After hunkering down, what comes next?

Excellent article in The Atlantic about how the pandemic will change the nation's retail businesses and our cities. I've always loved these long-form articles and remember reading each print issue of The Atlantic from front to back. I now pick and choose on the mag's reader-friendly web site. There is a limit of the number of freebies you get each month. Annual online subscriptions are $49.99. Crucial to support those pubs that allow us to think bigger than we do on Twitter.

So what will COVID-19 do to retail such as restaurants? It's the end of so many of those quirky city joints that serve Ethiopian or Moroccan or Salvadoran. Many are not going to make it through the crisis as they have limited cash reserves and won't be able to survive to the normal with fewer customers spread further apart. Same goes for bars and brewpubs. The raucous atmosphere is what we crave along with our IPA. Quaint bistros, places that serve organic chocolates and exotic teas, they'll be gone too. Those city rents are killers and you have to sell a lot of notions to make ends meet. Millennials won't find a shopless Adams-Morgan in D.C. or Denver's LoDo very appealing and they will leave all those cool lofts and walk-up apartments for cheaper pastures in smaller cities and even the burbs. Chains will take over downtowns and we will be bored to tears with the same ol' same ol'.

It's not just Millennials. Raise your hand if you know retired Boomers who have downsized their suburban digs for lively downtown lofts or small condos? I'm raising both hands. One only has to leave Cheyenne and drive to Colorado's Front Range to see what that looks like (wear your masks!). When I was a grad student in Fort Collins in the 1980s, nightlife was lively in Old Town FoCo but nobody lived there. Lots of new buildings have brought hundreds downtown, young and old. Loveland has a revived downtown. Greeley, too. Denver is Denver and Boulder is Boulder. Problem is, you need big money to live in these downtowns. Some have set aside affordable housing with the unaffordable. A few years ago when our daughter lived in Denver, we spent the New Year's weekend at the downtown convention center hotel. We were waiting for our car and chatted with one of the valet guys. He pointed over to the old Denver Dry Goods Building on California and said he lived there. He told us they set aside a number of affordable units with the pricey ones, although he had to get on a waiting list and wait for two years. The kooky Northern Hotel in Old Town FoCo was renovated and now houses low-income seniors. Chris and I don't qualify but it seemed like a cool place to live.

Affordability is an issue. Those of us who worked for Wyoming wages usually fall into a netherworld. We've paid down on our Cheyenne houses but really can't sell and move to a $300,000 Colorado condo. Strangely enough, new condos in Cheyenne also are unaffordable and there are no new nifty retirement developments as options. Retired friends who've moved to Colorado (and there are many) either moved to Front Range cities before the housing boom or bought in smaller mountain communities that aren't Aspen or Vail. All of them are liberals looking for a friendlier political climate.

Back to The Atlantic article. Winter is coming! Maybe not winter -- let's call it autumn, after the leaves fall and before big snows. Big changes are in the works and many lives will be upended. We love cities but will have to experience them as visitors. Some of those urban amenities will no longer exist but enough will survive to offer us plays and concerts and good food. Not sure how DCPA performances of The Book of Mormon and Hamilton and Hadestown will look. We won't be jammed together feeling the rush of excitement that comes with it.

COVID-19 has changed almost everything. More surprises to come...

To see today's COVID-19 briefing from WyoFile, go here.

Baby Boomers want to know: "Wazzup, Millennials?"

As a proud Baby Boomer parent of two Millennials, I am pleased to offer my services as a workplace consultant. According to a report last week on CBS This Morning, consultants can earn up to $20,000 an hour advising companies on what makes Millennials tick. I automatically believe anything on CBSTM because it features mind-blowing news items, most of which I've already seen on Facebook and Twitter: monster gator on golf course, rogue gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo, cats surprised by cucumbers, updates on Trump's hairdo. These breaking news updates are sandwiched between ads for Boomers' preferred meds: boner pills, blood thinners, joint-pain meds, and so on.

