The Trip: Denver vs. Chicago

We spent part of one night in Denver, and while one surely can’t base a town’s true essence on what it’s like after spending a handful of hours there, I can’t say that I was overwhelmed. It reminded me of Omaha, in some fundamental ways (the way it was laid out, the traffic, some of the modern architecture downtown). And considering I only know one person in Denver, I’m not even sure I’d enjoy living there more than Omaha. Half of what makes a town is how many friends you have there.

As with most cities in America, you have to drive pretty much everywhere, which is something I don’t miss at all. It would be tough for anybody who has lived in a town where you can depend on walking, biking and public transportation to go to a city where you have to worry about driving and parking. (I must note that Denver is drastically improving its public transportation system, but it didn’t seem so prevalent that you could live there comfortably without a car.)

We walked around the 16th St. Mall district, which was a fair attempt at creating an outdoor urban shopping area that cuts through one main strip of downtown (and takes you straight to Coors Field, where the Rockies play). Except pretty much everything in it had been built in the past ten years and was sorely lacking any original, regional specific shops or restaurants. It stuck me as an area of town not many people that actually lived in Denver hung out at (Em said she almost never went there when she lived in Denver.)

I kept thinking of Division St. (my street in Chicago) and how in many ways it (and many other streets in Chicago) is a template for how many post-modern cities attempt to design a contemporary urban shopping strip. Except almost nothing on Division is a franchise of any sort (the glaring exceptions being Jimmy John’s and Starbucks — which are omnipresent even in Chicago). It’s pretty neat knowing you live in an area that represents one of the last living representations of what most American cities used to look like. Back when a neighborhoods and towns reflected the members of the community: when the people that ran the neighborhood bar, bakery and deli actually lived in the neighborhood.

Corner after corner in this mall we approached pockets of thuggish-looking young black men standing around, being mildly obnoxious. Sadly, the first thought that ran into my mind was “What are all these black people doing downtown?” Just as I caught myself thinking that it occurred to me why I was: Because Chicago is so segregated I simply wasn’t used to it.

Bear with me here, I’m just trying to be honest.

Any Chicagoan will tell you that when you walk around downtown during the day, you don’t see groups of thuggish young black men standing around being mildly obnoxious. You especially don’t see them hanging around prominent shopping districts. You see people coming and going from work and bona fide rogue homeless people panhandling, but barely anything in between. I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m just saying that’s what it looks like.

It occurred to me today coming back from lunch why that’s probably the case in Chicago. Walking past the fire station on Michigan Ave. I saw a cop forcing a homeless black man on the street — a man who didn’t appear to be doing anything other than sitting there — to get up and move somewhere else.

(Also, just before I saw the cop asking this man to leave, there was another guy on the corner panhandling his ass off. “C’mon, all you people got your sodas, your ice cream, you coffee … and I ain’t got nothing. Won’t you help me out a little bit? I want some ice cream or a soda, too!” Just as we passed him I looked to my buddy Nick. “I wonder if that guy sees the causal relationship between the fact that we have libations in our hands and we’re walking to and from our jobs,” I asked.)

Now before Al Sharpton holds a press conference accusing me of insinuating that it’s only black people who loiter and solicit on public streets, I should note that we also passed packs of young white gutter punks. They were digging through trash bins on the busy street and eating discarded food straight out of them right in front of everybody. That, by far, was the most disgusting thing I saw while I was in Denver.