I don’t get why COS has such a bad rep

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by otowi

I would be interested in seeing that data. I think things have changed some since you left, perhaps - when did you go, I forget?

Anecdotally, I surveyed my students on parks usage for some other purpose than this question, but all of them could report going to at least a few of our parks/trails unless they had been here less than a year - and this includes students living in poverty. None of them had been to all the ones I asked about, but all of them who had been here more than a year had been to at least 1.

I'd say about half the people I know who live here (and I've lived here 46 years) regularly use the parks, and the other half rarely do.

Parks have gotten considerably more busy in the past 5 years as the city and tourism have both grown. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if they reported that average traffic had nearly doubled this summer at Garden of the Gods over 5 years ago.

I left a little over 2 years ago.

[StealthRabbit]

IIRC, the CoS 'Bad Rep' was often due to military bases / & high volume of transient residents + the baggage.. (A lot of unpopular soldiers passed through Ft Carson and Peterson during Cold War and Vietnam) How quick we forget.

Camp Carson became a hotbed of activity. Armor battalions, a Greek infantry company, Italian Ordinance troops, mule packers and cooks all trained at the mountain post. An internment center was operated at the camp, starting in 1943. The camp housed nearly 9,000 Italian and German prisoners of war for several years. Axis prisoners of war performed logging work in the area and helped out with farming and processing of local crops like corn and tomatoes.

https://militarybases.com/colorado/fort-carson/

+ the usual competition, Denver always wanting to be perceived as 'Better', and housing the legislature. (the Power to be better)

That's fine... Denver helped CoS be a much better place to live .

[Mike from back east]

That's mostly ancient history save for a few bad apples at Fort Carson who returned from Iraq with issues that led to a few murders and some weekend barroom brawls in the downtown as rowdy infantry troops let off some steam which they do outside the gates of any large troop base.

The real bad rap on COLO SPGS, which I've been fighting on here for years, is that the city is the "Vatican of the West" label that got stuck on the city from religious whack jobs like James Dobson, Gordon Klingenschmidt, Ted Haggard, shenanigans at the USAF Academy and others.

Since city-data began in late 2005 we've had to contend with accusations that the religious right was running amok in the city, which just isn't true. The media amplifies the nuttiness of people like Dobson whose radio show was known for his pronouncements that cartoon character "Tinky Winky" had gay tendencies and other such crap.

A second bad rap was the Great Recession where a majority of voters turned down a property tax increase (about $200/year per home) which forced the city to sell off its police helicopters, turn off street lights and stop watering the grass in city parks which turned them brown. The city became a national laughing stock for that and the nonsense of Dobson and Haggard in that same timeframe. The anti-tax majority of voters keep the city a basket case such that very few firms will relocate there. Any corporate CEO who flies into the city and drives the rotting infrastructure will determine very quickly that the city isn't up to the task of hosting their operations.

Truth is that the city is quite live and let live; stats we've seen are that only 37% of residents are regular churchgoers, etc.

The bad rap had germs of truth in them which were quickly enlarged by media hype. That is changing as more firms are coming to COLO SPGS as a cheaper alternative to Denver, a trend that will almost certainly accelerate.

[Brill]

In early 2000's I remember hearing this place was a hippie town. Was that ever true?

[TCHP]

Cos has never been a hippie town. However, Colorado College, in the center of Cos, is a very widely known liberal arts college with a very large granola population. Additionally, neighboring Manitou Springs has always been the eccentric next door neighbor with reputations ranging from witches, to satanists, to hippies, to tourists, and it is still a funky eclectic mix of very liberal minded people that attracts out of town visitors constantly.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by Brill

In early 2000's I remember hearing this place was a hippie town. Was that ever true?

That's sort of like the people I've seen or heard talk about COS's "ghetto". As if they had any inkling what a ghetto actually is.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

That's sort of like the people I've seen or heard talk about COS's "ghetto". As if they had any inkling what a ghetto actually is.

I KNOW RIGHT?

I laughed at them in Des Moines, Iowa for this, too. "I'm from the hood!" What hood? There is no "hood" in Des Moines. Sheesh. Silly.