It's like a lot of "big suburbs" attached to "big city", nice here, older there, fancy neighborhoods, big boxes lining the three-digit-interstate, wide roads and sidewalks, the usual plethora of dealerships, fast food, and a mix of retail from that dry cleaning store that looks like it's closed for forty years but isn't, and that check cashing store which has changed names a dozen times.
More dispensaries and Ethiopian food than the rest of the country, that's for certain. 45's just angling to bitch about immigration of dark people and get the folks bussed in from Greely and Loveland to cheer him on and blame the folks in Golden and Boulder for their "woes". I guess he can't complain about California and Chicago forever.
Now I want Ethiopian food again.
I actually know a guy who was at the rally who lives in Aurora. I'm friends with a relative of his, and we all met up at his place around Christmas time for gingerbread decorations for the kids, in the time before Trump became such an issue. He has an upscale house with a big yard in a quiet suburb. He has a sports car and a grill and a big TV in a multi-level house with lots of bedrooms and the obligatory plush toilet seat cover. It's what a lot of people would call "the american dream". He's near a wide freeway, a million chain restaurants, costco, grocery stores, good schools. It's of the nice parts of Aurora, and I think most people in the US would be jealous to live there. He has lots of money and lives a pretty posh existence.
He lives in not the only nice part of Aurora. It's not the same upscale neighborhood that my other friends live in. That part is newer, with close together homes. Here's a shot of it:
This is stapleton, which I think has been renamed central park, and part of it is in Aurora. Imagine living in this hellhole right?
The thing is, this development was added right next to an older part of Aurora, which has a more rundown and higher crime region. It has been that way for a very long time, and the stapleton development was part of the gentrification of this area. Incidentally, you can actually see why it was run down right in that shot. The tower is from an old airport, so the noise pollution used to be severe. It's not an airport anymore, now it's a nice neighborhood, giving the rest of the town an opportunity to improve without the noise.
Recently, two apartment complexes that were left to rot in aurora, with mold, wiring, and vermin issues, started to become home to very poor people, including people who have arrived here from abroad. These two complexes were owned by the same landlords, and the residents started complaining about gang activity in these buildings and in protest over the poor conditions, refused to pay rent. The right wing media jumped on this and declared that immigrants had taken over two buildings, denied rent to the landlords, and established gang ownership. The city said it's not true, that that gang arrests had already been made, and that the landlords had been notified that they needed to clean up the buildings or that occupancy would be denied altogether. This did not stop Trump from showing up.
So, as a result. The guy that is the relative of a friend of mine, who my kids spent part of their Christmas with years ago, got in his sports car from his fancy neighborhood and went to a rally to cheer on the guy saying that HIS CITY is a hellhole that nobody should live in. This guy lives in such an enviable part of the country in Aurora, and he's cheering on the guy lying that it's a cesspool because he heard a story about a couple of apartment complexes owned by slumlords in a part of Aurora that he never visits or probably even drives through.
It's sheer madness.
This is the pair of complexes that caused all this:
