Boulder Weekly Vote Guide 10.7.21

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Boulder Weekly’s annual guide for how to vote in November

by Boulder Weekly Staff

Pat Metheny shares a few thoughts about his instruments and keeping a light touch

by Dave Kirby

nibbles:

Be a taste tourist during Restaurant Week and find new favorite Boulder dining spots

by John Lehndorff

weed:

LifeTonic’s groundbreaking new solventless cannabis extraction technology is faster, safer, certified organic and patented to high hell

by Will Brendza

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departments 7 Letters: Signed, sealed, delivered, your views 10 Stews Views: Dead & Co’s cancellation of Florida shows demonstrates the true spirit of the Grateful Dead 35 Words: September Dawn 36 Events: What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do . . .

42 Astrology: by Rob Brezsny 43 Film: Newly released ‘Lamb’ and newly restored ‘Possession’ welcome in the horror movie season 49 Beer: 1265 Pilsner is a keeper 51 Taste of the Week: Heirloom garlic @ Wee Bee Farms 53 Savage Love: Quickies BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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PROUDLY ENDORSED BY

Pagada por / Paid for by Together with Nicole Speer

I'm Dr. Nicole Speer

an accomplished scientist, committed parent, successful businesswoman, and champion for inclusion. I’m running for Boulder City Council because our city needs experienced, values-driven leaders to make progress on our biggest challenges.

Soy Dra. Nicole Speer

una científica reconocida, madre responsable, empresaria exitosa y campeona en inclusión. Estoy postulándome para ser concejal de la Ciudad de Boulder porque nuestra ciudad necesita líderes experimentados(as/ es) y motivados(as/es) con valores que nos ayuden a progresar en nuestros más grandes desafíos.

Concejo Municipal de Boulder

As your city councillor I will...

Como su concejal voy a…

Boulder City Council

Endorsements | Aprobaciones

Use 10+ years of financial management experience and my progressive values to guide budget decisions.

Utilizaré mis valores progresistas y habilidades que he obtenido con más de 10 años de experiencia financiera para organizar las prioridades del presupuesto de la ciudad.

Advocate for diverse and affordable housing options for all members of our community.

WORKING FAMILIES PARTY

Apoyar alternativas con respecto a la diversidad de viviendas asequibles para todos(as/es) los(as/es) miembros(as/ es) de nuestra comunidad.

Lead on climate by reducing emissions and prioritizing safety, preparedness, and resilience in all city policies.

Dirigir con urgencia el cambio climático al reducir las emisiones y dándole prioridad a la seguridad, preparación y resiliencia en todas las políticas de la ciudad.

LEARN MORE / APRENDER MÁS:

NicoleForBoulder.com

UNITED CAMPUS WORKERS

Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief, Brendan Joel Kelley Managing Editor, Caitlin Rockett News Editor, Will Brendza Food Editor, John Lehndorff Contributing Editor, Angela K. Evans Contributing Writers: Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Jim Hightower, Jodi Hausen, Karlie Huckels, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Sara McCrea, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Katie Rhodes, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman 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

October 7, 2021 Volume XXIX, Number 9 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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Open Space, CU South and civil rights: A first step towards “Just Sustainability” in Boulder

by Timothy Thomas

D

ear council candidates, I thank you for having the courage and tenacity to run for Boulder City Council. The vast majority of you have received endorsements from one of two blocks of political campaign committees, the “environmental” block consisting of PLAN-Boulder and Forward Boulder, and the “justice and sustainability” block which includes groups like the Sierra Club and Boulder Progressives. As a long time Black resident of Boulder, I ask: Why would you pursue and accept the endorsement of PLAN-Boulder?

I have observed the fierce public debate regarding CU’s plans for its South Boulder property, which include the construction of up to 1,100 units of badly needed affordable housing. But I think most people are missing the fact that this is not simply an environmental issue. It’s also a racial and social equity issue which

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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requires equitable planning.

The American Planning Association describes equitable planning projects as those that pursue “the triple-bottom-line outcomes of environment, equity, and economy.”

This three-legged policy stool forms the very foundation of the concept of sustainability. Unfortunately, many Boulderites limit their definition of good policy mostly to impacts on land and animals and in the case of CU South specifically, of flooding.

Internationally renowned urban planning professor Julian Agyeman seeks to change this paradigm by asking activists and politicians to seek policy outcomes that achieve Just Sustainability. This framework adds two more legs to the three-legged Sustainability stool: Geographic Equity and Procedural Equity. see OPINION Page 8

OCTOBER 7, 2021

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OPINION from Page 7

This requires us to extend our concept of “community” beyond the borders of Boulder. Such an approach would seem reasonable if people truly cared about the environment and President Biden’s liberal agenda, including fair housing.

