Brad Evans
Audio By Carbonatix
Hi, Denver.
It’s me. Brad Evans from Denver Fugly.
I know, we don’t talk enough, in part because I’m likely busy yelling about a stupid BRT project on Colfax or whispering to myself “why?” to a new luxury apartment wrapped in beige. But this is a love letter, I swear.
Denver, I love you in a way that’s not always polite. I love you like someone who notices the chipped nail polish, but still holds your hand. Like someone who knows your strengths and your potential, and refuses to stop bringing it up at parties.
Here’s the thing: Design matters. In everything. Not just the awful stuff that we lampoon on Denver Fugly, like renderings of a future building with fake people holding coffee. What design is, is how a city feels when you wake up in it. It’s whether a sidewalk invites you to walk on it or dares you to survive it. It’s whether a bench says “sit, stay awhile” or “move along, nothing to see here.” It’s whether a building knows it belongs to Denver or could be anywhere, owned by no one, loved by no one.
Denver, you used to have more courage, and you still do, in flashes. Occasionally, it will pop up in a sun-bleached sign clinging to life on Colfax, in an old RiNo warehouse that refused to cosplay as a tech campus, or in a corner bar that somehow understands proportion better than most of the city’s new five-over-ones. Those moments are your tell: Design isn’t just vibes or finishes, it’s your true values, exposed.
When design is lazy, the city feels lazy. When it’s cheap, the city feels disposable. But when it’s thoughtful? When someone clearly cared? The whole place lifts. People linger. Strangers talk. Pride sneaks in. That’s not extra, that’s the infrastructure of the soul.
Denver, I don’t drag on you because I hate you. I do it because I love you and I know you can do better. Because cities, like people, rise or fall on the small stuff, You know, choices repeated over time are what makes a place a place. Every building, sign, street and park is a vote for the kind of place you want to be.
So please, Denver, design like you mean it. Design like people will be here longer than a market cycle. Design like kids will grow up remembering how a place actually felt. Design like beauty is a public good, not just another luxury upgrade.
With this love and my heart bared to you all, I am calling on Denver’s architects, designers, planners, artists, fabricators, sign painters, landscape folks, artists, students, critics and troublemakers to join us in loving this city. This city needs you to be loud and visible. Not just as a clicktivist on social media or sitting on panels with a pre-planned outcome. We need you to step up in a more public way. Together we need to push back when “good enough” is the core of a project’s mission.
Specifically, we need to advocate better when value engineering threatens to erase the soul of our city. That is the direction I want this community to take going forward. I want us to recognize the importance of design and to become a legion of citizen-advocates demanding it of our elected officials. Stay tuned for more concrete steps coming in the near future. Join us at DenverFugly.com and help make Denver the city we dream it could be.
As for me, I’ll still be here, pointing, sighing and occasionally applauding.
Forever yours, annoyingly and honestly.
