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What should Denver do about its image problem?
Denver's image has never concerned me much in the past. I venture into the city when necessary, and I cannot recall any domestic conversations of this nature:
Ed, what do you want to do today?
Let's go to Denver. I saw it on TV last night, and
it just looked so attractive, dynamic and wonderful that I
just felt compelled to visit and spend a lot of
money.
Great idea. I've felt the same way for a long time.
I really want to be part of that image, no matter how much
it costs. We haven't maxed out our credit cards yet, have
we?
I didn't even know Denver had an image, let alone an image problem, until I became exhausted and gave up struggling, so that the recent torrent of Super Bowl swill overcame my defenses and flooded my system.
First I learned that Denver suffered under a national reputation of being an isolated cowtown in one of those remote big empty square states out west. But a second consecutive NFL championship, I heard, would show the world that Denver is a big-time major-league city, able to hold its own and more in all urban competitions, from gridlock to imported cultural amenities.
Then I heard commentators wondering Oh, dear. What
will people think of Denver now?
after the Super Bowl
victory riots in LoDo made national news. (By the way,
it's good thing that English is our Official State Language
-- lodo
means mud
in Spanish.)
What would people think? Probably the same thing that people thought about Chicago after Bulls fans got worse than rowdy following an NBA championship game, or about Detroit after Tiger fans tore up a few blocks following a World Series victory.
That is, they would think that's too bad,
and a
day later, they'd forget about it and turn their attention
elsewhere.
But during the five minutes that people across America
were thinking about Denver and forming an image, they might
think that Denver is a real major-league city, even to the
extent of having the same sort of lame-brain yahoos whose
idea of celebrating means let's go out and smash
windows, turn over cars and start fires.
This perception of Denver would tend to confirm that it's not a cowtown (in a cowtown, the drunken rowdies would ride down Larimer Street on horseback, shooting out streetlights with their revolvers), and thus should actually improve the city's image as a metropolis worthy of major-league status.
But much of this difficulty I blame on Denver television stations. The local coverage last Sunday night gave me the impression that riots were on the official schedule, what with the police and cameras standing by, and that all this extensive and expensive preparation would be wasted unless a few hundred revelers kept the appointment by pouring into the street and igniting a bonfire.
All involved followed the script, thereby giving Denver an image, but if this matter is so important, then it certainly deserves more planning the next time a Denver team wins a championship.
For instance, Colorado Ski Country USA could be put in charge of image production.
The cameras would be at a resort where snow, real or
fabricated, limits visibility to about a dozen feet. Then
the camera personality could come on: Here we are near
Denver, where fans are celebrating yet another world
championship. Let's talk to one of the happy revelers
now.
Hey, the skiing is so great with all this fresh
powder that I'd totally forgotten about the game. And you
know, the really neat thing about snowstorms in Colorado is
that they fall only on the slopes and never touch the
highways, which are always clear and dry, so it's really
easy to zip right up here from DIA.
Or they could give Denver a more wholesome image by importing certain Colorado Springs residents on the Big Night:
Here we are at Mile High Stadium for the Victory Over
Sin, Democrats And The Other Team Rally, where thousands of
the faithful have packed the place, singing hosannahs and
offering prayers of gratitude after sharing their loaves
and fishes. We're going to try to get an interview with
Bill McCartney, who organized this Denver festival of
thanksgiving ...
Perhaps the easiest, though, would be to continue the current arrangements, but control the spin:
Denver-area glass merchants say that the Super Bowl
victory gave the local economy a vital boost during what is
normally a slow time of year.
Also joining in the triumph were property-insurance
agents, who say they always get commission-generating calls
for increased coverage in the wake of a victory, as well as
army-surplus dealers who would otherwise be stuck with
slow-moving inventories of gas masks.
If Denver's image is really that important, then it should be fairly simple to implement one of these strategies.
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