Bumthropology

During our recent trip to Denver "the city built on jaywalking", my girlfriend told me an interesting "fact"(1). She said that Denver's population has the highest percentage of residents who are college graduates in the entire U.S. Something like 40% of people living there have completed a four-year course.

At first, I was skeptical, seeing as Bush got Colorado's popular vote in 2004.(2) Plus, there's a ton of homeless people walking the streets. But I noticed something different about these bums: They were all carrying signs.

And not just simple signs like "I need money" or "Please help me", but long-winded explanations of what they will do with the money they receive. One bum wrote, "I will not use the money for drinking or drugs, only food." Another listed off his various honors as a Vietnam vet before his plea for money. And, best of all, they all used perfect grammar!

But what came as the biggest shock were, when there weren't any cars around, most of the bums would bide their time waiting for the next car by cracking open a paperback and getting some reading it.

In LA, meanwhile, I have yet to see one bum read anything more than a Jack In The Box burger wrapper. You can tell a lot about a city by their bums.

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(1) The word is in quotation marks because she has been known to listen to Bill O'Reilly, planting seeds of doubt in anything she says. Also the city isn't 1st, but it's close.
(2) And yes, I know that Denver isn't ALL of Colorado. But the Denver metropolitan area still contains roughly half of the state's population.