Boulder Weekly 02.16.2023

Safety concerns surround ‘a crown jewel of Boulder’ P. 10

MARDI GRAS COMES EARLY P. 31

COLORADO PUNKS WANT ‘REVENGE’ P. 16

WEED ON THE GO P. 38

TROUBLED WATERS

The Silhouette Project: Stories of Immigrants,

COMMENTARY

THE ANDERSON FILES

Biden’s populism and the stupid debt ceiling

In March 2020, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders had a rough debate in a sealed CNN studio without a live audience to avoid contagion during a raging pandemic. There had been many candidates but, at that point, Biden was destined to be the party nominee. A populist fever had overtaken the race and Bernie reminded people of Biden’s long record, pointing out that Biden’s populism was rather inadequate.

Later, a Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force was formed and they released an impressive progressive agenda. Biden was responding to pressure but also to the reality of crisis after crisis from grotesque economic inequality, the pandemic, climate chaos and systemic racism.

In 2020, Jared Bernstein, Biden’s former chief economic adviser in the Obama administration and a member of the economy task force, told Vox:

“Much like FDR faced a structural crisis of economic insecurity, we’re at a similar place. The vice president recognizes that the extent of market failure here is not something you can fix with a Band-Aid, and that structural reforms are necessary.”

The “Build Back Better” agenda would emerge. It wasn’t as good as the “Green New Deal,” but it was a break from Clintonism, which gave us NAFTA, welfare “reform” and broad financial deregulation.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus now has 103 members, which is nearly half of the 212-mem-

BY DAVE ANDERSON

ber Democratic roster. They are planning to work with more moderate Democrats and the Biden administration to promote workers’ rights, immigration reform and solutions to the climate crisis.

These days, you don’t hear too much from Democrats about the Clintons. Ironically, Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, Robert Reich, has become a prominent progressive voice. Reich tried to get the Clinton administration to deal with growing economic inequality but had no success. Reich, an economist, thinks the feigned Republican hysteria about the federal debt is an idiotic spectacle. In a recent opinion piece for The Guardian, Reich noted: “A half century ago, America’s wealthy financed

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Volume XXX, Number 26

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As Boulder County’s only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county’s most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you’re interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

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the federal government mainly through their tax payments. Tax rates on the wealthy were high: Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.

“Since then — courtesy of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump — the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted. Even as they’ve accumulated unprecedented wealth, today’s rich are now paying a lower tax rate than middleclass Americans. (The 400 richest American families paid a tax rate of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018, while the rest of us paid an average tax rate of 13.3%.)

“One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.”

Then there’s the controversy over raising the debt ceiling. Congress has to vote a second time to authorize the borrowing that results from already enacted spending. If Congress refuses to do that, it is like refusing to pay for your credit card purchases for the previous year. It would guarantee a recession, or something worse.

The debt ceiling was raised each year that Trump was president without any protests. According to ProPublica, “The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration.”

In the Working Economics Blog, Josh Bivens, of the Economic Policy Institute writes, “The debt limit needs to be abolished — either formally or effectively.” The overwhelming majority of rich nations don’t have a statutory debt limit. Bivens argues, “The debt limit measures nothing coherent and has no relationship to any serious measure of the economic burden imposed by the nation’s debt. It has as much relevance to the nation’s objective economic health as today’s horoscope.”

Republicans are demanding big cuts in spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. But they can’t agree on what they want to cut. They claim they don’t want to undermine Social Security or Medicare. Economist Paul Krugman calls them “blackmailers without a cause.”

Krugman stresses that “the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the military dominate spending, and it’s impossible to do much about deficits unless you either raise taxes — which is obviously not part of the GOP playbook — or make major cuts to these programs.”

For many decades, the righ twing has tried to repeal the civilizing accomplishments of the New Deal and the Great Society. Many other Americans want to go in the opposite direction.

OPINION

SAME VOICES = SAME OUTCOMES

BY FLOWS TEAM

At Foundations for Leaders

Organizing for Water and Sustainability (FLOWS), we center, elevate and celebrate the knowledge of underinvested and disproportionately impacted communities in the City of Boulder and CU Boulder students in environmental and climate justice work. We are a diverse group of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) from all over the world including Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nepal and South Sudan. At the Right Here, Right Now Climate Summit hosted by CU Boulder and the United Nations this past December, representation of and by impacted communities was a continuous theme. We expand on representation and why BIPOC leadership is crucial to climate initiatives and solutions. We start by honoring and showing gratitude to the Hinono’eino (Arapaho), Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ (Ute) and all original inhabitants and their descendants of this valley and Turtle Island. We recognize that the violent removal and genocide of these original stewards has also attempted to erase Indigenous and Earth-based values, knowledge, and practices in environmental and community stewardship that are so critical to addressing climate chaos.

Systemic racism, violence and oppression are tools of white dominance and supremacy to exclude and silence the most impacted communities both locally and globally from decision-making processes in climate initiatives. FLOWS member Adriana Palacios describes this as “epistemic violence that prevails over practices, stories, and knowledge that when perceived as different, as subaltern, as dominated, are denied,

silenced and made invisible throughout history.” Additionally, people who are not from our communities wrongfully speak, represent and make decisions without our consent on issues that have tremendous impact on our bodies, health, water sources, homes, communities and environments. At FLOWS, we know our communities are the experts of their needs and must lead in decisions that concern them.

“Racism has clouded the mainstream portions of environmental and climate movements from recognizing solutions that are right there from communities dealing with and navigating the direct impacts of environmental degradation,” explains FLOWS founder Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish. In celebration of Black History Month, she emphasizes the importance of paying proper respects to Black leaders such as George Washington Carver, the grandfather of what is now being called “regenerative agriculture” and Martin Luther King Jr., who was organizing sanitation workers (a key sustainability issue) at the time of his assassination.

FLOWS member Ingrid CastroCampos mentions the importance that we are not diversity tokens or a check in a box for climate justice organizations in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. She adds that “spaces are often biased and unsafe … led in the majority of cases by well intentioned individuals … and yet … the systems from which they operate from are deeply influenced by the same issues that bring us to the space.”

FLOWS Assistant Coordinator Gabriela Galindo shares a similar sentiment: “Colonialism and capitalism hurt us all, including those

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

How (old) new perspectives are needed now more than ever

OPINION

who impose it. These unbalanced and artificial systems treat everything, everyone and environments as things to be owned, sold, exploited and endlessly extracted from. Effective and holistic solutions will come from Indigenous, community led and Earth-based cultures who hold timeless knowledge of a balanced way of living.” We seek meaningful involvement and for our leadership to be respected and resourced. FLOWS team member Alejandro Murillo offers calls to action: “We ask for investment in people, organizations and grassroots efforts that do not conform to the dominant narratives and systems. We ask that people raise their voices in planning and budgetary meetings to allocate support and funds for underrepresented people and organizations. We ask people who are currently in positions of power to engage in their own deep personal work around their privilege and how they’ve benefited from it. Do you open doors for people who are the change or do you stand in the way?”

FLOWS also strives for economic justice and believes that our communities expertise and time need to be properly compensated.

FLOWS Program Coordinator

Rinchen Indya Love shares how removing barriers can help with participation for underinvested community members. This looks like “creating a stipend mentorship program with interpretation access,childcare and high quality food.” FLOWS not only works to gain access to these rights that every family should have, but also attempts to make it accessible.

As Winona LaDuke says, “This is a time of truth telling.” A time to acknowledge and accept the harm committed upon Black, Indigenous and People of Color by the violent imposition of European human centric values, systems and infrastructures. Governments, police, legal systems, political systems, oil and gas monoliths, academia,

science, pharmacology and technology fields uphold, participate and protect themselves in the destruction of people and environments. It’s time to reconcile that these are not the measures of successful and “civilized” nations. It’s time for leaders who know a better way. Will racism be what prevents us from finding the collective solutions we all need to unite on?

We at FLOWS celebrate the inherent knowledge of our communities. Our upbringings and connections to our homelands and cultures offer us a richness in perspectives and experiences. We give gratitude to our ancestors and all those who have dedicated themselves to protecting and respecting waters, air, soil, plants, foods and ecosystems for all life. We walk in the footsteps of our ancestors, grandparents and mentors and continue creating pathways for our BlPOC kin and underrepresented communities. Our presence is “ resiliencia ( resilience) and resistancia (resistance) ,” as Castro-Campos puts it , until the days when defending the very sources and sustenance of life aren’t tremendous acts of courage or uphill battles but gifts and joyful responsibilities we all collectively participate.

The Foundations for Leaders

Organizing for Water and Sustainability (FLOWS) Program housed at the CU Boulder Environmental Center brings attention to the leadership of underrepresented and underinvested voices in the sustainability and environmental and climate justice world. We partner with the City of Boulder and Boulder Housing Partners.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

DIFFERENT VOICES = DIFFERENT OUTCOMES

BY NICOLE SPEER

One of the most thought-provoking contrasts of the Right Here Right Now UN human rights climate summit CU Boulder hosted last fall was between the different perspectives offered by the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities on the front lines of the climate crisis, and the Western capitalist perspectives on how to address the climate crisis through science and industry.

Indigenous peoples have been tending to the wellbeing of land, water, air and all the life our ecosystems sustain since time immemorial, yet our capitalist and colonialist systems continue to exclude this wisdom from climate solutions.

As was highlighted in a New York Times analysis recently, the wealthiest areas of the world, and our country, have contributed the most to emissions. Yet, as speaker after speaker noted, the poorest regions and those who consume the least are the first to suffer the loss of their land and ecosystems with the climate crisis.

With this knowledge of how people like me have contributed the most to the climate crisis, my personal guilt at upholding and sustaining unjust systems makes me eager to jump in and be a part of the solution. Action enables me to assuage my discomfort.

But as I listened to the Indigenous speakers and speakers of color at the summit, I heard those on the frontlines of the climate crisis repeat a different message: If we really want to address the climate crisis and heal our planet, those on the the frontlines of the climate crisis

need to be centered in policy- and decision-making. My role in mitigating the climate crisis as an affluent, white suburban resident is to ensure the perspectives of those most impacted by the climate crisis are driving our solutions.

That is a heavy burden to sit with, because it means that getting ourselves to a position of relative safety involves finally overcoming the structures Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us would destroy our country: racism, capitalism and militarism. None of us will be safe until we undo white supremacy culture and create authentic partnerships with First Nations peoples and those who are most affected by the climate crisis.

It was and is uncomfortable to sit in this space of recognizing how my ancestors and the culture I sustain has created an existential threat to all life on the planet. That is a heavy burden. And we must have the courage to carry it as we do the work to change the colonialist, patriarchal, capitalist behaviors, patterns and beliefs many of us who are privileged hold, that can unintentionally lead us to act from a place of superiority without meaningful involvement from those most impacted by our decisions.

Changing these destructive systems means validating the solutions of those we currently exclude. It means investing in the lived experiences, cultural knowledge and representation from communities that our country has oppressed for centuries and repairing the harm we have done. It means recognizing that Western science and quantifi-

How changing current systems will heal our planet and ourselves

able data are not the only ways of knowing and understanding problems, nor of identifying solutions. As a scientist myself, I understand the challenge of this shift in thinking. And yet, our survival depends on our ability to finally recognize our country’s inflexible, one-sided bureaucracies and political divisions as existential threats to all life on our planet.

We need a revolution of values, in which we recognize our interconnectedness and shared wisdom, and finally put policy-making power, money and resources back into the hands of the people who have been the most impacted by the consequences of centuries of one-sided decision making. As white people, we can do this by investing our time and money into programs that support Indigenous leadership and the leadership of other People of Color, such as Harvest of All First Nations, FLOWS, Native American Rights Fund, Luna Cultura and other BIPOC-led climate justice advocacy organizations working across Boulder County.

These groups are already doing the work we need but are often not

paid for their efforts, or are severely underfunded. We can demand that our majority white policymakers meaningfully include BIPOC perspectives in their policy solutions, and we can spend time every day re-educating ourselves to understand how our internalized white supremacy culture impacts our ability to create change.

The climate summit made it crystal clear that the faster we can undo our colonialist, white supremacist and capitalist systems, the better chance we will have to heal our planet and ourselves, and prevent further devastation from climate disasters. Let’s get to work.

Nicole Speer is a director of research services at CU Boulder’s Institute for Cognitive Science and a member of Boulder City Council. She wrote this opinion piece in her personal capacity and acknowledges with gratitude the thoughtful review and editing of FLOWS.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

LETTERS

DESTROYING LIVELIHOODS

The proposed high-end student housing project, called 2700 Baseline, actually on Moorhead at 27th Way, is yet another instance of corporate interests disrupting livelihoods and wiping out small business, exactly what happened with the University’s Limelight Hotel on the Hill. Big-money capitalism backed by the City Council, the Planning Department, the Chamber of Commerce, and the University of Colorado is sucking the life out of Boulder, and loves doing so.

“Laughing all the way to the bank” is

a phrase that comes to mind. Change is a universal constant. Boulder will never return to the way it was. The corporate constant is to maximize profit. In the eyes of developers and unfortunately many city officials, CU students, their parents’ pocketbooks, and the residents of Boulder are regarded as open targets for exploitation. Change is what one makes of it. This project does nothing for affordable housing nor does it provide realistic outlets for the residents of Martin Acres.

— Robert Porath/Boulder

Estate of Dennis J Joyce, Deceased

Case No.: 2022PR645

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the Personal Representative or to the District Court of Boulder County, Colorado on or before June 9, 2023, or said claims may be forever barred. ERIN

Lafayette, Colorado 80026

Photo: Susan France

TROUBLED WATERS

BY WILL MATUSKA

Zoe Rhodes-Wolin, a ninth grader at Boulder High School, bikes to school with her little sister along Boulder Creek Path, until Rhodes-Wolin recently decided to take Arapahoe Avenue instead.

“Men who are hanging around the bike path have yelled at me, made lewd comments, asked for me to give them a ride, jumped out in front of me, blocked my path, yelled at my sister,” she told Boulder City Council at a regular meeting on Oct. 6. “And it has made us feel unsafe. This is not how it should be. We should feel safe riding ... on a bike path for 10 minutes.”

Once a crown jewel of Boulder, the Boulder Creek Path has become an epicenter of community outcry.

Numerous community members, from public officials and downtown business owners to young people, have raised concerns about safety on the path — citing harassment and altercations on the public space from people experiencing homelessness.

Last year, Boulder’s Convention and Visitors Bureau took the creek path off its website of tourist destinations “because of increased crime and safety concerns around the path,” director Charlene Hoffman told Boulder Weekly in an email.

Hoffman didn’t respond to requests for a more in-depth phone or in-person interview, but wrote that, “for a variety of reasons, there is no intention to draw attention to the evolving approach to solving issues people are experiencing on the Boulder Creek Path.”

Boulder County residents interviewed for this story talked broadly about crime and safety — some spoke about harassment and other incidents that went unreported to the police. But people also spoke to a sense of being unsafe that didn’t necessarily depend on them experiencing crime.

Examining three years of police reports involving the creek path,

Boulder Weekly found no significant increase of reported crime. But there are criminal behaviors along the creek path, driven by a rise in unmanaged mental health and addiction, an understaffed police department responsible for addressing and reporting crime, and conflicting systems that keep people cycling through the court system.

THE LANDSCAPE

The City of Boulder’s Crime Dashboard has public-facing data, but doesn’t filter specifically for crime on the Boulder Creek Path.

However, the City keeps records of police dispatches to the creek for up to three years, which show 154 dispatches in 2020, 145 in 2021 and 131 in 2022. From Feb. 8, 2020 to Feb. 7, 2023, there were 436 total instances of police being dispatched to the creek path area.

Of those 436 calls, 92 were due to behaviors like harassment, assault, weapon, criminal misdemeanor, drug violence, menacing, suspicious activity and theft. Many more were filed as nonviolent, like loitering or animal complaints.

At the city level, according to the Colorado Department of Public Safety, the Boulder Police Department has seen a three-year increase of drug law violations since 2020, and an upward trend of violent crime since 2019.

In a “deep-dive analysis” of Boulder County, nonprofit criminal justice organization Vera found people experiencing homelessness were disproportionately represented in felony charges (10%) between 2018 and 2019 Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty says those felony charges include “violent and serious criminal offenses.”

In the same Oct. 6 City Council meeting where Rhodes-Wolin spoke, Boulder Police Chief Maris Harold said the department had been understaffed

for the last two-and-a-half years, had mandated overtime for officers, and asked SWAT officers to go into “soft uniforms” and patrol the greenways “as much as humanly possible.”

While sources interviewed for this story didn’t point directly to an increase in crime on the creek path, it doesn’t change the perception for many residents, including local filmmaker Bruce Borowsky.

Borowsky has been in Boulder for 32 years and lives downtown. He says he’s felt unsafe near the creek for the last few years.

“When my wife walks home by herself at night, I’m worried,” he says. “I never used to be worried and I know a lot of people in the community who feel the same way.”

Peter Waters, the owner of T/aco, says an increase in violent behavior over the last two years around his restaurant in downtown Boulder, two blocks off the creek path on Walnut Street, has impacted business.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty is aware of these concerns.

“I’ve heard concerns, valid concerns, from community members about community safety and well being, particularly around the creek area,” he says.

And while some community members report incidents on the creek path, there’s also reluctance to speak out. One resident Boulder Weekly spoke with says her son fears the creek path after being verbally harassed by someone experiencing homelessness. The mother, who has lived in Boulder since 1993, requested to remain anonymous because “this is such a heated topic and I’d hate for me or my son to be the target of anything.”

Community members experiencing homelessness also face safety concerns, both on and off the creek path. Dougherty says he currently has cases — including murder, attempted murder, arson and serious assaults — with unhoused individuals as victims.

These experiences stem from a complex array of causes, including unmanaged mental health and addiction within the unhoused community, reduced capacity in the justice system and repeat offenders — all within a state that ranks 45th nationally in prevalence of mental illness (including substance use disorder) and access to care (low-

ranked states have high rates of mental illness, lower access to care), according to Mental Health America.

Jen Livovich has spent 11 years around homelessness in Boulder, experiencing it herself and later providing low-barrier services like food and clothing to people experiencing homelessness through Feet Forward, the nonprofit she founded in 2020. She lays out the complex issue plainly.

“We have multiple intersecting systems that are failing,” she says.

A CHANGING COMMUNITY

Tracking the number of people experiencing homelessness in Boulder is difficult. According to estimates from the 2022 Point in Time Count, which calculates the unhoused population over one night every January, there were 457 people experiencing homelessness in Boulder County. Results from the 2023 PIT Count will be released this summer.

One of those people is Nicole, who has experienced homelessness in Boulder since 2019. Originally from Pennsylvania, this is her second time without a home in Boulder.

She’s sitting on a bench with her dog, Daisy Mae, near the Bandshell at Feet Forward’s Tuesday in the Park event. She goes every week.

With the exception of her boyfriend, she says she stays away from people and the creek path, which has helped her stay sober for a year and two months.

She thinks the way housed residents treat people experiencing homelessness has changed since she was first homeless in Boulder in 2015, and that people are less supportive of the homeless community now.

“The way people that don’t support the homeless treat us, it’s like bugs needing to be squashed,” she says. “People don’t care. They don’t care.”

During her first experience with homelessness in Boulder, she says, “things were kept up better and we didn’t destroy things as much as it’s being done now.” Today she feels like the unhoused community doesn’t take care of each other like they used to. She says the actions of the few make it hard for her and others who have goals to rebuild themselves.

“Some people, and it’s usually the same couple of groups you’ll see, make it bad for the rest of us,” she says.

Community members raise concerns about safety on a ‘crown jewel of Boulder’ — is the Boulder Creek path dangerous?

JUSTICE, MENTAL HEALTH, ADDICTION

Dougherty at the DA’s office says the pandemic had a “tremendous” impact on the justice system. He saw a rise in criminal activity around the county, in addition to an increase in people struggling with mental illness and drug addiction, which continues today.

For example, the Boulder County Jail was forced to reduce its capacity due to COVID-19 protections, “leading many exiting the jails to the streets,” according to the City.

State data shows that the Boulder County Jail had half the bookings in the third quarter of 2022 (1,031) than it did before the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 (2,025).

Some of those bookings would have come through the Boulder Municipal Court, which has jurisdiction over certain offenses, like violations of city ordinances and misdemeanor criminal offenses from within city limits.

Boulder’s Community Court program is a voluntary diversion program that attempts to “hold participants accountable while connecting them to social services to help address the root causes of crime.” Most violations addressed in Community Court (including camping violations, alcohol or marijuana in public, public urination) are often committed by people experiencing homelessness.

Through this program, low-level offenses can be removed from someone’s record if they comply with orders from the municipal judge, like signing up for food stamps or getting a copy of their birth certificate.

According to Shannon Aulabaugh, communication manager for the City of Boulder, “it is common, normal and expected that Community Court clients will return repeatedly until the goal of housing is reached.” She says seven “high utilizers” of the Community Court system accounted for 988 Municipal Court violations until they were housed.

Sarah Huntley, director of communication and engagement for the City of Boulder, says there are 45 people on the county-wide “high utilizer” list (does not include the seven high utilizers of the Boulder Municipal Court) who have had “many contacts across the county with courts, hospitals and emergency services.”

Huntley says while someone who is

on the high utilizer list may participate in criminal activity on the creek path, “it would be presumptuous to say the two are linked in a substantial way.”

Dougherty says there have to be consequences for criminal conduct.

“We’re not doing right by anybody if someone comes into Municipal Court 30, 40 or 50 times … Think about the impact on that person’s rights, the court system and the community as a whole,” he says. “Each time they’re touching the Municipal Court system, there’s an opportunity for us as a society to ensure that they’re not going to return.”

Nicole has been in Boulder’s court system, but didn’t share on what account.

“It’s a black hole. Once you’re in it you might as well kiss your butt goodbye,” she says. “Because it’s a revolving door, like, [we] can’t get [ahead] because we’re out here. There’s no place for us to be safer or to be sanitary.”

homelessness nor ended homelessness.”

She says people experiencing homelessness need more options and resources, including inpatient care, for the rise of unmanaged mental health and “skyrocketing” addiction rate in the unhoused community.

“We need to address the root causes that lead to the behaviors that make people feel unsafe,” she says. “It all goes back to our well-known deficiency in mental health and addiction programs, and [solutions] cannot be outpatient. They must be rooted in community, which is central to homeless people, and provide a stable place to live.”

Dougherty says there’s a “glaring need” for mental health and treatment services throughout Colorado, which can drive criminal activity.

Nicole says she’s been trying to find mental health services for months and that most of the people she knows who are experiencing homelessness have

Department, the percentage of stimulants seized, including meth, more than doubled between 2017 (19.7%) and 2018 (42.1%). Today, 49.3% of drug seizures in 2022 were of stimulant drugs.

