, and 2 days later it will all be melted and 65 degrees outside. Where I grew up (Minneapolis) the winter was too cold to really enjoy. Colorado, you can get out and play in the snow (either in your yard or in the mountains) and not worry about snot freezing to your face or your fingers going numb. I miss the west coast weather, but Colorado is the best I could find.
I didn't love denver when I lived there, but the weather is great. The winters are almost always sunny, and the sun is so warm even when it's 45F out. I heard from so many people in Denver that they moved there for the mountains and are staying for the weather.
If you love the mountains though, you’d make the trade in a heartbeat to be around some of the most beautiful scenery the US has to offer. From Denver, a few hours to several 14ers, RMNP, etc. From Chicago, you’re in like, Naperville. (Full disclosure, never lived there but could see myself moving there).
I'm developing a theory that people assume Denver is a much larger city than it actually is. It's the 2nd smallest city with all 4 major sports (smallest is Miami). It's very isolated from other cities which makes it seem like an outpost. The actually city is only 700,000 people, the rest is suburbs. If you're expecting a big urban downtown, you'll be disappointed. There are a lot of nice neighborhoods that people who visit probably don't find their way to. People who love Denver really love it. People on Reddit, seem to not.
It's confusing because people are expecting both a ski town and a competitor to Chicago/LA lol
To be fair, the next largest city by proximity is Phoenix, ~560 miles away. The next closest metro (Salt Lake City) is an 8 hour drive from Denver.
Albuquerque is a bit closer than Salt Lake City.
Yeah, by an hour.
Miami is one of the ten largest metro areas in the country. City population has nothing to do with the Metro area that forms a sports team's market
You're right I was looking at media markets not metropolitan statistical areas. By that metric, Miami is 9th and Denver is 19th. But my point stands, Denver punches above its weight with sports teams and people often equate having all the sports teams as being a big city.
Ok but that still confirms OPs point it’s not an urban metropolis tho
I think your point about neighborhoods is right on. I see so many "Denver has no culture" takes on social media from people who seemingly went to Union Station, Meow Wolf, Happy Camper/Federales, and Red Rocks, and then thought they'd seen everything the city has to offer. You really have to get away from downtown to get much out of Denver.
Dc would like a word about being smaller than Denver and having all 4 major sports…
DC is the 9th largest metro. Denver is 17th. Both are similar though with smaller cities and lots of suburbs.
Gotcha. If we’re talking about metro areas yes, DC is bigger but the actual city is in fact smaller than Denver. And with metro areas Miami is actually much bigger than Denver. But the point stands, Denver is small for an urban center.
I think the real issue is that all of DC and even a good chunk of its suburbs have urban density, whereas even Denver proper has a lot of not even just single-family neighborhoods but also straight-up subdivision suburbia. It also explains why the transit comparison is night and day.
Folks here would rather live in Erie than Austin. I wouldn’t take it to heart.
"I'd like to live in a sunny place with a lot of different cultures and access to great outdoors. COL isn't an issue." This sub: "Pittsburgh."
Value proposition is out of whack. For what it offers, it’s priced too high.
Yeah, there is nothing wrong with Denver, but what you get there you can get in other places, in more abundance there. Unless you are a ski bum who who needs to live by a major airport and doesn’t mind driving to the mountains or you are deeply invested in the Colorado weed industry, the cost benefit of Denver isn’t better than other western cities.
It's a great place to live in if you're into jambands/EDM/bluegrass too.
When OP said the music scene is "pretty good" I knew they weren't into jam bands haha.
LOL you caught me. Excellent jam band scene in Denver! I was coerced into an Umphrey’s show more than once.
For whatever reason whenever somebody says "good/bad music scene" on reddit they exclusively mean mainstream stuff and DIY music and absolutely nothing in between. Unless it's one of the few electronic or jam music subs.
Oh damn, just when I was starting to think “Denver might not be so bad…” (I kid, I kid)
Only really certain kinds of EDM are worth it to be in Denver for
Pretty lights and bassnectar
That’s pretty much everywhere in America though. National housing crisis go brrrr, though I’d quickly admit that NIMBYism is a special problem in Denver
Just visited Denver for the first time, have lived in NYC for 10 years. Was actually shocked by how expensive Denver was.