A U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) webpage states that on its first days in office, the Biden administration “declared that the affirmatively furthering fair housing provision in the Fair Housing Act, ‘ . . . is not only a mandate to refrain from discrimination but a mandate to take actions that undo historic patterns of segregation and other types of discrimination and that afford access to long-denied opportunities.’”

The federal law, which was originally part of the 1964 Civil Right Acts, mandates the city “to do more than simply not discriminate; they must take meaningful actions to overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities.” In addition, Boulder must “determine who lacks access to opportunity and address any inequity among protected class groups” and “promote integration and reduce segregation.” This report is called the “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing.”

Boulder’s 2015 report mentions PLAN-Boulder as “a strong citizens lobby interested in land preservation” and that “over 45,000 acres within the City have been preserved as open space.”

But it also states that: “the two major implications” of the open space program “on housing choice have been a decrease in housing affordability and choice because of less available land and what is termed ‘leap frog development’ in which in-commuters must travel farther— across open space from other communities—to access jobs and services in Boulder. Leap frog development adds transportation costs for those who must commute. It is estimated that 59,000 people commute to Boulder for work.

According to a robust 2014 Housing Choice Survey, approximately half of in-commuters would choose to live in Boulder.”

In addition, the draft of the City of Boulder’s recently enacted Racial Equity Plan states that “Some ways the city government has strengthened and increased racial inequity include: Heigh[t] Restrictions . . .

The Green Belt—Buying up the open space around Boulder in an effort to preserve nature creates restricted 8

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movement in and out of Boulder and drives up cost of housing due to limited residential parcels” as well as “Zoning” and “Gentrification . . . to preserve natural landscapes, without replacement of housing . . . ” This is an open admission that the preservation of “open space” and other restrictions have an adverse effect on racial equity (the language was softened in the final version).

The policies, procedures and practices that the Save South Boulder (SSB) campaign and PLAN-Boulder insist upon solely in the name of environmental protection are not sustainable and they are unjust. In a city that a PLAN-Boulder co-chair recently called a “liberal bastion,” shouldn’t racial and social equity be considered in land-use policy?

CU South will take hundreds of cars off the roads, provide affordable housing and do so in a socially just way by allowing a more diverse faculty and staff to teach a more diverse student population. This will lead to higher levels of regional geographic equity and do so in a procedurally equitable way. Building on vacant land (aka open space) surrounding our city would do the same. People need places to live near where they work and learn, not just places to walk their dogs and play Frisbee golf.

Please oppose SSB’s and PLAN-Boulder’s socially and racially exclusionary housing policy initiatives on CU South and city land. If SSB and PLAN-Boulder really cared about sustainability, not merely environmentalism, they would seek more balanced solutions to CU South and the myriad other land use issues in Boulder.

A long time Black Boulder resident gave an interview to Boulder Weekly in an article titled “Black in Boulder: Boulder racism through the eyes of people of color.” She said, “I think generally speaking, people in Boulder pride themselves on being very liberal, very progressive. On top of that, they’re very well-off overall. I think that idea of liberalism sometimes blinds to the notion of where people in this community contribute to the perpetuation of white privilege or white supremacy—even if they aren’t of mind or heart a person who thinks that these other people are less than.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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

OCTOBER 7, 2021

MEET SAFER BOULDER My family recently moved to Boulder with our now seven-monthold daughter. In the 1980s I lived here for several years at 4th and Pearl and loved the community and its spectacular natural parks and public spaces. When I returned to Boulder, a brief walk down the Boulder Creek path started to bring up memories of why I left the San Francisco Bay Area and decided never to move to either Los Angeles, Portland, or Seattle. Boulder had become overtaken by “homeless encampments.” Boulder Creek looked more like a slum than a beautiful walking path. Crime and break-ins at local restaurants and homes were at an all-time high; and so were acts of violence against city residents from individuals brandishing knives and machetes while strung out on meth and other drugs.

Shay Castle’s Twitter feed and article in Boulder Weekly, “Who is Safer Boulder? How a shadowy group became a powerful force in Boulder politics,” try to infer some nefarious intent by a group of local Boulder residents who all have children and are concerned about the crime and drug abuse in our city. We are also concerned about the environmental hazards being visited upon our community by a group of individuals who refuse to partake of the services provided by local homeless shelters. Is it wrong for us to suggest that parents should not have to walk down the Boulder Creek path in fear of being accosted by individuals who are completely spaced-out on drugs? Is it wrong of us to be concerned that up until the Boulder Police Department cleared the encampment under the Boulder Library that thousands of drug syringes (YES THOUSANDS!) were littering our parks within feet of children’s playgrounds?

