Thoughts on first Denver Visit

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Chico Loco

I live a mile south of downtown Denver and have been here for a few decades. Be wary of commenters who say they live in Denver. When people say they are from here they are usually from a suburb.

Downtown was good 10-15 years ago. Not so much today. I don't know any of my friends who live here would go there. There are lots of sketchy people on and around the 16th Street Mall and no stores, etc., that you can't find anywhere else. A few months back I took someone from out of town who wanted to go there, and a crazy guy with a knife was chasing people around.

My only experience in Downtown Denver was driving into Downtown on Colfax Avenue, towards where I was staying that night east of the Capitol, and when I stopped at a light somewhere around 14th Street, I saw what were two presumably Antifa people hooded up and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police that were chasing them.

[cabasse]

have been to CO twice now in the past few months; will be moving over there sometime in september. we've settled in on longmont proper, where the husband's office is located and overall it seems like a decent small city of its own, part of the boulder metro, with a nice little walkable downtown. it didn't make sense try to settle anywhere in the denver metro itself as much as i would prefer to be within another major city. guess we'll be driving down on the weekends for hmart or whatnot.

i still haven't seen any of the city at all, yet. closest i've been was a quick trip down to thornton.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Yeah I'd say that's probably the biggest difference - whether it's just an administrative boundary or a physical boundary. Manhattan is a land form separated from other land by physical barriers so it makes sense to exclude anything beyond that boundary. But with people living near NYC, I don't see any issue with them saying they're from NYC when speaking to people from far enough away not to know the difference. NJ and LI have their own well established identities, so if they lived near NYC in either place, most people would recognize the terms NJ or LI so there's no need to round them into NYC. But someone from say, Yonkers, it would make the most sense to just say NYC when speaking to anyone outside the US NE.

A person from Yonkers might say they are from New York, but they likely don't claim to be from NYC. If a person follows up and asks a Yonkersite if they are from NYC, the Yonkersite would probably clarify that Yonkers is just outside of it.

Certain cities have pretty strict definitions of what it means to be from that place. I don't think it's a Rust Belt thing, though. Rust Belters like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis seem to have relatively flexible rules about when you can describe yourself as being from those cities. On the other hand, places like NYC, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc., have pretty rigid rules. NYC is by far the most rigid about it.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by cabasse

have been to CO twice now in the past few months; will be moving over there sometime in september. we've settled in on longmont proper, where the husband's office is located and overall it seems like a decent small city of its own, part of the boulder metro, with a nice little walkable downtown. it didn't make sense try to settle anywhere in the denver metro itself as much as i would prefer to be within another major city. guess we'll be driving down on the weekends for hmart or whatnot.

i still haven't seen any of the city at all, yet. closest i've been was a quick trip down to thornton.

Longmont is a nice town, with a nice business district. I was there in 2020 and did a photothread of the Downtown. It seems more like a regular town, if that makes sense. My impression from that time was that if you couldn't see the mountains in the distance, you would think it's a town in Nebraska or Kansas.

Longmont is a great gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park! I think it was a 45-minute drive for me when I used it as my home base.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

A person from Yonkers might say they are from New York, but they likely don't claim to be from NYC. If a person follows up and asks a Yonkersite if they are from NYC, the Yonkersite would probably clarify that Yonkers is just outside of it.

Certain cities have pretty strict definitions of what it means to be from that place. I don't think it's a Rust Belt thing, though. Rust Belters like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis seem to have relatively flexible rules about when you can describe yourself as being from those cities. On the other hand, places like NYC, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc., have pretty rigid rules. NYC is by far the most rigid about it.

To be clear, i wasn't commenting on whether or not they would say they were from NYC. I have no idea. I was just saying that, when speaking to someone from outside the region, there wouldn't be anything unreasonable about saying it.