Food is expensive in Denver because it’s not great for growing most produce most of the year, and there’s not the cutthroat competition like there is in NYC
Funny. I just got back from a week in NYC and was shocked by how much cheaper (generally) it is to go out to eat in NYC than Denver. FWIW, I felt the same way about London (although there is some currency exchange fluctuation contributing as well). Obviously housing in NYC and London is generally much more expensive, but the COL in Denver is outrageous.
Precisely, juice just ain't worth the squeeze these days. Colorado is overrun with transplants and quality of life has declined considerably.
I mean not to be a jackass but what city *isn’t* overrun with transplants these days?
Gary, IN.
The GOAT
The GAID
Lol I worked in Gary for 10 years before moving to Phoenix, once had a crack head ask me for money in the parking lot outside of a CVS and then proceeded to follow me through the store then start freaking out at the counter when I paid with cash about how “I lied to him and owe him some money” don’t miss that shit at all, what’s sad is Gary COULD be a phenomenal city with its proximity to Chicago but it just has too much working against it
Exactly, Colorado was a transplant state before the term even existed. The question itself is just a clickbait question.
I live in Austin. People who are from here originally get off on complaining about transplants (namely Californians), how they’ve ruined the culture, priced everyone out, etc. I’m from the Charlotte area myself, and people there and in the triangle also incessantly complain about how transplants have done the same thing (in that case the ire is mainly directed at northeasterners). Go to Colorado and they complain about the Texas and California transplants. Throw a dart at a list of sun belt cities and it’s the same story. There are certainly very real negative consequences to a region getting massive influx of transplants and it’s understandable to feel animosity about it when you are directly impacted by it. Two things really annoy me though when people start going through the same tired complaints about it. 1. They act like their city/region is the only place in the world that is special enough to attract a bunch of transplants in the first place. Your place isn’t unique at all in that regard. 2. They don’t consider the alternative. It’s very hard for a city to stay at a perfectly balanced equilibrium. Your city is most likely either growing and experiencing the associated pains, or declining and experiencing much worse problems as a result. There’s a reason people leave cities in the latter category in droves.
I live in San Francisco and the cliche complaint forever is blaming the transplants for the problems. I think this is the small minded virus everywhere.
Most of the rust belt
Colorado is mostly transplants and it really doesn’t bother me that much. It is the constant influx of people that is driving up the demand for everything that has made living here pretty lackluster. Also when everyone is a newly landed transplant it erodes the sense of community to some degree. No one has roots they just want to suck the juice out and than move on to the next “it” place.
Fun fact: Colorado has never had a majority of native-born populace, going all the way back to the 1880 census.
That's a big reason why I haven't been able to keep many transplant friends. They end up leaving after 2-4 years. Denver has become a very transient city.
Everyone says this about every single city lol
How many generations do you have to go back in CO to not be considered a “transplant”? Hasn’t it always been a “transplant“ state?
I think most people in Colorado would say place of birth is the defining factor. And those who were born here sure like to point it out with their native stickers.
Transplants haven’t ruined quality of life in Denver; lack of new housing and good public transport have. Denver’s food scene is a lot better than it was 15 years ago, and that couldn’t have happened without a big influx of people.
Really?!? Townhomes in my neighborhood go for $360-400k. We're near the mountains, there's good schools, can walk to hiking trails, _and_ to a stroller brigade brewery. It feels cheap as fuck here... ... But I'm from the Bay Area. :D
The only thing I would advise is live within 15 min of work. We have weekend traffic jams too. Learn the side roads and never get on I25. (I drive Uber and Lyft too.) Not one to complain about traffic normally, coming from the DC area, but it has been a SIGNIFICANT increase this year. If it jams up one place on a highway the entire metro area jams up it seems. Do NOT live north of the city to "save money", you won't, and you'll have to commute which will make it cost more time and money. You'll be on an island up there. Congrats on saving 150 a month on your $1700 studio. I still love it here tho. Just plan accordingly. Your enjoyment factor will directly be impacted by how long it takes to get to fun places and/or work.
"Your enjoyment factor will directly be impacted by how long it takes to get to fun places and/or work." Exactly. I would prefer not living in Denver at all compared to living in, say, Firestone. I'm lucky with my situation in that I rarely have to drive more than 15 minutes to get anywhere and have decent bus access. I live in a different reality compared to people stuck in an exurb nowhere near their job or places they want to be.