During a presentation this April by Director of Boulder County Parks and Recreation Ali Rhodes and Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold to the Boulder City Council, they showed photos of the hundreds of stolen bicycles and propane tanks and thousands of drug needles that the Boulder Police and Parks Department employees had to clear from l

these encampments. They spoke of how these efforts were taking a great toll on our city and county employees, as well as presenting both health and wildfire risks.

The very diverse Boulder City Council unanimously then voted to support the Boulder camping ban as a result of these facts and presentations. Is it wrong for people who share the same desire of most residents to enjoy Boulder’s natural beauty by wading in or tubing in Boulder Creek without the fear of it being used as a mass toilet by the encampments along the way? If Shay’s concerns are sincere for the “displaced” she must also share concern for the law-abiding citizens that want to preserve their environment and public spaces.

I have no doubt that both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans all share a common love for their children and concern for their safety. This is one issue on which we can, and should, unite as a community. So who is “Safer Boulder”? Well, we will tell you: many Boulder families who just want a safer place to live for our neighbors and our children. So why does Shay Castle want to demonize us, including Boulder City Council candidate and father Steven Rosenblum? Some people have even taken up creating false websites attributing quotes to Steve that he has never made. Has the new narrative of the far left become so perverse that we can now demonize families that simply want to take action to protect their children? We all have a responsibility to help our fellow residents who have fallen on hard times with true needs. Many of the people who support Safer Boulder have made donations to the Boulder Homeless Shelter, including myself. But the people we are seeing on our streets and public parks refuse to partake of our community shelters and support because they are committed to continuing their drug use, polluting our environment, and committing crimes against our citizens.

Those who have chosen to champion the cause of lawbreakers do not have the right to deprive the vast majority of citizens of their rights to live in a clean, healthy and safe community.

Brett Kingstone/Boulder

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Dead & Company’s cancellation of Florida shows demonstrates the true spirit of the Grateful Dead

By Stew Sallo, aka The Deadhead Cyclist

W

hile in the midst of a critically acclaimed, 31-show tour, supergroup Dead & Company suddenly announced on September 28 the cancellations of its sold-out October 6 and 7 shows in West Palm Beach and Tampa, Florida. The citation of “routing and production logistics” rings hollow, given that the State of Florida appears to have been singled out as the location of the only canceled shows of the tour, while the remaining 13 shows in states from coast to coast (including Colorado) are expected to be held as scheduled.

There is a lyric in the Grateful Dead tune “Bertha” that couldn’t be more apt in this context: Try to see what’s going down / Maybe read between the lines For the uninitiated, Dead & Company is the latest and most successful of a series of bands to be handed the Grateful Dead baton since the death of band leader and countercultural guru Jerry Garcia on August 9, 1995. For the casual observer, Garcia’s death merely took its rightful place in the interminable list of popular music figures fallen prey to the hazards of the rock star lifestyle.

For us Deadheads, there was a feeling of panic, a sort of “what are we going to do now?” moment, the sort that shakes you to your core and threatens your very identity.

This led to the inevitable question: Could there be a Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia? My knee-jerk reaction at the time was an emphatic NO! And I became increasingly steadfast in that position as I faithfully attended post-Grateful Dead concerts by bands like The Dead, the Other Ones, and Furthur. In each case, despite lineups including various surviving members of the band, I was left with feelings of emptiness, sadness, and disappointment—particularly after hearing another member of the band sing one of Jerry’s songs.

Then came the 2015 50th Anniversary “Fare Thee Well” shows, all five of which I faithfully attended and wrote about at length, most nota-

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bly in a piece entitled, “Ladies and gentlemen, not the Grateful Dead.” While the preceding post-Jerry bands exhibited the propriety of refraining from calling themselves the Grateful Dead, this group was actually billed as the Grateful Dead, and in many ways was less worthy of the moniker than its predecessors.

But a funny thing happened on the way out of Chicago after the final show on July 5. John Mayer, a brilliant guitarist better known as a

pop star, had become infected with the Grateful Dead’s music and culture, and formed an unlikely collaboration with founding member, rhythm guitarist, and lead singer Bob Weir. Consequently, Dead & Company was born. The band played its first show together on October 31, 2015, and included Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, along with bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti.

I have seen Dead & Company a dozen times now, and have found a new favorite band.

