Boulder Weekly 7.29.21

F r e e E v e r y T h u r s d a y F o r 2 7 Ye a r s / w w w. b o u l d e r w e e k l y. c o m / J u l y 2 9 - A u g u s t 4 , 2 0 2 1

out of sight, out of mind The quest to find out what happens to Boulder County recycling

by Emma Athena

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just economics:

Transcending the housing crisis

by Tom Mayer

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news:

The quest to find out what happens to Boulder County recycling

by Emma Athena

buzz:

Paul Richards talks about 30 years in an acoustic guitar triad and suspicions Robert Fripp might be channeling some later-life chill

by Dave Kirby

events:

Art, music, author talks and more to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do...

by Boulder Weekly staff

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nibbles:

Upgrade the common campfire treat with homemade marshmallows and bean-to-bar chocolate

by John Lehndorff

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weed between the lines:

In states that limit cannabis business licenses, applications are insanely competitive — this Boulder company helps

by Will Brendza

departments

6 Letters: Signed, sealed, delivered, your views 14 Film: Round two for the Mimesis Documentary Festival 22 Astrology: by Rob Brezsny 23 Savage Love: Crabs 27 Beer: New in brew: Fritz Family Brewers; West End Tavern’s 13th Annual Jul-IPA Party 29 Food/Drink: S’mores soar with local bean-to-bar chocolate; what to do with too many ripe tomatoes?

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Senior Editor, Angela K. Evans Arts and Culture Editor, Caitlin Rockett Food Editor, John Lehndorff Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Sarah Haas, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Katie Rhodes, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Christi Turner, Betsy Welch, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Sami Wainscott Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer July 29, 2021 Volume XXVIII, Number 50 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.

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2021 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@ boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.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.

Transcending the housing crisis

by Tom Mayer

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irtually all housing experts agree that there is a housing crisis in the United States. It is estimated that 600,000 Americans are currently homeless, and something like 3 million individuals or families have experienced homelessness in the last five years.

But homelessness is only the tip of the U.S. housing crisis.

In 2019 (the last year for which reliable statistics are available) a full-time worker earning minimum wage could not afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment in any American county.

A renter spending 30% or more of their income for housing is considered cost burdened. A renter spending 50% or more of their income on housing is considered severely cost burdened. According to the Harvard Center for Housing Studies, 80% of renters earning $25,000 or less in 2019 were cost burdened, and more than half were severely cost burdened. The COVID pandemic has worsened the housing crisis as well as worsening racial disparities in housing. In

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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early 2021, for example, 14% of all renter households were behind in their housing payments and facing eviction, while 29% of Black households were in this situation.

Although the median wealth of American homeowners is 40 times larger than the median wealth of renters, homeowners are by no means immune to the housing crisis. The median price of single-family homes has been increasing for over a decade, and during this interval the housing price increase has far exceeded the growth of median income.

Moreover, the median price of single family homes is accelerating. In March 2021, home prices increased 13.2% nationally and they have increased considerably more in many Western states, including Colorado. Racial disparities are also evident among homeowners. The median wealth of white households is more than seven times greater than that of Black households. In the first quarter of the current year, 7% of white homeowners were behind in mortgage payments and facing foreclosure, but 17% of Black homeowners were threatened with foreclosure.

What should be done about the United States housing crisis? A comprehensive and radical — but possibly achievable — national housing program has been proposed by People’s Action, one of the largest activist mulsee JUST ECONOMICS Page 6

JULY 29, 2021

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JUST ECONOMICS from Page 5

tiracial organizations in the country.

The People’s Action housing program, named A National Homes Guarantee, aims to “guarantee safe, accessible, sustainable and permanently affordable housing for everyone.” The program has five interrelated components: 1) Building 12 million social housing units (over 10 years) and eradicating homelessness; 2) Reinvesting in existing public housing; 3) Protecting renters and bank tenants (i.e., homeowners beholden to banks); 4) Paying reparations for centuries of racist housing policies; 5) Ending land and real estate speculation and decommodifying housing.

Social housing is housing that is permanently off the private market.

It can exist in various forms, but it is typically rental housing, provided at below market rates, and operated by municipal governments or non-profit housing associations. The construction of 12 million social housing units would be a federal project financed by taxes. At least 5% of this social housing would provide special services for the problems of the chronically homeless. Social housing units would be located to desegregate high-income, primarily white areas.

Thus, the program would reduce both income and race segregation. The new social housing would be constructed according to the highest possible environmental standards.

Public housing is often considered to be a failure, but the private housing market has failed on a much larger scale and problems of public housing stem primarily from political neglect.

The Homes Guarantee program advocates a recommitment to public housing. Wherever public housing can be preserved or rehabilitated rather than destroyed, it should be. And public housing tenants should have a significant voice in the management of their homes. Affordable and accessible mass transit should be located near all public housing. Moreover, Congress should move the capital and operating expenses for public housing from its discretionary to its mandatory budget.

Forty-three million households in the United States rent their homes and about half of them are cost burdened. Renters are far more likely than homeowners to be women, people of color and of low income.

Renters are also more likely to have a disability. The Homes Guarantee program is intended to rectify the power imbalance between renters 6

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and landlords. The core of the renter protection program is the following National Tenant Bill of Rights: 1) Universal rent control; 2) Eviction only for good cause and right to lease renewal; 3) Right to counsel in court on housing issues; 4) Right to truly affordable housing; 5) Right to organize renters and to legal enforcement of renter entitlements, and 6) Right to high quality and accessible housing.

In his 2017 book The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein shows how government policy (federal, state and local) contributed decisively to the racial segregation of American society.

The Homes Guarantee program cannot undo several centuries of capitalist housing bigotry, but it suggests numerous ways to repair racist housing injustice. One approach involves systematic reduction of housing principal. If the current value of a home is less than what the homeowner owes (i.e., if the homeowner is “underwater”), then the principal owed would be reduced to the current value of the home or even less. Such principal reduction would be especially helpful to Black homeowners who are more likely than white homeowners to be “underwater.”

Speculation involves buying land or housing as an investment vehicle rather than as a place to live. Speculation tends to make housing and rental markets predatory and unstable.

It can also lead to housing vacancies, housing blight and tax delinquency.

The Homes Guarantee program proposes several forms of taxation to curb land and housing speculation. One possibility would be steep tax (perhaps 70% or more) on profits made via residential speculation.

If good housing is understood as a human right rather than as a privilege to be earned, then housing should be a common possession of the human community rather than a set of commodities to be bought and sold. All housing should be of high quality and allocation of homes should be on the basis of need rather than via income and wealth. This is what decommodifying housing implies. Decommodification of housing is clearly a long-range objective and one that may be unattainable within a capitalist economy.

Just Economics is written by members of the Economic Justice Collective of the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center.

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

JULY 29, 2021

TURNING POINT U.S.-CUBA RELATIONS Dave Anderson is wrong (re: The Anderson Files, “The hidden history of U.S.-Cuban relationship,” July 22). The turning point in U.S.-Cuba relations was the Cuban Democracy Act of 1997. This statute requires the president overthrow whatever government Cuba has.

If Cuban nickel was used to make an auto part in Japan, the car can’t be exported to the U.S. A ship that calls at a Cuban port cannot call at a U.S. port for six months. Foreign firms, including banks, are sanctioned and sued for doing business with Cuba.

Food, fuel and medicine are priority targets.

The statute requires the coup government adopt a market economy and not interfere when goods are dumped at half production cost. Cuba’s public utilities, railroads, sugar steal, oil and nickel industries and 80% of the land must be returned to former owners.

Public institutions of education, health care, science and culture must be sold. Dictatorship and bloodshed being necessary to implement this, there are no democracy or human rights requirements. Haiti is what Cuba must become.

The statute mandates our taxes be used to foster havoc. The on-the-record portions is hundreds of millions.

On June 25, the United Nations General Assembly resolved yet again the blockade of Cuba must end. No l

abstentions. Israel and the U.S. dissented. Israel trades with Cuba.

Gary Erb/Boulder UNCERTAIN FUTURE I’m discouraged to hear that a bipartisan infrastructure bill is facing an uncertain future in Congress, as Senators in Washington are threatening to withhold their support for this legislation. Passing a major infrastructure reform will help address the pressing needs of our nation’s physical infrastructure and broadband access, aid small businesses, and boost economic recovery.

Working in roofing restoration, I am constantly on the road traveling to projects, and I can’t tell you how much I would benefit from improved road conditions and potential new business opportunities if we become part of the supply chain.