Here's my first tip as a consultant, which I offer freely as a good will gesture: Millennials do not watch CBSTM. They are on their way to work in Portland or Denver, or they are sleeping in after the night shift at a trendy urban bistro. Lest you think that all Millennials are slackers, Derek Thompson at the Atlantic Mag Online says that there are 50 million Millennials in the U.S. workforce. I'm just guessing here but I'd say that half of them are in Denver. Last week, while visiting a friend, we ate dinner at a Thai place in Denver's trendy Tennyson Street District. We were by far the oldest people in the place. As we left, Millennials were swarming Tennyson's brewpubs and shops, ogling the new studio apartment buildings that are rising along Tennyson at an alarming rate.

As you can tell, I'm observant despite my fading eyesight. I have other tips based on my years as a parent of Millennials and as someone who worked alongside them during my declining years.

1. Don't ask Millennials technical questions.
Nothing says "I am an old fart" like asking a Millennial co-worker for help with a web site, Facebook, smartphone, etc. Your best approach is to feign helplessness due to an infirmity. An example: "Greetings Millennial co-worker. I just broke my spectacles and can't see a thing. Can you help me Photoshop this photo for our web site?"

They will only be too happy to oblige, as 97 percent of Millennials said they would assist an old lady trying to cross the street. Except on Tennyson. That's our hood, bitches!

2. Don't use the term, "Millennial."
Nothing pegs you as an again BB like the use of this cliched term. Better to say, "Hey there, Mr. Young Person" or "What is happening, Ms. Youth?" And don't ever say "Wazzup?" or "What's the haps, peeps?" You may as well have BEWARE: BABY BOOMER tattooed on your forehead.

3. On the other hand, Millennials like to use ancient expressions.
Using words coined by people long dead can be endearing. Some good words to use in casual conversations are shenanigans, reprobate, canoodling or bindlestiff. The last one refers to a hobo. Most Millennials have never actually seen a real hobo, although some look the part. I caution you here to avoid using terms (old or new) that could be construed as suggestive or sexist. Most Millennials respect other ethnicities and gender identities. I have been told by someone not on Fox News that at some liberal bastions of learning, use of the pronoun "he" could be offensive if that person does not self-identify as a male. The same goes for "she." This may explain why the Webster's Dictionary folks recently decided that "they" and "their" can now be used in the singular form.

Here are some examples:
Incorrect way to use pronouns:
He: Miss Millie, would you like to accompany me to the barn dance this evening?
She: I would be delighted, kind sir. Will our chums, all traditional couples, be at the dance?
He: They will each be driving his or her own automobiles.
She: We shall meet the hims and hers there.

Correct way to use pronouns:
They: Millie, would you like to accompany me to the barn dance this evening?
They: I would be delighted, kind human. Will our friends of various ethnicities and genders be going?
They: They shall be carpooling or taking their preferred form of wind- or solar-powered public transportation.
They: We will meet them there.

4. Millennials are very keen to find meaningful work.
Nothing bores a Millennial like grunt work. Come to think of it, nothing bores a Baby Boomer like grunt work. If you are the supervisor in charge of doling out grunt work, call it "meaningful" work, a task destined to change the world. Text or IM the details to your younger colleague as you leave work for an afternoon on the golf course or volunteering at the homeless shelter, depending on your political affiliation.

5. Millennials will happily throw you a retirement party.
Nothing brings glee to Millennials such as the statement "I will be retiring Aug. 1." They will throw you a retirement party featuring delicious coffee and treats from Millie's Midtown Cupcakery and Su Yee's Sushi Barn. One of them will direct and product a multimedia show featuring embarrassing photos from when you were young and not-so-young. Most, but not all, of your Millennial co-workers will wait until you've left the building to pilfer items from your desk or to stake a claim on your cubicle space. Don't be offended. As you did when you were young, they are just trying to get a leg up in this dog-eat-dog world. It's the circle of life.

P.S.: That will be $20,000 please. I prefer cash.

