“In Denver, we had the 16th Street Mall. It is closed to traffic and had all kinds of shops. Only recently, however, the pot laws have drawn in every vagrant across the country and that mall is now littered with homeless bums looking to get high. Crime is rampant, and many stores are now gone.
We also had Broadway just south of downtown. Lots of outdoor shopping and a nice place, in the 1960’s. Today, it’s porn shops and pot shops.”
Indeed so. Colorado has been Californicated, aided by a wimpoid governor who’s been chosen to be the next president (by the build-a-Borgs). Denver has a corrupt city government, a totally worthless mayor and police chief, and is currently trying to become Vancouver by having places where druggies can be helped by the city to shoot up. Oh, and vagrants can legally take bodacious Obamas on the streets. A beautiful city with a sh*thole future.
Chicago also imposed a pedestrians-only “mall” on the downtown State Street shopping corridor in the late 70s. Utterly destroyed it, as shoppers who didn’t want to lug their purchases blocks away to their cars left for North Michigan Avenue and the suburban malls, and then the remaining crowds avoided the mall for fear of the urban street life.
Only in recent years has State Street (finally de-malled) made a comeback...and it’s still not the same.