Small businesses like mine often struggle to compete with construction conglomerates, and we’re stacked against the wall. This is why Congress must include small businesses as a key part of the supply chain for infrastructure reform, which would be crucial in building consumer confidence and demand at the local level for businesses like mine.

Lawmakers can no longer ignore the harmful effects of a decaying physical infrastructure, and it’s time to settle on a commonsense solution. see LETTERS Page 7

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

LETTERS from Page 6

Our elected officials must put their differences aside and pass this bipartisan legislation now to boost the small business community and even the level playing field.

William Archer, owner of Archer Property Solutions LLC/Englewood CONGRESS MUST EXPAND OUR VOTING RIGHTS Like many of my fellow Americans, I am frustrated. I am frustrated with the roadblocks put up

by Republicans in Congress that prevent even starting a conversation on critical pieces of legislation. I’m frustrated with the GOP’s relentless attack on our basic rights, including our freedom to vote. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 17 states have enacted 28 new laws this year that make it more difficult for eligible Americans to cast their ballots.

But I certainly haven’t lost hope — or my determination. Right now, legislators are considering two crucial bills, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Together, these bills would create national standards for voting and stop unjust and unfair voting laws. These bills are exactly what we need to reverse the worst attacks on our voting rights that we’ve seen in years.

I am urging Congress to prioritize voting rights and pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Elizabeth Ball/Gunbarrel AN EXTRA SCOOP I am proud of Ben & Jerry’s, the most prominent and recognizable Hippie business in the world, for refusing to sell its ice cream in the Israeli Occupied Territories. The Israeli lobby, the ardent Zionists, have for decades been bullying Americans into accepting Israel’s flagrant disregard for Palestinian humanity.

They’ve done this largely by shouting, “anti-Semite!” at anyone who would stand up for Palestinian human rights, who would in any way criticize Israel. Not surprisingly, this has been their knee-jerk response to the Ben & Jerry’s decision — the company is engaged in a “disgraceful capitulation to anti-Semitism,” and urged on by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are now boycotting Ben & Jerry’s, aiming to punish them in the pocketbook. (Both Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are Jewish-American, by the way, but to

Zionist fanatics, that just makes them “self-hating Jews,” traitors to their own people.)

I suspect that for the American public, these constant, flimsy accusations of anti-Semitism directed at critics of Israel (and usually having no basis other than that criticism) are wearing thin; their attempts to portray today’s Middle East as a replay of WWII and the Holocaust are increasingly falling flat. People, including a growing number of Jewish-Americans, no longer buy it.

My advice: Go into Ben & Jerry’s and buy yourself an extra scoop.

Enjoy your delicious ice cream, and as you do, be happy that you’re standing up to a bunch of bullies, supporting human rights and, in a small way, making America and the world better places.

Paul Dougan/Boulder JUST ONE PROBLEM Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.) says Democrats want to “knock down your door KGB-style to force people to get vaccinated.” (Washington Post, “Patience has worn thin,” July 23, 2021) Rep. Smith apparently has little understanding of what “KGB-style” really means. It is not the same as advertising a vaccination program for smallpox, polio, measles, or COVID-19, undertaken to save young people’s lives and hopes for the future.

Actually, America has taken the opposite of a KGB approach. Party leaders Biden and Trump are both refusing to criticize the unvaccinated.

Both power brokers are on board with the post-World War II libertarian current in American life that says people should not be forced or shamed to change behavior.

Just one problem: This airy little bit of philosophy goes against the grain of our 245-year-old criminal justice system, whereby we absolutely do force people to clean up behavior, at pain of actual punishment.

Autocrats are happy to torpedo criminal and public health accountability because they want the American people to decline to hold them accountable when they themselves do wrong while in power. When they fail to follow the Constitution or the statutory law, they hope to be supported by the huge and growing underclass of unprosecuted and unvaccinated Americans they have treated so softly.

Kimball Shinkoskey/ Woods Cross, Utah

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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BOULDER COUNTY RESOURCE CONSERVATION DIVISION

Out of sight, out of mind

The quest to find out what happens to Boulder County recycling

by Emma Athena

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ike most waste processing facilities in the U.S., Boulder County’s recycling center sits on the edge of town; its multi-story industrial frame and paved grounds sprinkled with rogue, colorful litter are just far enough away from the tourists, yet close enough for locals to drop off the occasional hard-to-recycle product.

I biked over there one hot afternoon two years ago, chasing news of smoke plumes pouring from one of the recycling center’s bays. Eco-Cycle, the building’s eponymous nonprofit, has been operating the County’s Materials Reclamation Facility (MRF) since it first opened in 2001. The MRF is the central processing plant that receives, separates and prepares all the recyclable materials collected within Boulder County, which Eco-Cycle then sells to various mills and end-user manufacturers that do the actual work of repurposing the materials. Bay 1, where stacks of recycling materials are sorted, was supposedly on fire.

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This was 2019, the second summer that the U.S. waste industry had spent recalibrating its relationship with recyclable materials, namely plastic and paper. At the beginning of 2018, China had stopped buying the bulk of the U.S. and European Union’s recyclable goods, causing major parts of the global recycling industry to crash. And though Boulder County’s recycling operation is designed in ways critically different from most other operations, Eco-Cycle wasn’t spared some of the effects of China’s international bombshell.

According to Yale Environment 360, prior to China’s ban, 95% of plastics collected in the E.U. and 70% in the U.S. had been sold and shipped to Chinese processors. Some domestic processing opportunities did exist, but the systems at large were drastically underdeveloped compared to the operations across Eastern Asia. So when China stopped buying and hauling away recyclable materials, the amount l

of plastics within the U.S. ballooned.

The impacts of this international policy change trickled quickly down to local levels. Like nearly every recycling operation in the U.S. that summer, Eco-Cycle was still waiting for the domestic infrastructure to catch up to an extreme surge in domestic supply.

County residents hadn’t slowed their use or disposal of recyclable materials, however, so Eco-Cycle kept collecting and eventually began storing the excess goods on the MRF property as it waited out the industry’s storm; hence the stockpile extending from the bays, baking in the heat, ripe for a fire.

By the time I arrived at Eco-Cycle, temperatures were topping 90 degrees and sweat poured down my back. But instead of smoke and flames, I found swirling eddies of dark, greasy water carrying soggy, wet scraps of cardboard and bottle caps through the paved lots surrounding the MRF. The fire department had stomped out the emergency in seven minutes.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

The staff had been evacuated and sent home, the firetrucks had headed back to town, and an eerie quiet set in. I circumnavigated the MRF’s perimeter, examining the neatly stacked bales of cleaned-and-sorted, ready-to-ship recyclables, the vast majority left untouched by what turned out to be a small fire. Altogether, they looked like a giant lego structure, blocks stacked high as single-story houses. How much longer would the bales be there, I wondered, and where exactly would they go?

Reports of U.S. municipalities pausing collections or ditching recycling programs altogether had been circulating in the news at the time. “It’s a dayto-day battle of moving this material,” the owner of a large-scale MRF in California had reported to its state’s Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery. “We can only warehouse it so long and then it has to go to landfill.”

From Oregon to Arizona to New York, municipalities had been feeling the recycling industry buckle beneath them for months. Recycling policies began adapting and many operations resorted to landfilling at least some of what came to their facilities.

Yet, Eco-Cycle maintained it would continue business-as-usual and could weather the storm.

“If you put a recyclable in your bin, it’s getting recycled in Boulder County. You don’t have to worry about your recyclables being landfilled,” Darla Arians, manager of Boulder County’s Resource Conservation Division, told me that summer. “In our county, we’re absolutely, absolutely recycling every piece of recyclable material that comes to our door.”

But questions began to rise as I surveyed the quiet, overstuffed MRF. How could Eco-Cycle survive when other systems were crumbling? The value of a recyclable material (and how easy it is to sell or move the material) is subject, like any other commodity, to forces that fluctuate like rollercoasters. In theory, it’s a market governed by supply and demand, and success in the industry relies heavily on institutional knowledge, networking, luck and, to some degree, secrecy. We may never know for certain exactly where Boulder County’s recycling ends up, and that’s by design.

high demand for recyclable materials made these relationships profitable. Then came single-stream recycling and the U.S.-China Trade War. Operation National Sword, China claimed, was a reaction to rising levels of contamination among recyclable materials from the U.S. and the E.U. Single-stream recycling had eliminated the burden on residents to sort their materials in different waste bins (according to type of paper, glass, plastic or metal) and while this improved household participation in recycling programs and cut costs in the collection process, it also added the cost of cross-contamination — people “wish-cycling,” for example (throwing non-recyclable items in the recycling bin with the hope that they can be recycled), or leaving food residue in containers.