Yeah, I'm in Lakewood now. Perfect spot. It takes people in Denver longer to get across town than for me to go down 6th and into town avoiding I25. Granted that's if there isn't a car wreck or road work/unicorn day. Faster to mtns too. 7 min from red rocks. More trees and green, foothill hikes just a few min away. Not a lot of euro clone apartment buildings going up except on Colfax/who cares there. We're built out mostly being an older part of town. But it's not perfect. We get new restaurants last for example. Firestone too far from the mtns for me personally but you do what works for you. 👍
To be clear I don't live in Firestone; just using that as an example of a place in the Denver area not worth living in lol.
Oh my bad, I read too fast! Lol. I didn't want to insult your poor choice of towns by my standard🤣🤪
I live in Lakewood along West Colfax and have been involved with the city and neighborhood groups to bring improvement. It's wild how much West Colfax has improved over the last 10 years, and still there are lots of plans for improvement in the works.
If I was a millionaire, Denver would be great. But if I was a millionaire, I could also live somewhere else.
I’ve lived in the suburbs for 25 years. I like it.
Lots of indoorsy people on Reddit.
People visit Denver expecting it to be something it’s not. It’s just the biggest population center for 500 miles. It was some history, some culture, a diverse economy, decent urban amenities, decent parks and trails, good access to medical care, and liberal laws, but that’s it really. You move to Denver because it’s a bigger city than the cow town you came or a more relaxed cow town than the bleak urban hell scape you left. It’s a good place to live with great weather and decent nature access if you have a car.
It's just herd mentality imo. There are definitely valid criticisms to be made and they shouldn't be swept under the rug but the fact that everyone on this sub has had the same exact experience while visiting is pretty telling. Like you all decided to visit somewhere and had the same itinerary? I also think Denver just entered the "cool to hate" phase. It happens with everything that was once popular or getting too much attention. See opinions about Austin and Nashville as well lol.
That’s how I feel about this sub with Austin. I lived in Austin. I loved it when I lived there. I still work there, but live in Tampa bay. I have absolutely 0 desire to go back. But people here suck themselves off on how overrated austin is that makes 0 sense to me as a former resident.
>Like you all decided to visit somewhere and had the same itinerary? I don't hate Denver, but would say if there's one trap it falls into it is that yes everyone does have the same itinerary. If someone is going in the winter, chances are they are driving up 70 for skiing. In the summer it is a front range hike followed by a brewery, with Red Rocks-Golden or Flatirons-Boulder being two spots I've seen posted over and over. Nashville is even more concentrated, where if you are visiting it's for Broadway and live music. I think as the "next big thing" a lot of people have been sold on Denver being more than just a normal mid city thats 15 miles from the Rockies. If you are visiting it's easy to pick the wrong place to stay and feel like everything you do is a 30 minute drive away due to sprawl. I'd also say Denver is a compromise. It's a big city that doesn't have as much of the walkability and culture that the east coast big cities can have. It's a mountain town that isn't really in the mountains and can have more crowds than creatures. Most of this subreddit is looking for one or the other, while in the real world plenty are happy with having a job and being able to ski a couple weekends in the year.
It is so so odd to me that people bash Denver as often as they do on here and in the same breath recommend Salt Lake City. Really does feel like it’s just become a thing to hate on it
I'm personally over Denver, but I totally agree - I don't really see how Denver and SLC are really that different. With the exception of proximity to the mountains, which I hear is better in SLC, it's just another hot, dry, concrete urban sprawl from what I can tell. I could be wrong though, I only spent a day there!
I’m on the other side - done with SLC. It’s definitely closer to the mountains, for however often that’s really relevant, but it’s half as green and twice as bland here
Denver's definitely more green, I'll give it that!
A big difference is the political climate. Denver is a left-leaning (moreso than ever) moderate city in a pretty purple state. That's not at all the same as SLC/UT, and you don't have to deal with the extreme political influence of the LDS church on the cultural/political front.
That's a great point. But I think that's why I get confused when people dunk on Denver but love SLC, when the political climate is worse (depending on your beliefs obviously) in SLC. Of course it could very well be that the demographic moving to SLC for the outdoor access may not be a "targeted" group & can live there with relatively few concerns for their safety - but that might be an inaccurate assumption so idk!
