a cowtown crisis

As cities go, Raleigh had a Napoleon complex: small, but it wanted to be bigger. To that end, it acted big – it courted professional sports, it courted major theater productions, it courted big retail outlets. And it got them, because its leaders really wanted it to grow and believed it had the potential to run with the big dogs.

In contrast, Denver is past the “courting” phase. We have all that stuff (but still no Sephora!), but the city must have grown quickly, before it could shake its quaint small-town naïvete. The dairy delivers our milk twice a week in the icebox on my front porch. (In true Denver-lefty fashion, the dairy only produces milk that is free of growth hormones and additives.) And when Oprah came to Denver for something or other, one of the local anchors, looking starstruck, interviewed her and made it into an hourlong special! Something tells me that WNYC doesn’t jigger its programming around when Oprah comes to town. Hey, we’re big enough for a Grammy winner to get shot here. (Which was in a safe, touristy, well-traveled part of town – like getting shot in the middle of “new” Times Square on a weekend night – so it was pretty shocking.)
Finally, in addition to having two large daily morning papers, we have a little community paper that delivers to about 10 neighborhoods on this side of town. I’m pretty sure the editorial staff went to the 1940s newsreel school of journalism. The main headline in this month’s edition was “Girl Bandits Terrorize Colorado Boulevard.” Throughout the article, the writer (who is uncredited) calls them “female desperadoes” and such. After more breathless puffery, the piece concludes with: “A massive man (girl) hunt is on for the elusive Ms. Drake.” Oh, please. The Smithfield Herald was far more professional.
This is a legitimate city. Wikipedia (if you consider that a legitimate source) says Denver is the 25th largest city in the United States (Raleigh is 55th; New York is, of course, 24 spots above Denver).* I feel like someone needs to grab this overgrown cowtown by its bolo tie and lariat-embroidered lapels and tell it that it's more than the sum of its omelets and boots.

* I am shocked to see that Austin, Texas (which was nearly our home), and Indianapolis are both larger than Denver. Charlotte, too. And I’m surprised that Raleigh is larger than Tampa, Cincinnati and Orlando. Wikipedia swears this is legitimate – it says this comes from the 2004 Census figures. Huh.