Lonely road
With fewer workers downtown, Pearl Street is feeling the strain P. 8
CAMPING BAN LIVES ON P. 10 MUSIC BOOK GIFT GUIDE P. 13 DRUNK SANTA + ELF HUNTING P. 20
By Louisa May Alcott
Adapted and Directed by Jessica
Robblee
Bring your family to the Dairy this holiday season and spend some time with the March family. Relive their adventures, their passionate loves, their ups and downs and their joy in being together.
Dec. 5 – Dec. 29
Dairy Arts Center | Boulder
SUBSCRIPTIONS & TICKETS at BETC.ORG
DEC. 12, 2024
Volume 32, Number 17
PUBLISHER: Stewart Sallo
PUBLISHING CONSULTANT: Francis J. Zankowski
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Shay Castle
ARTS EDITOR: Jezy J. Gray
REPORTERS: Kaylee Harter, Tyler Hickman
FOOD EDITOR: John Lehndorff
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Michael J. Casey, Adam Perry, Kathleen Sands, Dan Savage, Darius Tahir, Andrea Steffes-Tuttle, Sarah Valdez
COVER: Tyler Hickman
SALES AND MARKETING
MARKET DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: Kellie Robinson
SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE: Matthew Fischer
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Chris Allred, Tony Camarda, Austen Lopp
SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER: Carter Ferryman
MRS. BOULDER WEEKLY: Mari Nevar
PRODUCTION
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Erik Wogen
GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Chris Sawyer
CIRCULATION
CIRCULATION MANAGER: Cal Winn
CIRCULATION TEAM: Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer
BUSINESS OFFICE
BOOKKEEPER: Austen Lopp
FOUNDER / CEO: Stewart Sallo
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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Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@boulderweekly.com). Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.
COUNTY DEFIES PUBLIC ON PESTICIDES
2-1 vote approves controversial plan to spray weeds
BY KATHLEEN SANDS
Last month, Boulder County Commissioners approved a weed management plan after much dissent from the public on pesticide use and aerial spraying. Commissioners Claire Levy and Marta Loachamin voted to continue using pesticides countywide. This vote contrasts with the county’s own survey of the public, who clearly stated (81%) they did not want pesticides used — especially with aerial application.
Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann, a chemical engineer, spoke of the dangers of this experimental Bayer/Monsanto product being aerial sprayed. Stolzmann alone stood with the public on ending pesticide use, but was outvoted by the other two commissioners.
Lyons Climate Action Coalition presented on Jan. 23, 2023 to Commissioner Levy with two professors of regenerative agriculture — Michael
Kotutwa Johnson, Arizona State University; and Hunter Lovins, a professor of sustainability at Bard University — 50+ year chemist Peter Cowdery; and Goat Green, a goat-for-hire natural grazing operation.
Together, this group gave research on the public health effects of pesticides as well as soil and climate. Additionally, CU Boulder professor emeritus Timothy Seastedt, ecology and evolutionary biology, sat on a panel of experts for Boulder County Parks and Open Space’s advisory committee to discuss alternative means of weed management and gave them doz-
OPINION
ens of studies regarding the success of these methods.
Seastedt insisted Parks and Open Space should be focusing on List A and B weeds, species that the county or state requires for removal. Cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, which is the target of aerial spraying, does not appear on List A or B.
It is List C. These are plants where removal is not mandatory but recommended.
The county commissioners held a hearing on May 23, 2024. Members of the public attended and spoke against the use of pesticides, including many professionals in the field of sustainability, ecology, environmental engineers, chemistry and climate.
The county’s plan has the word “integrated” in its name, but there are very few alternatives to pesticides used for weed management included. In public hearings, Parks & Open Space Weed Manager Joe Swanson and Director of Parks and Open Space Therese Glowacki have stated it is not feasible to
A NEEDED LAUGH
Thank you so much for having the comic strip Tom Tomorrow! I got home 15 minutes ago to my wife in tears due to a technological issue with trying to order something online. I think we have all been there at one time or another. After we solved the problem, she took off for her afternoon walk. I sat down with the Boulder Weekly, one of my great pleasures, and opened it to the strip with the AI doctor (Dec. 5, 2024 issue). It reminded me so clearly of the hours I spent on the phone during the last year straightening things out with accounts, credit cards and bill payees after my identity was stolen. Most of the time, no person could be found and my situation was unique enough to not offer an easy solution. I immediately cut the cartoon out to share with my wife and anyone else who walks into the house. What a wonderful treasure it is to laugh now in the background of the worst political disaster since the Civil War.
Good journalism is more important than ever!
– David Hazen, Lyons
INCORPORATE ACCESSIBILITY
use any other methods, including controlled burns, goats (which Longmont and other cities use) and hand pulling.
Two of the three county commissioners are acting against the will of the people to aerial spray a dangerous pesticide that chemists — and its own label — say is dangerous to humans, animals and ecology.
Much of the public didn’t know about the November vote, and we believe they should be informed. People need to take precaution and hopefully let their commissioners know how they feel about this decision — again.
If people are concerned, they could get on the Colorado Department of Agriculture pesticide sensitivity list to be informed of spray events and to get on a county notification list so they can leave their home when it happens.
Kathleen Sands is an organizer with the Lyons Climate Action Group.
These opinions do not necessarily represent the views of Boulder Weekly
I have appreciated seeing Jennifer Och’s disability columns in the paper. I’m writing with feedback on how this might continue to be represented in other sections of the paper.
For example, the Nibbles article on Suti (“A time for hygge,” Nov. 7). I visited Suti after reading the article, but was sad to find it is not very accessible. There is a stair to enter with no handrail, the front door is quite difficult to open, the ordering area is too narrow to fit a mobility aid and the chairs are difficult to sit in without moving furniture. While these may not be obvious to the able bodied, certainly a mention of an entry that has steps might be something to include in future articles.
Thanks for taking this into consideration.
– Shelby Bates, Boulder
Cheatgrass, also known as downy brome. Credit: Michel Langeveld
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UNOCCUPIED AND UNCERTAIN
With fewer workers downtown, Boulder’s economy is feeling the strain
BY ANDREA STEFFES-TUTTLE
is the first in
On a Thursday afternoon in early December, Lindsay’s Deli is largely empty. The lunch rush is over, and unlike in years past, things probably won’t pick up again for the day.
“Our main people work on the mall, either in the offices or in the retail,” said Jocelyn Wallen, general manager of the deli, “and 40% of them are just gone. Maybe they come in here and there if they have an office, but a lot of them are hybrid now.”
While the drop in foot traffic is not “life changing” for the business, Wallen said, it does have owner Lindsay Shaw changing the way she runs things.
“This is the first year we’ve ever really paid for marketing over the 20 years she [has] owned the shop,” Wallen said. “She always said, ‘I don’t do marketing.’ Now we have a marketing budget.”
Empty restaurants have become a post-COVID hallmark of downtown Boulder. With fewer workers commuting in, eateries are struggling to stay afloat, and large employers that once leased offices in Boulder’s downtown aren’t returning.
Office vacancy rates are four times higher than pre-pandemic. Flat sales and declining taxes are impacting businesses, property owners and the city budget, leaving local leaders desperate for solutions.
Like Lindsay’s Deli, Boulder finds itself thinking about something it hasn’t had to in decades: economic development.
“Boulder never needed an economic development plan because of how desirable we were,” said city council member Matt Benjamin. “Our economic development plan was a ‘for lease’ sign.”
EMPTY OFFICES EVERYWHERE
New work-from-home norms are one of the reasons commercial spaces remain empty.
According to a recent Axios analysis, Boulder leads U.S. metropolitan areas in remote work, with 28.1% of Boulderites working from home — more than double the national average of 13.8%.
“COVID has been a disaster for office space, quite frankly,” said Nate Litsey, a commercial real estate broker at Market Real Estate. “It was a huge disruption overnight. And today, downtown is about 33% vacant. Before COVID, we were at about 8%.”
The impacts of remote work are evident in traffic patterns, said Cris Jones, Boulder’s director of community vitality.
“Thursdays used to be our busiest days downtown because we would have the daytime employees and then weekend activities ramping up,” Jones said. “Now
the busiest day is Saturday. Saturday has fully recovered since pre-pandemic levels, but the bulk of the week is still lagging during the day.”
Restaurants, too, illustrate the preversus post-pandemic difference.
“Before COVID, a restaurant could have three or four separate seatings,” said Bettina Swigger, CEO of the Downtown Boulder Partnership. “Now they have a 6-8 p.m. dinner rush, and that’s it.”
