>>23731698
I'm in Denver now but I moved here from ABQ. I doubt you'll get a hookup in an NM thread.

Do you think the state and its people will ever get their acts together? Having lived all over the world, ABQ could be a truly unique and dynamic place. I would move back if certain things changed.

>>23731716
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the change. Hasn't it always been a wee bit shitty here?

>>23731730
>Hasn't it always been a wee bit shitty here?
Everyone always talks shit when they're living in New Mexico, but getting out of NM has really made me appreciate it.

>Sun and Sky
I haven't been to large deserts in the Middle East, but I know of no other location where I can get that kind of view of the sky and the terrain coupled with sunny weather.

>Mountain
If you live in ABQ, having a mountain in your backyard is pretty cool. Yeah, I have the Rockies here, but I have to drive like 3-5 hours in gridlock traffic to get to them, let alone do anything on them. Snowboarding and skiing are insanely expensive.

>Culture
People always underestimate the NM culture. What other cities have the cultural influences we have? We've got Mexican, Spanish, Native, Euro, etc. all mixed in a small area. Santa Fe gets a lot of love outside of New Mexico for the art culture.

>Food
Fuck Denver's food. There, I said it. I've been here for 3.5 years and I still miss ABQ's food. ABQ has some of the best hole in the wall, inexpensive but delicious food I've ever had anywhere. You know that restaurant has good chili when they're shucking the Hatch *outside in the parking lot.*

>Drugs
Yeah you can drugs anywhere... but can you go to a Halloween party, see a guy in angel wings, ask him why he's so fabulous, and have him open up a backpack full of shrooms and ask you if you want angel wings too? Guy was a complete stranger and I ended up smoking out his mom and doing shrooms with his entire fucking family. Drugs pop up in Denver at raves... but drugs are just a way of life in ABQ. I was being offered meth caps in the bathroom sophomore year of HS.

>Business & Social Potential
Solar power... wind energy.... leading healthcare and research facilities, military base, cutting edge tech at sandia labs, conservation efforts...

A few small changes could create huge returns in ABQ. So many people are sleeping on New Mexico... I hope it comes into its own some day.

>>23731878
Wasn't looking for a "hookup", just saw a lack of New Mexico representation. 22 year old trans girl here.

I haven't traveled much so I don't much basis of comparison.

>>23731878
Well shit, now you've got me curious. Burqueno here. Been thinking a lot about Denver.

I love Albuquerque in that it could really become something else, it really could, but generally I see our leaders as incompetent fucks.

Everyone talks about commercializing the intellectual property coming out of the labs, but for the most part most of it is honestly not that great. The general formula is that they've found an improvement over an existing process or material that makes it better by x%.

Which is cool and all, provided such-and-such from MIT doesn't come up with an invention that is an even more significant standout improvement, which is probably going to happen. Or worse, someone just disrupts the process altogether.

Admittedly my solution doesn't exactly sound very catching. Basically we need to focus on creating companies that generate strong value through product development rather than intellectual property development. They need to sell things, powerful things, things so powerful they create or carve out new markets or completely upend existing ones. It's half crazy, sure, but we have a lot of infrastructure in place, it's inexpensive, there are a lot of reasons why people like being here including the mountains, the smallish city lifestyle, the breweries, etc. Whenever I say product development what I mean software development as much as I mean hardware development. In that regard I think we could pull something off.

But then we have a lot of people who think they're leaders, but they're really not, and they really hold a lot back in a lot of ways.

I don't know, half of me thinks about just moving 6 hours up north, half of me realizes that the leaders wouldn't exactly stop me from staging what's effectively a very gradual coup.

Been living in gallup a while. Moved from san jose and it's kind dead. Pretty peaceful though I'll give it that.