
Really? El Paso Isn’t On This Trending Cities List?
A list of the most "up and coming" cities in the USA just came out and, while Texas scored 5 spots on it, El Paso ... shamefully ... isn't one of them.
Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth made this list and, while they may well be the crown jewels of Texas, they're landmarks. Ever changing and always on the cutting edge of things, they're still, really, just holding their place(s).
Lemme get up on my soapbox ... You want to talk about "up and coming"? That's a city that's on the move, shifting, growing, changing and THAT absolutely, perfectly, literally and figuratively, sums up El Paso.
As few as 20 years ago , El Paso was still that sleepy little, "west Texas town of El Paso". Texas' best kept secret may have been "sleepy" but it was a sleeping giant that's fully awake now ...
Flash back to 2000 - El Paso, despite being one of the largest cities in Texas, is pretty quiet. After decades of strife, the turbulent 1800's ... when we were known, rightfully, as the 6 gun capital of the world ... playing a "bit part" in the Civil War and having a front row seat for a revolution, "The Pass" needed a break.
For a few decades, it was quiet. Boots, cattle, cotton and a steady flow of imports from Mexico kept the town successful and alive but "quiet". Starting around 2000, quiet got dull, El Chuco woke up and look at us now, baby.
In the last 20 years, we've gone from fast food joints and Mexican restaurants up the wazoo to being a true, culinary epicenter. Mediterranean, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Greek, Guatemalan, German and more ... along with, of course, Mexican and American staples ... abound. You name it, we got it.
Arts, sports and other entertainment.
Comedians, Broadway quality stage shows, local artists, and national/world class performers like Metallica, Coldplay and others from all over the world hit El Paso regularly.
The 2nd oldest college bowl game of them all, the Sun Bowl, happens here every New Years Eve and offroading fans have zillions of miles of desert to roam. Racing fans have a state of the art raceway in the upper valley and there's offroad racing too.
It's also pretty easy to get pot here.
Big Biz.
Amazon just built a monster facility in far east El Paso, once the fastest growing zip code in the USA and other businesses are headed this way. The military employs a huge number of El Pasoans but, believe it or not, even they don't employ the most. Tech companies, a (fairly) new film studio, and a soon to be active cancer treatment facility, among others, keep El Paso truly on the move.
Up and coming and ON THE MOVE ... not just "holding our ground" ... and what I mentioned here is, believe me, just the tip of the iceberg. Whoever put that list of "up and comers" together needs to stop relying on google and go look around.
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