We've gone back to the 1970's. I grew in San Francisco in the early 70's, the Summer of Love had come & gone, and the after effects were fully-felt like all of the country's urban areas: open drug usage, needles and waste all around, boarded up property, abandon buildings, street encampments, rampant prostitution and gangs, liquor stores, porn shops/theaters were all over downtown areas. Sensible people moved away to the outlaying areas or out to the suburbs, only venturing close to the downtown core because the department stores were still there or, the stage theaters. San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver, LA...all look the same: a downtown core that is filled with squalor and filth, while the constituents who allowed it to happen, live around the periphery, distant and unaware. Its not a mystery why movies like Dirty Harry, Death Wish and Taxi Driver were popular

I was stationed in Ft. Carson in 1960-61. Our command staff suggested that we should not go to Denver unless there was no other way to get the business done.

We had to go there for some official business with US government. Denver was a shit hole then, and when we traveled thru there several years later it had not improved. The state of road repair so worse than what I saw in Iran! Potholes deep enough to do major damage to a vehicle!

And from what I have seen recently, it has not changed much.