Pueblo is now on another list --- the right one
October 10, 2004
Pop!
That was the top button on my shirt.
There are more to come.
I live in Pueblo, you see, and we are mighty proud down here these days. We have just been selected as one of the 20 best cities in America to live in.
Of course, that’s not entirely correct. We are not talking cities here, we are talking towns and places. Places like Santa Fe, N.M., and Asheville, N.C., and Corvallis, Ore., and Colorado Spri ……. Oh, well.
When is the last time you saw Colorado Springs and Pueblo on the same list, unless it was on the list of places we most like to hate?
Colorado Springs was No. 18 on Sperling’s Best Places ratings of American “cities” that are the good places to live, based on cost of living, and crime rate and climate and education, etc.
Pueblo was rated No. 20, just two places below the Springs. You had to go all the way to Nassau, New York, to find No. 19, the next-best place to live in America between Pueblo and Colorado Springs.
Not to Glenwood Springs, or Steamboat Springs. Not to Denver or Boulder or Fort Collins. Not to Lakewood or Aspen or Grand Junction.
None of those places were on Sperling’s Top 20.
About the only place between Colorado Springs and Pueblo is a pit stop called, appropriately, Midway. And wonderful sunsets, and sunrises, and mountain vistas, and wide-open plains.
After living my entire life, up to now, in the Denver-Boulder-Longmont axis, I retired and moved to Pueblo County two years ago. And, surprisingly, I found my new home town on Sperling’s Top 20 list.
Pop! Damn, there goes another button.
We have the most ethnically diverse town between San Francisco and New York. We have the biggest sky between Pluto and Mercury. We have the best restaurants outside of Denver, and the finest neighbors outside of … well, they’re just the best anywhere.
Pop! There goes another one.
We can drive anywhere in town – during “rush” hour – in less than 20 minutes, border to border. We have weekend festivals almost any weekend of the year. And between weekends, we have other things to do, like cruising the lake on our boats, or hitting a long drive on our golf courses, or walking the dog along the Arkansas River.
Pop!
Did I mention we have mighty fine tailors?
And those are a few of the things that make Pueblo, and Colorado Springs, worthy of the list on America’s 20 best 20 places to live.
It is our people, and our heritage, and our historical treasures, and our climate, and our cost of living, and our all-American values.
Pop! There goes another one!
Oh, did mention the ball parks? You can’t go more than 40 blocks in any direction from downtown Pueblo and not pass a ball park. A neighborhood ball park. The kind of ball park that is just there, suddenly, without any notice, over on the right side of the street, with two sets of bleachers, one on the first-base line and one on the third-base line, and a small parking lot for the fans.
Pop!
God, I love this town.
I know that this is being read in Longmont, my home town and quite worthy of the Top 20, and in Aspen, one of the world’s grandest addresses.
But I chose to live the rest of my life in Pueblo, and it’s nice to know that I made the right choice according to Sperling’s Best Places.
Just don’t spread the word, or you’ll ruin it.
Pop!