But nowhere are the effects of increased remote work more apparent than offices. The vacancy rate for downtown commercial real estate has hovered around 30% for over a year, according to the Boulder Chamber’s economic council quarterly report.
“We had so many tech companies occupying large spaces,” said Swigger. The available offices are too big to meet current demands. “The leases that are closing are for much smaller spaces. People are looking for 1,500 square feet as opposed to 30,000 square feet.”
STEERING THE BOAT
The issue is particularly acute for the second-story offices that sit atop ground-level retail, according to Litsey. Nearly a third of such spaces downtown are empty, he said.
Property owners and city representatives confirmed there are ongoing discussions about alternatives for second-story spaces in the form of theaters, restaurants or other community uses, which would bring more bodies downtown.
Jones said the city is considering how to make regulations more flexible to accommodate these new types of businesses. The previous city council had a focus on cutting regulations, and the planning department has staffed back up after COVID-era furloughs.
“We have to intentionally steer the boat in a direction that leads to greater prosperity for our community,” said Benjamin. “When businesses are thriving, the community is thriving.”
The city also supported an Affordable Commercial Pilot Program, which provided a total of $800,000 in grants for businesses impacted by COVID. Nonprofit art gallery The New Local received support from the program, as did community radio station KGNU, which purchased a new
This
a series of three articles on the topic of empty commercial space in downtown Boulder.
Inside Lindsay’s Deli after the lunch rush on Thursday, Dec. 5. Credit: Tyler Hickman
building downtown and is creating a space for local creators.
But, as Jones noted, $800,000 only goes so far.
“The program was targeted toward building owners and property managers, but the amounts were not compelling,” said Jones. “The goal of the program was to make sure there are spaces available for businesses that can’t afford the premium rates downtown.”
A survey conducted by the city in 2021 gathered data from employers and found that employee housing is the dominant challenge for businesses, followed by the cost of doing business and finding space.
Retail space downtown costs $30 to $45 per square foot. A comparable space along Longmont’s Main Street is going for $15 to $22 per square foot. Office space in downtown Boulder rents for $28 per square foot, compared to $17 in East Boulder and $16 in Longmont.
Future subsidies and support from the city are unlikely as it faces budget constraints. Boulder recently approved a notably lean budget that reflects rising operational costs, the expiration of pandemic-era stimulus funds, and flat sales tax revenue.
“Our budget is largely derived from sales tax,” said councilman Benjamin. “So if our businesses aren’t generating the revenue, the city’s budget is directly impacted.”
COSTLY CONVERSIONS
At their spring retreat, where elected officials set their priorities for the next two
years, council members put economic development near the top of the list. Work started with a September community forum, held in partnership with the National Civic League, to gather input from residents.
“That was a really good first step to start to hear the short, medium and longterm solutions being recommended to us,” said Benjamin. A few interventions being considered are financial assistance, changes in zoning and land use, and other economic policy considerations.
In October, Boulder’s Housing Advisory Board discussed the possibility of converting Boulder’s empty office space into homes — a two-in-one solution for struggling businesses and the
city’s housing crisis. But architects and other planning professionals note the many challenges to such conversions, including the wildly different layouts and building codes for homes versus businesses.
“It doesn’t really pencil out for what you would have to pay to retrofit the building to be residential,” commercial realtor Litsey said.
Even in cases where the goal is to maintain office space in its current form and just update the property, the perceived difficulty of navigating the city’s red tape is a barrier.
“The permitting process adds a whole new level of uncertainty,” Litsey said.
Boulder’s permitting process is “not the fastest,” said Daniel Aizenman, director of development and design with Boulder real estate firm Conscience Bay Partners. But it’s also “not the slowest.”
‘A RESET’
For some property owners, the best bet is to make their existing spaces as attractive as possible. Aizenman said Conscience Bay has invested in adding amenities like showers, kitchens, patios and elevators to their commercial office spaces to try and lure workers back.
“The buildings that have high-quality space and good amenities are actually full,” Aizenman said. “Companies are looking for a refreshed, better space to attract their employees back to the office.”
Boulder’s historic downtown works against itself in this regard, Aizenman said, “with buildings that are very hard to remodel.”
A bigger stumbling block to bringing workers back might be Boulder’s high cost of living, where the average house costs over $1 million. In an April 2023 discussion about down payment assistance, city officials shared that homebuyers need to earn $270,000 a year to buy a medianpriced home.
“That’s an enormous competitive disadvantage Boulder has when compared to other cities in the state or in the country,” said Aizenman.
Litsey shares Aizenman’s concern about affordability, pointing to the number of people who have moved out of Boulder into the surrounding, more affordable areas. According to transportation data from 2022, 66% of people who work in Boulder live somewhere else.
Litsey believes companies move their offices to the outskirts of Boulder instead of downtown to make coming to work easier for employees. The Arapahoe corridor, on the eastern edge of the city, was home to 40% of Boulder jobs in 2019, according to city data.
There are some hopeful signs that conditions may improve — or at least not get any worse. According to JLL, a global real estate services company, office space vacancy levels across the United States went down nationwide in the third quarter of 2024, for the first time in over five years. But hybrid and remote work are likely here to stay. Though the amount of fulltime U.S. workers who are completely remote seems to have stabilized around 20%, the number of hybrid workers continues to rise. It’s currently between 40% and 45%, according to reporting from The Colorado Sun
“There’s a reset in office space,” said Aizenman. “My guess is 20 to 25% of office space will never be back as office space.”
“We have one of the best downtowns in the country,” he continued. “It has all the fundamentals of a great downtown, but that doesn’t mean we rest on our laurels. We need to double down on imagining what the future of our downtown and what the future of work will be.”
Tyler Hickman contributed reporting.
Foot traffic on Pearl Street has dropped since the pandemic. Credit: Tyler Hickman
Folding signs for retail stores on the Pearl Street Mall on Thursday, Dec. 5. Credit: Tyler Hickman
FREEZIE FEST
Cookie Crawl &
DECEMBER 14TH | 11 AM - 3 PM
GOV’T WATCH
What your local officials are up to this week
BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF
BOULDER CITY COUNCIL
On Dec. 5, council:
• Voted in Lauren Folkerts as mayor pro tem. The mayor pro tem serves for one year and fills in for the mayor in their absence. The position was previously held by council member Nicole Speer, who nominated Folkerts for the position.
On Dec. 13, council will:
• Meet with CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz and staff to discuss housing, sustainability, enrollment and retention.
LONGMONT CITY COUNCIL
At the Dec. 10 study session, council:
• Initiated an appointment process to replace Ward 2 representative Marcia Martin, who last week announced her resignation effective Dec. 31.
Per the Longmont city charter, any vacancy that occurs with more than one year remaining in a term will be replaced through a special election. Martin’s official resignation date falls outside of that window, requiring a replacement to be appointed by city council to fill out the remainder of the term.
The city will accept applications for the seat Dec. 16 through Jan. 8 and will conduct public interviews during its Jan. 21 first meeting in place of an open forum. Swearing-in of the new representative will be scheduled for Jan. 28.
Head down to the Pearl Street Mall and join us for a celebration of winter with Downtown Boulder's own Freezie the Snowman! Enjoy FREE train rides, reindeer games (arts and crafts) and visits with Santa & Freezie!
New this year, take a stroll around downtown during the inaugural Cookie Crawl. Head into participating businesses for a sweet treat:
Ana’s Art Gallery
Art Mart Gifts
Art Source International
Barbara & Company
Capital One Café
Cotopaxi
Dish Gourmet
Flower Wild
Helly Hansen
High Country
Produced by:
Lindsay’s Boulder Deli at Häagen-Dazs
My Neighbor Felix
Nomad Bead Merchants / Adorned
Norrøna
Organic Sandwich Company
Ozo Co ee - both locations
Pedestrian Shops
Pendleton
Peppercorn
Savannah Bee Company
Presented by:
Sponsored by:
FreezieFest.com
On Dec. 19, council will:
• Hold a public hearing and vote on regulations for natural medicine healing centers.
• Discuss the city’s Climate Action Plan, which is set for a refresh in 2025.
Council will be on winter recess from Dec. 22 to Jan. 4, 2025.
BOULDER COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
On Dec. 18, commissioners will:
• Attend the virtual Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) meeting at 6:30 p.m. An agenda for the meeting has not yet been released.