“If we address some of the very known voids, these other components that intersect with safety, like poverty and unmanaged mental health and addiction, we would see a reduction in community members not feeling safe” in public spaces like the creek path, Livovich says.

MULTI-PRONGED SOLUTIONS

Livovich says having alternative places for people experiencing homelessness to stay could help community members feel safer.

“Whether you’re coming from a place of compassion, public health or public safety,” she says, “if you don’t want people camping along the creek and in other public spaces, you’ve got to create alternative places for them to be.”

One such space in development is the County’s Project Recovery, where Tribe Recovery Homes, Inc. will manage three recovery homes that will provide mental health, substance-use and trauma treatment. The City of Boulder is using money from its Affordable Housing Fund to purchase a home for the project, set to open in early 2023.

Dougherty points to the fact that most people who commit a crime will be reintegrated “back to our community.”

“We’re not able to jail our way out of this crisis,” he says. “Because if someone spends five days in the jail, day six they’re back out exactly where they were before.”

Livovich, with Feet Forward, says there are multiple conflicting systems on top of limited treatment options for people.

“We’ve got people with under four grams [of illicit drugs like meth] being booked and released, and other lowlevel homelessness charges being quashed,” she says. “A decades-long police plan to evict and clean up campers, that costs a ton of money and has not reduced the visibility of

mental health issues.

Meth use in the community has also been more apparent lately, with the main branch of Boulder’s public library and a restroom in the downtown Boulder RTD station closing recently due to meth contamination.

During Livovich’s “time outside” from 2012 to 2017, she says if people struggled with addiction, it was mostly alcohol. Sometime in 2016, “meth crept in and grew to be a far more cost-effective habit.” When she came back to the community looking for ways to support it after being housed, she was surprised to see how prevalent its use was.

Data reflects Livovich’s observations. The Colorado Department of Public Safety found that within the total drug seizures by the Boulder Police

Dougherty is hopeful about the coming year. He says the court system is no longer “limping along,” and officials can make decisions without limitations imposed by the pandemic, such as reduced capacity at the Boulder County Jail. The Boulder Police Department also recently hired 20 new officers, but Dougherty made it clear that we cannot incarcerate our way out of these issues.

“If we really want to make communities safer and help people along the way, it has to be a multi-pronged response, including that behavioralhealth treatment piece,” he says.

To that end, the Boulder Creek Path is at a crossroads — whether increased crime on the public space is a perception or reality.

“I want my wife to be able to walk home safely living downtown,” Bruce Borowsky says. “I don’t think that’s asking too much.”

photo by Caitlin Rockett

BOULDER COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE RELEASES IN-DEPTH DISPARITY ANALYSIS

The Boulder County District Attorney’s (DA) Office, in collaboration with Prosecutor Performance Indicators (PPI), the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab and seven other DA’s offices, released a disparity analysis in the name of building a more transparent and equitable justice system. The analysis took data between March 2020 and June 2022 to review disparities and disproportionality of prosecutorial decisions in the Boulder County DA’s Office and the justice system. Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty says gathering this data and using it to improve the justice system is his office’s top priority.

“This is exactly what we should be doing — pulling the curtain back on the justice system and addressing issues that exist,” he says.

Colorado is the only state in the country where all DA’s offices share the same case management system. In addition to local data, this enables the collection of statewide data and trends.

Some of the key takeaways from the analysis include black defendants receiving deferred judgments at a lower rate and having an increased dismissal rate, and Hispanic defendants having a higher rate of incarceration.

Moving forward, the Boulder County DA’s Office will continue its DEI and implicit bias training, in addition to increasing training for staff on systemic drivers of disproportionality and disparity.

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF LOCAL AFFAIRS HOSTS SESSION ON HOUSING RECOVERY PROGRAM

Marshall ROC, a coalition aimed at helping those affected by the Marshall Fire, is partnering with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) for a public education session on DOLA’s Housing Recovery program, held virtually on Thursday, Feb. 23 from 6-7:30 p.m.

The session will give an overview of the program, clarify eligibility, explain how to apply and address frequently asked questions.

The Housing Recovery program is for community members recovering from disasters, including those affected by the Marshall Fire and Straight Line Winds. If you were the property owner at the time of disaster and have an existing funding gap for rebuilding, you may be eligible for this program.

COAL CREEK CANYON FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT UPDATES COMMUNITY WILDFIRE PROTECTION PLAN

The Coal Creek Canyon Fire Protection District (CCCFPD) is updating its 2008 Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) starting this month. The new CWPP will address issues like wildfire response, hazard mitigation, community preparedness and evacuation planning.

Residents of Coal Creek Canyon are invited to provide their input for the new protection plan through a survey and community meetings. Visit coalcreekcwpp.org to join CCCFPD’s email list and receive notices about opportunities for involvement.

COLORADO DIVISION OF MOTOR VEHICLES TO WARN VEHICLE OWNERS OF DEFECTIVE AIRBAGS

In mid-February, the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will issue letters about vehicles that have been recalled due to defective airbags.

Nearly 25 deaths have been confirmed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) across the U.S. from airbags that have exploded when deployed, “potentially shooting sharp metal fragments at the driver and passengers.” Hundreds of people claim to be injured by this defect.

The State estimates there are more than 66,000 vehicles with defective airbags still on the road.

The letter will urge recipients to schedule immediate free recall repairs. To check for open recalls, use your Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the NHTSA website.

NORTH BOULDER LIBRARY BREAKS GROUND

Boulder Public Library broke ground in celebration of its first new branch in 36 years on Feb. 15.

The new 11,000-square-foot North Boulder Library (4500 13th St.) will feature a public plaza, outdoor maker space, playground, learning garden and open areas inside to study, learn and connect.

Due to increased construction costs, the library is calling on donors to help raise the last $585,000 needed to create the community-requested 1,100 square-foot Culinary Maker Space. If that money is not raised, the space will become a “flex space.” Between now and Library Giving Day (April 14), an anonymous donor is matching every donation, up to $30,000.

DA Daugherty

Courtesy Boulder Public LIbrary

Path of the Panther

The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez

Dhaulagiri is My Everest

BEFORE AND AFTER

The Catamounts presents their 27th round of dinner and a show with FEED: Aprés

BY TONI TRESCA

For the 27th rendition of FEED, an avant-garde, multi-sensory theatrical food experience, Amanda Berg Wilson, artistic director and co-founder of Boulder’s experimental theater group The Catamounts, set out to cook up something special.

“I wanted to engage local writers so the experience could be immediate and fresh,” Wilson says. “We always take a theme, like Salt or Preserve, and use it to develop a menu as well as create a philosophical pondering for the evening. The theme of ‘What comes after?’ was particularly compelling to me, because we have just come through a paradigm shift with the pandemic. This year’s theme has wonderful implications for the event’s menu and is also really rich artistically.”

Traditionally, the group has used scripted materials — like famous plays, short stories, poems and essays — or had the company members write scenes for the perfor mances. Looking to bring new voices into the process, The Catamounts posed the event’s theme to four Colorado writers, Jessica Austgen, Sam Gilstrap, Felice Locker and Peter Trinh, and asked them to develop original pieces for

FEED: Aprés

The show features the world premieres of these four authors’ plays, along with live music and a four-course meal prepared by Boulder chef Bob Sargent, owner and executive chef of Savory Cuisines and The Ghost BBQ Catering, for each performance. FEED: Aprés

draws its name from the French concept of “aprés-ski,” which translates to “after-ski.” This refers to the magical feeling skiers expe rience once their skis come off for the day and the evening activities at the lodge begin.

Guests will be treated to a menu inspired by traditional foods, including bratwursts, crispy Swiss pancakes and plenty of booze. The event is tied together by mealtime music from local vocalist Nika Garcia and guitarist Bill Kopper, and live performances by Catamounts company members Joan Bruemmer-Holden, Sam Gilstrap, Maggie Tisdale, McPherson Horle and Jason Maxwell.

“I’ve found that doing FEED has helped me understand the importance of selection, curation and being as precise as possible,” says Gilstrap. “What you’re tasting, hearing and seeing has been curated for each piece. It’s such a full experience.”

SOUP TO NUTS

The idea for FEED came from Catamounts’ associate company member Lauren Shepard, who works in the local craft beer and cider industry. Like Wilson, Shepard moved to Colorado after working in Chicago’s theater scene. One night, after rehearsals for The Catamounts’ debut show in 2011, Mr. Spacky…The Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves, Shepard approached Wilson with a pitch for an original theatrical event.

“She had this crazy idea to integrate food with theater in a non-din-

suggested that we craft theater pieces that would then be paired with a multi-course meal. We literally pair theater with food the way a chef pairs wine with a dish.”

According to Wilson, the process of preparing a tableside meal for the audience promotes a laid-back atmosphere that’s essential to the experience. To that end, guests are invited to eat throughout the performances and converse with their neighbors during the interludes.

“I think what a lot of people like about FEED is that it’s not quite such a sit-down, ‘shut up and be quiet for two hours’ type of theater experience,” Wilson says. “We ask people to be quiet for 10 minutes during the short performances, and then you can talk with the people around you about how you feel about what you’ve just witnessed while you’re eating.”

This informal atmosphere creates a challenge for the performers, who are competing with the food for audience members’ attention. Although some actors who are used to having a crowd’s full attention may find this situation frustrating, performer and Catamounts company member Jason Maxwell has grown to value the experience.

Maxwell says. “FEED is such a weird animal because you’re onstage, but you’re not; you are really just there in the moment with the audience. You learn pretty quickly that any tricks you had up your sleeve to help get emotion across in a bigger theater are just completely unnecessary, which allows for subtle, quiet acting.”

And while some of the performances may pose contemplative questions, the company hopes that the overall tone of the evening is peaceful and warm without shying away from the weighty themes unpacked throughout.

“So rarely do you have a theatrical experience that can gently pose heavy questions, but that’s what this does,” Gilstrap says. “It’s nice because these pieces have great comedy and important introspection, as well as permission to just feel and not have all the answers.”

ON STAGE: FEED: Aprés by Jessica Austgen, Sam Gilstrap, Felice Locker and Peter Trinh Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m., Feb. 17–March 5, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. $75

Michael Ensminger

Amanda Berg Wilson

MUSIC

REVENGE THERAPY

After a period of uncertainty, Colorado punk outfit Plasma Canvas is out for blood on new LP ‘DUSK’

BY ADAM PERRY

The latest offering from Plasma Canvas kicks off with a slow burn. “Hymn,” the opening track on the Fort Collins quartet’s new album DUSK, is a quiet introduction to what turns out to be a very loud record. “I feel like I’m inside a dream, alone with your memory,” vocalist and guitarist Adrienne Rae Ash sings in the opening shot of what she calls the band’s “revenge album.”

Revenge albums are typically about former partners, or even parents, but DUSK is about the pain of having your dreams — specifically the momentum of a young buzz band’s career — crushed, or at least halted, by a global pandemic.

“There’s a lot of those themes [on DUSK] about catastrophe and just the worst parts of being a person, and how you just have to carry on,” Ash says. “You might not be stronger. I don’t necessarily believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes it just gives you trauma, and makes you weird at parties. You have to deal with it, and this record is kind of about that.”

DUSK is Plasma Canvas’ second full-length album, and it was produced by punk icon Bill Stevenson — co-founder of foundational pop-punk act The Descendents and one-time drummer for Black Flag — at his legendary Blasting Room Studios in Fort Collins. Ash is from outside St. Louis in western Missouri, and she says being a trans, autistic musician from “kind of a redneck, pretty workingclass area” made running off to Denver in 2015 a necessity to survive. But making DUSK with Stevenson, and Grammy-nominated engineer Andrew Berlin, has transported the artist from survival mode to revenge mode.