Not because they are the closest replica of the Grateful Dead to date, but because they’re a great band in their own right. Instead of trying to be the Grateful Dead, Dead & Company is the next evolution of the Grateful Dead, in much the same way that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young grew out of Buffalo Springfield and The

OCTOBER 7, 2021

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Byrds, and Led Zeppelin and Cream grew out of The Yardbirds. Dead & Company is its own band, while keeping the vibe and music of the Grateful Dead alive for a new generation of fans and longtime Deadheads alike.

After a pandemic-forced hiatus in 2020, Dead & Company announced a full concert tour in 2021, and out of deference to the safety of their fans, crew, and themselves, subsequently restricted attendance to those who are vaccinated or can present a recent negative COVID-19 test. The tour went on without a hitch, and along the way two shows were added at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, which makes the two cancelled Florida shows seem all the more suspicious.

To read between the lines of the allusions to “routing and production logistics,” we must travel back in time to May 3, 2021, the date on which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law Senate Bill (SB) 2006, which prohibits Florida businesses from requiring proof of vaccination as a precondition of service.

But more recently—in the midst of Dead & Company’s tour—the State of Florida doubled down on its May 3 statute: Effective September 16, a $5,000 fine per incident can be assessed to any business requiring customers to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination.

And this despite the fact that infections in Florida have skyrocketed over the summer, as the state has been one of the hardest hit areas in the country from the Delta variant in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.

What this means is that hundreds or even thousands of individuals could show up for a Florida concert, sans proof of vaccination, and the band and its promoter, Live Nation, would have a choice between admitting them and turning the concert into a “superspreader” event or facing millions of dollars in fines (just 1,000 such incidents could lead to a fine of $5 million).

This is what reading between the lines means when applied to the phrase “routing and production logistics.” What choice was there but to cancel these shows to indemnify the band and promoter from a financial nightmare, while protecting tens of thousands of fans from exposure to a potentially deadly virus?

Nevertheless, this decision has unleashed a firestorm of debate that follows suit with various pandemic-induced controversies that have afflicted all of us for the past 19 months. Unfortunately, even among the hippie-infused culture of the Grateful Dead, the discourse has turned hateful and largely divided along party lines. One fan criticized the band for taking action that can only be seen as politically motivated:

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

“This is a really stupid decision. Did you see the of around $4 million in revenue), for within this ballots during this political campaign. It matters CDC just announced that college football games decision we find a model of putting the needs who we place in a position of power and trust, and are not super spreader situations? 85,000 people at of the public ahead of the desire for wealth and too many of our political “leaders,” Ron DeSanthese events, no vax proof needed. This is a political political power. The Grateful Dead always placed tis included, are not worthy of the trust we have statement by the band and it’s super lame.” financial gain in its proper place, beneath higher placed in them. We need to do a much better job Much of the criticism focused on the financial priorities. In this situation, Dead & Company of choosing who will represent us—whether on a losses fans would suffer due to the timing of the has proven itself to be the worthy carrier of that local, state, or national level. Let that be the silver announcement (not understanding that the $5,000 still-burning flame. lining of Dead & Company’s decision to cancel fine provision was enacted less than three weeks Please keep that in mind as you cast your their 2021 Florida shows. prior to the concerts): “These things should have been worked out before they announced the concerts; that’s responsibility to your fan base. Their fans have spent good money on flights and plenty of non-refundable things, and this is wrong!”

Others defended the band and directed the blame towards Florida’s state government: “Everyone bummed out by this should direct their negative feelings toward Gov. Ron DeSantis. Say what you want and think what you want, but they would still have been playing if not for the Gov’s stance.”

Finally, the point was made that the state’s policy left the band and YES - Ballot Question 300 promoter no choice, due to the reality of insurance logistics: Bedrooms are for People info: “GA pit [referring to the general adbedroomsareforpeople.com mission section of the venue immediately in front of the stage] has to be vaxxed, according to the band’s insurance plan for the tour. He [DeSantis] outlawed asking YES - Ballot Question 301 for a vaccine card, so no show. No rumors End the sale of animal furs in here, all facts.”

What is especially revealing about the City of Boulder. the way Florida Governor DeSantis Info: furfreeboulder.com has handled pandemic-era leadership in his state is summed up in a comment made by his spokesperson, Taryn NO - Ballot Question 302 Fenske. In defense of the decision to enact a $5,000 fine for violations of Flood protection now for SB 2006, Fenske echoed the rallying cry of Donald Trump’s ill-fated 2020 2,000 residents. reelection campaign, saying, “Promises Info: protectourneighbors.org made, promises kept.”

