Fort Collins, or FoCo, is largely mislabeled as a city. While the population is probably at 130,000 blessed souls, it remains a town. Why? Because a train runs down the middle of
Mason Street. You can drive along side it. Fort Collins is demographically challenged, consisting of old white people, white students, white techies, white pot heads, white hippies, and white drunks. I guess that would make what relatively few minorities (probably under 17%) there are -
normal. An analysis reveals that most of the Subaru-owning population has come from California, or Boulder.
Geographically close to the "foothills" - which has a stupid A on it - which are the last remanants of real mountains before going north and therefore, being ruined by the proximity to Wyoming. Many outdoor activities are the only thing that keeps the young from throwing themselves off the five (5) "tall" buildings in the town.
High
School Breakdown:
FCHS - rich, yippie, my
parents bought my
bmw
FRHS - who knows, but they finally included 9th grade into a high
school!
RMHS - the "forgotten high
school" - many normal people go here
PHS - hicks, ffa, younger smart people
Centennial HS - oops
Plagued by horrible traffic planning and unsynched lights, nobody seems to care, because city council doesn't really want the city to grow. They would rather give explosive growth to Greality and Loveland.
On to the popular nickname of "The Choice City"... it is... if you're not young. Touted as a great place to raise a family - but not to grow up in. Many of us stay here out of sheer apathy and eventually move to Denver, which still sucks, but it has something called jobs. The *town's* one saving grace is Colorado State University, which feeds the bar cluster in "old town", the downtown area, which has... 12 bars within 6
square blocks. You will not find a decent club. FoCo's "old town", is sadly outshined by Longmont.
Drugs - the only thing that keeps us sane:
Fort Collins is apparently the
perfect transhipment point for killer nugs. In fact, just try to find schwag or ditchweed here, you can't.
Other than that particular notoriety, Fort Collins has three breweries of note: (excluding the huge Anheuser Busch factory north of town) New Belgium Brewery (Fat Tire, Sunshine Wheat, Loft), Odell's Brewery (5 Barrel Pale Ale, Easy Street Wheat), and Fort Collins Brewery (Major Tom's Pomegrante Wheat, Z Lager). Fort Collins employs 14.5x as many brewery industry workers as other cities its size.
Despite Fort Collins' enjoyment of alcohol, Colorado State University seems to boo-hoo it (who died last year?)- yet we still have a bar on campus - in the student center, a wine club, and who knows, do they still serve
beer at Hughes Stadium? Officially though, they have distanced from it, by doing shady things like not having
beer at the "zerunion" a zero-year reunion, which is more a ploy to suck alumni
money from us - they'd do a better
job with alcohol.
Interestingly enough, and despite how bleak life is for the young, meth has not caught on to the proportion that it has in Cheyenne, WY and Laramie, WY.
Things to stay away from:
Drunk driving on the wind-y hell that is Laurel Street.
Outside, when a front comes over the mountains. Once again, Wyoming affects us by sending down high speed gusts of wind.
Places to go:
Big City Burrito, and only buy the
potato burrito.
Whorestooth Rock.
The Surfside 7.
The Crown Pub.