“It’s definitely a record that I’m afraid for people to hear, and that’s

good. I think that if you’re an artist and you’re not kinda cringing just a little bit at being a little too vulnerable with the world, it’s not a big enough risk,” she says. “It’s like, ‘I survived a pandemic, and now you get what you get, motherfucker. I want revenge.’”

Plasma Canvas signed with independent punk label SideOneDummy Records as the COVID-19 pandemic was approaching, but that excitement — and a tour Ash says was in the works with pop-punk linchpins Less Than Jake and Lagwagon — was squashed by the woe of lockdown.

“[I was] so close to everything I dreamed of since I was 12 years old picking up my guitar the first time,” she says. “It really sucks to see everything fall apart right in front of you. I made [DUSK] and I survived, and that’s enough for me.”

album-release shows for DUSK will kick off there Friday, Feb. 17. Ash says the upcoming gigs are a chance to unleash a lot of pent-up energy while carving a space for connection.

is that Ash isn’t out to do anything but express herself.

There’s something of this resilience in the churning melodic punk of “Blistered World” — “It’s a blistered world,” Ash sings. “But I won’t let it kill me.” And the winding path that led to this assurance began right here on the Front Range.

Ash found community at Seventh Circle Music Collective in Denver immediately after arriving from the St. Louis area, and Plasma Canvas’

“I’ve been told that our shows feel like a community, like everyone’s there because they don’t belong anywhere else,” she says. “I want to make music for the people standing in the back of the room, the people that didn’t come there with anybody else, because they don’t know anybody.”

Ash can scream with the best young singers in punk and hardcore, with a huge guitar sound to match, but a few elegant, poignant tracks on DUSK — like “Soft” and the title track — prove she’s not beholden to any one register. Part of that holistic approach to Plasma Canvas, which defies genres even within one album,

“This is my story. That’s the whole point,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s profound or anything, but it’s honest. It started as a way to remove the filter between me and the world — just blood and guts on a canvas.”

ON THE BILL: Plasma Canvas with Cheap Perfume, SPELLS and wiff. 6 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 17, Seventh Circle Music Collective, 2935 W. Seventh Ave., Denver. $12-15 suggested donation | Plasma Canvas with Attack on Venus, Caustic Soda and Animal Future. 8 p.m. Saturday, March 4, Aggie Theatre, 204 S. College Ave., Fort Collins. $13

Courtesy Plasma Canvas

Courtesy SideOneDummy

FAMILY TIES

Tianna Esperanza mines her diverse heritage on status quo-defying debut

BY ANGELA K. EVANS

Tianna Esperanza equates city life to living in a pressure cooker: The concrete, the cars and the people leave no room for her to release everything she may be feeling and experiencing. Growing up on Cape Cod, access to the beach — to water — is essential for the emerging singer-songwriter and storyteller. The endless horizon gives her a sense of space and freedom, surrounded by sky and sand, as the waves gently wash her worries away. It’s where she goes to think, write and process her emotions.

“I feel free when I look out onto the water. I feel like I can bring my problems to the ocean and leave them there,” Esperanza says. “My mom used to say to me, ‘You can never be angry looking at the ocean.’”

Making music is also a cathartic release for the 22-year-old artist. With her debut album Terror out Feb. 17 via Rough Trade, Esperanza defies the status quo to create something varied and versatile. With one foot planted firmly in the indie/alternative arena, the new record weaves together elements of flamenco, hip-hop, rock and soul with punk and spoken word — all deeply personal and cultural influences for the young singer of mixed race and heritage. She may have grown up in a place established as a white flight haven in the 1960s, but her childhood was anything but homogenous.

Esperanza was raised by her mom and maternal grandparents: her Scottish grandfather and Spanish grandmother, Paloma “Palmolive” McLardy, the punk drummer and innovator behind influential bands like The Slits and The Raincoats. Esperanza’s first language is Spanish and she’s a first-generation immigrant on that side. But she also has deep roots on this continent, as her father is from Georgia with African and Indigenous ancestry.

“When I talk about mixed race, I think I also talk about my mixed experience of literally feeling mixed emotion,” she says. “It’s not, ‘Oh, my mom’s white and

my dad’s Black,’ you know? There’s a lot of experience and culture behind my British culture and Spanish culture and even how white Spanish culture is.”

This complex story of history and identity influences Esperanza’s music on a granular level. She makes the music that she wants, forsaking the compartmentalization of genre to showcase her influences, reflecting all of herself on every track.

comfortable, to put herself out there, especially in an industry that often dismisses her experience and talent. Some of the same issues her grandmother faced as a female musician in the ’70s still resonate with her experience in the industry today, not to mention the dominant culture’s entitled sexualization of young Black women that she has dealt with her entire life.

On a personal level, Esperanza doesn’t believe everyone has a right to her story, but she says singing about her life authentically is the only way she knows how to create. And she draws strength from the women who have pioneered spaces before her — like her friend and mentor Valerie June, a Grammynominated musician from Memphis, Tennessee, who joins her on the single “Lone Child.”

“Just because there’s a song that might sound, quote, ‘Black American,’ doesn’t mean that’s a song that reflects my Blackness,” she says. “All of those songs reflect my Blackness and all of the songs reflect my Spanish heritage in their own right.”

‘THE HUMANITY OF MUSIC’

Esperanza’s work is equally empowering and vulnerable — opening herself up to other people’s opinions about her own experience, even if she doesn’t always relish the public scrutiny. A haunting and raw track, the titular “Terror” touches on her younger brother’s death and surviving sexual assault. But the song has been misunderstood as an “angry lesbian” anthem, she says, demonstrating how listeners and critics can often misinterpret such deeply personal works

“I’m so proud of myself that I’m releasing something I can see is resonating with other people in its vulnerability,” she says. “And on the other hand, it’s hard to kind of sacrifice yourself on stage for strangers.”

Esperanza says it’s not easy, nor

“I put everything into my work and it costs a lot to do that. But I’m grateful I’m not alone in it,” Esperanza says. “And when I see women like Valerie June, I’m inspired and I’m encouraged to fight for a space [in the industry].”

People often tell Esperanza that eventually she’ll learn to blend all these influences together to create her own sound. But she resists that philosophy, saying it’s a complete misunderstanding of who she is and what music means to her. When she incorporates her grandmother’s influence in her work, is it her white experience? Her Spanish experience? Her punk experience? Or an amalgamation of it all?

“To me it’s about latching on and finding acceptance in so many different genres and finding beauty in so many,” she says. “It’s not a mixed girl sitting there with a guitar and doing white music because she doesn’t know better. It’s me embracing the beauty and the humanity of music. That’s what comes naturally to me.”

ON THE BILL: Tianna Esperanza (opening for Mick Flannery). 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder. $18

Courtesy Rough Trade

Courtesy Red Light Management

SIGHTLINES

Boulder County arts and culture news, at a glance

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

We love our local arts scene here in Boulder County — but with so much going on, it can be hard to keep up. That’s why Boulder Weekly is bringing you our regular round-up of goings-on in the world of performing and visual arts, film, music and more. Here’s a snapshot of what’s happening locally, so you don’t have to miss a beat.

EN PLEIN AIR

Caribou Ranch artist residency accepting applications for 2023

graphic design, photography, digital marketing, UX Design and more. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.

“This was our baby, so we were sorry to have to say goodbye,” Borowsky said in a Feb. 9 press release. “Zach and I are just so busy with our other projects, that we simply didn’t have the proper amount of time to devote to it anymore.”

IN THE SHADOWS

Silhouette Project seeks stories of immigrants, refugees and dreamers

Local photographer and personal historian Dona Laurita seeks participants for an ongoing visual art series called The Silhouette Project: Stories of Immigrants, Refugees and Dreamers. The artist is currently working with area high schoolers for a variation on the project called Newcomers, but she is looking for people from all walks of life who are willing to open up about their experiences with the U.S. immigration system through an in-person interview and photography session.

“I’ve done [this project] with all types of subjects from marginalized communities,” Laurita told Boulder Weekly. “Using the silhouette is a great way to get people to be honest and vulnerable while still keeping their anonymity.”

An exhibition of images from The Silhouette Project will be on display March 11 through April 2 at the Valkarie Gallery in Lakewood, followed by a show at Boulder’s East Window Gallery in September. Visit the artist’s website at donalaurita. com to learn more.

STRING THEORY

Colorado Music Festival returns for the 2023 summer concert season

Colorado Music Festival has announced its new season running June 29 through Aug. 6 at the Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder. This year’s bill includes 20 orchestral and chamber performances by guest artists and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, composed of high-level musicians from around the country, under the direction of Colorado Symphony Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian

“A festival is a celebration of creativity, and we are so fortunate to bring to you some of the greatest performers alive today, including artist-inresidence Joshua Bell, along with the extraordinary talents of eight of today’s brilliant composers,” Oundjian said in a recent press release. “It is such a thrill to hear today’s voices alongside — and interacting with — groundbreaking voices from the past, giving us a unique window into centuries of the greatest in creativity.”

Tickets go on sale March 7 at coloradomusicfestival.org

Boulder County creatives once again have the opportunity to draw inspiration from our region’s jaw-dropping natural beauty through the 2023 artist-in-residence program at Caribou Ranch. The annual residency is open to artists of all disciplines — from musicians to painters, poets and points in between — with online applications accepted through Feb. 28. Selected artists will stay in the historic DeLonde Barn at Caribou Ranch Open Space for up to four days and three nights (Monday through Thursday) from July 15 to Sept. 30. Apply now at bouldercounty.gov, or scan the QR code above.

PAGE-TURNER

George Reynolds Library to get facelift by Boulder-area artist

Local painter Marco Antonio Garcia is set to create a mural for the George Reynolds Branch Library at 3595 Table Mesa Dr. in South Boulder, according to a recent update from the City of Boulder Office of Arts + Culture. March 31 is the expected completion date for the vibrant, large-scale work that will accompany the children’s reading area at the library.

CH-CH-CHANGES

Boulder Digital Arts sells to local media professional

Boulder Digital Arts (BDA), a local organization offering classes and workshops in the creative digital arts, has named Galen Nathanson as its new director after a recent change in ownership. Since its launch in 2004 by co-founders Bruce Borowsky and Zach Daudert, the company has provided training in filmmaking,

“Marco is a self-taught artist who is rooted in his Mexican Culture and inspired by the detailed paintings of the Alebrije wooden mythical animals that were popularized in Mexico in the ’70s and ’80s, Ancient Mayan Art, and famous Mexican artists including Rufino Tamayo, Francisco Toledo and Diego Rivera among many others,” according to the artist’s website.

Got local art news? Email BW culture editor Jezy J. Gray at jgray@boulderweekly.com

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

Former Boulder Weekly staffer Dale Bridges sets mystery novel in familiar environs

BY BART SCHANEMAN

When Dale Bridges was working as the arts and culture editor for Boulder Weekly in the early 2000s, he couldn’t have predicted he’d publish a novel loosely based on some of what he experienced here.

With The Mean Reds, out now from Stephen F. Austin University Press, he’s done exactly that, finding inspiration in some of the people and places he knew during the job, and setting it all in the Boulder-esque fictional town of Mountainview.