While China had been buying recyclable plastics, it had been receiving more and more non-recyclable waste mixed in, adding the extra chore of waste extraction and disposal.

With Operation National Sword, China restricted imports to only the cleanest, highest-grade materials, imposing a 99.5% “purity standard,” which “most exporters found all-but impossible to meet,” Cheryl Katz reported in 2019 for Yale Environment 360. China’s decision “to no longer be the dumping ground for the world’s recycled waste” left municipalities and waste companies critically examining their systems, provoking a necessary referendum on the realities and sustainability of recycling.

Cue major news outlets untangling the concept of recycling as the poster child of U.S. global warming mitigation strategies with headlines like NPR’s “So, Should We Recycle?”; the Wall Street Journal’s “Help, We’re Drowning in Recycling!”; and Insider’s “Recycling Plastic Is Probably Not Worth It.” “Even before China’s ban, only 9 percent of discarded plastics were being recycled, while 12 percent were burned. The rest were buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and oceans,” Katz writes. “The recycling crisis triggered

by China’s ban could have an upside, experts say, if it leads to better solutions for managing the world’s waste, such as expanding processing capacities in North America and Europe, and spurring manufacturers to make their products more easily recyclable.”

In the few years since Operation National Sword, new solutions for plastic waste in particular have emerged, and policies local to Boulder County have been put to the test.

“[The brokers]

assure us that they’re going to the places they tell us they’re going, and we have the right to check, but we don’t get into their knickers.”

— Rick Kattar, MRF expert

The sword swoosh heard ‘round the world

Before China restricted the import of plastics and paper (known as Operation National Sword), its Chinese processors turned U.S. and E.U. plastic waste into pellets and shreds that Chinese product manufacturers could repurpose. For a while, it was a mutually-beneficial system, as China was shipping loads of manufactured goods to the U.S. and E.U., then could fill its ships with recyclable materials for the return journey. The country’s low labor costs and

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

How Eco-Cycle survived

Within the waste industry, Rick Kattar comes with pedigree. At one point his dad owned 26 l

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processing facilities across the country, and from the family home in Laurel, Maryland, Kattar began managing four MRFs of his own. “I always wanted to work in a white hat industry, and recycling fit for me,” he says.

Now decades later, after retiring from the family business, moving to Colorado, starting a consulting company, and re-entering the field as “MRF Expert” for Boulder County’s Resource Conservation Division five years ago, Kattar describes himself as the County’s “institutional knowledge.”

It’s a title that fits. In a July 2021 interview, Kattar joined our video-call in a dark-green T-shirt, a worn baseball cap pulled over his white hair. A tall, vibrant houseplant sat on his desk. “When China shut off [the U.S.’s out-flow of recyclable materials], it created a huge problem,” he says. But because the County had spent the preceding years reexamining and restructuring Eco-Cycle, its problems were different than other waste management systems.

According to Kattar and Arians, at the time Operation National Sword took effect, Boulder County didn’t have relationships with Chinese processors. Eco-Cycle had already been selling the County’s recycling to a variety of North American mills, so when all the other waste managers in the U.S. pivoted to the same mills, “We were suddenly competing with them,” Kattar explains.

When selling recyclable materials, the competition boils down to quality (who has the cleanest and best-sorted materials) and relationships (what contracts were negotiated, which brokers used) — two operational aspects the County had been sharpening for years prior to China’s ban.

In addition, the County concluded a series of major technological upgrades in 2017 with the installation of a multi-million-dollar optical sorting machine that reduced Eco-Cycle’s operating costs in multiple ways. It also improved the system’s efficiency and precision, thus increasing the processing speeds of high-quality materials while also reducing the workforce required to run the MRF. When Kattar joined the County’s Resource Conservation Division, he directed Eco-Cycle to seek long-term contracts that “put us in a position of security.” In such a rollercoaster industry, contracts act as stabilizing forces by establishing fixed prices for materials. (“At any given moment in time, month over month, the value of a commodity could drop substantially or rise substantially, and you’re at the whims of that as a business,” which is not a new side effect of Operation National Sword, says Kattar.) Eco-Cycle might not make as much money as other MRFs when certain commodity prices are high, but by the same virtue, it won’t lose as much when prices tank.

But I want to know about end-markets — where, exactly, my Gatorade bottle ends up after I toss it in my recycling bin in Boulder County.

When I requested records from the County, the names of any brokers or mills the County does business with were redacted. While frustrating, the redactions aren’t nefarious, just a byproduct of business: sharing brokers and mills could jeopardize see RECYCLING Page 10 9

RECYCLING from Page 9

Eco-Cycle’s competitive edge over other MRFs. Kattar says I may never be able to verify the final destination of my plastic bottle. To some degree, we have to trust what the County’s brokers tell the staff, and what the staff tell us — its an effect of having a competition-based market system for our recyclables. “[The brokers] assure us that they’re going to the places they tell us they’re going, and we have the right to check, but we don’t get into their knickers,” Kattar says. “You’d be really surprised how we’ll be selling tons into one mill, and I’ll go to a broker and they can find a backdoor into the same mill and get a better price.”

Preceding China’s ban, the County had also redrawn its contract with Eco-Cycle for the first time since 2001. This shifted Eco-Cycle from a costplus contract to a fee-based contract, which caused Eco-Cycle to assume control of its own finances and operate using the MRF’s income as an enterprise, rather than charging the County for all its costs.

“They’re operating very efficiently because they are now cost-driven. They’ve got to think ahead and they have to budget more intensely,” Kattar says.

The County has made efforts to prioritize processing volume over profits by keeping the fees for using the facility low. “We’re trying to bring in more volume rather than bringing in more profit,” Kattar explains. “We’re keeping our costs controlled so that we attract more tons and keep them from going to the landfill.”

Altogether, Kattar says, “We’re so much more of a business than most municipal plants, it’s kooky.” But that’s, in part, how it has survived.

The future of recycling

This combination of investments in cutting-edge technology, restructuring the business, prioritizing contracts, educating the community about and implementing programs like Universal Zero Waste, and maintaining low processing fees has kept Boulder at the top of the state’s recycling performance metrics for years. In the fourth-annual “State of Recycling and Composting in Colorado’’ report published at the end of 2020, Boulder County again bested other counties on the Front Range with 37% of municipal waste being recycled (second only on the state level to Pitkin County with a 38% recycling rate).

Statewide, however, recycling rates dropped to 15.9% in 2019, down from 17.2% in 2018, and Colorado continues to lag far behind the national recycling rate of 35%. “On average, Colorado residents recycle and compost only 1.1 pounds per person per day, while residents in leading states like Oregon and Washington recycle 3 pounds per person per day — nearly three times more than Colorado residents,” the report states.

It’s clear recycling plays an important role in reducing the demand for virgin resources, drawing down emissions and mitigating climate change, but the last five years of upheaval in the market have shown the current state of recycling is not enough. Even in Boulder County there’s room for improvement as far as increasing input volume and community participation go.

To boost recycling rates on a state level, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment published a literature review on July 1 for the Colorado General Assembly that investigates the topic of producer responsibility programs, which could shift the costs of recycling onto manufacturers and away from taxpayers — adding significant funding streams to recycling operations and the ability to expand proven participation-enhancement strategies like curbside pickup. In doing so, the state would be following Maine, which became the first in the country to pass legislation requiring an extended producer responsibility program for packaging products this July. And Oregon isn’t far behind.

Recycling isn’t the end-all-be-all solution to climate change, but it’s a piece of the larger puzzle. While I may not know exactly where my recycling ends up, I can understand it in the context of capitalism, subject to market forces and institutional networking. To throw a Gatorade bottle in my recycling bin is to participate in an intricate, international, profit-driven industry; it’s what’s available to us now, but it’s far from perfect.

After that hot summer day at Eco-Cycle in 2019, I found a small news story in the Daily Camera: “After whatever is damaged is repaired, they should be OK,” a firefighter told a reporter who’d evidently beat me to the MRF. The stockpile is gone now, but the recycling keeps coming in.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

COURTESY CALIFORNIA GUITAR TRIO

ON THE BILL: King Crimson with Special Guest California Guitar Trio. 7 p.m.

