When I visit Craigslist, it loads almost instantaneously, similar to how Hacker News does now, or Gmail used to years ago. This is not the case for sites that use JavaScript to position everything.
Perhaps I was. I used to use NoScript around the time I started using Gmail, but gave up at some point because I started having to disable it on almost every site I visited.
Sure you weren't using the basic html version? Because I've been using gmail since it was invite only and it always had a loading spinner.