On Dec. 19, commissioners will:
• Accept public comment and receive an update from the Boulder County Housing Authority. The meeting begins at 9 a.m. and will be held on the third floor of the historic courthouse, 1325 Pearl St. Attend virtually: boco.org/ BOCC-Dec19AM or register to speak in person: boco.org/InPersonDec19AM.
A Dec. 18 Planning Commission meeting has been canceled. The commission will reconvene Jan. 15
• Directed staff to bring forth an amendment that will require hotels to renew their licenses annually and meet safety requirements. The amendment is designed to reduce calls for service to city police pertaining to criminal activity in an effort to reduce disproportionately high levels of police responses to hotels and motels.
Establishments will be required to reach an average of no more than 1.5 calls for service per room by 2027 to be eligible for licensing.
LOUISVILLE CITY COUNCIL
On Dec. 9 and 10, council:
• Interviewed 25 candidates for boards and commissions in two special meetings. There were 75 applicants for 33 vacancies. Council will vote on appointments at the Dec. 17 meeting.
LOUISVILLE PLANNING COMMISSION
On Dec. 12, the Markel Homes Coal Creek Village application was withdrawn. The development included some 13,500 square feet of commercial space and 186 market-rate and affordable rental housing units. Having failed to meet the continuation requirement for an additional traffic study, approval of the plan will be subject to a new 2025 hearing.
All agenda items are subject to change. Mark Cathcart contributed reporting.
BOCO, BRIEFLY
Local news at a glance
BY KAYLEE HARTER
BOULDER CAMPING BAN IS LEGAL, JUDGE RULES
A 2022 lawsuit challenging Boulder’s camping ban was dismissed Dec. 6 by a Boulder County judge, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
The lawsuit, filed against the city by the ACLU on behalf of the nonprofit Feet Forward and several unhoused individuals, claimed that Boulder’s ban amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under state and federal law.
“Plaintiffs have advanced plausible arguments that the Blanket Ban may not be the best public policy response,” Judge Robert R. Gunning wrote in the order. “Reasonable people will disagree over which policy responses are most effective in addressing this complex issue. The wisdom of the Blanket Ban is not before the Court, however.”
Boulder’s ordinance is often referred to as the blanket ban because it prohibits “any cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.”
In the order, Gunning cited the Supreme Court’s June ruling on Johnson v. Grants Pass, which upheld the constitutionality of the Oregon town’s practice of ticketing people for sleeping outside even if there are no shelter beds available.
“The Court concluded that the punishments attached to the Grants Pass ordinances increasing fines and up to 30 days in jail were not cruel or unusual because they were not designed to ‘superadd terror, pain, or disgrace,’ and are typical of other punishments for similar offenses,” Gunning wrote.
Plaintiffs argued that despite the Grants Pass ruling, Colorado’s Constitution offered broader protections against cruel and unusual punishment, but the judge ultimately disagreed.
Violations of Boulder’s blanket ban are punishable by fines of up to
$2,650 per violation and up to 90 days in jail, according to the order.
CHEAP AND FREE RIDES IN LONGMONT
Longmont’s new microtransit service launched Monday, Dec. 9. All rides are free through Jan. 9, and will cost $2 after that, with rides for students, seniors and those with disabilities for $1 per trip.
Rides are booked through the RIDE App, which will tell riders where to meet the shared van, which may be a short walk away.
The shared ride service “operates corner to corner instead of door to door,” according to the FAQ page, which allows for picking up multiple passengers “without adding a significant amount of time to each rider’s journey.”
The service operates throughout the city Mondays through Saturdays 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The service is a partnership between the City of Longmont, Regional Transportation District (RTD) and Via Transportation, Inc. (not to be confused with the nonprofit Via Mobility Services).
IN OTHER NEWS…
• Boulder Police had initially warned of “possibly tainted” cocaine after several college students who were “sick/overdosing” were transported to the hospital from the Kappa Sigma fraternity, but poilce now believe they had “extreme amount[s] of alcohol and some had consumed drugs,” according to a Dec. 10 release. Police no longer believe fentanyl was involved. All five men (initially reported as six) are now in stable condition, and police are investigating whether the incident was related to pledging at the fraternity, according to city releases.
• Superior’s proposed home rule charter has passed, with 70% of voters approving the new governing document, according to unofficial results from the Dec. 10 special election. Read more about the charter and what it means for Superior: bit.ly/HomeRuleVoterGuideBW
EARTH TO MOON
BY MOON UNIT ZAPPA
Would you rather be born into rock royalty in the late ’60s and raised in one of America’s most interesting and iconic families, or be parented well? That’s the question behind this mesmerizing, can’tput-down memoir by Moon Zappa.
Before her genius musician-composer father, Frank Zappa, lay on his deathbed in 1993 at the age of 52, she says he had never written her a letter. In fact, throughout the eldest Zappa’s new book, Earth to Moon, she discusses the breathless, alien feeling of the few times growing up when Frank was actually home from touring and
emerged from his basement studio to speak to her.
“I don’t want to say the wrong thing,” she remembers thinking when her father suddenly appeared upstairs when she was eight. “I don’t want to be the reason the moment ends.”
Moon was 26 years old — healing from a traumatic childhood — when her legendary father died, after she had paused her quests for Hollywood and spiritual success to take care of him as prostate cancer took hold. The letter her mother made her father write to her as he was dying read only “I love you, Moon.”
BOOK IT
Your holiday music reading roundup
BY ADAM PERRY
Fifty-four percent of Americans read a book last year, up from 48.5% in 2022, according to a YouGov poll. Compare that with the 63% of Americans who planned to attend a concert during the same time period, and it would stand to reason that many people must read books about music.
Each year I read a slew of those offerings and recommend some in this annual column, just to save you the hassle of, well, reading bad books about music. In no particular order, here are the best ones released in 2024 that would serve as great gifts for loved ones, or even for yourself.
THERE
WAS NOTHING YOU COULD DO: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S ‘BORN IN THE U.S.A.’ AND THE END OF THE HEARTLAND BY
STEVEN HYDEN
Music geek Steven Hyden’s new book was published to coincide with the historic milestones of New Jersey singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen’s 75th birthday and the 40th anniversary of his smash hit, Born in the U.S.A., one of the most commercially successful albums in the history of popular music.
Because The Boss is still touring, and because some of us can still remember
the years (not months) when Born in the U.S.A. was promoted to us in every way possible like we were strapped to chairs
A Clockwork Orange-style, Hyden says “it’s still possible to believe in the power of a commanding, charismatic rock star to bring us together.”
Springsteen’s 1984 smash hit paralleled (and was sometimes blurred with) a distinct chapter in American history. But while some stars would’ve wanted to keep burning brighter and brighter, ultrafame led Springsteen to feel “Bruced out”
— as Hyden’s book deftly details — leading the iconic artist on a journey that continues through our current moment.
AT THE VANGUARD OF VINYL BY DARREN
MUELLER
UNSPOOLED BY
ROB DREW
Both from Duke University Press, Unspooled and At the Vanguard of Vinyl are very different books from very different writers. But they represent siblings of a sort, brilliantly telling the stories of cassettes and longplaying vinyl records, respectively and how each came to dominate Americans’ listening lives.
Throughout Unspooled, Rob Drew traces the eccentric, dorky tentacles of tape culture — from the art of the
mixtape to the music industry’s legal battles against the tiny giant, which children of the ’80s and ’90s religiously used to record music off the radio and friends’ purchases.
Darren Mueller astutely traverses the history of the LP in At the Vanguard of Vinyl, explaining how a medium that brought recordings of live classical and jazz performances into the homes of music lovers became the palette for geniuses like Mingus and Miles to stretch their wings.
Courtesy: HarperCollins
Courtesy: Hachette Book Group
Courtesy: Duke University Press
Courtesy: Duke University Press
MUSIC
PRINCE AND PURPLE RAIN: 40 YEARS
BY ANDREA SWENSSON
Minneapolis-based writer Andrea Swensson began interviewing people in Prince’s orbit about Purple Rain near the album’s 30th anniversary in 2014. The late, multi-talented iconoclast invited her to a party that year to listen to some of his massive stash of unreleased recordings, only a smidgen of which has been made public in the eight years since his sudden and shocking death from a drug overdose.
With a foreword from Prince megafan Maya Rudolph, the coffee table book Prince and Purple Rain: 40 Years is a comprehensive visual and oral history of the Purple One’s first No. 1 album, which also made him a movie star. Swensson’s illustrated tome — featuring loving, erudite and poetic descriptions of the artist’s life and work from birth to death — is accessible, complete and uplifting.