Monday, Aug. 2, Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, 6350 Greenwood Plaza Blvd., Greenwood Village. Tickets are $49.95-$160,

I

t’s a bit of humor, really, and not necessarily of deep artistic import, but the graphic accompanying the social media announcement of dates for this summer’s King Crimson tour features a horned lady in vaguely Tudor garb, a bunny in her lap, attended by an owl and a deer, smiling Mona Lisa-ish in front of what looks like a golf course.

“Music Is Our Friend” captions the unsettlingly placid scene, and for anyone who recalls the graphics of Crim’s early albums — Red or In The Court of the Crimson King or Starless and Bible Black — the whole thing seems to tease at irony, or perhaps more troubling, a late-stage symptom of... whimsey?

instrumental music and (at least in the States) club-going audiences’ reluctant embrace of non-jazz, singerless acts. Their association with Fripp and King Crimson have afforded them exposure lesser ensembles may not enjoy, but they have long stood as a substantial draw on their own.

CGT’s success has been buoyed in part by peppering their live sets and albums with a deft selection of covers to keep audiences periodically grounded in familiarity, and their wide embrace of stylistic adventures, ranging anywhere from ’60s pop to surf to Bach etudes. We’re not certain, but

California Guitar Trio, mostly

Paul Richards talks about 30 years in an acoustic guitar triad and suspicions Robert Fripp might be channeling some later-life chill

by Dave Kirby

comes to mind about King Crimson, helmed for more than half a century by the deeply serious guitarist Robert Fripp and whose current incarnation represents something like post-rock electric chamber music. Maybe the graphic’s message is just a reminder that we’ve all missed live music, and live music has missed us too.

Paul Richards, one-third of the California Guitar Trio (CGT), is understandably happy to be out on the road again, and tallies bonus points for restarting live work opening for Fripp and Co. “Yeah, and what a great way to be re-introduced to concerts opening for King Crimson,” he says over a phone interview.

Richards, of course, has a long history with Fripp and Crimson, extending back more than 30 years when he was a student at one of Fripp’s Guitar Craft intensive study programs in the late 1980s, and his trio has opened for Crimson several times in the ensuing duration. He has worked with Fripp as recently as this past spring.

“Over the past year, one of the things I’ve been involved in has been working with Robert on some online guitar seminars, and I’ve been on the staff. So, I’ve been in touch with him a fair amount over the last year.”

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

The core of Fripp’s instruction, and the technical backbone of Richards’ and CGT’s guitar work, is new standard tuning (NST), which, at this point, is neither new (Fripp has been playing in this tuning since the early ’80s), nor would few workaday guitarists understand it as standard.

Guitarists of varying facility move commonly between tunings — by itself that’s not novel, but NST, which traditional tuning), does compel some unique fretboard architecture and sonorities, which gives CGT’s original compositions, and even some of the re-imagined covers they’ve long been known for, a distinctly spacious and expansive sound. Richards has been playing NST more or less exclusively since graduating from Fripp’s course.

“Yeah, I think it’s one of the things that has kind of set us apart from other guitar groups and guitar ensembles,” Richards says. “I think that one of the things it does for us, even if we do a surf cover, playing it NST makes it a different thing. The chord voicings are different … Basically, it’s tuned to a C major pentatonic, containing all the notes in the scale, so in a way it’s tuned somewhat like a cello or other stringed instrument.”

That Richards, along with fellow CGT’ers Hideyo Moriya and Bert Lams, have managed to sustain an acoustic, and instrumental, guitar trio (all original members) for 30 years is a quietly remarkable achievement, given the music industry’s generalized skepticism toward l

JULY 29, 2021

cover “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and their three-voice read staple.

Richards actually refers to his neighborhood in L.A. as a reference point for the band’s stylistic reach.

“I’ve been living in West Hollywood with my wife for seven years or so, and just recently I was walking through the neighborhood, and I was looking at the architecture,” he says. “You have one house that’s like an English Tudor house, then a French farmhouse, then you have a building like a tiki hut, then a super modern house — and they all fit together. And I thought this is like California Guitar Trio repertoire, the diversity of architecture and how it all works together is very close to what we’ve been doing with CGT for the past 30 years.”

And it should be noted, they have accomplished this all without resorting to cheerless clinical displays of technical ferocity or the somnambulance of the kind of acoustic guitaring associated with the New Age wave of the ’80s and early ’90s, which was well established at the time of CGT’s inception. Equal parts composition, deeply informed arrangements, an unwavering allegiance to the collective mission and technically precise playing that manages to sidestep dry mechanics and slips elegantly see CGT Page 14 l

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COURTESY CINEMA GUILD ON THE BILL: The Second Annual Mimesis Documentary Festival, Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Tickets and information at mimesisfestival.org.

The art of the real

Round two for the Mimesis Documentary Festival

by Michael J. Casey

S

Documentary Festival (MDF) takes over the Dairy Arts Center’s cinemas for a simultaneous return and debut. A return as this is the second summer MDF will immerse viewers in screenings, workshops and conversations, and a debut be an in-person event. Not everyone plans to debut in the middle of a global pandemic, but MDF soldiered forth, bringing its artist-focused, community-oriented programming to the virtual world.

Some reliance on virtual lingers as this year’s featured artist, the great will not be able to attend in person.

Instead, MDF will screen three of Vitalina Varela, Horse Money and Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? with Costa Zooming in for post-screening discussions.

Tired of Zoom? No worries, MDF is bringing Lynne Sachs in for the opening night festivities with a screening and conversation about her latest, Film

About a Father Who — a portrait of her father that ends up looking like no portrait at all.

Pulling from home video and footage shot between 1965 and 2019 (on tal), Film About centers on Ira Sachs, a successful bohemian businessman who worked out of a shoebox, looked at Park City, Utah, the way others looked at a tropical beach and had an Achilles heel for women. Sachs finds asymmetry in her father’s story, but the longer the cameras roll, the more Film About becomes her story — and her sibling’s story. At one point in the movie, Sachs describes it as “looking at something from the inside and outside.” The more you watch, the more contradictions you find and the more your assumptions are punctured. programming. Costa and Sachs may

and graft.

Gifford, who has been hailed as “William Faulkner

be the headliners, but most MDF takes shape in thematic blocks, 20 in all, each featuring a handful of shorts and features tackling a common theme from diverse perspectives. Take the Images, ing how humans and animals transform the landscape around them — and how information transforms the landscape of a narrative. Many movies playing MDF navigate the line between what we think we know and what is true, but Emma Piper-Burket’s Driving Dinosaurs stands out for its playful work-in-progress approach. with that level of playful investigation.

Screening in the Sister Cities block, Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago, from is a collage of Gifford’s writings, archival footage and narration telling how the Windy City came to be through corruption

and the bulk of Roy’s World concerns growing up in the 1950s, when the postwar boom was reshaping the American landscape and demographics. As Gifford’s words roll off the soundtrack, Christopher stitches together a river of images — still photographs, animation, newsreels and industrials — to compliment Gifford’s prose. Winters never looked this cold, newspapers never looked this culpable, and Mayor Daley’s cronies never felt so real.

There are more than just a few passing similarities between Roy’s World and A Film About a Father Who, not to mention any number of the 100 features and shorts screening at MDF. That’s the disparate the perspectives, the more alities and connections emerge.

CGT from Page 13

between easy genre buckets.

And a little nod to the unexpected.

The band released their 16th long player, Elegy, in the late spring of last year, sadly orphaned of any tour support. Featuring an evocative three-part original suite commissioned by a Portuguese music festival and inspired by three rivers that hour east or Porto (“Guadela Trilogy”), the album also features covers of some of the band’s favorite composers, one Beatles tune, and a galloping read of “Diamond Head,” one of the Ventures’ big hits from the ’60s. Ever the democracy, where each player brings in tune suggestions to the collective, we made the reasonable guess that Richards — the only American in the trio — brought that one in.

“I’ve always been a big fan of surf guitar music, but Hideyo was the biggest 14

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fan,” he says. “The Ventures were like the Beatles in Japan, so when he was learning to play guitar as a teenager, that’s what he wanted to do. He played in a surf rock ‘n’ roll band as a teenager, so he really had the surf thing down.”

We asked Richards what he thought of the new breed of fingerstyle guitar players, the percussive, fretboard-tapping, flying harmonics school of solo acoustic guitar. One of its stars, of course, is Boulder’s own Trace Bundy.