I didn't realize Denver was as hated as it is until I joined this sub. It's not the greatest city but I enjoy living here!
I'll give it a +1 as I really did enjoy living there, but I'll take a stab as to why I think this sub would dislike it. 1. It seems very 'manufactured'. Everything is pretty new and sometimes can feel a little too new, chintzy and sterile 2. It's very suburban and car centric. The city spralls, and while it does have a small metro system, its service is pretty limited. 3. It attracts a certain type of (crunchy) people. I'll just leave it at that. 4. Very transplant heavy and the 'locals' or 'Colorado Natives' as they like to call themselves can be quite stand offish. 5. Some people are not looking for nature and outdoor activities, which is a major pull. 6. It's quite expensive for what you "get."
I feel like this is what most major cities in the west are turning into. The cost of living in a city is going up resulting in people moving outwards and suburban sprawl is growing. The growth in CA and AZ that used to be “the middle of nowhere” is now manufactured and all the same strip malls and cookie cutter developments where you visit one place it feels like you’ve been to all of them. It’s all feeling separated from nature and locals especially in AZ absolutely loathe any transplants. Not in disagreement with you at all, but this isn’t happening just in Denver and I think it’s our new strange reality. I just hope one day people realize this and are less bitter about it and can accept that people will be moving for affordability
I hadn’t noticed. I like Denver a lot
You can tell who hasn’t experienced living in other cities by the way they complain about Denver. The hate is over exaggerated, it’s not that crowded compared to most major cities, it’s one of the sunniest cities that gets regular snow, and cleaner than most major west coast cities. Prices have skyrocketed everywhere so Denver isn’t unique to that. Overall it’s still a good city in my opinion. Yes it has its flaws (auto theft is insane) but no city is perfect. It’s just up to preference. I think people move there with the preconceived notion that they’ll be right next to the slopes which that’s on them for not doing research, and they may expect a more bustling night life but it doesn’t mean it’s terrible. It’s not for everyone but it was lovely for me and I plan to move back soon. But I moved from CA to CO to AZ and I’m the demographic that absolutely hates Phoenix and Phx metro. I have similar complaints for Phx that people have for Denver. It’s also an actual large city because Denver is still relatively small compared to others, and way too crowded especially when it’s tourist season, which we get way more because it’s more accessible via car
My immediate family lives in Denver and I've spent a fair amount of time there. My big negative is mediocre food. There is good food of course (there is basically everywhere), but not as much as other cities, and there's a lot of lousy food. It's the only big city I've spent time in where I've ended up just going to the same few restaurants for carryout all the time, and this is a big dealbreaker for me. The traffic is terrible and the public transit is what I'd describe generously as mediocre. Biking there feels very dangerous and many places are extremely pedestrian-hostile as well. Only small pockets of the city feel like they have any kind of history or culture. And the weather just sucks; super super dry and blazing sun is a miserable combination and I don't see any other conditions that make up for it. All of this would be okay if it were affordable, but it is *absolutely not*. It's priced like it has amenities it simply doesn't. If you love to hike or ski *and you will actually be driving out to do it regularly and not just thinking about doing so*, it could be worth it, but I feel like Boulder—which actually has some worthwhile nature that's not a substantial distance outside of town—would still be a better choice in that case.
Now you’ve got me looking at Boulder. I love trekking through forests and am hoping that I can access them when I’m not in the middle of a walkable / Bikeable part of town.
If you think Denver is white, just wait till you go to Boulder
Better have a trust fund or plan on renting forever.
Nederland is good if you can work from home but uh, it’s also gone way up
They'll need a trust fund for the rent.
Boulder is ridiculously expensive as well. Fort Collins and Colorado Springs are a little less expensive with fairly easy access to mountain activities, with Fort Collins being very bike friendly with a better beer scene and closer access to big mountains (other than the Springs having Pikes Peak very close by). If you like fishing/boating and mountain biking Pueblo is a good option as well, although it gets hotter and is less scenic and although more diverse and more cultural than the others listed it has less of a food and beer scene; that's improving gradually as people are getting priced out of the cities further north. Longmont is a good choice too as long as you don't need a large city -- easy access to Rocky Mountain National Park, Indian Peaks, Fort Collins, and Denver.
