What doesn’t Suck in Boulder, Colorado!
October 3, 2009whybouldersucks No Comments »Since I have taken to lambasting Boulder, I also strive to provide something positive, to balance the yin and yang, the critisism and the appreciation. Ways that Boulder doesn’t suck, ways we can improve our experience here, are a foundation to build a truly healthy culture. Isn’t that what Boulder is really about? Besides, you really have to excell to be listed in here. Among the True, the Brave, the Elite…ah, ahem.
Tasty!
1. The Outdoors is close As it’s saving grace, Boulder is surrounded by absolutely beautiful open space and National Forest which provide opportunities for playing in the wilderness. From rock climbing to hiking to paragliding, tubing down the Boulder Creek in the summer, riding the snow up at Eldora Mountain (their slogan is “friends don’t let friends drive I-70″) in the winter, we’ve got alot of options for enjoying the outdoors. Eldorado Canyon, 15 minutes to the South, offers some of the best climbing in the world coupled with unreal vistas of the red, green, yellow and purple rocks and the Continental Divide as a backdrop. Boulder Canyon, on the way up to Nederland, has numerous opportunites for outdoor enthusiasts, including fishing, kayaking, and more world class rock climbing on flawless 10 billion year old granite.
A cup of love
2. Coffee shops that don’t suck The Laughing Goat doesn’t suck, except when the key clicking locusts swarm and drive the band width to nada. Still, it’s fine to veg out, stare at all the beautiful freaks, and even order up a pabst blue ribbon tall boy if your computer is unusable. In my opinion, this place is the closest we will ever get to a replacement for Penny Lane. Some of the same folks from back in the day at the Lane work now at the Goat. Respect. Up on the hill in North Boulder is Logan’s, which is a very non-pretentious place to get an excellent cup. The baristas here will actually be nice to you, maybe making a heart design in the foam of your latte and telling you its full of love. I still hold some nostalgia for the Trident, where I first sat and wrote in my hitch-hiking journal an entry about Boulder’s genetically high percentile breeding possibilites. But this place is the epitome of Boulder, that is an elitist coffee shop. Enjoy the attached psuedo spiritual bookstore and the sharpest tounged baristas in town. Ask for the giant jade and banana backgammon set behind the counter in the bookstore. Live large, just like Boulder.
Why Not?
3. Alternatives Vehicles To give credit where it is due, people do drive a fair number of alternative vehicles here in Boulder, enough that there are places to plug in your electric car along Pearl St. When BushII started the second oil war, I bought a Volkswagen TDI, through which I ran pure Bio-diesel fuel. It felt good to divest myself one level from the problem of demand for pertroleum products, which is plundering the deepest resources of the planet we live on. The constant sensation of being at a Chinese restaurant notwithstanding. Boulder is one of the only places in the nation with really good access to Biodiesel, which could save our country billions if the oil industry lobby wasn’t so strong.
Not Recommended
4. Alteratives to Driving We also have some 200 miles of beautiful bike paths in Boulder that criss-cross the city. They are also used by pedestrians, kids, dogs and old ladies, so all you gaily dressed road bikers stay on the road OK? Another fact- a small bell to ring as a warning goes a long way toward not maiming someone, as does simply paying attention. In Boulder we have pretty good bike lanes on the roads, which help keep the deaths and dismemberments to a minimum there. Just don’t have a few too many and go biking around, the cops here are famous for issuing BWI’s- Biking While Intoxicated. Really, I’m not kidding. These days you need a horse to really go out drinking. Or take the bus I guess, because Boulder really does have somewhat of a decent bus system, where you are bound to meet some new friends. Watch your behavior, there are cameras!
5. Access to high quality Alternative Medicine Boulder is a mecca for all manners of alternative health care, from the licensed to the dubious. In Boulder, if you do have the duckets, there are many options. There are even some compassionate buddhist type healers here who will offer a sliding scale and a number of good options with low-cost community medicine. You can choose from a gamut of services available here in Boulder. One of my favorites are Acutonics, a system of healing derived from Chinese Medicine and astrology using specially calibrated tuning forks, Tibetan bowls, and gongs, to harmonize your “vibration” with that of the stars and planets in your astrological chart. I am also quite an acupuncture junkie, and there are a fine variety of practitioners in this town. Two I can strongly recommend are Boulder Chinese Medicine, and Boulder Nutrition. There are as many alternative therapies in this town as a dragon has scales. Don’t limit yourself, try a colonic, or get hypnotized, or rofled, or have your chakras realigned. If you want, there is even a practitioner who specializes in cranial rectal therapy (CRT). This therapy in specific can help if your head is stuck too far up your ass. There is usually a line down the street.
6. Naropa University and other options for higher consciousness Naropa is an amazing small college that continues to produce brilliant writers and therapists, among others. It was founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a controversial Tibetan lama who stepped away from the monastic lifestyle (an understatement) in order to make the teachings of his tradition more widely available. Each summer, Naropa hosts a writing program which is attended by writers from around the world. Their writing school, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, was founded by noted beat generation poets Allen Ginsburg and Anne Waldman. All the students at Naropa are required to meditate, which keeps the already hippyed-out vibe even mellower. Incidentally, they will teach you to meditate for free, if you need instruction. Boulder has “traditionally” been a nexus for the spiritually over-developed. Seriously though, there are many options for those enclined to navel-gaze.
7. Access to high quality public education Well, the education is high quality, and you have access to it, basically. That is, you need to win a place for your child in the lottery. That’s right, Charles Darwin and Shirley Jackson met in a coffeeshop in Boulder and then went for a hike in the flatirons and then had sex, and their bastard love child is the BVSD. But if you do have good luck, your kids can go to school at the finest in alternative indoctination-stations. Perhaps you detect a note of sarcasm. Yes, it’ s personal. I detest all institutions of “learning”. Professor Skinner, Mr. Hand, you can kiss my ass. All of that notwithstanding, Boulder is as good as California when it comes to schooling.
8. OK everyone is pretty nice to look at Damn. Good breeding just is. Is like the cover and contents of cosmo, which to me, you guessed it, sucks. It’s hard to be man in Boulder, whether you are a SNAG (sensitive new age guy), or polically erect like me. It’s like all the best looking mothers and fathers around the world had a simultaneous lapse of reasoning and sent their daughters to CU. Like they forgot it was a party school.
9.The weather is perfect! No more need be said. The weather in Boulder Colorado is perfect. At exactly the equinoxes or solstices, the weather changes to the appropriate seaonal variation on sun and blue sky. We have over 300 days where ther is more sun than cloud, though, so don’t think you’re in for a mountain winter by moving to Boulder. In fact, don’t move to Boulder, it sucks.
10.It’s a great place to raise children Again, you may detect a note of subtle sarcasm. What really is a “good child”? I would say it is a young person who has found a purpose and a mission in the world that serves the greater community,as well as actualizing their own inner potential.
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