OUT OF THE BLUE: LIFE ON THE ROAD WITH MUDDY WATERS
BY BRIAN BISESI
3 SHADES OF BLUE: MILES DAVIS, JOHN COLTRANE, BILL EVANS AND THE LOST EMPIRE OF COOL
BY JAMES KAPLAN
Who you know can get you on a path, but what you do dictates where that path leads. Being a regular at a New Jersey club as a young man led to Brian Bisesi playing guitar with, and then being road manager for, one of the greatest and most authentic bluesmen of alltime: Muddy Waters.
MY BLACK COUNTRY BY ALICE RANDALL
“When you work for me, you wear that for life,” Waters often told him — and like James Kaplan’s 3 Shades of Blue, Bisesi’s Out of the Blue delineates the musicianship and personal life of an American legend. For its part, 3 Shades of Blue takes on the mighty task of mining the passion, addiction and genius of three icons who’ve already been written about widely, while still saying something new. Kaplan’s book is inherently anticlimactic because of how much the album Kind of Blue — where the captivating stories of Coltrane, Evans and Davis came together to create unforgettable magic — has been covered over the years, but his plunge into the fascinating and sometime maddening lives of these titans makes 3 Shades of Blue the most beautifully written music book of the year.
With Donald Trump spewing racism over the last decade, you might have missed the specific bigotry Beyoncé faced upon the release of Cowboy Carter earlier this year. The album topped the country charts, a first for a Black woman, and yet garnered zero Country Music Awards nominations.
Alice Randall — a writer and scholar who was the first Black woman to pen a No. 1 song in 1994 (Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s”) — coincidentally released the illuminating My Black Country this year. Her book shines a spotlight on the many extraordinary Black musicians who have played crucial parts in the history of country music.
The oldest country recording that exists on wax is an 1891 performance by Louis Vasnier, a Black man, but — as Randall artfully details in My Black Country — Lil Hardin, Charley Pride and many others have been keystones
in the genre since its inception. The result of the author’s extensive research on the subject is a wild, entertaining and educational ride that will open your mind and your ears.
Courtesy: Quarto/Motorbooks
Courtesy: University Press of Mississippi
Courtesy: Penguin Random House
Courtesy: Simon & Schuster
A BOOK OF ONE’S OWN
New memoir traces Colorado’s connection to ‘the woman who would be Steinbeck’
BY SARAH VALDEZ ROCKY MOUNTAIN READER
Poet and novelist Sanora Babb died in Hollywood on December 31, 2005, at age 98. Her death came just one year after her first but not only novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, was finally published by the University of California Press. She’d finished writing it more than half a century earlier.
Titled after those whose names remained unrecorded on death certificates, the book recounted a farm family’s struggle to survive in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl — and in the California migrant labor camps they’d fled to in search of work. Babb wrote it partially based on her own life, and partially based on work she did volunteering for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was established as part of the New Deal to combat rural poverty.
Her book, originally scheduled to be published by Random House, was delayed and then cancelled due to the overwhelming success of John Steinbeck’s now-classic second novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Published in 1939, his epic work has to date has sold more than 15 million copies and has this dedication: “To Carol who willed it, and Tom who lived it.”
Carol was Steinbeck’s wife. The latter was Tom Collins, a friend of Steinbeck’s and a supervisor of Sanora Babb’s at the FSA. Collins had made copies of Babb’s field notes and gave them to Steinbeck without Babb’s permission or knowledge. Though not precisely plagiarism, Steinbeck took Babb’s work and spun it into an extremely lucrative and influential triumph. Grapes was adapted into an acclaimed film by John Ford in 1940 and had much to do with Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Babb received no mention at all in the book, and no compensation for her work that contributed to its culmination.
BEATING THE ODDS
Biographer and poet Iris Jamahl
Dunkle describes with an abundance of empathy this and the many other highs and lows of Babb’s life in her 2024 biography, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
Babb was born into poverty on the outskirts of the Osage Nation near what is now Red Rock, Oklahoma. She overcame the odds stacked against her: A poor woman, she was unable for the first decade of her life to access basic education. Her most likely fate was exactly that of those nameless people honored by her first novel, but the reality she created with her life was quite the contrary. (An October Atlantic review of Riding Like the Wind was titled “The Woman Who Would be Steinbeck.”)
Her father bought 160 acres of eastern Colorado land for $750 in 1914 despite the fact that he could have gotten it for free through the Homestead Act of 1862 had he at least attempted to farm it for five years. This was just one of many rash decisions that nearly killed his family through starvation and living without basic necessities.
As Dunkle’s book recounts, Babb learned to read by examining newspapers plastered on the dugout walls of her family’s one-room pit house carved out of the earth near Lamar, Colorado. Her grandfather taught her math with a stick he used to draw in the dirt. The dugout was heated by burning wood when available and stinky cow dung when it wasn’t. There, Babb was semi-raised by a father who was a semi-professional gambler and a semi-professional baseball player, and a mother who baked goods to be sold at a bakery in which she and her husband had a stake.
SURVIVAL INSTINCT
Romantic entanglements and friendships with various creative men peppered Babb’s life later on, as traced in Riding Like the Wind. Ralph Ellison, the fellow Oklahoma-born author of Invisible Man — a cornerstone of 20th century African American literature that won the National Book Award in 1953 — was a romantic partner of Babb’s in the early 1940s. She
married ChineseAmerican cinematographer and Academy Award-winner James Wong-Howe in Paris due to anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. They wed in the U.S. in 1948, when mixed-race marriage was finally legalized.
For all the fame and artistic talent that enhanced Babb’s years, Dunkle brings her story most powerfully to life by recounting instances of basic survival. Babb’s mother Jennie was told by her town doctor that she ought to drink more milk to ensure that her forthcoming daughter wouldn’t leach the calcium from her own bones.
To do this, Jennie dressed herself and her other two children in freshly ironed dresses, carried “a shiny gallon pail for milk,” and set out with a cart on a summer day past her own family’s broom corn farm to a lusher Haupman farm with alfalfa fields four miles away, where a water source was available to irrigate the crops. There, they drank their fill of buttermilk and ate as many thick slices of buttered bread as they could.
As evening began to fall and storm clouds gathered, Mrs. Haupman declared that suppertime was nigh, accepted a dime for a bucket of milk, and brusquely sent the Babbs on their way. The road home turned into a slog of wet mud pelted by lighting and torrential rain. They eventually made it home and, as Dunkle puts it: “By the time they got settled inside, the storm had miraculously passed and the sky looked down on them with a big blue grin, as if nothing had happened and they’d imagined the whole thing.”
ON THE PAGE: Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb by Iris
Dunkle is out now in hardcover via University of California Press.
Jamahl
Author and poet Iris Jamahl Dunkle is a professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Davis. Courtesy: UC Davis
Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb recounts the life of the woman whose field notes inspired The Grapes of Wrath. Courtesy: University of California Press
LIFE IN A HOLE
‘The End’ might be the most perplexing movie of 2024
BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
It’s been 25 years since the world ended. Some sort of climate catastrophe is what did it, and the only survivors we know of are Father (Michael Shannon), Mother (Tilda Swinton), Son (George MacKay), their Doctor (Lennie James), Butler (Tim McInnerny) and Friend (Bronagh Gallagher). They survive by living in an expansive bunker below the surface — Father was a successful oil and gas man — where they while away the days recreating and revising the past through art, memoir and dioramas. They also sing.
Yes, this post-apocalyptic narrative of regret and hidden truths is a full-blown musical shot in anamorphic widescreen. The End wouldn’t have looked too out of place had it come out in the mid1960s from one of the major Hollywood studios — save for the whole end-ofthe-world business. But considering that it’s directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, whose two previous documentaries were intimate and bleak explorations of the Indonesian mass killings of 196566, The End might be one of the most curious movies of 2024.
That’s not to say The End is a good movie, though it has its charms. It is fascinating in ways. Take the instance that disrupts the survivor’s monotonous day-to-day: the arrival of Girl (Moses Ingram). Twenty-five years ago, Father and Mother had to make some tough decisions about who could and who couldn’t live in the bunker while the rest of the world burned. Now a total stranger has wandered into their midst, and they roll out the red carpet. That dredges up a lot of painful memories, which the characters continue to repress, even in the throes of song.
