The little more than 25 square miles that is known as Boulder, Colorado is about an hours drive from my place. Nine or ten times a year I manage to find an excuse to make the trip, usually on business. Occasionally though, it's just to poke around and see what's new and interesting in Boulder.
Any visit to Boulder must include breakfast at the Village Coffee Shop. Absolutely must. No questions.
The place can boast not only the best cheap breakfast in Boulder (big ol' perfectly cooked sausage and cheese omelet, large serving of hash browns, toast, and coffee - for about $8.00! Sweet), but also a few of the better rules and regulations in the Peoples Republic of Boulder - specifically, the posted notice that not only are shoes and shirts required, but customers must be bathed and wearing deodorant.
Try the sausage and cheese omelet - and sit at the counter to watch the Chefs work their magic
Truth in advertising
The restaurant is small, and there may be times when you have to wait for a table, but it is worth every minute you invest. The food is great, but the real appeal is the lack of pretension It's a diner, serves up breakfast and lunch, and doesn't bend you over for the meal. Awesome.
Be sure to buy an Andes mint or two as you leave.
Once you are out and about in Boulder you will find there is quite a bit packed into the town. Numerous museums and parks are scattered about, as well as some very interesting characters.
Boulder is not all burnt-out Hippies and lost souls as is rumored - it is actually a very diverse community though you have to gouge, not scratch, the surface to see it. It's a rich town, and a college town, so on the surface it looks like...a rich college town.
Once you get past the rich (average median household income: Just about $114,000, which makes the average Boulder household a litttle richer than 88% of all US households) and college (approximately 35% of the residents of Boulder are college students), Boulder is just like any other small to mid-sized American city.
Average that is except for the Pearl Street Mall, a purpose-built commercial center that was brought to life in 1977 as a four-block stretch of stores, galleries, bars and restaurants that is touted as being downtown Boulder.
The Pearl Street Mall is known for the wide range of boutiques that carry everything the budding young hipster could want - Patagonia, Volcom, Starbucks, the Cheesecake Factory - it's a virtual Hot Topic for the kids who made it past the suicidal Goth stage of teenage rebellion.
The mall is also known for the vast array of talent that seeks to earn a living entertaining tourists - musicians, jugglers, Henna (Or Mehndi for you purists) tattoo artists, and of course "free spirits" just asking for spare change...in exchange for being free spirits I guess.
The Pearl Street Mall concept has been duplicated in many cities, not only in the US, but throughout the world. Which, if you have a bit of travel under your belt, is decidedly ironic.
There are myriad ways to spend your leisure time in Boulder - whether it's a card sharp with a card trick,
Or a charlatan with a confidence trick, you'll find it on the Pearl Street Mall
Boulder has an architectural theme of sorts, not so much in the style of the buildings as in the materials used - lots of fieldstone and red, Spanish-style tiled roofs, most prominently in the buildings at CU.
The Boulder County Courthouse, designed in the early 1930's by local architect Glen Huntington in the classic Art Deco style and built in 1933, was renovated in 1998 and is a prominent feature of the Pearl Street Mall.
The Pearl Street Mall is also home to a number of artworks - conventional and not so conventional sculptures abound!
Ah, good ol' ordinary-things-made-large art. At least the kiddies get to play on these.
The Pearl Street Mall is very kid friendly - as long as they are well behaved - no climbing on anything (except the small creatures made large in the sandbox), and color between the lines (or at least not on the actual mall).
Buddy, can you spare a toke?
The Pearl Street Mall is a favorite place for Boulder's large homeless population to congregate. For years Boulder has been known for it's propensity to indulge the homeless, almost to the point of seeming to regard them as town pets.
Homeless and tired? Feel free to make use of the area in front of the Boulder Municipal Building or the Amphitheater. Catch a few Z's, revitalize the body for another hard day of nothing doin'.
While Boulder is well-known for it's indulgent attitudes, there is a caveat, and that caveat is the hours in-which the indulging is done. During the day you are free to be the person you wish to be, but between 11 at night and 5 in the morning you'll have to find another place other than a Boulder public park or facility to do it, since the city decided in January of 2012 to close the parks during those hours.
The distinctive fieldstone and red-tiled roofs of the CU campus
As mentioned, Boulder is a college town. Most people think of Colorado University at Boulder when the college bit is brought up.
After all, CU Boulder (really? CU Boulder? Couldn't go with the much more pragmatic University of Colorado at Boulder? UCB a bit too common? - Seriously?), has the lions share of the college students with almost 33,000.
However, CU is not the only college in Boulder. Naropa University, one of two accredited Buddhists University's in the US, is located in Boulder.
Naropa was actually the first Buddhist college in the US, and
offers a BA in Buddhist Studies, as well as degree programs in art and psychology.
Not to mention being home to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. You can get an MFA there in creative writing...which, if you know anything about Jack Kerouac, would probably have given him a seizure.
The Boulder City Library in all it's fieldstone glory
When you consider that 18 astronauts and 11 noble laureates have been affiliated with CU Boulder, and the fact that there are a ton of Internet and computer centered companies headquartered in and around Boulder, not to mention a boatload of US government research labs, it is a bit quizzical that something as...decidedly less-than-scientific in it's educational approach...exists in Boulder.