The story follows hapless alt-weekly movie reviewer Sam Drift, who skates through life getting high and watching old movies. Sam’s world is thrown into chaos when the editor of the paper assigns him an investigative piece to uncover the story of an exotic dancer who died outside a lounge not unlike Boulder’s real-life Nitro Club. The result is part The Big Lebowski, and part hard-boiled detective story, in the vein of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Bridges says writing the novel was a lesson in letting go of his real-life experiences and allowing the story to develop independent of his memories.

“Sam was definitely supposed to be me,” he says. “When I started writing the novel it was based on my experiences and my own internal struggles and issues. But … at some point, I had to let it go.”

The novel began to coalesce once Bridges delved deeper into his characters’ backstories and let them become different people. Same with the city. Once he changed the name, he felt the possibilities for the story open up.

“This city needed to become its own thing,” he says. “Then the imagination takes over and you make things up.”

But creative license aside, there’s plenty here Boulder readers will recognize. For instance, this passage in which the narrator waxes on the fictional Mountainview of yesteryear:

“Once upon a flashback, Mountainview had been a sleepy little college town nestled at the base of the Flatirons like a baby tucked into a mother’s bosom … In those days, the university focused primarily on agricultural studies, and the tourists who

quirky style, it doesn’t really matter to me what the book is about, I’ll keep reading it,” he says.

BLACK-AND-WHITE CHILDHOOD

One of Sam’s quirks is his obsession with old movies. He processes his life by making comparisons to Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant alongside many other classic films and their actors. That all comes from Bridges’ childhood growing up in the ’80s in Yuma, Colorado, the son of a fundamentalist preacher.

As a kid, Bridges wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music or go to the movie theater. He wasn’t even allowed to go to dances, a la Footloose

“The internet didn’t really exist at that time,” he says. “So it felt like the rest of the world was so far away out

“When people have nostalgia for their childhood, it’s usually of their era,” he says. “But mine was for an era that I never had borne witness to.”

Bridges used that childhood nostalgia to flesh out Sam’s character in The Mean Reds. The title of the novel comes from a line in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Audrey Hepburn, as Holly Golightly, asks, “Do you ever get the mean reds? Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.”

LETTING GO

To bring Sam to life and let the story take on its own trajectory, Bridges says he had to learn to stop forcing the novel to follow his direction.

For example, when he was trying to write the character for the owner of the dance joint, Bridges was relying on his memory of the proprietor of the Nitro Club from many years ago, whom he remembered as a small, bald man with very soft hands.

Bridges knew the club well, because people threw a fit when it opened on Pearl Street in 2007 — a story he wrote about at the time for Boulder Weekly. Then he started hanging out at the club because it was one of the only places in town that stayed open late.

Bridges says he kept trying to write the owner as the small, soft-handed man from his memories, but it wouldn’t work. So after months of struggling, he made the fictionalized owner into a woman, and things began to fall into place.

trickled through were mostly bearded men with checkered hats and rubber boots pulled up to their testicles as they prepared to fish the Colorado River. It was just a town. A nice town, a pretty town, but just a town.”

As the above excerpt highlights, Bridges’ novel is driven by a distinct voice, with Sam often making Chandler-esque quips as part of his internal monologue. Bridges says that’s a matter of taste.

“If you give me an interesting voice, something with dark humor and a

on that prairie where it’s just that nothingness as far as the eye can see.”

They had a television with a rabbitear antenna and four channels at his house. On Saturday, after the morning cartoons, he was allowed to watch old black-and-white movies. No cursing, nudity or sex. So when Bridges went off to college at the University of Northern Colorado, he watched everything he could — from John Hughes films to The Simpsons — but those classic movies stayed with him.

“What really happens is you let that subconscious brain of yours, where a lot of the creativity happens, let the story take on a life of its own,” he says. “You have an idea of where it needs to go and what needs to happen. But if you try to force it down that path, it often just doesn’t work.”

ON THE SHELF: The Mean Reds reading with Dale Bridges. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder. $5

Courtesy Dale Bridges (left); Stephen F Austin University Press (right)

18

LGBTQ+ HIKE: WONDERLAND LAKE

11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, Wonderland Lake, 4201 N. Broadway, Boulder. Free

Want to build community in the great “out” doors? Out Boulder County and Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks present this LGBTQ+ nature event at scenic Wonderland Lake. Participants can look forward to “fun recovery activities” after the short North Boulder hike, complete with snacks and hot cocoa at the nature center.

18-19

BOULDER OPERA: MASSENET’S MANON

7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18 and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder.

Boulder Opera presents a stirring performance of Manon by Jules Massenet at the Dairy Arts Center — a story about innocence, love, betrayal and tragedy. Get there early at 6 p.m. for an introductory talk with stage director Gene Roberts to kick off this moving night of music.

21

TUNE INTO NATURE: DARK SKIES

6:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, Lafayette Public Library, 775 W. Baseline Road.

Dark Skies Colorado, a nonprofit “dedicated to preserving the exceptional quality of the natural dark skies of the Wet Mountain Valley in Custer County, Colorado,” comes to the Lafayette Public Library on Tuesday night to talk about light pollution and its effects on migratory bird populations.

22

HIKE FOR SENIORS:

WINTER AT NEW HEIGHTS

10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, near Nederland; location provided when registered

Volunteer naturalists with Boulder County Parks & Open Space invite up to 20 participants on a moderate hike to explore and learn about the geology, history, plants and wildlife around Nederland during this outdoor event designed for older residents. Limited transportation available from Boulder.

18-19

ROCKY MOUNTAIN RECORD SHOW

11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, and 10 a.m.3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, Denver Sports Castle, 1000 N. Broadway. $6 Saturday / Free Sunday

Calling all cratediggers! The Rocky Mountain Record Show returns for a weekend celebrating all things vinyl. The two-day blowout is estimated to feature more than 100,000 LPs from punk to free jazz and points in between, along with other music memorabilia, food trucks, local DJs and more. Early-bird entry ($25) begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Registration required.

19

NAACP FREEDOM FUND: NASHVILLE AFRICAN AMERICAN WIND SYMPHONY

3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, Macky Auditorium, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder. Free

NAACP Boulder County presents the Nashville African American Wind Symphony, featuring more than 50 classically trained musicians, for an afternoon performance at Macky Auditorium. The symphony will feature classical music highlighting the influence of African American culture on American folklore.

21-23

BANFF CENTRE MOUNTAIN

FILM FESTIVAL

7-10 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21 through Thursday, Feb. 23, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St. $25

Like your movies with a little stoke? Head to the Boulder Theater for this year’s Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival, an awe-inspiring compilation of adventure films that will transport you from picturesque remote landscapes to intense mountain sport thrill rides.

22

DOUBLE IPA TAPPING PARTY

6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Boulder Social, 1600 38th St., Boulder. Free

Heads up, hop heads: Boulder Social is hosting an IPA-themed tapping event you won’t want to miss. Participants will get one free 5-oz. pour of the local brewery’s Social Double IPA. Full drafts of the new offering and other in-house beers are $5 during the event.

TOP 10

FOUND SOUNDS

What’s in Boulder’s headphones?

Another week, another round-up of the bestselling new vinyl releases from Paradise Found Records & Music (1646 Pearl St.) Millennial arena emo standard-bearers Paramore snag the top spot with their first album in half a decade — plus the new one from indie rock icons Yo La Tengo, reissues from Avril and Whitney, and more.

1. PARAMORE This Is Why

2. YO LA TENGO This Stupid World

3. WIDESPREAD PANIC Huntsville 1996

4. IGGY POP Every Loser

5. WHITNEY HOUSTON Whitney Houston (Reissue)

6. PIERCE THE VEIL Misadventures (Reissue)

7. ANDY SHAUF Norm

8. OSCAR PETERSON Night Train (Reissue)

9. AVRIL LAVIGNE Let Go (Reissue)

10. REX:C Rose

LIVE MUSIC

ON THE BILL: “And you may find yourself” at the Boulder Theater on Friday, Feb. 17, for a live celebration of the seminal 1980 Talking Heads album, Remain in Light. The band’s former guitarist Jerry Harrison joins music legend Adrian Belew as they lead a large-scale band in faithful renditions of classics like “Once in a Lifetime,” “The Great Curve,” “Crosseyed and Painless” and more. See listing for details.

THURSDAY, FEB. 16

SPUNJ WITH ORCA THE BAND. 9 p.m. Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St., Boulder. $12

KYLE HOLLINGSWORTH BAND & JOEL CUMMINS WITH MORSEL. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $20

FRIDAY, FEB. 17

EXTRA GOLD WITH DEREK DAMES OHL. 9 p.m. Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St., Boulder. $15

CRITCHLOW. 6 p.m. BOCO Cider, 1501 Lee Hill Drive, Unit 14, Boulder. Free

EDDIE 9V WITH DRAGONDEER. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $20

JERRY HARRISON AND ADRIAN BELEW: REMAIN IN LIGHT. 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St. $36

SATURDAY, FEB. 18

JESUS CHRIST TAXIDRIVER WITH THE SALESMEN.

9 p.m. Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St., Boulder. $10

GRIEVES WITH MOUSE POWELL, ZAC IVIE + DUMB LUCK AND VOZ 11. 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $20

FACEBAGEL. 6 p.m. BOCO

Cider, 1501 Lee Hill Drive, Unit 14, Boulder. Free

MICK FLANNERY WITH TIANNA ESPERANZA.

7 p.m. eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder. $18

MARTIN SEXTON WITH WENDY WOO. 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St. $25

TARJAMA ENSEMBLE. 7 p.m. Unity Columbine Spiritual Center, 8900 Arapahoe Road, Boulder. $15

SQWERV. 6 p.m. Beyond the Mountain Brewing Co., 6035 Longbow Drive, Unit 109, Boulder. Free

SUNDAY, FEB. 19

DJ GOODIE. 9 p.m. Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St., Boulder. Free

TRENT DIVINE. 7 p.m. BOCO Cider, 1501 Lee Hill Drive, Unit 14, Boulder. Free

YOTTO WITH PAIGE AND BLACK WANDS. 9 p.m. Ogden Theatre, 935 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. $35

PROGFEST WITH SONS OF GENESIS. 3 p.m. Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Unit T, Lafayette. $15

MONDAY, FEB. 20

STRFKR WITH DAS KOPE. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $25

TOVE LO WITH SLAYYYTER. 8 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop St., Denver. $40

TUESDAY, FEB. 21

ARLIE WITH WHITEHALL AND THE SEWING CLUB. 8 p.m. Larimer Lounge, 2721 Larimer St., Denver. $20

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 22

LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE WITH WAVE DECAY AND DJ NOVAK. 9 p.m. Hi-Dive, 7 S. Broadway, Denver. $15

WYLIE. 9 p.m. Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St., Boulder. Free

Courtesy Warner Music Group

ON THE SHELF

It’s your last weekend to catch the regional premiere of Alma at Curious Theatre Company

The family drama from playwright Benjamin Benne explores the contours of the so-called “American dream” through the perspectives of its title character Alma, an undocumented immigrant facing deportation back to Mexico, and Angel, her first-generation daughter. See listing for more.

