Daily
Coming home to Denver
Spend the first twenty-four years of your life in Colorado. And it’s all you really know. Move back here after five years in L.A. And every, single thing you thought you knew looks the opposite. L.A. is 24/7/365. Denver is 8/5/261, with an hour set aside for lunch each day. L.A. is a creative circus. Denver is a one-armed clown juggling for street change. L.A. is pushing the envelope. Denver is looking for one of those wet sponges to seal up the envelope and mail it off to Grandma Tilly.
But L.A. is also filled with cutthroats who will run through you to get what they want. In Denver, people say “hi” and “have a good day” and “thanks.” L.A. sucks people in and forgets about them. Denver remembers anyone who ever did something noble for the city. Ninety-nine percent of people in L.A. never have a chance to be the star. Ninety-nine percent of people in Denver just need to step up to the plate. For all these reasons, this site is dedicated to the creative longevity of this city we both love. Let’s raise the bar.
732 days ago / / Link
I had the same experience…I transplanted a year and a half ago from the bay area…a lot of my family is from L.A . I just got burned out, was never going to be able to afford a house…tired of the commuting, traffic and an isolated existence.
When I arrived in Denver I was STUNNED at people’s kindness, eye contact and the actual humanity and genuine conversations with my neighbors, yes real neighbors. I really love it here and would rather telecommute than live in the madness…
Heather
— Heather Crank · Jul 19, 06:23 PM · #
^ don’t forget about the motion work coming out of LA. Otherwise it’s a desert out there.
— kyle · Jul 24, 01:27 PM · #
The point of the story is not to compare Denver’s ad scene to LA’s. The point is that Denver is a barren wasteland of nothingness compared to a city where every square inch is being pushed creatively. LA will always be a town where the movie industry overshadows the ad industry. On that, we see eye to eye. However, to call Chiat the only thing going is to mistakenly overlook 72andSunny.com, omeletla.com, 86theonions.com, goodnessmfg.com and gmplumbing.com, among others doing things that make LA an ad town that rivals any hotbed in the country.
— The Denver Egotist · Jul 25, 01:40 PM · #
Saying ‘Chiat is the only agency doing good work in LA’ is like saying ‘my buddy Kevin is the only dude in denver who knows how to barbeque’.
You can’t count out a whole city. Especially one with this VOLUME of work coming out of it. Theres a reason why LA and NY known for their creative output.
And a reason why burned out designers from portland and minnepolis and chicago and new york end up there. And it’s not cause they love traffic.
But I definitely agree about feeling isolated. It’s hard to meet people and when you do, chances are they live 40 minutes away. That almost never happens in denver.
— Evan · Jul 25, 03:50 PM · #
I moved here from LA less than a month ago. I just wanted to get out of Southern California for a while. I like Denver though. It’s a weird city in a good way. But I’ve only been here a month and have a handful of buddies, so we’ll see.
— Juan · Jul 25, 07:55 PM · #
One day, I too hope to return to Denver, not that I was there that long. I’m an account planner working at an interactive shop in Ohio…and I’m giving myself 3 years at most, until I make the move back to CO, come hell or high water…
— B-Man · Jul 27, 10:13 AM · #
I’ve had a very similar experience but rather than L.A., I spent 8 years in NYC. And rather than making me appreciate Denver more, It’s opened my eyes to how incredibly marginal this town is. The culture of mediocrity sickens me and I feel it creeping into my own life already. I made a huge mistake coming back (I thought I loved snowboarding and mountain biking enough to make it worth it – I don’t) and can’t wait to move back East. I’ve traded a beautiful mix of cultures, ideas and faces for dusty group of car-culture yuppies. The design industry here is half-assed at best with one or two real interactive agencies doing anything worth noticing (Factory and Xylem). And on top of all of this, it’s not even cheap to live here any more! The pay scale compared to cost of living sucks. And don’t get me started on the crime rate. My car has already been broken into twice and someone backed into it without leaving a note. The same car that sat in my Brooklyn neighborhood for 3 years with not one incident. This is one hometown girl that can’t wait to leave Denver behind (for good).
— Cindy Larson · Jul 30, 05:17 PM · #
Hey Cindy,
There are quite a few nice creative companies in Denver..maybe you just overlooked them?
www.spillt.com
http://www.kerndtdesign.com/
http://www.bigorangeplanet.com/
http://www.citizenpictures.com/flash/index.htm
http://www.kearstevens.com/
Denver expensive? I’m making the same $ as I did in CA with rent that is almost half. I haven’t been to N.Y. in 5 years but it’s hard to imagine Denver being more expensive. Compared to Oakalnd/L.A. the crime seems nonexistent.