This face-off featured DeSantis’s adherence to Trump’s failed COVID-19 policies versus Dead & Company’s commitment to the safety of their fans through sensible policies. It is truly unfortunate that PAID FOR BY SIERRA CLUB INDIAN PEAKS UCC many fans will miss the chance to NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY CANDIDATE OR experience a terrific band and the PAID FOR BY SIERRA CLUB INDIAN PEAKS BM CANDIDATE COMMITTEE most authentic Grateful Dead concert experience of the post-Grateful WITH 4,000 MEMBERS, THE SIERRA CLUB INDIAN PEAKS GROUP IS THE MOST Dead era. But the band should be INFLUENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP IN BOULDER COUNTY. PLEASE JOIN US TODAY, admired for its courage and sacrifice AND BE A PART OF THE FIGHT FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE. WWW.SIERRACLUB.ORG (it is estimated that the cancellation of these two shows represents a loss

ENDORSEMENTS

EXPLORE, ENJOY AND PROTECT THE PLANET

CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATES

BALLOT QUESTIONS

Matt Benjamin

Lauren Folkerts Dan Williams Nicole Speer

OTE THE ENVIRONMENT!

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OCTOBER 7, 2021

David Takahashi

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VOTE 2021

SAMPLE BALLOT 2021

Boulder Weekly’s annual guide on how to vote in November

B

oulder County, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Brendan, and by the time you’re reading this, I’ll have been editor-in-chief of Boulder Weekly for a mere six weeks, which is also how long I’ve had more than a passing familiarity with the region you call home.

Fresh eyes are an advantage when coming into a role like this in your community. I didn’t have preconceived notions about the issues facing the municipalities here, or a group of local politics. I’ve been learning and analyzing as I meet politicians and activists who span the unique political spectrum that’s evolved here.

Those same fresh eyes have been applied to understanding the intricacies and nuances of the political issues and their historical context here, to help you navigate your ballot on November 2, when municipal-, county-, and state-level decisions will be made by you, the voters.

Thankfully, I’m not alone in this endeavor, wherein Boulder Weekly’s editorial staff spoke with every candidate for every race in Boulder County and researched every question that will appear on the various ballots.

BW Managing Editor Caitlin Rockett has been with the paper nearly eight years; she was a Boulder resident for four years but was priced out and retreated to slightly more affordable digs in Denver.

My wife and I both commute to Boulder from a Denver suburb for work, and Caitlin’s a commuter too. We’re part of a bloc of this community that doesn’t get a vote on Boulder issues, yet is a critical factor in nearly all of the city of Boulder’s issues—we’re part of the 60,000-member workforce that comes in like a tide, spewing our paying sales tax on what we buy while we’re here.

BW News Editor Will Brendza will mark up a City of Boulder ballot on November 2. Will has been a Boulder resident for a decade, since he came here to attend CU Boulder and decided to make this place home. Few if any of his classmates did the same, due to the cost of living and the fact this place doesn’t offer much to a single person in their mid-20s

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just trying to launch their career.

All three of us identify with values that are labeled “progressive”—equal opportunities, equitable social justice, offering a hand up to our neighbors in need . . . That’s who we are, and values, morals, and ethics.

I’ve always found newspaper endorsements annoying. Most are presented as the paper’s opinion: a monolithic corporation as faceless and nameless marionnettiste offering its direction for the community where you live, work, and play. We’re not one of those newspapers. Boulder Weekly continues to be the only independent and locally-owned newspaper in Boulder County.

What we offer you in this Vote Guide blends our wealth of experience covering local governance with our impressions gleaned after one-on-one conversations with the candidates, as well as ballot questions’ proponents and opponents. We took a deeper look than you may have the time or resources to pull off.

Though our choices for these races are highlighted throughout this issue, we offer our preferences as informed suggestions, and a starting point for an ongoing dialogue. For what it’s worth, our decisions on candidates were unanimous, as were our calls on ballot questions. To learn more about these candidates and issues, we’ve provided links to candidates’ websites in the online version of this story at boulderweekly.com Some of you will disagree with our choices; that’s a given. But we’d like to make this the opening of a dialogue with our readers. There are three more issues of BW before the election on Tuesday, November 2, and we encourage you to write in and tell us where we hit the mark or where you think we’re completely off in our analysis of these ballot questions. We’ll dedicate extra space in that interim to the most incisive and acute feedback we receive, whether we agree with the conclusions or not.

We look forward to your feedback and your reactions to our takes here. Send your evaluations to us at letters@boulderweekly.com —Brendan Joel Kelley BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

CITY OF BOULDER BOULDER CITY COUNCIL Matt Benjamin Michael Christy Jacques Decalo Lauren Folkerts Steve Rosenblum Nicole Speer David Takahaski Mark Wallach Dan Williams Tara Winer Boulder as a concept, as the best place to live in America, as a liberal lodestar, is untenable. That facade conceals a community divided between those trying to protect a 50-year-old vision of this city as an environmental wonderland and those who see the necessity of change to correct the damage wrought in pursuit of that same vision.

