(no subject)

[rhiannonstone]

Lots of people have been asking, so I figured I would write it out.

Things I will miss about Denver:

• Breakfast burritos and green chile{s}
  
• Urban bunnies
  
• Fruition Farms cheeses
  
• Being able to bike to work almost year-round (OK I can do this in SF, too, but it's a different kind of prep)
  
• The free Mall Ride bus
  
• 1Up
  
• Cart-Driver, Señor Bear, Sarto's, Reunion Bread Co., El Five, Hop Alley, Acorn, Jones Family Spirit House
  
• Hiking in the snow and not actually being cold
  
• Brief and intense afternoon thunderstorms
  
• Being able to hop on a bus and be in Boulder in under an hour
  
• Cheaper-than-SF rent, and a housing policy that (for now, at least) still allows for new dwellings to be built
  
• Public art everywhere (even when it's bad)
  
• Mountains
  
• Denver Airport conspiracy theories
  
• Being only a 45-minute car ride away from being able to see the Milky Way unassisted
  
• My Denver work family
  
• Opportunities to spend more time with randomdreams and threemeninaboat
  
• Shorter flights to the east coast
  
• Having superpowers when I return to sea level

Things I will not miss about Denver (besides being too far away from my chosen family):

• High facial moisturizer and body lotion budget
  
• One of the highest transit fares in the country
  
• Strong car culture --> Major gaps and lags in transit infrastructure, especially for getting out of Denver proper
  
• Not being able to bike more than 25 miles in any direction without having to go up the side of a mountain
  
• Recycling being so difficult that I sometimes throw away even the recyclables that actually get recycled
  
• Most of the concerts I want to see being at a place that is beautiful but nigh-inaccessible for folks with mobility issues
  
• Hail, and hail bruises
  
• Extreme rapid weather changes
  
• Having to go to the suburbs for good Chinese, Mexican, and Vietnamese food
  
• Everyone wanting to go to Linger and Snooze all the time
  
• Maintaining the polite fiction that TAG Restaurant Group restaurants are any good when people enthuse about them to me so I don't come off like a total California food snob
  
• The Denver Airport
  
• The Denver Airport Bathroom Smell
  
• Dog food smell days
  
• Cow poop smell days
  
• Basically all the smells, especially all the apartment lobbies, hotels, bars, and street corners into which artificial scent is pumped
  
• Also all the smokers of all kinds, smoking in public as if that is somehow not unspeakably rude
  
• Everything being about weed

Comments

[joycec]

Smokers of all kinds... Everything being about weed

I am skipping my discipline's major conference this year because it is in Denver and that is exactly the experience I cannot deal with. Thanks for confirming that I’m making a good call. :-)

[rhiannonstone]

To be clear, the number of people smoking cigarettes out in public is higher than I'm comfortable with, but still lower than most places in NC.

The number of people smoking weed can vary. Some days I never smell it, some days it's like my neighbors think weed is going to be illegal again, and most days I might smell it in passing once or twice.

There are a lot of dispensaries and ads everywhere, though, and no matter how much they try to contain it the area outside the shops reeks of weed--and even outside that, everything else is about CBD. Though I understand that's starting to be the case everywhere, since it's not technically illegal in most places.

All that said, everything that isn't about weed/CBD is about beer, so. Denver is actually pretty neat and I'd have loved to give you recs for places to check out, but skipping all the above is probably a good choice. <3

[jensmitkil]

Sarto's! I've dreamed of that place.
Not Infinite Monkey wines? (Was that the name of it?)

[rhiannonstone]

It's not hard to find excellent Italian food in the Bay Area, but I don't know if there's anything quite like Sarto's.

Infinite Monkey Winery! It was a fun place to go sometimes, but I didn't love their wine enough to miss it. And frosé is trendy enough now that you can definitely find it in SF in the summer.