Down and Out

When Alastair and I started this blog a year and four months ago, it was because we disliked Denver and we wanted to have a forum to vent about it.  As you may recall, we did a lot of venting in the beginning: about outdoor sports, and gays, and gays’ clothing, and bars, and drivers, and the lack of a real downtown.  I could go on.  In the past year, however, we seem to have moved more into the realm of reporting on our adventures here in D-Town.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  I warn you right now, however; I’m about to take us right back to our origins.  The reason I’ve been so silent of late is because writing on this blog just serves to remind me that I do live in Denver, and that’s something I’ve been trying to forget. ‘Cause I really don’t like it here.  Lately I have not only been out, I have also been out of state.  I just checked: of the past 14 weekends (that is, the months of December, January, February and the beginning of March), I have spent a grand total of 4 of them here in Denver.  United and Frontier love me.  Where have I been?  Does it even matter?  So long as it hasn’t been the Centennial State, I almost haven’t cared.  I have decided that in order to get back to blogging, I must first get back to the reason that I blogged in the first place: my disdain for this state. So bear with me as I update you on my current malaise.

This blog was at least in part supposed to be Alastair’s and my attempt to make ourselves happier here.  We envisioned some sort of community forming around our mutual distaste for all things Mile High.  That is, admittedly, a ridiculous goal in some  ways, but we still thought we might make some new friends with whom to bitch about Denver.  While we have certainly made friends since November of 2009, we have officially met zero people directly through this blog. Alastair did meet Mondo Guerra (!!!), but not through the blog, and we’ve never actually gotten together with the ladies of the Denver Omelette (who have a new member!), despite many promises on both sides that we will.  Over the almost five years that I have lived here, I have done my utmost to like this state.  I joined a book club. I joined a gym.  I volunteered.  I went to museums and art galleries and parks.  I visited parts of the state that I’d never been to before.  As you know, Alastair and I have also drunk and dined at many a fine watering hole and restaurant (and restaurants remain the one thing about Colorado about which I will generally not complain).

But, dear reader, I still don’t like it here.  When asked what I think about Denver or the state more generally by people I meet in other places, I generally say: “It’s pretty and affordable, and it’s great if you like outdoor activities, though I don’t.”  That is about as much enthusiasm as I can muster. Because I then also say: “It’s Midwestern and provincial and conventional and it’s only pretty if you look at the mountains and it’s small and Denver is a city utterly without edge.” Let me be clear: as horrible as I am I do realize that Denver is great for some people.  I am just not among them.  I lived for ten years in a city whose population is double the size of the entire state of Colorado.  This was my own fault.  I should have approached my adult life by working my way up from small to mid-sized to truly metropolitan.  But I didn’t.  And it has ruined me for anything that does not feel distinctly urban.  And Denver just doesn’t cut it.  This “city” has no rail system that takes you anywhere but suburbs.  It is not very walkable.  It has little life not for tourists in its downtown. It is populated by people who seem fully satisfied by getting in their cars and driving to strip malls to do their shopping.  That is, when they’re not leaving the “city” to go skiing or snowboarding or hiking or rafting or some other snow-air-waterborne activity. And that, to this jaded coastal urbanite, is just not really a city.  If Chicago is forever relegated to “Second City” status, I don’t even want to venture a guess as to how far down that numerical ranking Denver might be.  And the thing is this: no amount of defending or “we have X number of parks or restaurants or buses” can possibly redeem it. Because desirable places don’t constantly have to defend themselves, precisely because everyone knows how wonderful they are.

All of this begs the obvious question: if you hate it here so much, why on earth don’t you leave?  Dear reader, I have tried. I work in a field that required far too much education and that is specialized enough that one cannot simply move to a new place and expect to find employment in that field.  So does Alastair.  That’s why we’re here and why we stay here.  I am surprised by how many people there are who work in these sorts of fields, and how different the fields are from one another.  Alastair and I do not, for instance, do anything similar in our work, but both of us in our own ways have found ourselves here and unable to leave if we want to continue to practice what we’re trained to do.  If we want, in essence, to continue to be ourselves.

Another reason for my current bitterness — which I recently described to a friend as a “seething cauldron of resentment”; fun, huh? — is that I was recently a finalist for a job that I can only describe as The Job To End All Jobs (TJTEAJ, henceforth).  Not only was it a fantastic position, it was also in the Bay Area, where, you might recall, my Gentleman Friend resides.  At each step of the process of applying and interviewing for TJTEAJ I did not believe that I could possibly make it to the next round, so good was this job, and each time I did.  Until, dear reader, that final time.  I did not get the job.  And I am heartbroken.  (If there is anyone reading this right now who is thinking, let alone saying, to him or herself, “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” I swear to you right now that I will track you down and throttle you with my bare hands.  By whom was it not meant to be?  Seriously?  Who figured out that I was not meant to get this job, aside from the people doing the hiring, who basically just preferred the qualifications of someone else?  ‘Cause if there was any sort of “meant to be justice” in this world, that job was clearly labeled “Blake.”)

All of the buildup to the possibility of TJTEAJ just meant that I spent an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about what my life would be like in San Francisco and how wonderful it would be.  You can imagine how Denver is now faring in comparison to all that kind of thought.  Not well.  I’m not at all sure that telling you all this has done anything to convince me that I’m going to be any happier here, but I will say that it’s allowed me to feel like I can return to contributing to our little blog, thus relieving Alastair of all the responsibility.  Besides, I’ve got a restaurant to review, and a PBS series that is my new best friend, and an HGTV program that delights me, and an installment of Blake’s Book Nook that’s been percolating for months now.  And how could I not share all of that with you, dear reader?