News from Home
When I first moved to California, I made a real effort to stay abreast of what was going on back home in Colorado. Now that I’ve lived here for a good 9 months, though, I can’t say that I’m very good about keeping up with the Denver news. In fact, most of what I hear about these days comes in the form of oddball news items forwarded to me by friends and co-workers, which tend to reinforce a decidedly South Park-ish view of the 38th state. A few cases in point:
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In Granby, a small mountain town near the west entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park, a man “barricaded inside a fortified bulldozer” went on a rampage, firing shots and knocking down walls from five buildings. This event was especially odd given that it wasn’t the first time such a thing has happened in Colorado—a man in Alma used a front-end loader to do the same thing in 1998. No word yet on whether either was yelling “they took our jobs!” (Thanks to Ammon for the link.)
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My Mom tells me that the local TV news does a story on this at least once a year, but I personally had never heard of Bishop’s Castle until Ammon Skidmore forwarded me a link he saw on Metafilter. Basically, it’s a huge, 30+ year, one-man building project—sort of like the Watts Towers in LA, the Coral Castle in Florida, or Opus 40 in upstate New York. Odd, quixotic, yet somehow inspiring and definitely on my itinerary next time I visit Southern Colorado.
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In other architectural news, a link I saw on the front page of del.icio.us awhile ago alerted me to an odd development in suburban Denver that will surely be a source of great angst to urban hipsters everywhere: someone has actually built a subdivision of single family homes designed to resemble old factory buildings converted into lofts. Yes, Baudrillard would have a field day.
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Meanwhile, in the world of politics, Jens Alfke’s del.icio.us links pointed me to an amusing Salon article detailing a creative proposal the Bush administration came up with to ease the reconstruction of Iraq: make Denver Baghdad’s “sister city!” Of course, no one seems to have actually asked Denver before the announcement, and reaction from the mayor’s office, which is struggling to deal with a large budget deficit, seems to be a bit non-committal. Pity—just think about the South Park plot possibilities a Denver-Baghdad relationship would create!