Sometimes a good band comes to town, but mostly we have to go to Denver for that. Everything closes at 9 p.m., a phenomena we discovered one Saturday night looking for dinner. Everyone has dogs, and looks at us with pity like we’re barren when we tell them we don’t have one. I could go on and on about the things in Boulder that drive me crazy, but I won’t. Otherwise living here for the next few years would be brutal.
Luckily, after eight months under my belt, I’m beginning to see the positive points of Boulder. It’s extremely active, which has caused me to lose ten pounds almost involuntarily. I still spend a good amount of time couch surfing, watching re-runs of The Golden Girls, but after living here for a while, knowing that it’s a nice day and the whole town is outside riding bikes or running, it’s pretty hard to remain a bump on a couch. Colorado is a state that loves its meat, and Boulder, though very natural, organic and hippie-ish, is no exception. As a woman that loves her meat, I cannot complain. The burgers are better here, maybe because they’re all-natural, but whatever the reason, I love that people think it’s silly not to have a burger with at least bacon, if not bacon and pork chili smothered on top. It’s a meat, wrapped in meat, dipped in meat, on a bun made of meat paradise.
Aesthetically, it’s very beautiful here. Boulder has growth boundaries and laws set up that will never allow it to become sprawling or towering. The foothills and the mountains will never be obstructed by tall buildings. The smallness of this place is very quaint. The people are very nice. It’s incredibly sunny every day. I’ve surmised that there are far worse places I could be living than a liberal, organic bastion of outdoorsyness.
So, I try to hug Boulder once a day, and not get mad at it when it closes itself off to me at eight or nine o’clock, not allowing me to get anything done after work. Only once did I really blow up at it, after returning from a week-long trip to San Francisco and becoming insanely mad that there was way too much wealth and privilege for such a small town, no sign of a ghetto, and an insanely small percentage of Asian, African American, and Indian living among it’s boundaries. I’ve gotten used to the idea that this is a bubble that I live in, and people pay a lot to live here. And despite all this, it’s more of a realistic living situation than I’ve been in for a while.