This shouting and cane shaking is thirsty business

Great to see that Amy Surdam has been named the new executive director of the Cheyenne Downtown Development Authority/Main Street. The organization has been looking for a new director since the departure of Christie DePoorter last year.

Surdam was one of the founders of the Children's Museum of Cheyenne, which will be built sometime soon in "The Hole" downtown. That organization came up with a plan to fill "The Hole," something that the city has been working on for a decade. She and her colleagues get kudos for action in the face of widespread inaction.

Surdam is a nurse practitioner who managed the CRMC Urgent Care Center when it opened near downtown in 2012. She also is a major in the Wyoming Army National Guard. Married to a CRMC ER doctor, she was quoted in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle as someone who "loves our downtown" and wants to "create a place where my own children will want to return to live and work."

That's the crux of the matter, isn't it? Where will our kids want to live when they're in their 20s and 30s? Good jobs are one thing. Quality of life is another. While young people may find work in Cheyenne, they often choose to live south of the border in Wellington, Fort Collins or Greeley, Colorado. Many would rather live in the college town of Laramie and face the treacherous daily winter commute over the pass than live in Cheyenne. This week, the Laramie City Council passed a measure that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. This is the first municipality in the state to pass such a measure, an effort that's regularly defeated by the Know Nothings in the State Legislature. Laramie, off course, was the site of Matthew Shepard's murder in 1998.

Laramie's downtown is a happening place. I say this as a 64-year-old soon-to-be-retiree. Let's go over to Laramie, ma, and get one of those Geritol-laced lattes at Coal Creek Coffee, sit outside on the patio and watch the trains rumble by. I'd rather be perusing the shelves at Night Heron Books or lunching at Sweet Melissa's. But you get the idea. Downtown Laramie is full of life while Cheyenne is still working on it. Lots of credit goes to Trey Sherwood, director of the Laramie DDA/Main Street org.

I think Cheyenne may have found a similar dynamo in Ms. Surdam.

The City of Cheyenne received some good news this week. The feds have pledged $3 million to the city's West Edge Project. The city now has $15 million to get that project going. It will transform the west end of downtown into a network of parks, business and living spaces. You can find out more about it here. One of the more intriguing ideas in this effort is an idea to take renovated historic railroad cars, park them on spurs and turn them into bistros and shops. The city is working on this with the High Plains Railroad Preservation Association. This is a terrific way to celebrate Cheyenne's heritage, a city founded in 1867 as a "Hell on Wheels" railroad camp.

The Cheyenne DDA/Main Street has some funding challenges, as we've been reading about lately. Local naysayers don't see the value of a vibrant downtown development organization. They often get the most ink and air time because they're the loudest and crankiest. You kids get out of my downtown! This gray-headed, cane-wielding (knee replacement surgery) old guy could be one of the cranky ones. But if you see me down at the Depot Plaza shaking my cane at a group of young people, I'll probably be saying something like: Welcome to our downtown, kids. Spend your time and money down here, and don't forget to volunteer for some of DDA/Main Street's fine projects. And while you're at it, fetch me an IPA from Freedom's Edge or the Cheyenne Brewing Company. This shouting and cane-shaking is thirsty business.

Sunday morning round-up: Workers Memorial Day, pipeline protest and Microsoft taking over Cheyenne

I work in front of a computer in a temperature-controlled office. It's hard to imagine being injured or killed on the job.

But workers die every day in the oil patch, in mines, on the construction site, in factories and driving truck. It's tough work. Pays well (mostly), but the risks can be enormous.

Wyoming doesn't have a sterling record when it comes to workplace safety. The state marks Workers Memorial Day on Monday, April 28, in the State Capitol Rotunda. Get the details at the Equality State Policy Center web site.

At Friday's Cheyenne rally opposing the XL Pipeline.

