Why the "split" between "old" and "new" Coloradans . . . (Denver: apartment, condos)

[hello-world]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Thank you, vegaspilgrim and I_LUVNM, I do like to write, though my genre is non-fiction. I actually do write a fair amount as part of my current career, but it is not the historical and "current affairs" writing that I enjoy the most. As to comments that I'm paranoid, etc., etc., well, let me throw this out:

No one would argue with me that our current lifestyle (in Colorado and elsewhere, but certainly in the Rocky Mountain West as much or more so than anyplace) is currently totally dependent on cheap and plentiful oil. Well, today Venezuela announced that it had completed nationalization of its oil fields, those fields being the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan President, during the announcement was quoted as saying "Down with America." Great. Just a few days ago, the press reported (way too quietly, in my opinion) that the off-shore Mexican oil field that supplies a large portion of U.S. oil imports was in serious decline, and was--in fact--declining at a rate greater than previously anticipated. Production out of the North Slope fields of Alaska and in the North Sea have also peaked. Similar concerns were also expressed about some of the Saudi fields, among the largest in the world. Meanwhile, worldwide oil demand continues to INCREASE.

This is like everybody partying the night before Pearl Harbor. When are we going to wake up to what's about to happen? If not pretty soon, we may not WIN this one. Paranoid? Maybe. But, like the old saw, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't out to git ya!"

it's funny how some people reading what jazzlover has to say might see it as a good recital of the types of things many people have known and been talking about for a while, yet to others, it sounds "paranoid"! i would guess if jazzlover wrote this stuff on a forum that more non-americans read more of, it would seem more like conventional wisdom to them generally, while many americans might tend to be like "oh, no! say it isn't so! where could you possibly be getting all this 'our habits might be bad for us' and 'there are people out there that don't like us and will get us where it hurts most' business?!?!" i'm sometimes reminded of what it may have been like in conversation about slavery pre-Civil-War (while plenty of people believed slavery might be "a little iffy"), about smoking pre-"smoking can be bad for you" (while many people knew of evidence that smoking could be bad for you), the motion of the planets pre-Copernicus (while some of his contemporaries were talking about the possibility that it might not be they themselves, but the sun, that might be the center of the planetary-sun system).

[esya]

It's driving me crazy because I can't remember.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by esya

It's driving me crazy because I can't remember.

A clinker is the residue (along with ash) left from burning coal. It resembles volcanic ash or glass. The morning ritual with coal stoves or furnaces was to shake the grates and remove the ash and clinkers from the ashpan.

[S&AMOM]

I get frustrated reading threads on here. I feel like I will never move back to CO with the way it's changed. I grew up there but my father was unemployed for too long and got a great job offer in TX that he couldn't pass up. I was devastated leaving my beloved home state at the age of 16 (TX seemed like a foreign country to me.) We had a nice house on the west side of COS that my parents had built for $88,000. I saw that it recently sold for almost 300K. My parents sure kicked themselves for not renting it out.

I am almost 30 now and CO seems to have turned into an unattainable dream for me. The "new" CO is expensive. Here in TX we don't rent...we own and I am able to be home with my kids. To live back in the springs I would have to give up the pride of home ownership and work part time at the very least. All I hear about on these forums are people with tons of equity paying cash for homes in exclusive areas. Are there any "normal" people moving there? Probably not because they can't afford it.

[esya]

Thanks, Jazz lover. Having never lived on an alley before this house, I always dumped the ashes into the forsythia bushes, or the garden, or someplace like that.

As a middle class southern Ohioan to the core, I am living proof that urbanite are NOT all hoity toity fancy pants elites. I married a boy from the bronx way back when, but I am not elite.

You can take the boy out of the Bronx, but you can't take the Bronx out of the boy.

[esya]

Yeah, and I work with a lot of rural Coloradoans, many many natives (anglo as well as hispanic, Indian, etc.) I can tell you there is a deep streak of moral meanness there just like anywhere. If I had a penny for everytime I saw someone just up and fire a person because they "felt" like it (i.e., got angry or thought the person's "morals" were not up to snuff), I would be a rich retired woman. I don't call that a sense of community myself. That individualism can cause people to be pretty hard hearted as well.