Celebrated Boulder author Stephen Graham Jones drops by Boulder Book Store on Feb. 16 for a reading from his new novel, Don’t Fear the Reaper, the latest installment of his pageturning Indian Lake Trilogy. Check out the listing below for more details, and keep an eye out for a profile on the author in next week’s issue of Boulder Weekly

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES: DON’T FEAR THE REAPER. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder. $5

GIOVANNI RUSCITTI IN CONVERSATION WITH VIC LOMBARDI. 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, Tattered Cover, 1991 Wazee St., Suite 100, Denver. Free

DALE BRIDGES: THE MEAN REDS. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder. $5

TANYA COOK: FANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Tattered Cover, 7301 S. Santa Fe Dr., Littleton. Free

JOEL WARNER IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID SIROTA. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Tattered Cover, 2526 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. Free

KAY ALLISON: JUICY AF: STOP THE DRINKING SPIRAL, CREATE YOUR FUTURE. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder. $5

THE FOREIGNER. Jesters Dinner Theatre, 224 Main St., Longmont. Weekends through April 2. $22

ALMA. Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma St., Denver. Through Feb. 18. $35

THE ROOMMATE. Vintage Theatre, 1468 Dayton St., Aurora. Through Feb. 19. $20

BE MORE CHILL. CenterStage BlackBox Studios, 901 Front St., Louisville. Through Feb 19. $22

MS. HOLMES & MS. WATSON, APT 2B. Grace Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Through Feb. 25. $40

DUKE ELLINGTON’S SOPHISTICATED LADIES. Vintage Theatre, 1468 Dayton St., Aurora. Through March 5. $20

THE SECRET COMEDY OF WOMEN — GIRLS ONLY. Garner Galleria Theatre, 1101 13th St., Denver. Through March 5. $52

LAUGHS IN SPANISH. Singleton Theatre, 1400 Curtis St., Denver. Through March 12. $35

HOTTER THAN EGYPT. Kilstrom Theatre, Speer Boulevard and Arapahoe Street, Denver. Through March 12. $25

Mark Montour-Larson

Past, present and future moviemakers will gather on March 12 at the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to celebrate the best of 2022. Ten movies will contend for the Best Picture prize, 20 actors will compete in four categories — you know the drill.

You probably also know that 15 short subjects will compete in three categories: Animation, Documentary and Live Action. These categories often get short shrift at the ceremony, but if you’ve ever attended an area film festival or spoken to one of the programmers who run our art-house theaters, then you know the short subject packages are some of the most popular programs around. Why settle for one movie when you can buy a ticket to five?

And starting this weekend, you can with the 2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films, 15 titles across three programs. The International Film Series is first to the party, showing all three this weekend — they’ll repeat them over two more weekends, March 2-5 and 10-12 — with the Dairy Arts Center screening the Live Action

SALUTE YOUR SHORTS

Local theaters ask: Why buy a ticket to one Oscarnominated film when you can buy a ticket to five?

BY MICHAEL J. CASEY

shorts Feb. 23-26 and Animation March 2-5. Down in Denver, the Sie FilmCenter opens the Documentary shorts on Feb. 17. Options, you have them.

As for the programs, settle in. Of the 15, only one is under 10 minutes in length — the animated Flying Sailor from Canada — with nine clocking in at over 20 minutes apiece. The duration of some of these feels wishy-washy. More aggressive cutting could have gotten to the point a heck of a lot sooner and more powerfully (The Elephant Whispers and The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse), while others feel like there’s enough material for a feature (The Martha Mitchell Effect).

Those, and a few others, can feel like letdowns, but there are some real gems to discover. In the Live Action category, The Red Suitcase from Luxembourg is a taut, holdyour-breath thriller about a young Iranian girl (Nawelle Ewad) trying to dodge her waiting — and much older — betrothed at the airport. In the U.S. documentary How Do You Measure a Year?, director Jay

Rosenblatt interviews his daughter on her birthday every year from 2 to 18 with the same questions. You can probably guess how her attitude shifts throughout the ages, but it’s through the compression of time that the story develops and identity is forged.

How Do You Measure a Year? is the best of the doc bunch. Haulout, about a lone marine biologist studying the effects of climate change on walruses in the Siberian Arctic, is also good — and contains one of the most jaw-dropping reveals you’re likely to see — but the other three range from informative to downright infuriating. That latter dubious honor belongs to Stranger at the Gate, which employs a reprehensible baitand-switch aesthetic to drum up dread and surprise.

The Red Suitcase is the best when it comes to Live Action, but Italy’s Le Pupille competes with real playfulness. An Irish Goodbye is rote but has its moments, while Ivalu and Night Ride feel exploitative.

Looking to take the kiddos along? The first four of the Animation pro-

gram are suitable for kids 10 and up (The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse; An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It; The Flying Sailor and Ice Merchants), but there will be a short break in the program before the fifth entry — My Year of Dicks, chronicling a 15-yearold girl’s failed attempts to lose her virginity — so parents can escort their children out. (That makes the film sound racier than it is. Truth be told, there’s more animated penis in The Flying Sailor.)

They might not be the strongest showing of shorts in recent memory, but what works, works well.

ON SCREEN: 2023 Oscar

Nominated Short Films

International Film Series (Feb. 17-19, March 2-5, March 10-12)

CU-Boulder, Muenzinger Auditorium. Dairy Arts Center (Feb. 23-26 and March 2-5)

2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Sie FilmCenter (opens Feb. 17) 2510 E. Colfax Ave., Denver.

Courtesy National Film Board of Canada

STAY CONNECTED

ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

ARIES (MARCH 21-APRIL 19): Philosopher John O’Donohue wrote a prayer not so much to God as to Life. It’s perfect for your needs right now. He said, “May my mind come alive today to the invisible geography that invites me to new frontiers, to break the dead shell of yesterdays, to risk being disturbed and changed.” I think you will generate an interesting onrush of healing, Aries, if you break the dead shell of yesterdays and risk being disturbed and changed. The new frontier is calling to you. To respond with alacrity, you must shed some baggage.

TAURUS (APRIL 20-MAY 20): Rightwing religious influencers are rambling amuck in the United States. In recent months, their repressive pressures have forced over 1,600 books to be banned in 138 school districts in 38 states. The forbidden books include some about heroes Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks. With this appalling trend as a motivational force, I encourage you Tauruses to take inventory of any tendencies you might have to censor the information you expose yourself to. According to my reading of the astrological omens, now is an excellent time to pry open your mind to consider ideas and facts you have shut out. Be eager to get educated and inspired by stimuli outside your usual scope.

GEMINI (MAY 21-JUNE 20): I think we can all agree that it’s really fun to fall in love. Those times when we feel a thrilling infatuation welling up within us are among the most pleasurable of all human experiences. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do it over and over again as the years go by? Just keep getting bowled over by fresh immersions in swooning adoration? Maybe we could drum up two or three bouts of mad love explosions every year. But alas, giving in to such a temptation might make it hard to build intimacy and trust with a committed, long-term partner. Here’s a possible alternative: Instead of getting smitten with an endless series of new paramours, we could get swept away by novel teachings, revelatory meditations, lovable animals, sublime art or music, amazing landscapes or sanctuaries, and exhilarating adventures. I hope you will be doing that in the coming weeks, Gemini.

CANCER (JUNE 21-JULY 22): The scientific method is an excellent approach for understanding reality. It’s not the only one, and should not be used to the exclusion of other ways of knowing. But even if you’re allergic to physics or never step into a chemistry lab, you are wise to use the scientific method in your daily life. The coming weeks will be an especially good time to enjoy its benefits. What would that mean, practically speaking? Set aside your subjective opinions and habitual responses. Instead, simply gather evidence. Treasure actual facts. Try to be as objective as you can in evaluating everything that happens. Be highly attuned to your feelings, but also be aware that they may not provide all facets of the truth.

LEO (JULY 23-AUG. 22): Is there anything in your psychological makeup that would help you do some detective work? How are your skills as a researcher? Are you willing to be cagey and strategic as you investigate what’s going on behind the scenes? If so, I invite you to carry out any or all of these four tasks in the coming weeks: 1. Try to become aware of shrouded half-truths. 2. Be alert for shadowy stuff lurking in bright, shiny environments. 3. Uncover secret agendas and unacknowledged evidence. 4. Explore stories and situations that no one else seems curious about.

VIRGO (AUG. 23-SEPT. 22): The country of Nepal, which has strong Virgo qualities, is divided into seven provinces. One is simply called “Province No.1,” while the others are Sudurpashchim, Karnali, Gandaki, Lumbini, Bagmati, and Janakpur. I advise Nepal to give Province No. 1 a decent name very soon. I also recommend that you Virgos extend a similar outreach to some of the unnamed beauty in your sphere. Have fun with it. Give names to your phone, your computer,

your bed, your hairdryer, and your lamps, as well as your favorite trees, houseplants, and clouds. You may find that the gift of naming helps make the world a more welcoming place with which you have a more intimate relationship. And that would be an artful response to current cosmic rhythms.

LIBRA (SEPT. 23-OCT. 22): Are you aimless, impassive, and stuck, floundering as you try to preserve and maintain? Or are you fiercely and joyfully in quest of vigorous and dynamic success? What you do in the coming weeks will determine which of these two forks in your destiny will be your path for the rest of 2023. I’ll be rooting for the second option. Here is a tip to help you be strong and bold. Learn the distinctions between your own soulful definition of success and the superficial, irrelevant, meaningless definitions of success that our culture celebrates. Then swear an oath to love, honor, and serve your soulful definition.

SCORPIO (OCT. 23-NOV. 21): The next four weeks will be a time of germination, metaphorically analogous to the beginning of a pregnancy. The attitudes and feelings that predominate during this time will put a strong imprint on the seeds that will mature into full ripeness by late 2023. What do you want to give birth to in 40 weeks or so, Scorpio? Choose wisely! And make sure that in this early, impressionable part of the process, you provide your growing creations with positive, nurturing influences.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22-DEC. 21): I recommend you set up Designated Arguing Summits (DAT). These will be short periods when you and your allies get disputes out in the open. Disagreements must be confined to these intervals. You are not allowed to squabble at any other time. Why do I make this recommendation? I believe that many positive accomplishments are possible for you in the coming weeks, and it would be counterproductive to expend more than the minimal necessary amount on sparring. Your glorious assignment: Be emotionally available and eager to embrace the budding opportunities.

CAPRICORN (DEC. 22-JAN. 19): Actor Judi Dench won an Oscar for her role as Queen Elizabeth in the film Shakespeare in Love—even though she was onscreen for just eight minutes. Beatrice Straight got an Oscar for her role in the movie Network, though she appeared for less than six minutes. I expect a similar phenomenon in your world, Capricorn. A seemingly small pivot will lead to a vivid turning point. A modest seed will sprout into a prismatic bloom. A cameo performance will generate long-term ripples. Be alert for the signs.

AQUARIUS (JAN. 20-FEB. 18): Most of us are constantly skirmishing with time, doing our best to coax it or compel it to give us more slack. But lately, you Aquarians have slipped into a more intense conflict. And from what I’ve been able to determine, time is kicking your ass. What can you do to relieve the pressure? Maybe you could edit your priority list—eliminate two mildly interesting pursuits to make more room for a fascinating one. You might also consider reading a book to help you with time management and organizational strategies, like these: 1. Getting Things Done by David Allen. 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. 3. 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse.

PISCES (FEB. 19-MARCH 20): “What is originality?” asked philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Here’s how he answered: “to see something that has no name as yet, and hence cannot be mentioned though it stares us all in the face.” Got that, Pisces? I hope so, because your fun assignments in the coming days include the following: 1. to make a shimmering dream coalesce into a concrete reality; 2. to cause a figment of the imagination to materialize into a useful accessory; 3. to coax an unborn truth to sprout into a galvanizing insight.