Good turn-out Friday at the rally opposing the XL Pipeline. It was organized by Edith Cook who writes amazing columns for the local paper. BTW, if you'd like to read her words in their raw form before they go under the editor's knife, go here. She's a good writer and researcher. Her columns stir the blood and rile up the energy industry and its apologists. They incite a hue and cry from the right-wing crazies, who must all be unemployed as they seem to have plenty of time to pen angry online responses -- witness the recent online dust-up over Wyoming's proposed immigration resettlement program.

Edith spoke at the rally yesterday. Many protestors wore hazmat suits in keeping with the topics of tar sands and oil spills. I saw some familiar faces and met new people, some from Laramie and Fort Collins. After the speakers, everyone made a circuit around the Capitol, chanting about environmental trespasses and the legislature's recent efforts to dumb-down our schools' science curriculum. We will need well-educated scientists to solve some of the problems that science and technology have wrought over the years. Teaching kids that coal is earth's yummy candy and oil is mother's milk is not the solution.

News came in yesterday's paper that Microsoft is adding on to its data center here in Cheyenne. Its property is west of town in the North Range Business Park, adjacent to NCAR's super-computing center. We're going high-tech around here. Microsoft honchos seem to like working with business promoters such as Cheyenne LEADS. They also like southeast Wyoming's computer connectivity and its cool weather, which keeps down energy costs. Wyoming will be far from high tides caused by 21st century global warming which doesn't exist anyway.

It's all good for the economy. The initial Microsoft construction brought 400 jobs. While not all of these jobs employed locals, lots of dough was spent buying food and supplies and lodging and vehicles. As is the case with any Wyoming building project, workers were imported from Fort Collins and Greeley and Denver and  other exotic climes. Some skilled workers prefer Colorado to Wyoming, as it's the homeland of their forebears, dwelling place of the Broncos and Rockies, and purveyor of find suds and smoke. Cheyenne, of course, is a working person's city, with its refinery, chemical plant, military base, mega-truck-stops and sprawling fulfillment centers. A skilled union pipefitter can live in Fort Collins, work in Cheyenne and then hunt, fish, boat and hike all over Wyoming. We're also drawing many of our high-tech workers from ColoradoLand. Borders, it seems, are permeable when it comes to employment -- not so much when it comes to immigration issues.

 

Makes sense that Wyoming has two escalators and two U.S. senators

Nate Cohn at The New Republic doesn't think that Wyoming deserves two U.S. Senators.

And not just because Liz Cheney is running for one of them.

It's our low population numbers. It's been pointed out before, but Wyoming (pop. 576,000) has fewer people than many urban counties. Cohn trots out the numbers:

—There are at least 100 counties with more people than Wyoming. [I've lived in three of them: City and County of Denver and Arapahoe in Colorado and Montgomery County in Maryland.] 

—Rhode Island’s largest county has more people than Wyoming. 

—Fairfax County (VA) has twice as many people as Wyoming. There are more Romney voters in Fairfax County than voters in Wyoming, the second reddest state. 

—There are almost as many Romney voters in wildly Democratic Brooklyn as there are in Wyoming.   

—The student body of the University of Wyoming (13,992) would be the state’s seventh largest town.

And so on.

That's the real problem with Liz Cheney's decision -- now everybody in creation knows that there is such a place as Wyoming and that we have two U.S. senators, just like those big states. Mike Enzi is one of them (for now). Dr. John Barrasso is the other. Our little joke about Barrasso is that the most dangerous place in the world in that patch of real estate between Barrasso and a news camera. I saw him yesterday evening on our local Channel 5. He's in town to ride a horse in today's opening Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. WYO politicos have to know how to ride a horse. In D.C., they wear dark suits  and ride in limos as do others of their ilk. In WYO, they wear Wranglers and boots and a cowboy hat. Writes Nate Cohn:

Wyoming is a place with two escalators; it probably shouldn’t get two senators.