(After meeting Bundy at a festival in Bend, Oregon, CGT is working to put together some shows with him.)

“It has been really interesting to see these guys, like Trace and Andy McKee, really blow up on YouTube,” Richards says. “Part of it is, it’s really amazing how much sound they can make as a solo guitarist, and then they add that JULY 29, 2021

percussive element. We’ve been doing some shows with the Montreal Guitar Trio, and one of those guys is really great at that percussive element, so when we’ve played with them, he brings a little of that into the mix. And another guy we’ve played with, Trevor Gordon Hall, we’ve done some shows with him as well.”

Unfortunately for this leg of Crimson opening dates, the California Guitar Trio will be appearing as California Guitar Duo-and-a-half. While most of the world is sitting back watching the Olympics on TV from Tokyo, Hideyo Moriya is more or less quarantine-restricted in his native Japan (COVID’s not over, kids) and can’t make the trip. Richards and Lams will be joined by erstwhile CGT collaborator and Chapman Stick player Tom Griesgraber, filling a role that’s l

been seated in the past by Crimson’s Tony Levin, the Chapman Stick maestro with whom CGT has almost as long as a relationship with as that with Fripp.

And as for Fripp, Richards credits extending past the fretboard.

“He is a really... serious guy,” Richards says. “He also has a big sense of humor. ... Studying with him, I was totally maybe ‘easy-going’ isn’t the right term, but maybe a little less scary and serious.

“If you’ve seen any of the videos he’s done with his wife (wherein Fripp and his wife Toya Wilcox goof on the likes of Metallica, GnR and Mötley Crüe), it really shows a side of him that most people have never seen before.”

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E V EN TS

Hope for Justice presents Human Trafficking Awareness Workshop.

EVENTS

6 p.m. Thursday, July 29, E. Simpson Coffee House (Upper Room), 201 E. Simpson St., Lafayette.

Register via Eventbrite: bit.ly/372Ah36 With school and social interactions increasingly taking place online, there are ample opportunities for grooming.

Education is the key to preventing it. How do we educate and protect our kids? What do predatory signs look like?

How do we respond? This presentation is geared to equip and empower you.

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email the arts and culture editor at crockett@boulderweekly.com

Venardos Circus.

July 29-Aug. Outworld Brewing, 1725 Vista View Drive, Longmont. Tickets: $16.50-$46.50, venardoscircus.com/longmont

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2014 at the Los Angeles County Fair. Created by former Ringling Bros. Ringmaster Kevin Venardos, the show featured a cast of six artists in a kind of Broadway/circus musical. In the years since, Venardos Circus has reinvented the American circus tradition for a new generation — no animals, all human talent. Enjoy acrobats, contortion, comedians and more.

Boulder Fine Art Street Festival.

10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday, July 31 and Sunday, Aug. 1, 1710 29th St., Boulder, bit.ly/3zEQ7wO Presented by Howard Alan Events (HAE), a national producer of juried art shows, the Boulder Fine Art Street Festival at 29th Street represents original, hand-crafted artwork from more than 100 national and international artists. The outdoor art gallery will feature photography, ceramics, glass, wood, handmade jewelry, collage and more. Artists will be on-site for the duration of the festival to talk about their art and answer questions.

U.S. REP PRAMILA JAYAPAL

‘From Past to Present’ presented by Cultural Caravan.

KRISTIN GORNSTEIN

7:30 p.m. Friday, July 30, B2 Center for Media, Art and Performance at the Roser ATLAS Institute, 1125 18th St., Basement Level 2, Boulder. Free, culturalcaravan.org Mezzo-soprano Kristin Gornstein is joined by leading

Author Talk: Tim Higgins — ‘Power Play.’

5 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1. Virtual Event presented by the Boulder Bookstore, boulderbookstore.net Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley. To some he’s a genius and a visionary; to others he’s a mercurial huckster. Billions of dollars have been gained and lost on his tweets; his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids. But for all his outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel, his most audacious vision is the one closest to the ground: the electric car. A story of power, recklessness, struggle and triumph, Power Play is an exhilarating look at how a team of eccentrics and innovators beat the odds — and changed the future.

Hear author Tim Higgins speak about his book at this virtual event hosted by Boulder Book Store.

the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado for an immersive journey from the 17th century into the present day. Featuring music by John Dowland, Henry Purcell, John Tavener, Benjamin Britten and Caroline Shaw.

Motus Theater presents Undocumonologues: Stories From Our Undocumented Neighbors — with Rep Pramila Jayapal.

5 p.m. Friday, July 30. Via Zoom, register at motustheater.org

and Motus Theater for a special Immigrant Heritage Month performance where Motus’ undocumented monologists invite you, via Zoom, into their homes to share autobiographical stories about their dreams, hopes and fears. Their artfully crafted monologues interrupt the dehumanizing and racist anti-immigrant narratives around our nation and challenge people to acknowledge the danger to us all from the current threats facing the undocumented community and take action. see EVENTS Page 18

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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EVENTS from Page 17 ZACHARY ANDREWS

Post-pandemic ‘Pericles’ The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is rehearsing like it’s 1609

by Emma Reynolds

A

EVENTS

fter a year of isolation and loss, nostalgia is in full swing: the re-emergence of Friends, Sex and the City, JNCO and low-rise jeans remind us of a time before surgical masks and delta variants.

There’s a yearning for the past, even at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF).

Now in its seventh iteration, CSF’s “Original Practices” tradition stages a play in much the way a theater would have during Shakespeare’s time.

But what exactly was theater like during the late 16th and early 17th centuries?

For starters, “the modern director didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s day,” explains Heidi Schmidt, dramaturge (a type of literary consultant) for CSF. Instead, an actor in the play took on a managerial role to simply “keep things organized and on track,” she says.

This year, Schmidt is assisting in CSF’s Original Practices production of Pericles.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre was written in 1608-9, during the end of Shakespeare’s career. It was published many years after some of his more well-known (according to present day audiences) dramas, such as Macbeth and Hamlet.

Schmidt admits that CSF actors can only recreate the traditions and cultural norms so much in the Original Practices performances.

“It’s not the same thing — it can’t be the same thing — but it’s fun to try,” she says.

Because Shakespearean-era theater companies didn’t have access to universal lighting, performances were always outdoors in the afternoon. This means that “the audience was lit just as much as the actors,” Schmidt says.

CSF’s Pericles performances start at 7 p.m., and as the sun goes down, the crew will turn up the house lights so the actors can continue to see the audience, creating intimacy between performers and spectators.

“We talk to the audience, we interact with the audience,” Schmidt says. “We expect the audience to talk back sometimes and respond in certain ways. The audience is really a character in the play.

“The idea that the audience should be invisible and quiet and voyeuristically observe what’s going on onstage, that’s really an invention of the late 19th, early 20th century,” Schmidt explains. “That was not part of the deal in Shakespeare’s day.” (Many believe this treatment of the audience to be an invention of the famous 19th-century German opera composer Richard Wagner, who, Schmidt explains, believed the audience was “meant

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ON THE BILL: ‘Pericles,’ showing Aug. 1-3 at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, is sold out, but waitlisting is available at cupresents.org

to be reverent in the face of immense art.”)

Schmidt helps the actors analyze the script “for any opportunity to involve the audience... to invite them into the storytelling.”

Soliloquies shift from being “an actor talking to themselves” to “an actor talking directly to the audience” and asking them for advice. It’s interactive... sort of.

“It’s not that we’re asking the audience to get up expected to be present.”

THEATER

To be fair, the expectations for actors in an Original Practices performance are elevated as well.

For one thing, they only get part of the play — a “cue script” where, rather than a full script, an actor has only their character’s lines, plus the few words immediately

preceding as a cue.

In addition to working with partial scripts, CFS Original Practice actors only get to rehearse for 20 hours.

Compared to the 125-140 hours that the actors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Odyssey are getting this year, this is a “very, very fast rehearsal practice,” Schmidt night.

But Schmidt’s excited that Pericles will be “wildly under-rehearsed,” as it creates “an energy and a rawness” for both the audience and the actors.

“There is that unknown quality [where] you’re just not sure what’s going to happen,” Schmidt says. “As you can imagine with 20 hours of rehearsal... sometimes memorization is not quite as 100% as you would expect from a 140 hour rehearsal production.” As the only person with a full script, Schmidt stands at the side stage through performances, feeding actors cues when necessary — some like to call out “Prithy lady Heidi” when they get stuck.

