Wealth & Money Quote by Santiago Durango

The line lands like an offhand confession, but it’s really a snapshot of how a place gets economically rewritten the moment “college students” arrive. Durango isn’t just describing poverty; he’s pointing at a particular kind of poverty: the kind that’s treated as background noise until an influx of outsiders turns it into a market opportunity. The phrasing “came into town” frames the students as a migrating force, almost seasonal labor in reverse, bringing spending power rather than taking it. It’s the language of a community that experiences prosperity as something imported, not produced.

The blunt “we were all very poor” reads less like self-pity than a bitter baseline: this was the normal state of affairs, shared and unquestioned. Then comes the quiet indictment: “didn’t have money to do anything.” Not “to travel” or “to splurge,” but “to do anything” - a totalizing limit that hints at stalled social life, shuttered choices, boredom, and the way lack of cash shrinks a town’s imagination.

As a musician, Durango is also signaling the ecosystem behind culture. College students don’t just buy coffee; they show up at shows, tip bands, pack venues, create scenes. The subtext is uneasy gratitude: the students animate the town, but they also expose how fragile local livelihoods are, how quickly value is assigned when a new audience arrives. It’s a cultural boom built on someone else’s calendar - and that’s both opportunity and dependency.