Again with the escalators. It's quaint, isn't it, to live in a state that has fewer escalators than your average station on the D.C. Metro? Have you ever taken a ride on the Dupont Circle escalators? Wyomingites have been known to quaver in fear when confronted with a ride from the sun-drenched city streets into the murky depths of the subway. Even our coal mines don't have murky depths. We don't have traffic either. Cohn notes that he's visited Wyoming and drove through our biggest city in two minutes. He must have been speeding; it takes me at least 5.27 minutes to drive I-80 through Cheyenne, starting at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center and exiting at Campstool Road, site of the Lowe's Distribution Center. We love our distribution centers.   

Just goes to show that people in other places are fascinated and repelled by Wyoming. We should use our entrepreneurial skills to showcase some of the odd things about the state, things that would interest our urban cousins. The "Wacky Wyoming Tour" would showcase our two escalators in Casper along with the place near Jackson in which gravity causes objects to roll uphill. We could show tourists the Casper elementary school classroom where Liz Cheney had her first Neo-Con revelation.

Other suggestions for stops on the Wacky Wyoming Tour?

Cheyenne and Laramie will be part of the Front Range Megaregion by 2050

Word comes from south of the border that a group of Colorado counties wants to secede. The effort is being led by commissioners in Weld County, which butts up against Laramie County in Wyoming, home of the capital city, Cheyenne, wherein I dwell.

No word yet on the new state's name. But fellow blogger Michael Bowman (Colorado Pols) labeled it The Silly State of Dumphuckistan, which seems appropriate.

I'm pleased that the is happening in my home state of Colorado instead of my adopted state of Wyoming. It's usually Republican legislators from Casper or the Big Horn Basin who are proposing dumb stuff in public, such as labeling wolves terrorists or buying an aircraft carrier for our mythical land-based navy. Sometimes its our new county commissioners of the Tea Party persuasion, the "Agenda 21 wants to take away my guns and make me live in a Hobbit home" crowd. So it's refreshing that this particular bit of nonsense comes from Colorado.

What's got these people fired up?

Liberals making laws. First of all, Liberals should not control both legislative bodies and the governor's seat. Second, they should not be making laws for the entire state. Third of all, they should not be making laws that could possibly curtail fracking, limit gun ownership and promote alternative energy. There's probably a bunch of other things but that should do it for now.

I don't blame the rural, conservative residents of this proposed new state for being angry. I live in the most populated city in the most populated county in the least populated state. As a Democrat, I have to put up with stupid laws by the rural conservative majority that abrogate workers' rights, demonize gays, feed the egos and pocketbooks of the energy companies, prohibit Obamacare, OK silencers for hunting rifles, and so on. I would secede from the State of Wyoming if I thought that I could work up the liberal minority enough to pull it off.

If I had my druthers, I would advocate for a state that placed Cheyenne and Laramie across the border into Colorado. For the most part, these two southeast Wyoming cities have more in common with Greeley and Fort Collins that they do with Lusk, Worland and Afton. Rural Wyomingites already call Cheyenne north Denver or a suburb of Fort Collins. Thing is, we already are part of one of the "emerging megaregions" that will control American politics by 2050. I will be gone by then, but my offspring will live in a reliably blue part of Wyoming. Look at this map:

The Front Range Megaregion with stretch from Laramie and Cheyenne in Wyoming to Albuquerque in New Mexico. It will vote reliably blue and will control politics in three big Rocky Mountain states. That's already happening in CO and NM. Wyoming has some catching up to do. Laramie County with its 90,000-plus population already has one-sixth of the state's population. If that keeps up and we get to, say, a million people in Wyoming in 2050, Laramie County will have a population of 167,000 with most of them in the city of Cheyenne. Since it's tough to find a city of more than 100,000 that votes Republican, Cheyenne should be reliably Democratic. As the article in The Atlantic said, "it's not people that make cities blue, it's cities that make people blue." That's because city dwellers live with within a rainbow of other cultures and sexual persuasions.When you live and work with Latinos and African-Americans and Asians and gays and lesbians and tattooed young people and cranky old folks it's hard to discriminate against them.

Democrats only hope in SeWy (Southeast Wyoming) is to keep up the drumbeat of economic development, continue to beef up our infrastructure, refurbish our downtown to make it friendly for brewpubs, cafes and boutique hotels, improve our educational system and ban the Fox Network's blowhards from our TVs and radios.