JULY 29, 2021

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Pericles was selected for the Original Practices performance because it’s a lesser known Shakespeare play.

“If the assumption is that the actors don’t get the full script... that’s a little easier to mimic if it’s a play that isn’t Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet,” Schmidt says.

Pericles is rarely taught in high school and even college-level courses. Though it was one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays during his time, today it is often dismissed as not sounding like classic Shakespeare.

“We have completely different expectations from characters” and other things than Shakespeare’s audiences did, and, Schimdt points out, “‘good theater’ is subjective and very contextual.”

To its credit, Pericles with shipwrecks, riddles and fantasy.

“It’s such a departure from the heavy, intense, [and] deeply psychological meat of King Lear or Hamlet,” Schmidt says. “This one is much more loosely aligned with fairy tale and romance and epic adventure, and because it is so fantastical, it is easy to dismiss.”

Though Pericles was selected originally for the 2020 season, perhaps the past year presents the play in a more relevant light.

Schmidt cites a moment in the play when Pericles and his daughter are reunited, and they refuse to believe it. There’s “a mistrust of good news” that Schmidt says she “understand[s] differently than when I started working on this play two years ago... It’s easy to mistrust when you get something back, and that resonates really hard this year.”

Much like the story of 2020, with hundreds of thousands dead from COVID, Pericles doesn’t exactly have a completely happy ending either.

“Pericles doesn’t get everything back,” Schmidt says, “but he gets a lot of it back.” see EVENTS Page 20

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EVENTS

EVENTS from Page 18

MUSIC

Caffe Sole, 637 S. Broadway St., Boulder:

50 Shades of Blue.

7-9 p.m. Thursday, July 29.

Wrapping up the Summer Sundown series is 50 Shades Of Blue, a savory gumbo of funkalicious blues and R&B made from Dan Crecco’s New Orleans tinged drums and percussion, Christine Webb’s soulful vocals and solid bass lines, and Doc Seely’s mastery of all things with six strings.

Dru Heller Quintet with Ron Miles. 7 p.m. Friday, July 30.

Art Lande and the S Band. 7 p.m. Saturday, July 31.

Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder:

Vocal Marvel.

2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, July 31, Grace Gamm Theater. Tickets: $22.60.

This performance will feature a variety of show tunes, pop music, jazz and the brand new featured a cappella group, Vocal Marvel — a miscast night of fun and entertainment for the whole family.

Louisville Downtown Street Faire, downtownlouisvilleco.com/street-faire

Gasoline Lollipops. 5:30 p.m. Friday, July 30. Tickets: Free.

Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder:

Mike Wird & Plain N’ Simple. 8 p.m. Saturday, July 31. Tickets: $20-$25.

License No. 1, 2115 13th St., Boulder:

The Mighty Twisters. 9 p.m. Saturday, July 31. Tickets: Free.

Boulder Bandshell, 1212 Canyon Blvd., Boulder:

Colorado Music Festival: Ivalas Quartet. 7-8:30 p.m. Saturday, July 31.

Tickets: Free.

DV8 Distillery, 2480 49th St., Boulder:

Dream with Us Concert.

6-9 p.m. Friday, July 30.

Get excited to dance the night away with some amazing DJs, artists and dedicated to empowering people to realize their full potential regardless of gender or sexuality.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

MAT KEARNEY

Chautauqua Auditorium, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder:

Mat Kearney with Rob Drabkin.

6:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 2. Tickets: $35$50.

Nashville-based, Oregon-born Mat Kearney is back with his new studio album January Flower. Written between an isolated retreat in Joshua Tree and his home studio, January Flower sees Kearney in his rawest form, distilling the songwriting process and rediscovering the joy of making music.

Colorado Music Festival: Hadelich Plays Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.

July 29 and 30. Tickets: $48-$75.

Colorado Music Festival: Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. 6:30 p.m.

Sunday, Aug. 1. Tickets: $48-$75.

CMF: Brooklyn Rider. 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Aug. 3. Tickets: $48-$75.

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Stone Cottage Studios Backyard Summer Concert Series, stonecottagestudios.com:

Pete Muller & The Kindred Souls Join Stone Cottage Studios on Thursday, July 29, presenting a special, hybrid acoustic show featuring Pete Muller & The Kindred Souls. Doors open at 6:30 P.M. and the show begins at 7:00 P.M., rain or shine. Ticket buyers are welcome to bring their favorite seating (lawn chairs, blankets, pillows), drinks and a picnic. Please note that all ticket holders are will have to show ID upon entry.

CHRIS COLLINS

BDT Stage, 5501 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder:

Chris Collins with Alex Mitchell: A Tribute To John Denver.

6 p.m. July 29, 30, 31 and Aug. 1 BDT Stage, 5501 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder.

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Now Sharing a Single Vision

BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: What does it mean to feel real? Some

people have a hard time doing that. They have such false ideas about who they are that they rarely feel real. Others are so distracted by trivial longings that they never have the luxury of settling into the exquisite at-home-ness of feeling real. For those fortunate enough to regularly experience this treasured blessing, feeling real isn’t a vague concept. It’s a vivid sensation of being conscious in one’s body. When we feel real, we respond spontaneously, enjoy playing and exult in the privilege of being alive. After studying your astrological potentials, Aries, I suspect that you now have an enhanced capacity to feel real.

TAURUS

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SAGITTARIUS

MAY 21-JUNE 20: I suspect that your immediate future will

be a patchwork of evocative fragments. You may be both annoyed and entertained by a series of flashing attractions or an array of pretty baubles or a hubbub of tasks that all seem at least mildly worth doing. Chances are good that they will ultimately knit together into a crazy-quilt unity; they will weave into a pattern that makes unexpected sense. In the spirit of the spicy variety, I offer three quotes that may not seem useful to you yet, but will soon. 1) “Isn’t it possible that to desire a thing, to truly desire it, is a form of having it?” — Galway Kinnell 2) “It is not half so important to know as to feel.” — Rachel Carson 3) “Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.” — Pema Chödrön

JULY 23-AUG. 22: Leo poet Renée Ashley articulates a per-

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NOV. 22-DEC. 21: Suggested experiments to try soon: 1) Remember a past moment when you were touched with the sudden realization that you and a person you’d recently met were destined to fall in love. 2) Remember a past moment when you kissed someone for the first time. 3) Remember a past moment when someone told you they loved you for the first time or when you told someone you loved them for the first time. 4) Allow the feelings from the first three experiments to permeate your life for five days. See through the eyes of the person you were during those previous breakthroughs. Treat the whole world as expansively and expectantly as you did during those times.

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: Capricorn poet Kenneth Rexroth was shirt-

less as he strolled along a rural road. To his delightful amazement, a fritillary butterfly landed on his shoulder, fluttered away, landed again, fluttered away — performed this dance numerous times. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. Later he wrote, “I feel my flesh / Has suddenly become sweet / With a metamorphosis / Kept secret even from myself.” In the coming days, I’m expecting at least one comparable experience for you. Here’s your homework: What sweet metamorphoses may be underway within you — perhaps not yet having reached your conscious awareness?

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: “Each time we don’t say what we want to

LEO

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SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: Scorpio author Andrew Sean Greer writes, “As the Japanese will tell you, one can train a rose to grow through anything, to grow through a nautilus even, but it must be done with tenderness.” I think that’s a vivid metaphor for one of your chief tasks in the coming weeks, Scorpio: How to carefully nurture delicate, beautiful things as you coax them to ripen in ways that will bring out their sturdiness and resilience. I believe you now have an extra capacity for wielding love to help things bloom.

JUNE 21-JULY 22: A Tumblr blogger named Cece writes, “The fact that you can soak bread in sugar, eggs, cinnamon and vanilla, then butter a pan and fry said bread to make a meal is really liberating.” I agree. And I share this with you in the hope of encouraging you to indulge in other commonplace actions that will make you feel spacious and uninhibited.

You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll thrive on doing day-to-day details that excite your lust for life. Enjoying the little things to the utmost will be an excellent strategy for success.

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SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: Now is a fantastic time to seek out effervescent socializing and convivial gatherings and festive celebrations. If you surround yourself with lively people, you’ll absorb the exact influences you need. May I suggest you host a fun event? If you do, you could send out invitations that include the following allures: “At my get-together, the featured flavors will be strawberry chocolate and impossibly delicious. There’ll be magic vibrations and mysterious mood-enhancers. Liberating conversations will be strongly encouraged. Unpredictable revelations will be honored. If possible, please unload your fears and anxieties in a random parking lot before arriving.”