I don’t know what to make of The End, but I do know that at least a halfdozen times a year, this paper covers the restoration and re-release of an overlooked or forgotten gem from cinema’s past. For a variety of reasons, those movies were dismissed at the time but have now been reclaimed as a singular work. Maybe even a masterpiece. Will that fate behoove The End’s oddball approach to its subject matter in 20-50 years? Anything is possible. Though, with a runtime of two and a half hours and only a couple of strong singing voices to stand on, I suspect that The End will be beloved more for its ambition than its success.
ON SCREEN:
The End opens in limited release Dec. 13.
FORGONE CONCLUSION
Paul Schrader is in fine form in ‘Oh, Canada’
BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
Leo Fife, an acclaimed Canadian documentarian, is rapidly withering away from cancer. With his few remaining breaths, he would like to tell his story. It’s a story no one else fully knows — maybe not even Leo himself.
“You can’t do this,” his wife and artistic partner, Emma (Uma Thurman), pleads with the filmmakers capturing Leo’s final testament. “The drugs are confusing him.”
“It’s what he wants,” Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) implores. He is a student of Leo’s and will stop at nothing to get his movie, even if that means exploiting his subject in his most vulnerable moments.
But what neither Malcolm nor Emma realizes is that Leo wants to be as vulnerable as his mind will allow. Maybe it’s the drugs; maybe it’s the cancer. Hell, maybe it’s the lifetime of mistruths confusing him. To complicate matters, Leo is moving unstuck through his past — sometimes as the younger Leo, played by Jacob Elordi, sometimes as the older Leo, played by Richard Gere — and not getting any closer to the truth.
What is Leo’s grand original sin? The one thing he must atone for before he passes? That’s between him and filmmaker Paul Schrader. The things Leo wants to expose seem to already be exposed. Maybe he told everyone already and forgot. Maybe others suspected it. Maybe, as we see in one of the movie’s
final scenes, Leo is a terrible liar and harbors no real secrets. Can you demythologize if the myth never formed in the first place?
Schrader is similar. The movies he makes and the stories he tells are as warts-and-all as you can get. He leaves no stone unturned and offers no real excuses for his behaviors and opinions. That might make some wonder what dirty truths Schrader is still hiding. For those familiar with his films, you get the sense there is nothing left to hide, only the fixation of confession.
Oh, Canada, adapted from Russell Banks’ novel Foregone, fits beautifully within Schrader’s oeuvre. As both a screenwriter and a director, Schrader has always explored the seedy underbelly of artistic compulsion and the horrors the man in the room must bury to move forward. Everyone either is or can be corrupted. And here, the corruption happens with such banality you might wonder what all the fuss is about in the first place. That there’s even a fuss at all is what makes Oh, Canada one of the year’s best.
ON SCREEN: Oh, Canada opens in limited release Dec. 13.
Richard Gere in Oh, Canada Courtesy: Kino Lorber
They all go on singing in The End Courtesy: Neon
13
4-8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, Apex Center Ice Arena, 13150 W. 72nd Ave., Arvada. Free
Grab the whole family and head to Arvada for this celebration of all things holiday cheer on ice. Local skaters will be jingle bell rocking all afternoon at this free annual event at Apex Center Ice Arena. No registration is required.
DERANGED HOLIDAY HOOPLA
7:30-9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, 300 Suns Brewing, 335 1st Ave., Unit C, Longmont. Free
Break out your best ugly Christmas sweater and head down to 300 Suns Brewing for a holiday extravaganza featuring a sing-along, free comedy from Front DeRanged Improv and an ugly sweater contest with a gift card prize. Holiday-themed drinks will be flowing all night and “Drunk Santa” will be on hand for photos.
14
FREEZIE FEST
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, Pearl Street Mall, Boulder. Free
Boulder’s frostiest, freeziest family event returns for “a celebration of winter and all things snowmen.” This holiday extravaganza includes free train rides for the kiddos (weather permitting) along with Santa visits, reindeer games and the inaugural cookie crawl featuring sweet treats from participating retailers.
13
FLASHLIGHT CANDY CANE HUNT
6-7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, Bob L. Burger Recreation Center, 111 W. Baseline Road, Lafayette. Free
Why should the Easter Bunny have all the fun? Grab a flashlight and head to the fields near Bob L. Burger Rec Center to hunt for candy canes and “sneaky elves.” If you catch an elf, bring them to a table to win a prize. After the outdoor adventure is over, head inside to warm up with hot chocolate, cookies and pictures with Santa — or enter an ornament in the lazy river race. Register: bit.ly/ CandyCaneHuntBW
13 – 15
HOLIDAY TOY DRIVE
11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fri.-Sun., Dec. 13-15, Left Hand Tasting Room, 1265 Boston Ave., Longmont. Free
Give back this holiday season by bringing an unwrapped toy to the Left Hand Tasting Room. This weekend is the perfect time to swing by the award-winning brewery to support the Safe Shelter of St. Vrain Valley, but the drive is ongoing daily through Dec. 20.
14
BIRDING BOCO
2-3:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, Louisville Public Library - Meeting Room, 951 Spruce St. Free
Looking to pick up a new, peaceful pasttime? Learn how and where to find local and migratory birds any time of year in Boulder County’s diverse ecosystems and habitats. Registration required: bit.ly/ BirdingBW.
14
TEA TALK: COPING WITH THE HOLIDAYS
3-4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, Inner Space Healing, 6964 N. 79th St. Suite 4, Niwot. Free
Feeling overwhelmed, wistful or blue? Have a cup of tea about it. Find connection and support in a warm, welcoming space hosted by therapist Patti Ashley. Once you’ve refilled your cup, join the rest of the festivities at the all-day Niwot Holiday Market, including horse and carriage rides, roasted chestnuts and a holiday sing-a-long.
14
LONGMONT LIGHTS PARADE
5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, Downtown Longmont. Free
Bundle up, break out the folding chairs and head downtown for Longmont’s twinkling procession of holiday floats. The builders have been working hard all season on this year’s “timeless holiday tales” theme, so brave the cold and show your support. The parade starts on Longs Peak Avenue, and will continue down Kimbark Street and Main Street.
15
ART THERAPY HONORING DISABILITY
1-3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15, The Collective, 201 N. Public Road, Lafayette. Free
A trained art therapist guides this inclusive workshop to “honor and explore the unique experiences of people with disabilities.” Make a collage and then participate in a sharing circle. The event is “open to anyone interested in exploring their relationship with disability.”
16
CIDER TOUR
4:15-5:45 p.m. Monday, Dec. 16, Acreage by Stem Ciders, 1380 Horizon Ave. Unit A, Lafayette. $60
Join the cider makers at Stem in support of Rise Against Suicide, a local nonprofit removing financial barriers to mental health care for youth. Tour the cidery, sample blends straight from the barrel and head home with a festive glass. A portion of the proceeds will support the organization; try a nonprofit flight to continue to give back. Tickets: bit.ly/ StemTourBW
18
WINTER MARKET & MUSIC WEDNESDAYS
4-8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18, Wibby Brewing, 209 Emery St., Longmont. Free
Still searching for the perfect last-minute gift? No need to fear — grab a beer and stroll through Wibby’s last winter market of the season. From handmade woodworking to finely crafted ornaments, the European-style Christkindl market is a one-stop-shop for all you procrastinating present purchasers.
19
MUSE MAKERS CREATIVE CLASS: SCRUNCHIES
10 a.m. to noon, Thursday, Dec. 19, Museum of Boulder, 2205 Broadway $21
Museum of Boulder’s adult education series exploring creativity with found materials continues with a class on making your own scrunchie. As always, this hands-on workshop will be led by local artists Wendy Rochman and Pati Frey.
Want more Boulder County events? Check out the complete listings online by scanning this QR code.
LIVE MUSIC
THURSDAY, DEC. 12
WANDERING ROADS 6 p.m. Bricks on Main, 471 Main St., Longmont. Free
JT JONES AND DAN FROELICH. 6 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt St., Longmont. Free
CAROLINE COBB 6:30 p.m. Risen Savior Lutheran Church, 3031 West 144th Ave., Broomfield. $23
KATELYN KLICKMAN 7 p.m. Muse Performance Space, 200 E. South Boulder Road, Lafayette. $20
XENO & OAKLANDER WITH SPIRITUAL POISON AND TERRAVAULT NETWORK. 7 p.m. Hi-Dive, 7 S. Broadway, Denver. $15
FRANZ FERDINAND WITH ALMOST MONDAY AND LOSERS CLUB. 7 p.m.