There are two competing visions of Boulder, that’s readily apparent. One is of a Boulder now decades in the past, when a question like “Do the citizens really think that Boulder should try to accommodate everyone that wants to move here?” might not have reeked so much of classism against the tens of thousands of people who come here to wait our tables, to tune up our $5,000 bicycles, to teach our children, or to write in our newspapers.

In the present day, though, the damage is done: Boulder is already a white, wealthy, exclusionary enclave, not a welcoming progressive paradise.

The competing, forward-looking vision of Boulder strikes us as considerate of what the City of Boulder could be if it were truly comchange, and one side of the political divide here in Boulder seems wary if not downright scared of changing what was created 50-plus years ago.

Look, we appreciate the open space and the Blue Line and the height limit and how radical those ideas were for their time. But today Boulder faces challenges that demand even more revolutionary ideas. Expanding housing density without compromising environmental and lifestyle ideals, embracing and encouraging diversity in the community, providing effective, compassionate services to the less fortunate among us—these are all issues we believe are solvable with fresh ideas and an awareness that change is inescapable (our friends at Naropa would remind us that impermanence is the cornerstone of the Buddha’s teachings).

We believe it will take innovation and idealism to reverse course—coupled with pragmatism and experience, yes, but not in equal amounts.

For those reasons, we’re supporting Matt Benjamin, Lauren Folkerts, Nicole Speer, Dan Williams, and Mark Wallach for city council— the four candidates running as a progressive slate along with the single incumbent on the ballot, who’s proven his ability to thoughtfully dissect issues and change his mind when warranted.

MATT BENJAMIN

Matt Benjamin, a freelance astronomer, ran for city council in 2017, but felt his candidacy pulled support from other candidates

with similar aims and values. In 2019, instead of running again, Benjamin headed The Coalition, an assemblage of further-left political groups challenging the long-in-power slowgrowth majority on the council, and chalked up three wins by Coalition-supported candidates.

In 2020, Benjamin chaired the successful campaign to directly elect Boulder’s mayor using a type of ranked-choice voting.

This year The Coalition has endorsed Benjamin’s run for council, and we concur that Matt’s time has come. He says his work in the community supporting candidates and ballot measures and serving on city working groups showed him a potential that Boulder’s failing to pursue. “We’re just not on the trajectory to meet those aspirational goals,” he says.

Benjamin is an advocate for rethinking zoning to address not just affordable housing in Boulder but middle-income housing for young working families. He’d like to see Boulder invest in a program like Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) to use mental health professionals to respond to calls instead of police, when appropriate. And in building the Boulder of the future, he envisions eliminating parking requirements and instead providing access to non-driving transportation options. And right off the bat, Benjamin says he’d work to pass increased gun control measures in Boulder.

“I want to leave this community better off than I found it, so that my kids and their generation have the building blocks in this community to thrive and meet their generation’s challenges,” he says.

NICOLE SPEER

LAUREN FOLKERTS

it sooner rather than later, she says, adding, “There are going to be a lot of hard changes we’re going to have to make in order to deal with the climate emergency.”

We can act tomorrow, she says, but tomorrow might be too late.

Speer comes off as an idealist and a big-picture thinker—that’s because she is.

She’s aware that her biggest priorities and the issues that are most important to her are issues that Boulder has been wrestling with for years, even decades: equity, housing, homelessness . . . But to Speer, that’s all the more reason to start addressing them now, and we at Boulder Weekly concur.

As a career-long architect, Lauren Folkerts sees the world in terms of how places and spaces shape behavior. It’s a perspective that she believes would make her a useful city councilmember, because it also lends her insight into building codes, zoning, carbon footprints, and community access. on the issues facing Boulder, but on many of the possible solutions to address them.

When asked about affordable housing, she starts listing stats: how nearly 60 percent of Boulder workers commute here, and how that affects our environmental footprint and sense of community within the city. She talks about reformatting Boulder’s use-tables, and rezonaffordable housing options. When asked about think the city offers enough services for its homeless population. She talks about re-establishing Boulder’s day center to give those experiencing homelessness a place to stay and charge their devices and get some food, but also to create a central location where service providers can locate and connect with those they’re trying to provide services to.