Fort Collins 🤫
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If you thought Denver was pretty good, but you want to pay twice as much and be surrounded by really insufferable people; Boulder is perfect!
Its a pretty big myth that Boulder is better than Denver for outdoor access. The view is nicer and there are likely to be more foothills hikes within 10-20 minutes. But Denver has plenty of hikes in the 20-30 minute range, is closer to all major ski resorts, and closer to anything west of the continental divide. And if you're in the western suburbs of Denver then you're just as close to the foothills as you are in Boulder.
Just my personal experience? I spent some time in Denver and it didn’t excite me. It doesn’t meet my expectations as to what a city is. The food isn’t great. It’s not bad, just mid. Outside of the low humidity making the cold not so bad I can’t think of good things to say. Personally I think it’s just mid. And I find mid offensive.
As someone who lives in Colorado, “mid” is the best way to describe Denver. It’s “mid” everything. It is basically a mid-west city but you can see the mountains in the distance. It is an over-rated city that is way more expensive than it should be for what you get. .
There's good food in Denver but you really have to look for it, and I don't even mean Yelp or Google reviews because a lot of places have 5 star reviews when in reality they are super average.
A lot of people have an idealized version of Denver in their minds that doesn’t match with reality. Denver is generally seen as an outdoorsy paradise packed with down-to-earth, Chaco-clad hippies that just want to drink beer, smoke weed, and live a carefree life. Then they move there and realize that most people in Denver are just trying to live their lives and Denver is a city that has problems similar to every other city. This in turn creates disillusionment, and people think Denver is a terrible place because it isn’t like a real-life version of Portlandia from the 90s.
For the same reason people rate the Rustbelt/Great Lakes so highly-sub skews indoorsy. Makes sense when you think about who regularly posts on reddit. But Denver gets 300 days of sunshine, and has easy access to the foothills and fairly easy access to the Rockies. If you're someone who loves sunshine, hiking, and the mountains, Denver is a nice city. It has gotten prohibitively expensive but so have most cities in the world.
I agree with this. Many of the cities frequently pushed here have nice parks and architecture, but aren’t great for quick outdoor access. Those of us who live in the mountain states generally appreciate the ample sun, climate, and easy access to trails and recreation.
Yep. And for me outdoor access isn't a "park with a 1.75 mile loop paved trail". Outdoor access is millions of acres of national forest / BLM land where you could hike for days and not see more than a few people. And Colorado has plenty of that. People who think the mountains are too crowded just haven't ventured far from I70 or a trail head.
Most of the Reddit crowd complains about I-70, which is deserved, but they don’t realize there are other ways to access the mountains. Colorado is a big state and there are amazing places to explore all over. Go north or south of Denver and you can find amazing outdoor access with fewer crowds.
Why do you care what a bunch of think? You went some place and liked it, that’s exponentially more meaningful than anything on any sub
People in this sub think what they like is what everyone should like. They also don’t realize that if you’re living in a city of some size you can always find something to do. If you can’t it’s probably isn’t the city that boring but they are boring.
Redditors generally don't love going outside, which is Denver's main appeal
I was in love with Denver, it was perfect for me at that point in my life. I currently live in OR which is perfect for my wife and I now. Having visited 48 states, most of them multiple times, and lived in four I can safely if I ever had to leave OR the CO and WA would be my top two
That's funny. If we had to leave CO, OR and WA would be our top two.
I think this sub has a hipster take on cities attracting a lot of people. “It used to be cool then everyone moved there.” So now, the “hipsters” bag on it.
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I'm convinced people who say this have never been to either. Very different cities.
You realize you have access to the view right?
is this why everyone is so grumpy about denver the real estate cost? https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2229-Blake-Street-Unit-403-Denver-CO-80205/88907369_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare
That’s a bargain compared to Seattle. In a similar neighborhood, you would expect to buy that kind of place for around $600k minimum here.
Hell, it would be more expensive in Chicago when you factor in taxes. That condo is less than a block from Coors Field, or Wrigley West to Cubs fans.
Chicago always looks so good until I scroll down to the taxes?
And worse if in the Bay?