Ogden Theatre, 935 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. $50
ARS NOVA PRESENTS: LIGHT/ SHADOW 7:30 p.m. Mountain View United Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder. $35
FACE VOCAL BAND: JOY TO THE WORLD! 7:30 p.m. Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Unit T, Lafayette. $50
SPRIG OF THAT 8 p.m. Chautauqua Community House, 301 Morning Glory Drive, Boulder. $24
BEGGARS UNION WITH SPITTING IMAGE AND HARLOTTS. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $20
FRIDAY, DEC. 13
LAST MEN ON EARTH. 6 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt St., Longmont. Free
PEAK2PEAK 6 p.m. St Julien Hotel & Spa, 900 Walnut St., Boulder. Free
HART TRIO WITH JAKE HART. 7 p.m. Muse Performance Space, 200 E. South Boulder Road, Lafayette. $20
HOW ABOUT NO. 6 p.m. Bricks on Main, 471 Main St., Longmont. Free
JULIE MONLEY & THE FRENCH CONNECTION 6:30 p.m. Full Cycle Cafe & Bar, 2355 30th St., Boulder. $23
RACHEL ALENA. 7 p.m. Oskar Blues Homemade Liquids and Solids, 1555 Hover St., Longmont. Free
SUBLIME WITH ROME, THE EXPENDABLES AND JUSTUS AND THE LIMITS (NIGHT 1) 9 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop St., Denver. $55
SATURDAY, DEC. 14
LONGS PEAK CHORUS 2 p.m. Heart of Longmont United Methodist Church, 350 11th Ave., Longmont. $15
BOULDER MESSIAH SING-ALONG 5 p.m. St. John’s Episcopal Church, 1419 Pine St., Boulder. $15
FIRE THE STILL 5:30 p.m. Left Hand Brewing, 1265 Boston Ave., Longmont. Free
BROOMFIELD SYMPHONY 5:30 p.m. Broomfield Library and Auditorium, 3 Community Park Road. Free
SKANKIN’ NATION 6 p.m. Bricks on Main, 471 Main St., Longmont. Free
JAZZETRY WITH VON DISCO 6 p.m. Trident Booksellers, 940 Pearl St., Boulder. Free
FUNK KNUF 6:30 p.m. Full Cycle Cafe & Bar, 2355 30th St., Boulder. $13
AL’S HWY50 7 p.m. Stone Cottage Studios, 1928 Pearl St., Boulder. $65
STAFFORD HUNTER AND FRIENDS WITH CLARK TERRY 7 p.m. Muse Performance Space, 200 E. South Boulder Road. $20
EDITH WITH NO FAUNA AND TALKING POINT 7 p.m. Hillside Pizza, 1622 Broadway, Boulder. Free
REED FOEHL WITH KATE FARMER 7 p.m. The Times Collaborative, 338 Main St., Longmont. $18
TITONIC 7:30 p.m. Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Unit T, Lafayette. Free
3RD ANNUAL BOULDER COUNTY
JINGLE JAM 8 p.m. Roots Music Project, 4747 Pearl St., Suite V3A, Boulder. $35
DESERT FURS DUO 8 p.m. Longs Peak Pub, 600 Longs Peak Ave., Longmont. Free
LIVE MUSIC
ON THE BILL
SUBLIME WITH ROME, A-MAC AND THE HEIGHT (NIGHT 2) 9 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop St., Denver. $55
SUNDAY, DEC. 15
DUNCAN COKER. Noon. Jamestown Mercantile, 108 Main St. Free
CHRISTOPHER MORSE. 2 p.m. Busey Brews, 70 E. 1st St., Nederland. Free
LOCO UKULELE JAM. 2 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt St., Longmont. Free
HAZEL MILLER AND THE COLLECTIVE HOLIDAY SHOW. 4 p.m. Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. $15 BW PICK OF THE WEEK
MOJO MUSIC HOLIDAY CONCERT
4 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt St., Longmont. Free
EDITH WITH CAPTURE THIS, FLOWERHEAD AND PILL JOY. 5 p.m. Globe Hall, 4483 Logan St., Denver. $19
ROLLINGS HARVEST. 5 p.m. Bricks on Main, 471 Main St., Longmont. Free
PAUL MCDONALD & THE MOURNING DOVES WITH ZENARI. 7 p.m. Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St., Boulder. $20
MOORS & MCCUMBER. 7 p.m. Gold Hill Inn, 401 Main St., Boulder. $34
ROCKY MOUNTAIN STOCKING STUFFERS. 7 p.m. Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Unit T, Lafayette. $30
Local R&B mainstay Hazel Miller returns to The Dairy Arts Center with her band The Collective for their annual holiday extravaganza in Boulder. Expect equal parts soul power and seasonal cheer during this anticipated performance at the multidisciplinary arts center’s Gordon Gamm Theatre Scan the QR code to check out a BW interview with Miller before you go. See listing for details
MONDAY, DEC. 16
EMMA RUTH RUNDLE 8 p.m. Bluebird Theater, 3317 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. $38
TUESDAY, DEC. 17
LIVE MUSIC AT ROSETTA HALL
7 p.m. Rosetta Hall, 1109 Walnut St., Boulder. Free
OPEN MIC AT THE SPEAKEASY
8 p.m. The Speakeasy, 301 Main St., Longmont. Free
PAERISH WITH COVEY AND ALEX
VILE 8 p.m. Marquis Theater, 2009 Larimer St., Denver. $19
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 18
TENBUCKSIXER. 6 p.m. Rosalee’s Pizzeria, 461 Main St., Longmont. Free
OSKAR BLUES OPEN MIC NIGHTS. 6:30 p.m. The Tasty Weasel, 1800 Pike Road, Longmont. Free
DOMI EDSON TRIO. 7 p.m. Muse Performance Space, 200 E. South Boulder Road, Lafayette. $20
ADAM BODINE. 7 p.m. Dry Land Distillers, 519 Main St., Longmont. Free
BLESSING BLED CHIMANGA. 7 p.m. eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder. $25
BRENDAN JAMES COZY HOLIDAY
SWEATER SHOW. 8 p.m. Roots Music Project, 4747 Pearl St., Suite V3A. $30
THU. DEC 12
BEGGARS UNION SPITTING IMAGE, HARLOTTS FRI. DEC 13
VKTM BWRZ, BASSTROYD, SLICK PORTAL
CONNECT AFROBEATS “PARTY ON THE HILL
YACHTY GOT BACK THE ULTIMATE YACHT ROCK EXPERIENCE
BANSHEE TREE DAVID SATORI (DJ SET), BLOOMURIAN TUE. DEC 31
CABIN FEVER BOULDER LOCZI FRI. JAN 10 BEAR HAT NORTHWOODS, STEEPLAND STRING BAND
ASTROLOGY
BY ROB BREZSNY
ARIES (MARCH 21-APRIL 19): If you were walking down the street and spied a coin lying on the sidewalk, would you bend down to pick it up? If you’re like most people, you wouldn’t. It’s too much trouble to exert yourself for an object of such little value. But I advise you to adopt a different attitude during the coming weeks. Just for now, that stray coin might be something like an Umayyad gold dinar minted in the year 723 and worth over $7 million. Please also apply this counsel metaphorically, Aries. In other words, be alert for things of unexpected worth that would require you to expand your expectations or stretch your capacities.
TAURUS (APRIL 20-MAY 20): The Taurus writer Randall Jarrell compared poets to people who regularly stand in a meadow during a thunderstorm. If they are struck by the lightning of inspiration five or six times in the course of their careers, they are good poets. If they are hit a dozen times, they are great poets. A similar principle applies in many fields of endeavor. To be excellent at what you do, you must regularly go to where the energy is most electric. You’ve also got to keep working diligently on your skills so that when inspiration comes calling, you have a highly developed ability to capture it in a useful form. I’m bringing this up now, Taurus, because I suspect the coming weeks will bring you a slew of lightning bolts.
GEMINI (MAY 21-JUNE 20): My upcoming novels epitomize the literary genre known as magical realism. In many ways, the stories exhibit reverence for the details of our gritty destinies in the material world. But they are also replete with wondrous events like talking animals, helpful spirits and nightly dreams that provide radical healing. The characters are both practical and dreamy, earthy and wildly imaginative, wellgrounded and alert for miracles. In accordance with your astrological potentials, I invite you to be like those characters in the coming months. You are primed to be both robustly pragmatic and primed for fairy-tale-style adventures.