APRIL 20-MAY 20: When she was a child, author Valerie Andrews visited her secret sanctuary at sunset every day for seven years. She lay on the ground among birch trees and aromatic privet plants, feeling “the steady rhythmic heartbeat of the earth” as she basked in the fading light. I’d love for you to enjoy the revitalizing power of such a shrine.

The decisions you have to make will become clear as you commune with what Andrews calls “a rootlike umbilicus to the dark core of the land.” Do you know of such a place? If not, I suggest you find or create one.

CANCER

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spective I recommend you adopt. She writes, “I’m drawn to what flutters nebulously at the edges, at the corner of my eye — just outside my certain sight. I want to share in what I am routinely denied or only suspect exists. I long for a glimpse of what is beginning to occur.” With her thoughts as inspiration, I advise you to be hungry for what you don’t know and haven’t perceived. Expand your curiosity so that it becomes wildly insatiable in its quest to uncover budding questions and raw truths at the peripheries of your awareness.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: “There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person,” declared Virgo actor Greta Garbo (1905–1990). “It is not right that you should tell them,” she concluded. “You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.” I presume Greta was being melodramatic. My attitude is the opposite of hers. If you find allies who listen well and who respect your vulnerability, you should relish telling them the secrets of your heart.

To do so enriches you, deepens you and adds soulful new meanings to your primary mysteries. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to seek this wise pleasure in abundance.

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say, we’re dying.” Aquarian artist and singer Yoko Ono said that. I will add a further nuance: Each time we’re not aware of the feeling or experience or situation we want, we’re dying. And these will be key themes now that you’ve entered the “I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND I KNOW HOW TO ASK FOR IT” phase of your cycle. The most healing and vivifying thing you can do during the next six weeks is to be precise about your desires.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: In 1829, Piscean author Victor Hugo

began work on his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

He had other projects, though, and by September 1830, he had made scant progress on Hunchback. Growing impatient, his publisher demanded that he finish the manuscript by February 1831. In response, Hugo virtually barricaded himself in his room to compel himself to meet the deadline. He even locked his clothes in a closet to prevent himself from going out. For the next five months, he wore only a gray shawl as he toiled nonstop. His stratagem worked! I recommend you consider trying a somewhat less rigorous trick to enforce your self-discipline in the coming weeks. There’s no need to barricade yourself in your fortress. But I hope you will have fun taking stringent measures.

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Dear Dan: I’m a gay male in my 40s and I’ve been married to my husband for nine years. There was some mild around on him the whole time we’ve been together?

—Scratching Head And Meat Dear SHAM: Whether or not you stay Fast forward a few years and he gets depends on what you’re willing to tolerate, SHAM. You were willing to tolerate being it was most likely from the married to a guy who had ROMAN ROBINSON volunteer work he does in cheated on you in the disa homeless shelter. I let tant past. Can you tolerate it go again. Fast forward being married to a guy who has most likely cheated on you in the recent past and — given his track record — will probably cheat on you again in the future?

Answer that question, SHAM, and you’ll know what to do.

As for the new case of crabs, SHAM, sure, it’s possible your husband got them during a non-sensual sleuthing revealed there was another guy massage — if the place wasn’t clean, if they reuse towels and sheets without washing admitted to all of this only after I showed them, if they don’t disinfect the massage table.

I don’t know why anyone would wanna get a

lives. At the time we talked about having my life with someone who lies to me so

last four years have been great. We never

he got them. This has obviously brought

your husband isn’t so choosy.

But I gotta say... it seems far likelier that your husband, a man who lied to your face the last time he got crabs, is lying to you again. Crabs — pubic lice — are almost always transmitted during pubes-to-pubes contact, e.g., someone who has crabs grinds their crotch against the crotch of someone who doesn’t have crabs and then they both have crabs. That doesn’t necessarily mean your husband had sex with a body worker. He may have gotten one of those full-body-contact massages that involve the masseuse stripping off and rubbing his body all over his client’s body — and while I think that kind of massage

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(and rationalize) differently. ...Good luck.

the forefront and I’m questioning so many things. I feel like the only way I’ll ever get

Dear Dan: —Settle This Argument Dear STA: The government.

Send questions to mail@savagelove.net, follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage, and

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COURTESY RIVER AND WOODS

Summer s’mores secrets

Upgrade the common campfire treat with homemade marshmallows and bean-to-bar chocolate

by John Lehndorff

S

’mores — originally created to feed large groups of Girl Scouts — contain one key ingredient that has long been considered an aphrodisiac.

Ironically, the foundation of this all-American treat was baked to suppress sexual urges.

appeared in 1927’s Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts and included 16 graham crackers, eight bars of milk chocolate and 16 marshmallows. It suggestcrackers and chocolate.

S’mores are quick to make, cheap and sweet, but frankly, totally bland and boring. Just as we’ve outgrown Wonder bread and embraced sourdough artisan loaves, mature taste buds need something more nuanced than the Hershey’s-Stay-Puffed-Nabisco combo.

Local restaurants and food and drink companies have long played with the s’mores formula in various tasty ways. Boulder’s River and Woods restaurant table, house-made marshmallows and graham crackers (including a gluten-free variation) with Chocolove chocolate bars.

Meanwhile, Boulder’s Wild Woods Brewery pours S’mores Stout, an extra dark ale aged with cocoa nibs, and Table Mountain Farm near Golden ships s’mores kits featuring soft cinnamon grahams, vanilla marshmallows and salted dark chocolate goats’ milk caramel sauce.

Making More of Common S’Mores If you’re going to dive headlong into all the calories, sugar and carbs in (Don’t worry, I promise I will still be fun.)

Start by ignoring those weird, white, air-injected things that sit in plastic bags for months on the shelf at your supermarket. Admittedly, commercial marshmallows do burn well to produce that blackened effect we love. However, until you taste your own homemade mallows, you can’t comprehend how great they can taste (and burn).

When he isn’t making ice cream with liquid nitrogen, Chef Ian Kleinman of Denver’s The Inventing Room Dessert Shop makes serious candy from scratch including edible paper, lollipops, pop rocks, chewy compressed cotton candy

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

“Making marshmallow at home isn’t that complicated if you have a stand mixer,” Kleinman says.

Kleinman’s recipe: 1/2-ounce plain gelatin powder (found in the boxed dessert section) 5 tablespoons cold water 3/4 cup corn syrup 1/3 cup water 2 cups white granulated sugar the whisk, combine them for a minute. In a deep saucepan, heat the sugar, water and corn syrup. Bring to a boil and boil on high for two minutes. Caution: Very hot! Add to the gelatin mixture and whisk for about 10 minutes until the bowl is cool to the touch.

It will be a moist, stiff texture. Spray a loaf pan with oil. Wet your hands (or a spatula) the top with plastic and chill for at least a few hours in the fridge. Slice the marshmallow while it’s cold into bars and nuggets. You can jazz up your mallows by layering or sprinkling them with powdered espresso, cocoa or ground freeze-dried fruits.

Abstinence demands a better cracker It’s true. Minister and health food advocate Sylvester Graham created his cracker to be so bland it wouldn’t arouse any yummy tingly thoughts. It did not work. Modern grahams are tastier and sweeter than his but still pretty nothing, even the organic ones.

One simple tweak, says Kleinman, is to put graham crackers in your home smoker for Instead of store-bought, consider baking your own regular or gluten-free graham crackers. Recipes abound online.

Graham alternatives include whole wheat British “digestive” biscuits, ginger snaps, vanilla wafers and chocolate wafer cookies. to make your s’mores.

able. You want the right technique so the chocolate begins to melt before the outside becomes a smoking husk. Kleinman swears by a handheld torch to make s’mores because it gives him precise control of how burnt they get. They can also be made under a broiler or in a toaster oven. I’ve also had them deep-fried in tempura batter – tasty but messy.

Chocolate — especially good dark chocolate — does contain some stimulating substances including caffeine and theobromine. In choosing chocolate to make more of your s’mores, try upgrading to bean-to-bar chocolate. You feel better about yourself 29.

