The city fathers must be frantically pulling their withered puds over the news that Outside magazine has dubbed Bibleburg No. 1 in its “America’s Best Cities” spooge-fest. I myself prefer Outside‘s hometown of Santa Fe, N.M., but Herself and I can barely afford to visit there, much less own a piece of its preposterously pricey property.
If we’d had any brains (and a bunch of money), Herself and I would have bought a place when we lived there 20 years ago, right about where the Railyard clusterplex is now. Then we could visit all the damn’ time and on the cheap, too. But we had neither brains nor money in abundance, and thus we live here, where a couple can buy a small house without selling Don Rumsfeld to Al-Qaeda.
Bibleburg has much to recommend it, as Outside notes. We’re five minutes by bike from a trail that stretches from Fountain on the south to Palmer Lake on the north, and 10 minutes from the 730-acre Palmer Park, which contains some 25 miles of trails (most of which are in pretty wretched condition from our insanely wet summer). And you can ride from downtown straight into the Rocky Mountains without spending too much time on an actual city street (which is good because they are in a terrible state of repair and packed curb to crumbling curb with insane people driving with neither skill nor mercy).
True, there is no downtown to speak of, barring a two-block strip of grog shops, alehouses and toilets whose last calls often lead to street fights, but at least the parking fees are world-class. And the stranglehold that chain eateries have on the local appetite, thanks to a transient population and abysmally low wages, means that fine dining is mostly a thing that takes place in one’s home, if one knows how to cook.
We did finally land a Whole Foods about 10 years after the rest of the country had grown bored with it, and it’s not uncommon to see some of the more colorful locals skulking about the place like retarded coyotes, filling up on free samples of exotic tidbits they don’t recognize because they are made of actual food.
When you get tired of watching them there are the neo-libertards and Elmer Gantrys for entertainment. The first lot wants government drowned in a bathtub but won’t pay for the tub or the water, while the second wants to stop the rest of us from having as much fun as they do until the hooker rats them out on “Oprah.”
And the newspaper sucks, the local TV news is worse and even our local NPR affiliate could do with a vigorous shaking from time to time.
But y’know? It could be worse.
We could be living in Pueblo.
Mad Blog Media 
As one who has lived in ‘Bibleburg’ I am ‘simpatico’ with your observations! When cycle guy and I lived there it was drought time, the bikeways were just starting to go in, there were a small handful of truly fine dining establishments, the roads were still in good shape and there was some ‘reason and common sense’. We fled the ‘FOTF’ folks and ended up in Portland – another ‘best city..’ – but if you look close, our city is quietly degrading just as fast as any other. Sorry to hear the rain is messing with the trails – hope they get repaired soon! (If I had to come back, I’d be headed to Manitou if possible – rather be with the hippies than the hotheads! :). Stay upright and pedal on! (I’m new to this blog – have mercy on me!)
What is it about a military base that guarantees the local ‘ville will have a bunch if shitty restaurants? Just because you know I’m going to leave town in 2-3 years, don’t you want me to come back at least once? I guess not.
But Bibleburg doesn’t have a thing on your Ft Bennings or Ft Hoods. At Benning, you can give directions between any two objects in town using nothing but pawn shops, tattoo parlors, and EZ-Pay Check Cashers as landmarks.
Not sure how Outside does it. They do a “ten best cities” about every five minutes. Pretty sure Gary, Indiana even got listed at least once.
Ah, Portland — one of the fabled Seven Cities in velo-mythology (Portland, Moab, Boulder and … um … four others). I used to like bar-hopping around Stumptown when I lived in Corvallis; I’m sorry to hear that the place has begun to devolve.
Our little corner of Bibleburg is actually bearable. We’re near Patty Jewett golf course in a Thirties house with excellent neighbors (even the Republicans are cool around here). Lots of trees, wide streets, a good java shop one block away and an excellent wineseller an easy bike ride west. Many pedestrians, cyclists and scooterists (when it’s not raining and hailing sideways, that is). And our homeowners’ association exists primarily to throw the annual block party.
Now, if the Safeway of the Living Dead at the Bon Center would just magically transform into a Vitamin Cottage-Natural Grocers, a Whole Foods or a Sunflower Farmers Market, we’d be set. Kinda. Sorta.
Hey, Steve-o,
Actually, we can do that here, too. Pawn shops, payday loaners and tat’ parlors are the only growth industries left in Bibleburg. Things were different when I worked for the now-defunct Sun back in ’74. Then it was massage parlors.
If I recall correctly, our assistant city editor, Bill Buzenberg — who went on to help found “Morning Edition” and expand “All Things Considered” on NPR — went under cover to write a story which said, among other things, that we had more hook shops per capita than LA.
How times have changed, eh?
Still crack up thinking about the Chinese restaurant outside Fort Leonard Wood, MO. The menu featured an appetizer labeled “grab a coon,” which we guessed should have read “crab rangoon.”
The place burned to ground in about six seconds when one of the burners went up. Hadn’t cleaned their grease traps in a hundred years, so it was like fugas mixed with napalm with a tactical nuke chaser. They left so quick, they didn’t get a chance to dispose of the hundred or so stray cats that were in the walk-in freezer.
Could it be worse? Sure, you could live in er, Sioux City Iowa where the cycling is actually nice when it’s not too hot, cold, windy, or humid. Peaceful roads (but not mucn in elevation change) surround us and the city is small enough to get out of on the bike in not-much-time. Cheap too which is why when the wife does not have to be here for her college prof gig, WE’RE NOT! Like many places, nothing in high quality eateries, here it’s “all ya can eat and keep the flies off” as one local explained shortly after we moved here, so the real food has to be homemade. No Whole Foods, unless one wants to drive 100 miles to Omaha. Trader Joe’s closest outlet is Minneapolis, 4 hours away. We DO have a real downtown with Historic 4th Street–a titty bar on one end and a porn store at the other. In between are other establishments where one can get drunk surrounded by folks with more clothes on. We have less of the right-wing religious nut-jobs but a city councilman who saw fit to express his outrage that a “Girls Gone Wild” bus should be parked on the historic street between said titty bar and porn store! Motorists are probably way nicer than Bibleburg too, I get the “get on the sidewalk where ya belong” only one or two times each year.
Hey, Larry,
Ah, Sioux City, where I spent many a childhood summer visiting the maternal granny and her second husband, a blue-collar Dane who let me take hits off his cigar and beer. Good times.
We’re gonna have to follow you folks around Italy one of these days. I hear it’s even prettier than Sioux City or Bibleburg, and that the flies have better manners.
Jeziz. Makes me happy to live in bomb town, where we just had our second big hailstorm of the summer, such as it is. My wife’s car (a 2002 Impreza) was nearly totalled during the 6 July celestial icefest and our yard looks like it was attacked by a giant weed whacker. Today wasn’t quite so bad, but most of the major home and auto insurance companies have set up shop for the remainder of the summer.