I frequented Durango a few years back. The townsfolk were complaining about the tide of Californians settling there. Now the pot and lowlifes who follow the scent. From there crime will increase.
Progress, there’s no stopping it.
Durango has had a street people issue for a long time
They have even attempted to criminalize loitering like Aspen and Vail and maybe Telluride and Summit county towns do
But the libs have guilt over it so they squabble about it
The main culprit for bums congregating on Main Street in Durango is alcohol same as most town bums anywhere in the USA
Occasionally some smoke pot too or do crack or pills etc but it's alcohol driven and serious drunks don't like weed trust me
After the mid to late 60s psychedelic explosion the youth culture began to mythologize bucolic rural life over the street psychedelic scenes in the big cities but most notably in the Haight
It even went that way in Europe too...the band Traffic was born from a country self imposed lifestyle etc
Pink Floyd as well
Here it was Crosby Stills and Nash and Jesse Colin Young and Grateful Dead and a plethora of bands extolling idyllic rural life and most of that centered on places like NORCAL or Santa Fe or southwestern Montana or rural Tennessee oddly enough where Steve Gaskins FARM still stands and most importantly Colorado
Colorado was sorta the Mecca of where to go
It's so damn pretty as we all know too well
I've been going since 64 that I can recall and have been at least 50 times and have family and friends there
First it was the hippie generation
Then the Xers
And now hipsters
And each one more PC and indoctrinated than before....
And most from California or the northeast.....
And many are libs
And it's changed the state but what really turned the state Democratic is the huge rise in Latino population
From 3% in 1970 to almost 25% now
Ok so that's the macro view of a once glorious cowboy cattle and oil state dotted with neat ski towns
Durango has a bum problem and most are drunks like anywhere else
I go there I know what I see.....in fact I'll be there in June or mid July
People stand in line at the rec stores to buy weed because they want to buy weed and lines move very slow due to regulations about IDs and so many folks in the viewing and purchasing area and so forth
It's clumsy in my view
Do people here hand-wring about booze in grocery stores...a legitimate gripe in my view
Control booze as strongly as weed it's more dangerous in my opinion although I rarely use either anymore
Now on hippies on the streets
Yes there are rainbow tribe bums all over Colorado but they've been there in one form or another since the early 70s
The nuisance bums I see on Main Ave or Buckley park in Durango are these two camps
Transient druggies who smoke weed but prefer stronger meds and classic drunk bums
This is a problem everywhere that people go
Nashville
New Orleans
Miami
Dallas
Bums whether hippies or drunks go where the panhandling is good
And the local libs cater
Personally I think Colorado should have stayed medical but they smelled cash
The bum issue in Colorado is what it is
If you banned booze and weed and pain pills and meth and local bleeding hearts you might knock it out
I've seen bums all my life....the problem underneath nearly all of it is booze
Pot will never satisfy a drunk trust me
Freepers love to pony up to their virtual bars here so what do I know
Enact anti loitering laws and discourage begging would help
I remember going to Santa Fe in 1969 and the Plaza was chock full of hippies all leaning up against the old stone walls which they removed btw...my WWII jolly Rodgers vet uncle hated em lol
Denver today has hipsters maybe in higher numbers than anywhere
And plenty smoke dope and the lower end are kind of day to day sorts too
I'll close on a positive note....parts of rural Colorado especially most of the Western slop are still mostly like it used to be
And we're forgetting the ranching eastern Colorado which remains as always
So many pass through Durango headed to Silverton and Ouray or the corner highway Utah and Moab or Cortez to Monument valley Make sure to buy goodies at Jean Pierre bakery ....it's incredible...and you can bum watch on Main ave and make your own opinion
You can’t base that it’s a “hole” on one news article! Most places have good and bad elements. I’d go to Durango in a heartbeat and not have any worries.