LOCAL FOOD NEWS

Basil Bowl Thai restaurant is open at 1302 Centaur Village Drive in Lafayette. ... Cluck-n-Burger is serving wings, sandwiches, deviled eggs and street corn from a roadside food truck at 4435 Ute Highway (U.S. 36) in Lyons. ... Coming doughnut attractions: Landline Doughnuts & Coffee is planned for 321 Main St. in Longmont. We miss Estes Park’s iconic Donut Hut. Luckily, the town’s You Need Pie Cafe will open The Daily Donut, a new doughnut factory and shop, in Estes this fall. ...The much-loved Louisville Labor Day Homemade Pie Contest has been cancelled for 2021 due to onat the new Boulder Reservoir eatery after complaints about potential problems from neighbors living nearby.

WORDS TO CHEW ON

“An apple is an excellent thing — until you have tried a peach.” — George du Maurier (1834-1896) John Lehndorff is the Boulder Weekly’s Food Editor.

Comments: Nibbles@boulderweekly.com

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F

ive years ago, Niwot was home to two breweries. Bootstrap Brewing was first to market, with Powder Keg not far behind. But as of last year, there were none. Powder Keg closed in 2018, and Bootstrap outgrew its original location on 79th Street, and owners Leslie and Steve Kaczeus turned their attention to their spacious packaging brewery and taproom in Longmont. But brewing space is never vacant long in Boulder County, and as of July 23, Niwot is once again home to your friendly neighborhood brewery.

“Well, Niwot was kind of random,” Kelly Buenning admits, explaining that she and her husband, Cory, were taking their son to the Niwot Children’s Park when they saw the “For Lease” sign up at Bootstrap’s former location. The two were looking to move back West. Niwot needed a brewery. What more could you ask for?

Fritz Family Brewers — named after their 3-year-old son — is a homecoming for ON TAP: Fritz Cory, who discovered homeFamily Brewers. brewing in the early ’90s while 6778 N. 79th St., at CU-Boulder. He went pro Niwot. Open Monday-Thursday at Brewery in Idaho Springs, 3 p.m., Friday then at Snake River Brewing through Sunday at in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. noon.

While at Snake River, he netted two dozen Great American Beer Festival medals in his 17-year tenure. In 2016, opportunity knocked once more when Cory’s brother-in-law decided to open a brewery, Gravely Brewing, in Louisville, Kentucky, and brought enjoyable change of scenery but, all the while, Kelly and Cory thought about moving closer to Cory’s family, and opening a brewery of their own, one with a focus on community and the taproom experience.

“My husband doesn’t like it when the beer is out of his control,” Kelly says. “When you send it out into the world, you have no idea how it’s stored. You have no idea how long it’s out on the shelf. All that kind of stuff.”

And at Fritz, Cory’s in control. Working with a seven-barrel system and four fermenters, Cory will be able to manage every step of the brew process, even working the bar and pouring pints for customers. And with 16 taps on the wall, there’s plenty of space for

New in brew: Fritz Family Brewers The Niwot brewery gap is no more

by Michael J. Casey

Cory to experiment.

“He likes having the smaller system, so you can make different styles and not have to sit on it for a super long time,” Kelly says. Hazy and West Coast IPAs are to be expected, but, as Kelly says, “He loves himself a German lager,” so make sure to try the helles and the German Pilsner. His Dortmunder — a soft and round pale lager — will soon be joining the tap wall, ideal for warm-weather drinking.

music. They’re just not “conducive to hanging out, having a conversation,” Kelly says. Instead, they aim to make Fritz a communal space that’s “inviting and bright,” with ample seating for everyone to get to know everyone else.

“We want [people] to have a place to come and hang out,” Kelly says. “We’re going more for a family-friendly place where you can bring your kids.”

After all, Fritz Family Brewers exists because they were taking their son to the park. It only seems fair he gets to be a part of things.

West End Tavern’s 13th Annual Jul-IPA Party

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PA is the most popular craft beer style out there, and second place ain’t even close.

And not just because the style is so popular, but because it’s so varied: Bright and bitter, hazy and juicy, session, imperial, triple, black, red, white, wheat, rye, Belgian — the list goes on. When it comes to beer styles, IPA is a workhorse.

So it’s high time you break out of your standard IPA rut and discover something new. Lucky for you, West End Tavern will be hosting its 13th annual Jul-IPA rooftop party on July 31. They’ll have IPAs from 14 brewerwithout a few local favorites: Bootstrap, Crystal Springs, The Post and more. Tickets are $35 and include food and live music — more information at thewestendtavern.com.

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COURTESY MOKSHA CHOCOLATE

BY JOHN LEHNDORFF

TASTE OF THE WEEK: S’mores soar with local bean-to-bar chocolate

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ROM MALLOMARS to Moon Pies to cannabis edibles, we love

Moksha Chocolate Dark Chocolate 72% (Peru)

Cultura Craft Chocolate 70% Whiskey and Nibs

Other Recommended Colorado Bars: Fortuna Chocolate Dark 75% (Mexico)

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Looking good on paper

iest, strongest approach to legalization.

Even so, he admits the “bread and butter” of his business at Canna Advisors depends on states doing exactly the opposite.

“The majority of the work that we do as consultants is actually competitive licensing,” he says.

When states limit the number of cannabis licenses, it can often box out smaller businesses and entrepreneurs in favor of applicants that have more resources. In Connecticut, for example, the state government elected to issue just four cultivation licenses for the entire state when it legalized cannabis. It was the first state to have a truly merit-based application process, Czarkowski says — and it was extremely competitive.

Most small businesses and entrepreneurs cannot compete on paper with established, well-resourced, firmly-backed big businesses or wealthy investors applying for the same licenses. And it really does come down to looking good on paper, according to Czarkowski.

He explains there’s four main components to a successful application in any state. The first is having a good team; the state will want to know that applicants have all the job positions lined up with qualified people. The second is financing. Czarkowski says the state needs to know that applicants actually have the capital necessary to get their venture started (and to check that they aren’t on any IRS naughty lists). Then the state looks at an applicant’s real estate. Because

In states that limit cannabis business licenses, applications are insanely competitive — this Boulder company helps

by Will Brendza

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egalizing marijuana is not a one-size-fits-all process for states.

Some cautious states are choosing to only legalize medicinally, while their neighbors leap at the opportunity to go full rec. Some states allow dispensaries to sell cannabis they grow themselves, while others require totally separate licenses for cultivation and dispensing. Some states, like California, have created as many as 20 different cannabis business-license classifications (like retail, distribution, cultivation, manufacturing, medical use, adult use, testing, etc.), while other states, like Alaska, offer just a handful.

One of the most significant policy distinctions between states with legal cannabis is whether or not they choose to restrict the number of cannabis licenses issued. If they do, that makes it incredibly competitive for hopeful business-owners to obtain a license and break into the industry. According to Jay Czarkowski, a founding partner at Canna Advisors, it also dramatically affects the shape and nature of a state’s legal cannabis industry.

“The fact that there was never any artificial limit on licenses in Colorado allowed for a true capitalistic program to develop where the strong survive — those that provide the best product at the best price with top notch customer service, thrive,” Czarkowski says.

“And that’s how I always feel this market should be: an open market that lets the cream rise to the top.”

Czarkowski is a cannabis entrepreneur, investor, advocate and longtime Boulder resident. He co-owned Kind Care medical dispensary in Boulder with his wife and business partner, Diane, from 2009 to 2012, and he believes the unlimited license model is the health-

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many municipalities or counties prohibit cultivation or distribution of cannabis, having real estate ready for business, in an area that will allow it, goes a very long way on a license application.

Finally, Czarkowski says, is the application itself.

“The application is typically a very robust document, many hundreds of pages, sometimes over a thousand, and it’s really important to put everything in that application: all the ways you’re going to do business and operate under the rules and regulations,” he says. “It’s a tedious job creating these applications.”

That’s where Canna Advisors comes in. The company offers consulting services for cannabis brand and business development, compliance advice and guidance for businesses growth, but it also helps groups in other states win these competitive limited license applications.

In fact, Canna Advisors’ first limited-license job was in 2013 for a group of entrepreneurs out of Westport, Connecticut — where the four-cultivation-license limit was implemented statewide.

“So we went to work with these guys and actually won one of those licenses,” Czarkowski says. “We were successful.”

That was just the beginning in a long sequence of successes. Canna Advisors helped win four more limited cannabis business licenses in Massachusetts in 2013; and in Missouri, Czarkowski says the firm helped secure 34 (roughly 10%) of the state’s limited licenses for their clients.

Canna Advisors still has a lot of potential business coming down the pike. Czarkowski says he believes New York in particular is going to be very competitive, as well as New Jersey and Alabama.

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