DEAR DAN: I’ve been doing ethical FinDom (financial domination) for a few years. I’m good at it and take reasonable amounts of money, aka “tribute,” from my finsubs. I share sexy text messages, pics, and do meet ups with subs who’ve earned my trust. One of my trusted subs offered to sign everything he has over to me: House, condo, vacation home, savings, stocks. Everything. This person says it’s their ultimate fantasy and they ask again and again. They have no children or family members. Do I have to say no? No one in their right mind would make an offer like this, right? Can I do this and still think of myself as an ethical FinDom?

— Seriously Entertaining This Unbelievable Possibility

DEAR SETUP: I shared your question with a couple of ethicists: “The fundamental, background, taken-forgranted ethical framework assumed by Dom/sub relationships is that they’re entered into autonomously and both parties are ‘in their right mind’ in some relevant sense,” said Dr. Brian Earp, senior research fellow in moral psychology at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. “Running with that, if SETUP really does think his sub may not ‘be in his right mind,’ if he thinks his sub is offering to sign over all those assets due to some breakdown in his decision-making competence, then, yeah, it would be exploitative and wrong to say ‘yes’ to this offer.”

But Dr. Earp cited a relevant debate in the field of bioethics that might argue in favor of taking the money.

“Take someone who refuses to go on kidney dialysis because she’s ‘tired of life’ and doesn’t want to deal with all the hassle,” said Dr. Earp. “In a recent real-life case, the doctors basically said, the sheer fact she says she prefers to die — which seems pretty harmful! — instead of getting the doctor-recommended treatment suggests she ‘lacks competence’ to decide about her own healthcare and so she should be forced to go on kidney dial-

SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE

ysis ‘for her own good.’ But if you go with that way of thinking, you can basically just declare people incompetent — people who otherwise would not be seen as incompetent — every time they choose something you think is a bad idea.”

However, if there’s evidence of diminished mental capacity, that would argue against taking the money, the house, etc.

“Basically, if SETUP has some other, independent set of good reasons for thinking the sub is ‘not in his right mind’ apart from the sheer fact of offering to sign away all his assets,” said Dr. Earp, “then it’s not paternalistic to say, ‘No, I’m not going to honor your request.’”

So, if signing over all his assets is the only crazy thing your sub wants to do, you can take the money. But if signing everything over to you is one crazy tree in a forest full of crazy trees, you can’t take the money.

But how crazy is wanting to give everything you own to someone anyway?

“If we were to think giving all your stuff away without ‘expecting anything in return’ is evidence of not being in your right mind,” said Dr. Earp, “I wonder why you wouldn’t reach the same conclusion if the person just wanted to give away most of their stuff, or half of their stuff. Why wouldn’t you conclude that entering into a FinDom relationship as a sub is not by itself evidence that someone is not in his right mind? But if SETUP isn’t willing to concede that, as I assume he is not, then I don’t see why — without other corroborating evidence of decision-making incompetence — SETUP should think that the sub’s desire to give away most or all their stuff is somehow, by itself, disqualifyingly irrational.”

Assuming SETUP is telling us the truth — his sub offered, SETUP didn’t demand; there are no children or other dependents — this one seems like a pretty easy call.

Good luck to you, SETUP, whatever you decide to do.

Whether the sun is shining or snow is falling, our little corner of Pearl Street is the perfect place to soak up winter in beautiful Boulder! Feast alongside the jellyfish, sink into a lounge or take a seat at one of our lively bars.

Prefer the great outdoors? Our fireside patios are the coziest place to savor those mild winter days.

When your own couch is calling, all of your favorites are available for curbside pickup too.

No matter how you choose to dine don’t miss our ever-evolving specials, delicious seasonal cocktails, and latest rare whiskey!

GOOD TASTE

THE BIG EASY

Rosetta Hall debuts two-week pop-up to celebrate Mardi Gras

BY COLIN WRENN

Of the eight stalls serving food at downtown Boulder’s Rosetta Hall (1109 Walnut St.), there’s one called Chameleon. While most of the other concepts in the food hall are largely set in stone cuisine-wise, Chameleon has been experiencing full overhauls roughly every six months. Though on Feb. 10, it opened as The Big Easy, which will serve an eight-item menu of New Orleans classics only through Tuesday, Feb. 21, Mardi Gras itself.

“We focused on the most popular items of the cuisine, and items that were good for both lunch and dinner crowds,” says chef Evan Fox. There’s of course a shrimp po-boy with cornmeal-fried shrimp, house-made pickle remoulade and a healthy portion of crisp Creole fries. Oysters come with Crystal Hot Sauce and the hush puppies have plenty of freshly diced jalapenos. The hearty muffuletta sandwich comes with Zapp’s kettle-cooked potato chips, and the remoulade seafood salad arrives packed with blue lump crab, gulf shrimp, avocado, cherry tomato and fried okra atop a bed of romaine. Though the real star of the show may be the red beans and rice, filled to the brim with cranberry beans, andouille sausage, scallions, smoked pork shoulder and a “milk chocolate” roux, a cocoa-free, four-hour gravy that takes its name from its deep brown hue.

When Rosetta Hall first opened in late 2019 — in the space that once held such iconic late-night venues as The Foundry and Absinthe House — each stall was managed and operated by an individual proprietor. Justin Brunson served up burgers at Folsom

Foods and Natascha Hess incubated The Ginger Pig, which has since gone on to standalone success in Denver.

Over the course of the pandemic, the model shifted in favor of all of the concepts being run by a single team of chefs. The menus for all eight stalls are now developed and overseen by chefs Evan Fox and Mike Sullivan, pastry chef Casey Murnane, Director of Operations Sarah Beckwith and Assistant General Manager Kate Horton. Current stalls include Middle Eastern spot Amira, Italian fare at Amalfi, Thai cuisine at Chiang Mai, New American at Flatiron, Chinese at Shanghai Moon, Latin American at Cruz and handcrafted patisserie at Petit Fleur. “It’s always been a place that married all kinds of global influence,” Beckwith says.

“We want to be as fast but as upscale as possible,” Fox says. “I want people on a half-hour lunch to be able to eat anything in the hall.” Most menus don’t exceed 10 items and all the stalls have plenty of appetizers and entrees that are highly executable while still remaining refined. Cruz’s list was recently refurbished by consulting chef Manny Barella, who gained prominence in Colorado for his time as executive chef of the still-fabulous Bellota in

both Denver and Boulder. The Torta Alambre, with shaved beef, fried onion and bell pepper, mild Chihuahua cheese and avocado on a telera bun is a must, though it will still be available long after The Big Easy has closed its doors.

While the task of handling a large staff and multiple cuisines is formidable, Fox says he thrives best in chaotic environments. Though the culinary pedigree of the staff likely keeps chaos in check. Beckwith attended the Culinary Institute of America, spent seven years at The Little Nell and worked at OAK at Fourteenth, where she hired recently departed chef John Bissell. Fox has been cooking since he was 15 and ran the kitchen at Southern Sun from 2012 to 2022. Fox says he continues to update the menus, finding inspiration while dining out, in an endless assort-

ment of cookbooks, and in publications like Food and Wine. He says new dishes popping up on Chiang Mai’s menu have been influenced by frequent visits to Busaba, a Boulder and Louisville spot that serves “some of the best Thai food” he’s ever had. Fox says each stall will usually see one to two new menu items a month.

No Mardi Gras menu would be complete without cocktails. The bar has done a nice job of putting its own touch on a few notable classics. The Hurricane comes with Cihuatan rum, Plantation pineapple rum, and a blend of lime, orange, passion fruit and pomegranate juices. It packs the expected punch usually associated with bead tossing and other such festivities. The Bayou Spritz comes with Pimm’s No. 1, lemon, mint and Volio prosecco — a delicious and slightly less dangerous alternative to the Hurricane. The La Nouvelle Carre comes with Rittenhouse rye, Plantation pineapple rum, sweet vermouth, Benedictine and Angostura and Jamaican bitters. It certainly packs a punch but may be the slowest sipper of the bunch. Even as The Big Easy has an unusually short tenure, the food is definitely worth a visit. The team is working on getting Chameleon’s next concept situated, with plans to open something in early March.

Sarah Beckwith

SAY CHEESE

Skip the American singles and waffle up a singular sandwich

STORY AND PHOTOS BY JOHN LEHNDORFF

Let’s face it: February is the frugal month. The holiday bills have come due, taxes loom, food prices are up and we’re all looking for affordable, simple, comfy dishes.

That’s why it wasn’t surprising to see a grilled cheese sandwich starring in a Super Bowl ad featuring actors Jon Hamm, Brie Larson and Pete Davidson. It’s an iconic sandwich.

For many Americans, grilled orange cheese paired with canned tomato soup is a sacred duo that needs no tweaking. For the rest of us who crave more flavor, “grilled cheese” is a broad culinary construct that welcomes a world of ingredients and techniques.

After a recent sandwich encounter on the Pearl Street Mall (see Taste of the Week), I started experimenting at home with ways to expand the grilled cheese tent.

Pressed is best: When push comes to shove, pressing creates yummier grilled cheese sandwiches. It can be as simple as pressing down with a spatula on a sandwich cooked

in a cast iron pan. Back in the day, people used heavy clothes irons to grill foil-wrapped cheese sandwiches in between shorts. These days, since nobody irons any more, the easiest way to press the issue is to use a countertop waffle maker. My recent waffling experiment included sourdough slices brushed with olive oil, with tomato slices and Port Salut cheese inside. Soft bread is essential to get the full crispy, gooey effect. The waffled result is silly-good and terribly easy, even for noncooks.

The best grilled cheese hack is to coat the buttered bread with shredded Parmesan before cooking to add a crispy coating. If you’re lucky, cheese will ooze out of the sandwich and fry a bit, too.

The better the bread: Use an airy sourdough loaf with lots of holes. Think ciabatta, focaccia and not a dense bread like brioche because the holes allow the heat through to melt the cheese and make the slices crunchy. Spread them with your favorite fat: olive oil, spray avocado oil, bacon grease or mayo. Look for

appropriate loaves with flavor from local bakeries including Moxie Bread Co., Breadworks, Dry Storage, Izzio, Longmont Bakery and Babette’s.

If you are all about the crunch, pretoast the bread on both sides first before making and cooking the sandwich.

Choose better cheese: It may challenge cherished memories, but please step away from the American slices. Upgrade to aged sharp cheddar or another meltable, spreadable cheese. Better yet, choose a Colorado-made soft-ripened cheese like Haystack Mountain Snowdrop, MouCo Camembert, Origin A2 Chile Jack and Rocking W Horseradish Cheddar.

Look to the world: As is the case with apple pie, grilled cheese is not American-born. My favorite global variation is the French croque monsieur, griddled slices spread with bechamel sauce and ham crowned with a layer of grilled cheese on top. Add an egg on top and it’s a “madame.” Consider the Italian panini and Cuban-American pressed Cubano sandwiches and it’s only a short hop to Central American quesadillas and arepas.

Up the flavor ante by spreading flavor with condiments like kim chi, spicy chili crisp, garlic aioli, pesto, caramelized onions, caponata and roasted green chilies. I like to add a sweet element too, whether honey, apricot jam or thin apple slices.

A word of caution: It’s all too easy to add too much or too many yummy ingredients. If it’s too thick it will be hard for the heat to reach inside. It all melds together better if the fillings are not ice-cold when you start frying. Also, an overloaded grilled cheese has a tendency to spill its contents down your shirt when you pick it up.

One final hack: Fuse French toast and grilled cheese by dipping the bread in an egg-milk mixture after the sandwich has crisped and continue cooking.