[dynimagelv]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

• All Colorado license plates were green and white, had two letters and up to four numbers; and you could tell where somebody was from by the letters.

But before that they were numbers instead of letters in front......Denver County was [I think] 1, Lincoln county [Limon/Hugo] was 33 and the VFW published a book of license plate number so you could look up and see who it was....[very handy when spotting a CO car in another state.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by dynimagelv

But before that they were numbers instead of letters in front......Denver County was [I think] 1, Lincoln county [Limon/Hugo] was 33 and the VFW published a book of license plate number so you could look up and see who it was....[very handy when spotting a CO car in another state.

True. The numbers were dumped in 1959 for the alpha sequence I described, however, the county alpha sequence was in the same order as the numbers, i.e.,

Denver County, County #1, County letter designation AA-GN
Pueblo County, County #2, County letter designation GP-HX
Weld County, County #3, County letter designation HY-JW

and so on.

Some state agencies still use those county numbers internally to designate the county. The county numbers were assigned, as I recall from history, in order of the counties' population by the 1920(?) census.

For many years, the state did not issue "government" plates to state vehicles. The governor's limousine always had "AA-1" as the license plate.

[denverian]

I worked for the DMV in the mid '90s in Denver and the most recent green plates did indicate the county. They were the AAA1234 configuration, and all "A" plates were Dever County, "M" was Boulder County, "S" was Adams, rual counties started with "V" and so on. I don't see what the point was though. Who cares what county a car is from? Kansas still has a county designator on license plates and the only point is for people to point fingers at each other, as in, "Look at that typical 'blank' county driver", or "They must be country hicks since I've never heard of that county".

Regarding outsiders in Colorado, we're all (well most of us) Americans and free to move wherever we want. Times change, things change, cities grow. I love that Denver is becoming a larger, world-class city with so many new buildings going up and light rail going in. I hope Colorado continues to become a more liberal state, and if Dobson and his ilk packed up and left the state, I'd throw a party.

That's not to say I don't appreciate Colorado history. This is a beautiful state with a great history to be preserved and passed down. But expecting the population to stay where it was in 1960 is ridiculous. There were probably old timers back then who didn't like the changes they saw in their lifetimes.

I left California partially due to the overpopulation and problems that brings. There's no way 10 million people will move into this state in my lifetime, which is what you'd have to do to recreate California here. It's not that crowded and most of the state is sparsely populated. If you live between Ft. Collins and Pueblo, that's where most of the state lives, and things will progress here.

[denverian]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Thank you, vegaspilgrim and I_LUVNM, I do like to write, though my genre is non-fiction. I actually do write a fair amount as part of my current career, but it is not the historical and "current affairs" writing that I enjoy the most. As to comments that I'm paranoid, etc., etc., well, let me throw this out:

No one would argue with me that our current lifestyle (in Colorado and elsewhere, but certainly in the Rocky Mountain West as much or more so than anyplace) is currently totally dependent on cheap and plentiful oil. Well, today Venezuela announced that it had completed nationalization of its oil fields, those fields being the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan President, during the announcement was quoted as saying "Down with America." Great. Just a few days ago, the press reported (way too quietly, in my opinion) that the off-shore Mexican oil field that supplies a large portion of U.S. oil imports was in serious decline, and was--in fact--declining at a rate greater than previously anticipated. Production out of the North Slope fields of Alaska and in the North Sea have also peaked. Similar concerns were also expressed about some of the Saudi fields, among the largest in the world. Meanwhile, worldwide oil demand continues to INCREASE.

This is like everybody partying the night before Pearl Harbor. When are we going to wake up to what's about to happen? If not pretty soon, we may not WIN this one. Paranoid? Maybe. But, like the old saw, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't out to git ya!"

So someone else above refers to "fancy pants new urbanists", "late drinkers", etc. I live in Stapleton, a new urbanist community and I love it. I strongly support infill projects (which helps keep the metro Denver footprint from spreading), dense projects that don't take up too much land, and being near public transportation and the core of the city. Are you a supporter of denser building within cities rather than eating up farmland?