Editor’s note: The editorial boards of The Denver Post and The Charlotte Observer agreed to engage in a little trash talk leading up to Super Bowl 50. Post editorial writer Jeremy Meyer took up the challenge, wielding his pen against The Observer’s Taylor Batten. Read Meyers’ column
I must have been stoned when I agreed to do this. Why would anyone with a clear head and not affected by altitude sickness agree to take on the challenge of portraying the Mile High City of Denver as inferior to Charlotte?
I don’t stand a chance. My only hope is that all Denver Post subscribers can’t read this because they are stuck in their daily parking lot hell known as Interstate 70 or I-25. Or at least that they’re so apathetic from smoking their legalized weed that they don’t bother to e-mail me their thoughts.
There are people who can read in Denver, after all. It’s not everyone who’s being left behind by Denver Public Schools. A national report last fall found that Denver’s better-off kids are doing OK. It’s the 70 percent of kids who are poor who suffer from the worst achievement gaps in the nation.
Yes, I have my work cut out for me, because Denver is the greatest place on Earth, filled with the most stunning, most active, most beautiful people. Don’t take it from me. Just ask them, they’ll tell you. And tell you and tell you.
These are outdoor-loving people. On weekends, they hop in their Range Rovers and skid down their driveways headed for fun activities such as skiing, snowboarding and hopping over the homeless people who fill the downtown sidewalks.
The skiing is great, I’ll grant you that. It’s only if you want to do anything else with your life that the weather becomes a problem. It snows as much in Denver in the average October as it snows in Charlotte all year. Denver residents boast about all their days of sunshine (among endless other things), but you haven’t lived until you’ve watched a storm from hell whip up on Denver within minutes.
Really, what’s not to like about a place where the temperature drops below freezing 156 days a year? In Denver, they point out that it has hit 20 below zero or colder “only” 30 times since 1872.
It’s OK; you can stay warm by standing near the wildfire.
It must be that kind of weather that drives so many people in Colorado to do drugs. It’s not only the legal doobies. The state also ranks at or near the top nationally for alcohol consumption and for cocaine and other illicit drug use. (Presumably, this doesn’t include their signature beer, Coors, which is closer to water than to a world’s-best beer like, say, Charlotte’s own Hop Drop ‘N Roll from NoDa Brewing.)
Of course, if you paid $2,000 a month for a basic two-bedroom apartment, you’d be looking for a coping mechanism, too.
Charlotte can’t even top Denver on the sports scene, because the cities are so similar. The Panthers and Broncos meet in the Super Bowl, of course. Both have NBA franchises, in the Hornets and Nuggets. And both have minor-league-level baseball, with the Knights and the Rockies.
I give up. Denver is too great. There is simply no better city to live in if you want to be in a place that thinks of “South Park” as high culture and that ranks last in kids’ vaccinations, last in funding for state universities and first for sexually active women.
Plus, when you get the munchies during the Super Bowl, you can feast on the local specialty: bull testicles.
Reach Charlotte Observer Editorial Page Editor Taylor Batten at tbatten@charlotteobserver.com; on Twitter: @tbatten1
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