If you need some wackier variations, visit the Grilled Cheese Sandwich Lover Facebook page.

TASTE OF THE WEEK: GRILLED THRILLS

Lunchtime errands took me near the corner of 14th Street and the Pearl Street Mall where the aroma from Ruthie’s Boardwalk Social drew me in. It’s Boulder’s only establishment specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches. I warmed up on a cold day with their Philly steak variation. Griddled thick white toast was filled with a hot, gooey layer of cheese and sautéed steak, peppers and onions, so every crunchy bite had all the tastes.

Ruthie’s menu also features grilled cheese with everything from mac-ncheese to mashed avocado and tomato. One highlight: the Raspberry Beret, filled with smoked gouda, cheddar and raspberry jam. For

Waffle-ironed sourdough with olive oil, tomato and cheese.

Grilled cheese dashboard dining in downtown Boulder near Ruthie’s Boardwalk Social.

NIBBLES

breakfast: egg and bacon grilled cheese. Naturally, the kiosk offers tomato soup on the side as a dip.

LOCAL FOOD NEWS: NEW PLACES TO EAT

● The recently opened Cherry’s Cheesecakes & Delights in Lafayette (111 N. Harrison Ave.) serves up just-baked Southernstyle goodies ranging from creamy cheesecake to serious pecan pie and bread pudding.

● The Curry Corner food truck is dishing Indian fare at 508 W. Baseline Road in Lafayette.

● Oven Spring, a new home-based bakery, is open in Longmont. Among the current offerings: Spicy Mexican hot chocolate stout bread.

CULINARY CALENDAR: RESTAURANT WEEK

● The 19th annual Boulder International Film Festival launches tastefully on March 2 with the CineCHEF tasting and competition with food served by chefs including Daniel Asher (River & Woods, Ash’Kara), Patrick Balcom (Farrow), Rich Byers (Jill’s Restaurant & Bistro) and Chris Royster (Flagstaff House). Tickets: biff1.com.

● Denver Restaurant Week returns March 3-12 with multi-course meal deals at dozens of eateries including some locals: Cafe Aion, Dagabi, Jill’s Restaurant & Bistro, Melting Pot and Via Toscana. More info: denver.org

COLORADO’S FAVORITE FOOD AROMA?

The State of New Mexico is about to declare roasted green chile as the official state aroma (even though Colorado-grown Pueblo chilies smell better). It made me wonder what food smell would qualify as Colorado’s official state aroma. Cinnamon rolls? Red Zinger tea? Bacon? Malt and hops? Send your suggestions to nibbles@boulderweekly.com

THE NIBBLES INDEX:

GENE-EDITED TACO TUESDAY

Sixty percent of American women say they are unwilling to eat gene-edited foods, according to the 2022 YouGov’s National Omnibus Panel study. The under-30 crowd is less likely to avoid foods created through CRISPR technology. Those averse to gene-edited foods include consumers who identify as more religious and more conservative politically.

WORDS TO CHEW ON: EMMA’S INNER

BEAUTY

“I’m into a grilled cheese. Grilled cheese makes me feel beautiful!”

– Actor Emma Stone

John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:20 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU (88.5 FM, streaming at kgnu.org.)

HOP ALONG

Avery Brewing Company launches its Hop Freaks Exploration Series

BY CAITLIN ROCKETT

If you ask Josh Rapp, the Bitterness Wars are over in the brewing world.

“I love how much IPAs have changed and grown over the years,” says the senior brewer for Avery Brewing Company (4910 Nautilus Court North, Boulder), which became the first Colorado brewery to package an India Pale Ale 30 years ago. “It used to be [about] how many IBUs [or International Bitterness Units] can you get into this thing, and there was kind of an IBU-off between brewers for many years. Now it’s a little bit more nuanced.

“People don’t really care how bitter it is anymore,” Rapp adds. “They want to have unique aromas and flavors in their IPAs, whether it’s 20 IBUs or 80. What I really love about IPAs is that you can kind of do anything [with them], and that comes back to the hop as a plant — it’s so versatile. We can get so many different aromas and flavors out of that ingredient. It’s just fun to experiment with.”

“Experiment” is just what Avery Brewing has done with its Hop Freaks Exploration Series, a run of four IPAs

set to debut over the next year. You can currently drop by Avery’s Gunbarrel brewery to try the two core beers in the series: Clear Horizons and Nomadic Wanderer.

Rapp calls the series of beers — which will include Majestic Voyage and Infinite Wanderer — “a fun challenge” for the brew team at Avery.

“I think it really comes down to using a lot of brand new ingredients, as well as getting with the times a little bit,” Rapps says, which, for Avery Brewing, meant embracing the hazystyle IPA. “We were maybe a little bit stuck in our past with really clean, clear beers with a bunch of IBUs, and we’ve had to evolve our thinking a little bit and be like, actually, you know what, [hazy IPAs] are really good, and they can be done really well. It’s been exciting to just find new practices and ways to make our beer better in ways that we wouldn’t have even thought of five or six years ago.”

CLEAR HORIZONS

IBUs: 50

“For Clear Horizons, we wanted to make something really clean and

drinkable that would showcase some hop character that we’ve never really done before at Avery,” Rapp says.

Avery has always “kind of relied” on what Rapp calls the “C hops”: Centennial, Chinook, Columbus — hops with piney, dank, earthy profiles. But with this first release in the Hop Freaks Exploration Series, Rapp’s team leaned on Citra hops, which creates the highly-sought-after aroma compound Citronellol that has become popular in fruit-forward IPAs. Strata, Amarillo and Mosiac hops add splashes of spice and berries to Citra’s tropical palette. Pale barley provides a bit of body and some balance to the bitterness to create an easy-drinking beer with brilliant clarity. You can try Clear Horizons on tap or pick up a sixpack to take home.

NOMADIC DREAMER

IBUs: 40

Rapp’s brew team experimented with Azacca hops for this New Englandstyle hazy IPA. Named after the Haitian god of agriculture, Azacca hops offer a bright aroma of mango, tropical fruits and citrus.

“It took many test batches, but the first time I tasted the one that I liked, I really felt like I was almost drinking a mimosa,” Rapp says.

“This one’s kind of redefining the word ‘hoppy,’ because we have low bitterness, but tons of aroma and hop flavor. You still have all those hop oils in there … [that] kind of coat your tongue, and make the beer feel heavy, but they don’t give you that

kind of bitter pucker on your tongue that can be unsettling.”

You can currently only get Nomadic Dreamer on draft at Avery’s taproom. Check in around March 1 to see if it’s available in a six-pack to take home.

MAJESTIC VOYAGE

IBUs: TBD

While this third beer in the series is still in development, Rapp says Majestic Voyage will be an Imperial West Coast-style IPA.

“So higher IBUs and [Alcohol By Volume], probably 8.8% or 9%,” he says. “We want to use some Southern Hemisphere hops … grown in New Zealand or South Africa, which are well known for having that kind of juicy tropical component as well. We’re looking at Galaxy hops, Motueka hops, Vic’s Secret hops, and we’ll see if all those make it into the beer or not.”

Again, expect juicy tropical flavors in this brew, but, unlike the lower IBUs in Clear Horizons and Nomadic Dreamer, Majestic Voyage will feature high bitterness and a mid-palate hop flavor.

INFINITE WANDERER

IBUs: TBD

Infinite Wanderer likely won’t surface until 2024. This “really juicy, hazy double IPA” will rotate with Majestic Voyage, offering similarly higher ABV and IBU. Rapp says a test batch of Infinite Wanderer included Sabro and Talus hops, which impart a coconut flavor on the brew.

WEED BETWEEN THE LINES

PUNCH THE GAS

The Color of Cannabis wants to accelerate cannabis delivery

BY WILL BRENDZA

Four years ago, the House passed Colorado’s Regulated Marijuana Delivery bill. The purpose was twofold: One, to make it possible for medical patients and recreational users to have cannabis delivered to their door and two, to build opportunities for new businesses, creating new jobs in the state.

As of 2020, Colorado started phasing in cannabis delivery permits for medical and recreational transporter businesses. It was largely meant to help Social Equity licensees, statefunded business grants to people who had been disproportionately affected by the criminalization of cannabis and who were often blocked from participating in the legal cannabis industry as a result. Many were hopeful that they could corner the market on this undeveloped aspect of the state’s legal cannabis industry.

But by 2022 that still hadn’t happened (See news, “Greenlining,” April 14, 2022). That’s despite there being a legal pathway for people to get licensed for delivery, and despite the Social Equity Licensees In Regulated Marijuana bill passing in 2020. That

bill was aimed at expanding the accelerator program for Social Equity business licenses. To date, the state has issued 22 Social Equity business licenses — 14 of which were related to transportation.

In 2023, cannabis delivery still hasn’t taken off in Colorado. Dispensaries aren’t utilizing delivery services because of the complex processes and disjointed systems surrounding them. Operating legally out of a physical dispensary requires jumping through a lot of compliance hoops and expensive licensing. Setting up cannabis delivery on top of that would add to the challenge and investment.

“Unfortunately, less than 12% of Social Equity businesses are operational,” says Sarah Woodson, founder and executive director of The Color of Cannabis (TCC). “Because delivery was not meant to be a successful model — too much of the established industry is invested in a brick and mortar model so they won’t partner with delivery companies.”

Woodson says many Social Equity business owners believe established

cannabis businesses don’t want to work with them because they’re part of the Social Equity accelerator program.

“The reality is there is truth to both views,” Woodson says. “The current laws create an undue burden on both parties.”

Woodson hopes to change that with a bill TCC is lobbying for on Capitol Hill: HB23-1020, the Social Equity Licenses in Regulated Marijuana bill.

TCC was established in 2019. Since then it’s helped lobby for bills HB19-1234, the Regulated Marijuana Delivery Bill, and HB20-1424, Social Equity Licenses in Regulated Marijuana. HB23-1020 would create accelerator licenses for hospitality businesses and transporter businesses, and also create a retail deliverer permittee accelerator license.

Importantly, HB23-1020 would allow recipients of these Social Equity licenses to “exercise the privileges of a retail marijuana store license without needing to obtain a retail marijuana store license or accelerator store license.”

The cost of obtaining either of those licenses is high, and comes with high application and renewal fees. For Social Equity applicants trying to start a business, those costs have represented barriers of entry, especially in the delivery space.

HB23-1020 would also require the Department of Revenue to create monetary incentives for both the Social Equity licensee and “Accelerator-Endorsed licensee,” an

approved mentor business that can offer technical and capital support to an accelerator licensee. That could include waiving or reducing some of the fees that have discouraged many dispensaries from working with Social Equity transporters and delivery businesses.

Currently, the state requires a Social Equity applicant to have lived in an area in Colorado designated as an “Opportunity Zone” or as a “Disproportionate Impacted Area” for 15 years. HB23-1020 would lower that requirement to 10 years.

It would also expand the eligibility requirements to include anyone who has received assistance from programs like the low-income energy program, the supplemental nutrition assistance program, the Colorado Medical Assistance Act and others for at least five of the last 10 years.

HB23-1020 is sponsored by Rep. Naquetta Ricks (D-Aurora), and was introduced to the House on Jan. 9, 2023. To raise awareness and rally support for the bill, Woodson and TCC hosted a Lobby Day at the Capitol on Feb. 15. It was the second annual lobby day TCC has hosted.

“People are starting to understand that we have to always be educating and advocating for our livelihoods and businesses,” she says. “And being able to do this during Black History Month just emphasizes the importance of economic justice and representation not only in cannabis but in the business community in general.”