Folkerts is sharp, well-informed, and has a clear vision for what she believes Boulder needs. She’s unwavering in her own beliefs, ground when it comes to working through some of Boulder’s more contentiously argued progress-minded but also realistic. And while she has big ideas for Boulder’s future, she’s also familiar with the often tedious nitty-gritty details of city governance and its processes.

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There are people who self-identify as “active community members” and then there are people like Dr. Nicole Speer, who embodies the description. When Speer isn’t running the Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium at CU’s Institute of Cognitive Science, where she teering at weekly homeless outreach programs or working with the NAACP to promote equity and inclusion efforts at CU. In fact, on the topic of equity and inclusion, she is the only Boulder city council candidate who translated her campaign into Spanish, a testament to her dedication to include minority and underrepresented populations in Boulder.

Speer’s got big ideas for addressing Boulder’s biggest issues. When it comes to housing she believes that every available option should be in play, from expanded occupancy limits to tiny homes and ADUs to buying (much like the city did with open space). When it comes to homelessness, she’s against the camping ban and for safe camping and safe parking policies. She’s also wary of increasing that doesn’t mean she won’t support the police, she does want to shift spending away from that direction.

When it comes to the hot-button topic of CU South’s annexation by the City of Boulder, Speer says she is all for it. As a resident of South Boulder, she sees the problem as a matter of “the perfect getting in the way of the good.” Her neighborhood and those that sur-

MARK WALLACH We believe in the importance of balancing idealism with realpolitik, and that’s the reason incumbent councilman Mark Wallach is once again receiving Boulder Weekly’s support. the council, and while he’s proud of the work that he was able to accomplish, he says that he didn’t get to really address the issues he ran on. Between COVID-19, college riots, and a mass shooting here in Boulder, Wallach’s local emergencies. That’s why he says he’s running for a second term, despite repeatedly likening his position to the myth of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill.

Wallach is pro-affordable housing, but against the Bedrooms are for People (BAFP) measure on the ballot. He believes BAFP will only serve to force rent prices up, push single families out of Boulder, and make landlords wealthier than they are now. He says that’s why he’s been working to advance the municipal airport planning reserve housing project OCTOBER 7, 2021

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so in a second, if elected. He calls the airport a local “amenity for rich white hobbyists” and he thinks it would much better serve the community if it was developed as permanent affordable housing instead.

Wallach supports the camping ban, and is an advocate for more enforcement of it and more police funding. He recently voted to increase the Boulder Police Department budget by $1.5 million and says that the city isn’t obligated to provide any additional services beyond what it’s currently offering to address homelessness.

Despite those positions, which are contrary to our own, we’re supporting Wallach again for one pivotal reason: He can change his mind. It’s something he demonstrated with his vote on the annexation of CU South. Wallach was against the annexation agreement for a very long time, but after extensive research, hours of testimony, and many meetings on the topic, Wallach wrote an op-ed explaining why he was going to break with his previous position and vote in favor of the annexation agreement when the council held its emergency vote in September (“Annexed by emergency vote,” Boulder Weekly 9/23/21).

It wasn’t the outcome of his vote that sold us on Wallach so much as the process that got him there. He remained open to all of the information, digested it, and then made his own choice based on the facts in front of him. On top of that, his realism, logic-oriented mindset, and disdain for looking through rose-colored glasses make him a candidate we’d like to see remain on the council.

DAN WILLIAMS

Dan Williams, a litigator, says he didn’t intend to jump into politics even a year ago.

But when he considered what was at stake in this election, his take was grim. “It seems to me the city has really gotten off track. Our wealth disparity’s growing; our population numbers stagnated, they’re actually starting to decline; we’re locking out future generations,” he says. “We’re failing on our racial equity and social justice goals—I mean, Boulder talks about itself as a liberal Mecca, but when you talk to people in POC communities here, that’s not what they’re feeling. I thought, ultimately, I could do a good job pushing our city in a more progressive direction.”

Williams ticks off a list of the human assets Boulder has been losing, “the artists, the musicians, the people who want to launch new companies, the creative types, the people who want to work as massage therapists or work in our restaurants—they’re being locked out now.”

To that end, Williams supports expanding multifamily housing in Boulder in spots like Diagonal Plaza, and also supported the Bedrooms are for People ballot measure which would expand occupancy limits to match the number of bedrooms in the dwelling plus one.

Williams’ wife is a public health nurse who’s provided services for unhoused people, and he approaches that issue with compassion. “If we want to have people who aren’t living by the creek and aren’t defecating by the creek and who aren’t spending their days drinking by the creek or in our underpasses, the solution is to give people safe places to be,” he says. His proposed solutions include a day shelter and designated camping areas; he see VOTE GUIDE Page 14 13

VOTE GUIDE from Page 13 opposes the city’s camping ban.