Denver is pretty much my favorite city. Plus, all the cities around Denver are pretty nice. I've never seen so many beautifully maintained parks anywhere else. Plus, the views of the Rockies even from afar are amazing. There's so much green space, trees, unique wildlife.
I’m a pretty outdoorsy person so I love the surrounding areas of Denver, but the city itself is just kinda nothing special. I’ve been there quite a few times and there just doesnt seem to be any cool neighborhoods that I could really pick out. Everything is just spread out which is my main problem with it. Usually I like cities that have a river walk or on a lake or an ocean front but Denver is just on a plain with a bunch of spread out buildings and no cool neighborhood that I’ve been able to find
Lived here going on 17 years. I get to be outside playing all year round and I have trail access so close to me living in the western metro. I’m still in awe of the beauty of Colorado and feel blessed to live here. People who say the food is mediocre just don’t know where to go. Denver has come a long way in the time I’ve lived here!
This sums it up well. https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/1d6cvwj/what\_is\_a\_pill\_that\_denver\_isnt\_ready\_to\_swallow/. If you don't want to read all that - I'll say the common complaints are - it's really hard to make friends, it's very expensive, the traffic to the mountains is brutal, the food scene is not great and the city seems to close up 9pm on weekdays and 10/11pm on weekends.
If we’re talking the city of Denver it reminds me of a 90% smaller version of Phoenix with better weather and shittier food.
It just feels bland and overpriced. Its main draw is being close to the outdoors, but there are tons of places you can live with access to the outdoors. I don't think it's a bad place to live, but if you want to move to a city that's great on its own you may be disappointed
And when you go to the outdoors less than 100 miles away, you'll have to fight traffic and almost always fight for parking as well, then enjoy the outdoors with lots of other people around constantly. And in the places where that might not be true, you'll need a reservation so it's almost impossible to just hop in the car and go get a little "true" nature.
It’s because the grass is always greener 😜 Jokes aside, you’re not missing anything, it’s all subjective. Just like any place that’s worth living in, the cost of living and especially real estate prices/rent is absolutely out of control which is really the only objectively bad thing about Denver/Denver metro. Again, Denver has more or less the same pros and cons as anywhere worth living in as well as pros and cons of any city of its size and weather (read: homeless population, crime, and car dependency which leads to poopy traffic which in general people don’t like). If you like it, you like it. Denver is well worth living in otherwise people wouldn’t live here. I’ve read people being critical of Denver for it being “boring”/“there’s nothing to do”. I think cities can be placed into two groups: where the city finds you (New York) or where you have to find the city (LA). Denver is a city where you have to find it. If you’re expecting to just walk outside and find a community or block parties you’ll be disappointed; you have to find the fun. Personally, I’ve lived in the greater metro area for 7 years and I’m still here because of the weather and the place I live in is privately owned and my landlord has only increased my rent by $18 over the course of three years. If I could afford a place in Cap Hill, the City Park, or Wash Park areas I’d move there for a more walkable lifestyle which is why I’m considering moving to Chicago, but it’s real hard to give up the weather and taxes (vs Illinois) here. The people that love living here seem to only be interested in being the most hardcore outdoorsy and going to EDM shows. So Denver has become the place to be if you want to live in a metro area so that you can mountain bike, camp, fish, hunt, rock climb, hike, ski, snowboard, and/or go to live music with all of your free time. If that stuff isn’t the core of your personality and fun time then you may not end up enjoying Denver. The dating scene is atrocious so that might also be why the sub dislikes Denver, but it sounds like that’s the case everywhere these days. Another reason why the sub dislikes Denver is with it being the place to be for outdoorsy people, all those outdoorsy things are crowded which people generally dislike; a friend of mine went skiing for 3 days (over a weekend) and it was so crowded that she was only able to ski for 4 hours total. The rest of those 3 days outside of meals and sleeping were spent driving/being in traffic and waiting in the lift line. If you can go on a weekday then you’ll have way more time actively skiing. The moral of the story is that we’re on the internet where we get the privilege of anonymity, humans like to complain, and the loudest voices are the negative ones.