CANCER (JUNE 21-JULY 22): In December 1903, the Wright Brothers flew a motorized vehicle through the sky for the first time in human history. It was a very modest achievement, really. On the first try, Orville Wright was in the air for just 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet. On the fourth attempt that day, Wilbur was aloft for 59 seconds and 852 feet. I believe you’re at a comparable stage in the evolution of your own innovation. Don’t minimize your incipient accomplishment. Keep the faith. It may take a while, but your efforts will ultimately lead to a meaningful advancement. (P.S. – Nine months later, the Wrights flew their vehicle for over five minutes and traveled 2.75 miles.)
LEO (JULY 23-AUG. 22): During the rest of 2024, life’s generosity will stream your way more than usual. You will be on the receiving end of extra magnanimity from people, too. Even the spiritual realms might have extra goodies to bestow on you. How should you respond? My suggestion is to share the inflowing wealth with cheerful creativity. Boost your own generosity and magnanimity. Just assume that the more you give, the more you will get and the more you will have. (Do you know that Emily Dickinson poem with the line “Why Floods be served to Us — in Bowls”? I suggest you obtain some big bowls.)
VIRGO (AUG. 23-SEPT. 22): The term “cognitive dissonance” refers to the agitation we feel while trying to hold conflicting ideas or values in our minds. For example, let’s say you love the music of a particular singer-songwriter, but they have opinions that offend you or they engage in behavior that repels you. Or maybe you share many positions with a certain political candidate, but they also have a few policies you dislike. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t have to be a bad or debilitating thing. In fact, the ability to harbor conflicting ideas with poise and equanimity is a sign of high intelligence. I suspect this will be one of your superpowers in the coming weeks.
LIBRA (SEPT. 23-OCT. 22): “Amazing Grace” is a popular hymn recorded by many pop stars, including Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson. Created in 1773, it tells the story of a person who concludes that he has lived an awful life and now wants to repent for his sins and be a better human. The composer, John Newton, was a slave trader who had a religious epiphany during a storm that threatened to sink his ship in the Atlantic Ocean. God told him to reform his evil ways, and he did. I presume that none of you reading this horoscope has ever been as horrible a person as Newton. And yet you and I, like most people, are in regular need of conversion experiences that awaken us to higher truths and more expansive perspectives. I predict you will have at least three of those transformative illuminations in the coming months. One is available now, if you want it.
SCORPIO (OCT. 23-NOV. 21): “Thinking outside the box” is an American idiom. It means escaping habitual parameters and traditional formulas so as to imagine fresh perspectives and novel approaches. While it’s an excellent practice, there is also a good alternative. We can sometimes accomplish marvels by staying inside the box and reshaping it from the inside. Another way to imagine this is to work within the system to transform the system — to accept some of the standard perspectives but play and experiment with others. For example, in my horoscope column, I partially adhere to the customs of the well-established genre, but also take radical liberties with it. I recommend this approach for you in 2025.
SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22-DEC. 21): I don’t recommend burning wood to heat your home. Such fires generate noxious emissions harmful to human health. But hypothetically speaking, if you had no other way to get warm, I prefer burning ash and beech wood rather than, say, pine and cedar. The former two trees yield far more heat than the latter two, so you need less of them. Let’s apply this principle as we meditate on your quest for new metaphorical fuel, Sagittarius. In the coming months, you will be wise to search for resources that provide you with the most efficient and potent energy.
CAPRICORN (DEC. 22-JAN. 19): The world’s longest tunnel is over 35 miles long. It’s the Gotthard Base Tunnel in the Swiss Alps. I’m guessing the metaphorical tunnel you’ve been crawling your way through lately, Capricorn, may feel that extensive. But it’s really not. And here’s even better news: Your plodding travels will be finished sooner than you imagine. I expect that the light at the end of the tunnel will be visible any day now. Now here’s the best news: Your slow journey through the semi-darkness will ultimately yield rich benefits no later than your birthday.
AQUARIUS (JAN. 20-FEB. 18): Would you like to avoid wilting and fading away in January, Aquarius? If so, I recommend that during the coming weeks, you give your best and brightest gifts and express your wildest and most beautiful truths. In the new year, you will need some downtime to recharge and revitalize. But it will be a pleasantly relaxing interlude — not a wan, withered detour — if in the immediate future you unleash your unique genius in its full splendor.
PISCES (FEB. 19-MARCH 20): My treasured Piscean advisor, Letisha, believes it’s a shame so many of us try to motivate ourselves through abusive self-criticism. Are you guilty of that sin? I have done it myself on many occasions. Sadly, it rarely works as a motivational ploy. More often, it demoralizes and deflates. The good news, Pisces, is that you now have extra power and savvy to diminish your reliance on this ineffectual tactic. To launch the transformation, I hope you will engage in a focused campaign of inspiring yourself through self-praise and self-love.
Q: I’m getting mixed signals from someone who runs hot and cold, and I don’t know how to interpret some of the things he does. How do I get him to be clear about whether he wants to be with me or cut me loose?
A: Cutting him loose yourself will make something clear to him, and his reaction to being cut loose will provide you with the clarity you need.
SAVAGE LOVE
BY DAN SAVAGE
Q: I’m in a sexless but otherwise wonderful marriage. Hubby knows about and supports my outside sex life. Recently, to my dismay, I contracted herpes. What are your thoughts about my obligation to tell potential sex partners? Does your answer change if I’m on meds? Does your answer change if I’m with one person as opposed to a sex club? The two people I did tell ran for the hills.
A: People who have casual sex with multiple partners — one at a time or one right after the other in a sex club — are volunteering for herpes. And while I think you should disclose, I can certainly understand why you might hesitate, given the irrational reactions you’ve received from people who should know better.
Q: My boyfriend cums in me frequently, but I’m not concerned about that. I have an IUD. However, I love to cum before and after penetration, and he will not finger me after he cums in me, fearing he will “push the sperm in deeper” and increase my chances of pregnancy. Can you help clear this up for us?
A: I don’t think your boyfriend is actually worried about your IUD failing — IUDs have very low failure rates — I think your boyfriend, like many men, not only rapidly loses interest in sex after he cums, he’s a little grossed out by the same fluids and activities that were turning him on immediately before he came. Maybe instead of asking him to put his fingers back inside you, you could ask him to use a toy on you instead.
Q: My boyfriend likes to be tied up and left alone. I’m happy to do it for him. But he also likes to be tied up and left alone when there are other people in our apartment who don’t know he’s tied up in another room. Is this a consent violation?
A: Yes, but it’s a minor one, and I will allow it. To have a clearer conscience, let your friends know your boyfriend is in the apartment but he’s working on something and in the zone or not feeling well and under the covers — either way, he won’t be coming out to say hello. (For the record: Leaving someone alone in bondage is dangerous. If you’re going to do this dangerous thing — and I’m officially advising you not to do this dangerous thing — please Google and follow the safety tips.)
Q: MM spanking: I want it. I know other boys are getting it, as I see their pics and videos all over Twitter. Why can’t I find it?
A: “There’s a great app geared toward the MM spanking scene called Whappz that I’ve had some luck with,” said The Spanking Boy, a gay spanking enthusiast who’s had more luck finding play partners than you. “But I’ve personally had a lot of luck just using Grindr and with the ‘spanking’ tag, a hot profile pic and a bio that’s straight forward about what I’m looking for.”
Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan. Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love
BUS STOP GALLERY
4895 N. Broadway, Boulder Wed-Fri 10:30-1:30 Sat-Sun 1-4
ROOTS, ROCKS + MUD
THE SOUND OF SHOPPING
Enjoying the tunes in the canned tuna aisle?
Thank Boulder-based Custom Channels
BY JOHN LEHNDORFF
While looking for noodles at King Soopers in Louisville, the bouncy studio version of “Scarlet Begonias” by The Grateful Dead started playing overhead. The sound of the 50-year-old tune didn’t make me feel old. I was just impressed that Kroger’s playlist ran deeper than the same old biggest hits of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
A recent food research project took me to almost every supermarket chain in Boulder County. With so many hours spent in the aisles, it was easy to obsess about the music each store chose to make me hear.
It turns out that, like me, some grocers think a lot about their sonic ambience. Others, not so much.
“Not every business pays close attention to the music they play, but some want to make shopping a multisensory experience,” says David Rahn, co-founder of Boulder’s Custom Channels, a firm that programs playlists for retail establishments including grocery stores. “They want the lighting, how things are displayed and the music all dialed in.”
Rahn and his partners, John Bradley and Ray Skibitsky, played critical roles in creating the nationally known AAA radio sound in the 1980s that locals loved on Boulder’s KBCO. After teaming to help radio stations program music similar to KBCO’s, Custom Channels began using new internet technology to stream music directly to businesses.
