Colorado is an obvious paradise, but living here, a person can start to take for granted the quirks and attractions of their surroundings. We outline the best Colorado has to offer.
Colorado is an obvious paradise, but living here, a person can start to take for granted the quirks and attractions of their surroundings. Tourists, however, pee their little tourist khaki cargo shorts at the very things that we natives have become sensitized to. That's why we threw together this list: so you can excitement-shake just as hard as the Texan family next to you is when you look at the Rockies (except at #16, that would make you an asshole).
1. Attitudes about weed
Texans still whisper the word "weed" when they use it in a sentence. Californians steer clear of recreational dispensaries and stick to the medical stuff. East coasters won't even smoke with you unless they've preformed a background check on you to make sure you're not DEA, their buttholes tightening up everytime a car passes by. Meanwhile, Coloradans are frolicking in knee-deep fields of marijuana, shouting about it while they smoke in public in front of cops. Colorado's lax-as-hell attitude towards weed enthralls tourists to such a degree that they've decided to move here en masse, lured by the promise of avoiding a future in the prison bitch business for lighting up.
2. Pearl Street
For those of us who grew up here, Pearl Street was just a place to misbehave, lose our virginity, and buy pills and what we hoped wasn't oregano. When we go there, it's just because it's the only centralized location to collectively get drunk. But to tourists, it's a miracle of shopping, a prodigy of upscale dining, and corridor of liberal dreams bathed in the marbled-walls of yuppie money. Attracted to its active-wear stores like moths to a yoga flame, they flock to the promenade to bask in the holy light of elite shopping.
3. Casa Bonita
Native Coloradans know Casa Bonita is just a place you can go to experiment with salmonella, but out-of-towners cannot even when it comes to the place. The cliff divers, arcade, and free love-themed website baffle their Midwestern sense of decency and logic, compelling them to travel-blog about their experience of people falling from the sky right into their enchiladas, which are coincidentally the only thing on the menu.
4. Pedestrians on a pedestal
In Colorado, pedestrians are kings, strutting about the state's many thoroughfares as if they were walking the red carpet to their Hall of Fame dedication ceremony. Everywhere else, those pedestrians are called "road kill."
5. Those giant hill things
For tourists, the mountains are like some kind of life-changing nature wet-dream. Rising out of the ground like rocky giants, they tower over tourists who've never been on anything higher than a man-made hill as they stare in awe. Don't get us wrong, Coloradans love the mountains. They're our identity. But we've been in, on, and around more times than Kanye has with Kim, and we faint less and less with every time we head up there.
6. Skiing and snowboarding heaven
Colorado's skiing is like nowhere else in the country, and the slopes are temporary homes to the state's biggest tourist contingent. But while flat-landers take to the slopes with their entire families for a day of $14 water bottles and lift lines, Coloradans are tearing up the backcountry, making our own jumps and courses, and building smoke shacks and shit.
7. The ol' Colorado accent
The Colorado accent isn't known so much for its existence as it is for its non-existence, but what we lack in identifiable accent, we make up in weirdo slang. The way people talk here is hugely informed by snowboarding and weed culture. Words like "gnarly," "dank," "epic," "radical," "buttery," "snaking," "swooping," "cashed-out" and "harshing" are delivered with a lackadaisical drawl that Coloradans take for granted … but tourists pick it up right away when they're left speechless by our instruction to "get your gaper ass off our pow, son."
8. EDM scene
If you live here, acts like Pretty Lights, Bassnectar, and Big Gigantic have played Red Rocks so many times that you've become immune to the tantalizing pull of the ubiquitous EDM show. Outsiders, however, can't even begin to wrap their heads around the EDM scene here. Even performers can't; everyone from Karmin to The Glitch Mob has told us Colorado is one of their favorite places to play because of the music scene.
9. Tiny Town
Not one person from Colorado has ever been there, but it's where every tourist goes to snap pictures of fake King-Kong rampages for their senior photos. It's probably just as well that natives keep their distance though; you know we'd just try to hot-box the mini fire station.
10. Frozen Dead Guy Days
A few Coloradans hit up Frozen Dead Guy Days if they're coming back from Eldora, but tourists come from far and wide to do baffling like what you just saw.
11. Denver Mint
Being one of the only places in the country that American money is made, it's on every tourist guide of Colorado ever made. But for natives, money isn't the only thing minted there; boring is too, in endless quantities. Coloradans got burnt out on that shit when we went there for a field trip every year of elementary school and ended up puking up our graham crackers outside the building in protest.
12. Boulder Falls
Boulder Falls dribbles some water over like six rocks, but being the only piece of water that falls semi-impressively off a miniature cliff, it's more packed with tourists than a Señor Frog's in Cabo on Ladies' Night. Coloradans know not to waste their valuable waterfall time on Boulder Falls, and to stick to places like Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride when they feel like chasin' waterfalls, TLC-style.
13. The Coors brewery tour
Colorado has so many insanely good micro-breweries that to us, Coors just looks and tastes like alcoholic pee water now. Why would we drink pee water when we could sip on a Saison from Funkwerks? But tourists? They can't believe their little tourist taste buds that they could tour the infamous Coors factory, and see where their sixth-favorite beer is made.
14. Natural foods
Tourists are often shocked at Colorado's unwavering obsession with natural foods. But in a place where waiters typically hear the question "Is this water free-range?" it doesn't faze natives a bit. We're fully acquainted with the occasionally farty world of raw, vegan, free-range, organic, non-GMO, dairy-free food. And while most of the country views terrorism or antibiotic-resistant bacteria as the greatest threat to humankind, for us, it's gluten.
15. Start-up valley
If you're from Colorado, your next-door neighbor probably invented Crocs, Tesla, Noodles and Company, Chipotle, Celestial Seasonings or Smashburger, but here's how many fucks you give … 0. But we can't count the number of times our out-of-towner friends have begged us to see the mint room at Celestial Seasonings. "I just love their tea!" they squeal, as you roll your eyes and take another bong rip.
16. The diversity of a bag of white rice
Anyone who's in the business of comparing diversity to bags of rice might notice that Colorado is like a box of Uncle Ben's with a few darker pieces of rice sprinkled in here and there. When Coloradans travel, they're infamous for being enthralled by the diversity of big cities and more racially varied states, because, after all, their surroundings look like a scene from the movie "Clones" starring our main man Bruce Willis.
17. Unchained canines
"What's a leash?" Coloradans ask themselves on a daily basis as their dogs run wild through the 'hood as if humans never evolved from primates. Newcomers think that Colorado is overrun by packs of wild dogs, but there's a method to the madness: Coloradans have those doggie dogs on voice command. Leashes are for idiots.
18. The Boulder bubble
Colorado is famous for bubbles of non-reality where people live in a privileged, dream-like state of liberalism and spirituality. Sup, Boulder, we're looking at you. Conservative-Christian Eastern Colorado doesn't exist as far as we know; it's just a ploy to make us believe our state is square, not rectangular. We think everywhere in Colorado has as many "Coexist" bumper stickers as Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins, but outsiders pick up on the stark borders between bubble and reality like a crime dog picks up on the cocaine in your butt.
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