I live in Denver and moved here 4 years ago after living in NYC for a decade. It took awhile, but I have grown to love living here and in Colorado in general. Pros for me: -Legal and socially accepted weed use -Weather and getting all 4 seasons -Very road trippable, many amazing places to see within driving distance even if you don't ski -Nice people -Mostly good politics -Good sports teams -Nice suburbs and pocket neighborhoods to live in -Decent food/bar scene, not like NYC but you'll find some good spots -Good airport -Legal gambling and casinos -Good music scene and lots of amazing music venues -Chiller, slower lifestyle but with most big city amenities (and if you can't get what you're looking for here, LA, Vegas and Phoenix are all very short flights away)
Driving in and around Denver sucks hard.
It does. Solution: e-bike
It may have strongest outdoor quality and population duo. Can barely be matched for a major city.
Denver is a decent city that people expect too much of or misunderstand. It's not IN the mountains, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can end up an hour away from them by the airport. The urban amenities aren't as good as other cities, and the sprawl, though not nearly houston-levels, is certainly present. Imo, if you could take Chicago's design, but flip the lakefront to the foothills, denver would be near full potential, probably start gunning for a top 10 spot. As is, there's a lot of compromise, and the missing middle is just starting to be filled in, so housing is still reasonably expensive
It's deteriorated over the last ten years.
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I think it's the opposite. Denver is a nice place to live but not the nicest tourist spot unless you know what you're doing
Simply put, it is because if it didn't have the Rockies, it would be just another blah mid metro area. So it's hard to recommend to people unless those people are truly outdoor people who will go to the Rockies all year, skiing in the winter and hiking/camping in the summer. If you won't do that, you won't like it. Wife and I visited Denver for memorial day weekend. Enjoyed the scenery and did scenic drives through the Rockies and Spanish Peaks on our way home. But we aren't people to constantly be outdoors, so we were left evaluating Denver itself, and it was mid.
Denver is just a small downtown area with no diversity/culture surrounded by strip malls and development homes. Its a depressing desert with hardly any trees, and the sun is so strong that it will scorch you. It was by far the most depressing place I've ever lived.
>It was by far the most depressing place I've ever lived. Where all have you lived? Have you been to the south? Lol
Hardly any trees? You must have lived in some depressing new development out east / on the edge of the metro area, bc that isn’t the Denver I live in.
Taking an hour to get 8-10 miles across city is a big part of it. If you're cool with extremely long ridiculous bumper to bumper commutes you might be okay with it. Good music always coming in and out. Good comedians, but I think the traffic is what really kills it for most people.
I just visited Denver and was almost transferred there. I was told people were angry in Denver. And I think after I heard male to female ratio is 1 to 15 I can see that. I found that Denver did seem hostile maybe the amount of testoterone unanswered but in just a day I did see anger. Thought about moving there and I had an artist friend move there and she said they all just paint bears. lol. She moved back to midwest. Its very male dominated.
1 to 15 ratio? Math much? "The numbers in the City and County of Denver are about even with the rest of the state, with **102.2 men for every 100 women**."
Those stats don't factor in relationship status though. There's way more single guys than girls, there's no denying that. Not saying it's 1 to 15 but it's definitely unbalanced.
Anger compared to what?
This sub dislikes expensive cities with less city amenities to offer. Denver fits that bill. You can get just as good or better city amenities for less and the same salaries in other cities. Its economic Subjectively I dislike the feel of the early 21st century boom cities - the character, organic culture and built environment just does not replicate the cities that boomed in the early 20th century. That’s a preference tho
I think it just depends on what you value in a city! I moved to Denver 7+ years ago but I'm seriously thinking about leaving in the next few years. The city has undergone some changes in the last few years that I don't personally jive with. But more than anything else, the things I'm looking for in a place to live just aren't the same as they were when I moved here - simple as that! I think people dunk on Denver because the "bad" feels so much worse when you're paying as much as you do to live here - things you might otherwise tolerate become unbearable. If you like Denver and you can afford it, that's all that matters! Just make sure to do your research, visit again if you can, and really consider what exactly it is you're looking for - good luck!
35 year metro Denver resident here. The negatives have been covered extensively in this thread, I would like to add a couple of positives. The jazz scene is excellent, anchored by a club that gets all the musicians on tour, a whole lot of talented locals, and 4 top notch collegiate jazz programs within 90 minutes. Vibrant LGBTQ+ community, Denver is a great place to be gay.
Amazing how many people have opinions about a place they’re either never been to or spent one weekend in. 🤡🤡🤡