Of course, that could be attributed to the environment. Boulder is a natural wonder, or at least the surrounding area is. Easy to get lost in all that beauty and start thinking life is all butterflies, unicorns, and rainbows.
The town is bi-sected by Boulder Creek, and the few miles of the creek that run through the heart of the town have been tamed a bit to minimize damage from flooding, but the possibility of flash floods still exists, and warning signs are posted everywhere.
Dragonfly/Giraffe by John King
Boulder International Peace Garden
Along both banks of the creek the town has built parks, replete with gardens and requisite sculpture. In 1990, a peace garden was built...a single four-sided post with two plaques of verbiage in a some language or another on each face of the post (not English though - the second-most common language on the planet certainly does not belong on a peace post).
Fishing is allowed along the banks of Boulder Creek, BTW - but catch and release only! Live bait is not permitted either, just artificial flies and lures. That is why businesses such as Rocky Mountain Anglers on Arapahoe stay open (with great mural work by Rem Robinson to help drive traffic).
While certainly a town with it's eyes on the future, Boulder definitely values it's past. Many of the older buildings in town have been re-purposed - the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (which was closed the day I was in town - bastards) is housed in the old City Storage & Transfer Building that was built in 1906 (which is also now a city landmark).
Nanu, nanu...the Mork & Mindy house...which even has a plaque stating such on the front porch
There are a lot of century-old Victorian and Craftsman style homes in Boulder. People around my age will remember fondly the television series Mork and Mindy and the attractive Victorian home they lived in.
The Victorian home that was used as the exterior of their home is not too far from the Pearl Street Mall. It has been lovingly cared for by the people who own it, just like most of Boulder's older buildings.
Boulder has embraced it's architectural past quite judiciously, preserving and renovating many of the older buildings and re-purposing them without sacrificing any of the original charm.
This building is now the Boulder Shambala Center, where for $25.00 you can take an introduction to meditation class. I could be wrong but I'm thinking the golden dome/spire dealios were not part of the original design, and nor were the Namaste Prayer Flags.
While some of the older buildings have been re-purposed some of them are being lovingly restored. This is the Hannah Barker House, one of the oldest in Boulder. Parts of it date to 1875. The plan is to restore the home to it's circa 1900 appearance.
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Not all homes in Boulder are restorations, though there has been an effort by developers to build homes that blend in with the Victorian era architecture.
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And of course, not all circa 1900 homes are reconditioned as part of a large public works project. Some are simply purchased by This Old House enthusiast who like to restore old homes.
Boulder even has a few buildings that have been refurbished from the inside out. This pub was a favorite of my Uncle Don's (R.I.P.), and he and I enjoyed a few Guinness's here while listening to one of the partners tell us how the interior was from a pub in Galway that was disassembled and shipped to the US where it was reassembled in Boulder.
I don't know if that is a tall-tale or actually how they got the authentic Irish pub look and feel of the place, but whatever the case may be, the pub is must stop for any visitor, full of Irish charm and history.
Boulder does have a number of ordinary, average buildings. This is an ordinary neighborhood, one that looks pretty much like where I live in Lakewood - except the homes are all probably rentals for college kids, hence the lack of landscaping.
Of course, those types of homes are the exception, as Boulder has some serious growth management laws in place now. There hasn't been a large subdivision built in Boulder in decades.
This town is very serious about controlling urban expansion, especially how it looks.
Those laws may go a long way towards explaining Boulders large homeless population. As the residential growth management plan currently in place (since 1976) has severely limited the construction of affordable housing (translation - there has been none).
Which is not to say there has not been any new home construction in Boulder - it's just done one for one, meaning that you can build to replace, which has resulted in some fantastic new homes, but you can't build to increase, which has skewed supply and demand to favor the monied elite.
Boulder does not have poor people, btw. Homeless people, sure, but not poor people. The poor live in Longmont.
The people of Boulder are known for being environmentally conscious which has resulted in a claim that there is a greater than average number of solar panels decorating the roofs of residences throughout the city.
Doesn't look like there were more or less alternative energy efforts than what one sees in Lakewood, but in Boulder people seem to be a bit more determined to draw attention to their environmental efforts. There are quite a few signs planted in front yards touting how eco-friendly a particular home is.
There are a lot more Namaste Prayer Flags draped in front of homes in Boulder than in most every other Colorado town, without a doubt.
In Boulder, where the median price for a home is a bit more than half a million dollars, you can pretty much ascertain the residents status by the view. If this is their view, they probably have tenure at CU and vacation in world capitals, staying in three and four star hotels.
If this is their view, where they can't actually see Boulder (and Boulder can't really see them) yet they're still in Boulder, they probably vacation at a nice beach resort in a private residence that features a full-size kitchen and a deck that is right on the water.
If this is their view - and yes, several residents of Boulder enjoy this view - then they usually vacation in their summer (or winter) home in Italy or Switzerland, and play chess with Bill Gates.
Boulder - happy, healthy, wealthy, and educated. Other than that though, meh.