Then you can color us blue for the long haul.

Aggressive Democratic ground game -- and demographics --made Colorado a "tipping point" for Obama and legislative races

The Denver Post reports that Colorado may have been the tipping point for President Obama on election night. Read all about it here.

One thing is clear -- Colorado voters get lots of credit for getting out the vote for Obama and for its state legislators, as Democrats recaptured the House. The ground game in contested counties such as Larimer (Fort Collins), and some of the suburban Denver counties, was superb. They did get some help from little ol' us in Wyoming, as all of the efforts of Obama for Wyoming were directed southward into The Reefer State. While it's irritating to be relegated to GOTV efforts aimed at Greenies, there was no way in hell that Obama was going to lay claim to Wyoming's hotly-contested three electoral votes.

So what makes Colorado so purplish-blue and Wyoming so fire-engine red? It's population, both the quantity, age and ethnicities thereof. Colorado's population is ten times Wyoming's, and it has big city Denver as well as hipster Boulder, art-and-craft-beer-friendly Fort Collins, working-class Pueblo, chi-chi Aspen and, well, Colorado Springs. Cities draw more people and they tend to be younger and more ethnic. Colorado has always been youth-friendly, going back to the sixties, when people my age gravitated to its outdoor ethos and groovy vibes. My roots are in Denver, where I spent part of my youth and a big chunk of my adult life. Denver has seen its up and downs but it's always been able to climb out of the doldrums and prosper. It's always had its share of hucksters and rip-off artists (Soapy Smith, William Byers and Neil Bush come to mind), but also more than its fair share of visionaries, including its current governor, John Hickenlooper.

My parents were Denver natives. My mother grew up in the Irish-American enclave near Washington Park and my father grew up in City Park, about midway between the Denver Museum of Natural History and Stapleton Field (then an airport, eventually "international"). Their parents, my grandparents, all came to Colorado in their twenties. My mom's father was an Irish immigrant looking for a nicer climate than Chicago, where he'd landed after fleeing Ireland. My mom's mother trekked from Ohio to Colorado on vacation, liked it, returned home, packed her bags, and moved West. My dad' s father was gassed in France and came to Denver's Fitzsimmons Army Hospital to recuperate. Florence Green of Baltimore returned from The Great War to find her hometown boring, so re-upped in the Army Nursing Corps and was sent to Denver to care for all the ailing doughboys.
 
Seems that Denver's always been a draw for young people, for the scenery, the climate, jobs. World War II drew GIs to Colorado in record numbers to train for the Army Air Corps at Lowry Field or for the 10th Mountain Division ski corps at Cooper Hill near Leadville. After the war, they returned to Colorado, prospered and bred lots of Boomer children. Like me.

Back to the election. Colorado has been gathering innovators and yuppies and Deadheads and techies for generations. Denver, especially, has reached a critical mass, turning it from a cowtown into a world-class city. And turning the state into a blue-and-red checkerboard, with all those blue islands of progressivism.

Meanwhile, Wyoming limps toward the political margins. Its population is aging and is mainly rural. The economy is not diversified enough to capture those talented young people graduating from its high schools, community colleges and one public university. It finds it difficult to lure its graduates back from colleges in other states. In some ways, state politics is no more crazier than Colorado's, Montana's or Idaho's. Problem is, right-wing loonies have an easier time getting elected because the Democratic Party is not competitive. And even when we get great Dems to run for the legislature, they often are overwhelmed by the 2-to-1 registered voter margin of the Republicans.

Who went for Romney on Tuesday? Older white voters. What does Wyoming have plenty of? Aging white voters. Who went for Obama on Tuesday? Young voters. Also Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American voters. What does Wyoming have little of? Young, multicultural voters. So great local candidates get defeated and we keep electing more extremists to the Wyoming State Legislature.

There is obviously more to it than that. But it's the start of an explanation. More to come (fair warning!).