Sketchy perceptions

An image of Colorado Springs sketched by national media this month has left some people around here wondering if they’re staring into a funhouse mirror.

Is this really the way we look from afar?

Jay Leno and others poked fun at us after a local elementary school banned the schoolyard game of tag. And The New York Times on Monday ran a story about Colorado Springs police saying that gangsta rap music contributes to violence here.

It cited a local hip-hop club and said “the only sign that this is Colorado Springs is that two churches sit adjacent to the club.” Another part of the story said the hip-hop community is mostly blacks and Latinos who live here because of ties to the military.

Some might say the city should shrug off the caricatures and jokes, but those who are paid to fret about such things have wrung their hands over the city’s image for years. Damage to the city’s reputation hurts efforts to attract new companies and talented workers to move here, some experts say.

“As a community, we have let other voices define who we are,” said Nechie Hall, president and CEO of PRACO, a public relations company in Colorado Springs. “There are lots of great messages that we could get out about Colorado Springs, but there’s not an organized effort behind it, so we’ve just abdicated.”

Hall declined to discuss the Times story in detail. She said it was just one in a long line of news articles that “don’t really get to the heart of who we are as a community.”

Hall said she doesn’t want to replay those stories by discussing them further.

But it’s no secret to many city leaders that Colorado Springs is sometimes viewed nationally as intolerant, whitebread, heavily military and deeply religious.

Mike Kazmierski, chief of the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp., said in an e-mail that some views in the Times story reflected “the typical Denverbased attitude about our community.”

“The EDC faces the national misperceptions of our community on a regular basis,” Kazmierski said.

The Times piece followed national news coverage of a ban on the game tag at Discovery Canyon Campus’ elementary school. That story started with a Gazette report Aug. 29 and continued in numerous outlets this week including an editorial in The Sun newspaper of Baltimore, which was republished from The Sacramento Bee.

“Wow, what a great week for us,” Hall quipped Monday in an e-mail to local business leaders. “First, the ‘can’t play tag’ story and now this. It would be great if we could get a strategic, professional program going in public relations to control our image.”

Colorado Springs’ national image is important, business leaders say, because it affects their effort to recruit new business operations after about 8,000 Colorado Springs technology workers lost their jobs during a recession from 2001 to 2003.

Other e-mailed reactions bounced among Colorado Springs leaders. They offered a couple of ideas for responding to the latest story but apparently settled on nothing specific.

Repairing the city’s reputation was part of the drive behind the 2005 formation of the Colorado Springs Diversity Forum.

The private group tries to combat what members view as the city’s reputation for intolerance of minorities. The forum put out a “Diversity Resource Guide” for businesses in June, and it held a festival downtown called “Everybody Welcome” on Aug. 18.

Two former New Yorkers suggested there’s not too much to worry about when it comes to the image held by people back East.

“Unless they’ve been out here, they don’t have any idea what this place is like,” said Rob Raia, who moved here in 1984 and visits New York City about every other year. “If they’ve seen it or heard about it, they’ve heard about how pretty it is.”

Craig Anderson, who moved to Colorado Springs about a year ago, said he knew almost nothing about the city before arriving.

“I didn’t think I was moving to a city,” he said. “I thought I was moving to the Old West or something like that.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0187 or perry.swanson@gazette.com

ONLINE READERS’ COMMENTS

Is Colorado Springs the unsophisticated, one-horse town that some worry is shown in the national media? Readers at gazette.com weighed in on the question this week. Here are a few responses.

- “I wouldn’t consider Colorado Springs to be a onehorse town. If you include the surrounding towns and countryside, this area has a lot to offer. . . . But Colorado Springs does suffer from an undeniable divisiveness that is rooted in bigotry and self-righteousness of many of its citizens, and unfortunately it’s created a stereotype that is recognized by the rest of the country.”

- “Having traveled all over the world, I’ve learned that you cannot judge a place until you’ve actually spent some time there. I love this place and have been very proud to call it home for 20 years.”

- “Of course we are not a one-horse town, but we still act like we are.”

- “Yes, thank you very much, it is a one-horse town and thankfully acts like one. Who wants all that big-city stuff from New York to Los Angeles?”

- “One horse? Depends on your definition. Culture? None. Style? None. Pretty? Certainly. Cheap? Yeah. Educated? Please. Elderly? Seems like. Corrupt? Not really. Crimeridden? Not too bad. Well-organized? No way! Weather? Nice. . . . Pick your reason for being here, or not. Every place has pluses and minuses.”

- “Colorado Springs has no culture, very few concerts, no real sports teams, and the clubs are sub-par, too. But on the good side there are lots of hiking activities here. Yeah, it’s a one-horse town, and that horse needs to hit the glue factory.”

- “One-horse town? Is this a bad thing? Must of the charm of Colorado Springs is that small-town mentality. It’s when folks come here with big-city dreams that they perhaps re-evaluate their expectations, I’d wager. It’s not the worst, not the best, it just is.”