I agree, Denver isn’t as culturally diverse….it’s a trade off. N.Y. definitely had more going on. But it did take me a year just to get to know the scene here. It’s a bit underground, but it’s here.
— Heather Crank · Jul 31, 09:21 AM · #
She said ‘worth noticing’ not ‘outdated and boring’. And yes, the cost of living in Denver COMPARED TO THE PAY SCALE makes it expensive. If you compare it to southern cal, the most expensive place in the country, it’s going to look better but as compared to the rest of the US, Denver is behind the curve salary wise and above average rent wise. I just moved here from South Carolina last year and I was amazed how expensive houses and rent are around here – and the people I work with (I was transfered from the SC office) are making CRAP compared to what we make back East. However, I dont think Denver is all that bad, it’s hot as hell in the summer and cold as hell in the winter but it’s dry and I like that.
— Travis Smith · Jul 31, 05:50 PM · #
I’ve lived a lot of places, and there are people like this everywhere, but I don’t understand people who hate where they live. If you don’t like it, move! I lived in Dallas, then realized I had moved to hell so I left. Why stay somewhere that doesn’t agree with you, allowing vitriol and negativity to creep into every crack of their being. It’s not healthy.
I know Denver’s not as culturally diverse as NY or LA, and it’s not as accomplished creatively, but only a handful of cities in the world are. Trying to compare Denver to NY is like comparing a bicycle with a car—they’re both modes of transportation, but they have very different purposes.
And, personally, the reason I like Denver is that it is FULL of promise; it hasn’t been exploited yet. What it lacks in history (being a couple hundred years younger than NY) and creativity I think it makes up for in promise. But whether that promise is realized depends upon how we—the creative forces in this town—treat it.
Denver should be the canvas upon which a new school of art is created, not the contrast board upon which we look at more accomplished cities. That’s my 2¢.
— Artistic Mercenary™ · Aug 6, 10:06 AM · #
Well, the basis of the original text was comparison, that’s why most of the responses went that way. The love it or leave it argument is pretty juvenile by the way. I agree 100% that if you don’t love where you live, you should jet – if you can – but sometimes it’s more complicated than that. Cindy came back for the mountain sports and realized they weren’t important enough to give up what she had in NYC. And Travis, is here on business. I work with a women that moved here because her husband’s company moved them out here – she HATES denver – she’s stuck here though. For me, Denver is home, I moved here as a teenager with my parents and just never left. I travel a ton and have no illusions that Denver is anything special but it’s fairly easy to live here and I have a job that I love. So, although I agree with the rampant mediocrity, it’s comfortable for me and mine.
— Alice · Aug 6, 11:26 AM · #
I hear the track you’re layin’ down. And I agree on the mediocrity of the city, but there’s no one to blame for that except the city’s own residents. It’s the people that inhabit a city that determine it’s greatness, a city by itself is nothing. So if it’s mediocre and you don’t like it, do what you can to change it—like this very site is attempting to do. And if you’re comfortable with the status quo then just don’t rock the boat.
Me, personally? I’m a boat rocker. And so far I’ve been much more succesful at that than my horrible, down-in-flames failed attempt at a career in shadow puppetry. But I’m not prepared to talk about that, and my therapist says that’s OK.
— Artistic Mercenary™ · Aug 6, 06:07 PM · #
Don’t sell Denver short. There are a lot of us refugees from the big city agencies who moved to Denver precisely for the 8/5/261 lifestyle. I personally am enjoying working for the small, down&dirty Denver companies. They don’t have the budget for 3 months of strategy, and yes, it’s a different type of work, but sometimes more gratifying… you can see the results of your work.
— Liz · Aug 7, 08:47 AM · #
8/5/261?
This might be true for some people but I’ve never worked harder than I have in the last 3 years in Denver. There seems to be a pro management, take-what-they-give-you-and-like-it attitude here – where as on the coast (I worked in Jersey and NYC for 10 years) the employee is more empowered and has to eat less shit (at least in my experience). In Denver for example, you are expected to work a 9 hour day, where as in NYC, everything works on the 8 hour day – your lunch is paid for. It’s a 9-5 schedule. Of course there were exceptions during crunch times but for the most part, the expectation that you’ll give up your nights and weekends because Sales happened to oversell the project and the deadlines weren’t reasonable, just seemed to happen A LOT less. The culture is different. They’re just not allowed to get away with it by the employees the way they are here.
— Jason · Aug 8, 11:12 AM · #