“Our first and biggest client for many years was Whole Foods Market,” Rahn says. “We started with the Boulder Pearl Street store and by
2019, we were streaming music to 450 [locations]. We made sure it sounded different than the music at King Soopers or Safeway and appealed to the sensibilities of the Whole Foods shopper.”
As tempting as it may be to bring your own music into your business or workplace, Rahn warns against it. You may get a warning or fine from licensing organizations such as BMI and ASCAP.
“If you’re playing music as any part of the ambience,” Rahn says, “whether it’s a dental office or a grocery store, you’re supposed to pay license fees for the commercial use of that music.”
NO LIVE FRAMPTON OR DRUM SOLOS
There are definitely some do’s and don’ts when it comes to mood-setting music.
“I know when things sound good and [when] they don’t sound good,” he says. “There’s one Boulder grocery store I shop at sometimes where I heard a long Frampton Comes Alive track with all the audience noise. That may be fun to listen to in your car, but it just didn’t fit. The same supermarket played this long Jimi Hendrix tune that just went on and on and was grating.”
Similarly, live tracks and long drum or guitar solos and jams are typically verboten at the deli counter, according to Rahn.
“We talk about tempo a lot,” he says. “Even songs you think are fairly fast can really drag in that big-box environment. There are a lot of songs with high beats per minute that feel slow.”
HEAVY METAL FOR THE NIGHT SHIFT
Anyone who has ever worked in a store, retail space or office ends up loathing certain songs that get repeated on background music loops.
“They might be awesome songs, but when you’ve heard them a thousand times, they get old,” Rahn says. “With this world of background music, you have to include things that aren’t hits in order to extend playlists that fit the vibe. We can update the music every day and make sure it’s never the same songs in the same order.”
The music you hear at Safeway during the day also won’t necessarily be what workers hear when no customers are around.
“I’ve had a lot of stores say: ‘Once the store closes at 10, can you just switch
over to heavy metal for the stockers to work to overnight?’ Like with the radio that we’ve done, we’re trying to set a mood.”
SUPERMARKET MUSIC IN YOUR HOME
A few decades ago, shopping music was an afterthought and supermarket sound systems often crackled.
While many customers today wear earbuds and shop to their own playlists and podcasts, supermarket soundtracks are a thriving concern. Many chains offer Spotify lists of their in-store music. Apple Music offers a 101-song, five-hour grocery shopping playlist of favorites.
Custom Channels also helps supermarkets create custom channels and playlists for customers.
“When we worked with Whole Foods, we created a livestream of their music you could access. We also curate Spotify playlists for stores,” Rahn says. “You’re not putting 3,000 songs on those, just 50 or 75.”
According to Rahn, his Custom Channels partner, John Bradley, puts their overall mission best.
“John says: ‘We program music for people who can’t change the channel.’”
NIBBLES
LOCAL FOOD NEWS: VEGAN OPEN & CLOSED
The vegan restaurant Thrive has closed at 1509 Arapahoe Ave.
Lotus Moon has opened in the former Black Pepper Pho space at 2770 Pearl St., serving Vietnamese vegan fare.
Cheba Hut is open at 1346 Pearl St., former site of Lazy Dog Bar & Grill and Rocky Mountain Records & Tapes. The cannabis-inspired sub chain was originally located on The Hill from 2004-2019.
Wonder Press has closed at 1139 Francis St. in Longmont, but the juicery’s Boulder location remains open.
Coming soon: Kalita Grill Greek Cafe, 801 S. Public Road, Lafayette.
Expand your relleno consciousness at the first Festival del Chile Relleno through Dec. 16 at Denver’s La Diabla restaurants. Rellenos from seven Mexican states will be featured.
Sweets and hot chocolate, plus the big menorah lighting and live music, are on the menu for Hanukkah on Pearl Dec. 30 on the Pearl Street Mall’s courthouse lawn. It’s free, but registration is requested.
Details: boulderjcc.org
WORDS TO CHEW ON: HEARD IN THE FAST LANE
“The line it is drawn / The curse it is cast / The slow one now / Will later be fast.”
– Bob Dylan’s “The Times They are A-Changin’” … heard while waiting in the slowest checkout line at Hazel’s Beverage World in Boulder.
John Lehndorff has written about music in Colorado since the late 1970s for the Boulder Weekly and other publications. Comments: nibbles@boulderweekly.com
ON DRUGS
KETAMINE’S RISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Companies struggle with misleading ads, claims
BY DARIUS TAHIR KFF HEALTH NEWS
People keep talking about ketamine. The drug has become a favorite of celebrities, billionaires and ordinary patients, many of whom view it as a potential miracle drug for depression and other mental health conditions.
Whether on Facebook or Instagram, patients and clinics alike are giddy about the possibilities. But it is a drug that can be abused and can be deadly.
Despite warnings about the drug’s dangers, Meta allows ads and posts about ketamine. Sometimes that chatter comes from sources that don’t meet the conglomerate’s voluminous standards, which, in theory, ensure posts are based on credible information.
Other internet ad networks are also trying to strike balances. Google says that because ketamine is a prescription drug, it can be advertised only if a provider is offering a prescription and is certified with a third-party oversight group; advertisers can’t promote “highs.” TikTok, which didn’t reply to a request for comment, broadly prohibits advertising from unauthorized pharmacies or dispensaries, or advertising that features prescription drug abuse.
Ketamine, which is available in both liquid and powder form, emerged first as an anesthetic and became popular as a party drug because of its dissociative and hallucinogenic effects. It’s FDA-approved as an anesthetic and, in some formulations, as a prescription antidepressant, to be administered in medically supervised settings. Regulated as a Schedule 3, nonnarcotic substance under the Controlled Substances Act, the drug has been shown to cause dependence, especially for people with a history of addiction to other substances. But researchers are intrigued by another aspect of ketamine: its mind-altering properties, which have potential therapeutic benefits.
These possibilities, aided by a boom in ketaminefocused medical startups and spas promoting the prescription drug as part of “holistic healing” or other wellness purposes, are fueling consumer interest, news coverage and social media attention.
But there are indications of a dark side. According to an autopsy report from Los Angeles County’s medical examiner department, actor Matthew Perry died with ketamine in his system as he reportedly was undergoing infusion therapy meant to treat depression and anxiety. Poison center reports of exposures involving ketamine surged just over 80% from 2019 through 2021, a study showed.
allow posts on the drug, they also include warnings. For example, if you search Instagram for “ketamine,” you learn the term “may be associated with the sale of drugs” and are offered a button to “get help” for substance abuse treatment. (You can also opt to get the results anyway.)
When a particularly influential influencer posts about his clinic, there’s “a sharp uptick” in interest “every single time,” Jacob Silverstone, the medical director of a ketamine infusion clinic outside Miami, told KFF Health News. That interest often drives patients to his clinic, he said.
respond to conventional treatments like SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
But, Heifets said, pop culture oversells the potential. On social media, some clinics promote practices without scientific backing, he said. “It’s not clear that they have any mental health expertise,” he said.
Some clinic ads he has seen, Heifets said, dwell on the idea that the drugs act quickly and comprehensively — avoiding the lack of good data about long-term therapeutic use.
Still, despite the social media buzz, evidence for ketamine as a mental health treatment is unsettled.
The review of ketamine clinics’ claims in ads on Google found the businesses rarely disclosed potential side effects, while aggressively marketing its benefits. Some ads falsely claimed the drug is nonaddictive, the review said.
Facebook and Instagram advertising can be similarly bullish about ketamine’s potential. A fall 2023 search of Meta’s ad library shows an armada of ketamine clinics with sunny claims, some promising “rapid relief” or telling viewers they can “say goodbye to a once-daily SSRI” or that “IV ketamine can be your light in the darkness.”
The tug of war is leading to conflicts between social media giants and advertisers. While Meta and its peers sometimes
“Data from clinics strongly suggest that there’s a benefit” from the drug, said Boris Heifets, a Stanford University School of Medicine professor of anesthesiology studying ketamine and other psychiatric therapies like MDMA. Ketamine, some of these studies indicate, can work for depression — even for patients who don’t
These types of claims, while downplaying risks like substance use disorders, create outsize expectations in patients, Heifets said. “You can create expectations for some of these kind of big interventions that if they’re not met — that can actually be disastrous for patients.”
KFF Health News produces in-depth journalism about health issues.