“Instead of trying to hold on to a past image of Boulder, we have to think about what its future is going to look like,” Williams says.

We wholeheartedly agree.

BALLOT QUESTION 2I: EXTENSION OF COMMUNITY CULTURE AND SAFETY SALES AND USE TAX (TABOR) and BALLOT QUESTION 2J: APPROVAL OF ISSUANCE OF BOND TO BE PAID FROM EXTENDED COMMUNITY CULTURE RESILIENCE AND SAFETY SALES AND USE TAX (TABOR) Yes/For No/Against Boulder Weekly mildly supports a Yes vote on both of these measures. First, some background: The measure asks if Boulderites want to extend a current 0.3 percent sales tax for the next 15 years, with the majority of the money—about 90 percent—funding infrastructure projects, and the remainder going to

be repaid from the sales tax.

The original Culture and Safety tax, passed in 2014, provided 20 percent to local years before voters were asked if they wanted to extend it again in 2017, which they did.

Now, another three years later, voters are being asked if they’d like to keep the tax for a full 15 years, but with half the amount of While there is no formal opposition to (or support for) this measure, a number of organifunding. While Boulder is often touted as an that the city’s funding is paltry compared to percent allocated in the tax is for all local arts groups will be pitted against, say, human increase over previous extensions of the tax.

“It’s trying to loop in too many competing interests that are apples and oranges . . . it gives people a sense that the arts are being supported to a degree which they are not,” says Amanda Berg-Wilson, artistic director of The Catamounts theater company in Boulder.

“The issue is we invest in buildings and not in artists or producers. We have beautiful buildings that are expensive to produce in, and we live in a town in which it’s expensive to live.”

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between the main branch of the Boulder library and the Dushanbe teahouse; $11 million for construction of Fire Station No. 3; $35 million to relocate or rebuild Fire Station No. 2 or Fire Station No. 4; $1.4 million to add Advanced Life Support capabilities to Boulder Fire Rescue; $13.5 million renovate East Boulder Rec Center; $5 million to acquire streetlight system from Xcel and convert to LED lights; and $4 million to refresh Pearl Street Mall.

BALLOT QUESTION 2K: COUNCIL COMMITTEES and BALLOT QUESTION 2M: COUNCIL PAYMENT SCHEDULE

These two ballot measures—one that would codify rules for city council subcommittees that examine particular issues, and one that would adjust city council members’ pay schedule to match that of other city employees—are administrative changes brought forth by the council to smooth wrinkles.

The Council Committees measure would simply write into law the process the council already follows for subcommittees: subcommittees would be limited to two members in most cases, and never have a majority of the council on them; council members who aren’t on the subcommittee can attend meetings but not participate; two council members required for a recruitment committee when the city is hiring a city manager, city attorney, or municipal judge.

The Council Payment Schedule measure would alter council members’ pay schedule from a per-meeting basis of $239.40 (fully dependent on the member’s attendance) to the same schedule as other city employees (but not dependent on the member’s attendance).

The pay wouldn’t increase or decrease, and it would smooth operations for the city’s administrative staff.

Both of these changes make sense, and we encourage a Yes vote on Ballot Questions 2K and 2M. BALLOT QUESTION 2L: CLARIFICATION FOR SIGNATURES FOR PETITIONS Yes/For No/Against

from their current level, and, frankly, it’s hard to get taxpayers excited about funding infrastructure projects. The city certainly needs the money, with city council stating in 2019 that Boulder had more than $300 million in unfunded infrastructure projects. It’s safe to say that this tax won’t actually cover all of the city’s infrastructure projects, but it will get the process started for some major improvements, which include $17 million for transportation (maintenance and improvement of l

$7 million to improve the Boulder Creek Path

Yes/For No/Against

Issue 2J asks voters if it’s okay for the city -

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roads and multi-use paths; replacing the Central

Referendums are required to overturn decisions made by the city council or state government. Currently, Section 46 of Boulder’s City Charter requires 10 percent “of the number of registered voters” sign a referendum in order to validate the petition. Ballot Question 2L would modify that slightly, in order to match the state requirements for referendum petitions. If approved, it would change the requirement to ten percent of the “average number of people who voted in the last two city council candidate elections.” Because this is only meant to align municipal law with state Boulder Weekly supports a Yes vote on this measure. see VOTE GUIDE Page 16

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BALLOT QUESTION 300: BEDROOMS ARE FOR PEOPLE Yes/For No/Against Boulder currently limits home occupancy to three or four unrelated individuals per home, no matter the number of bedrooms in the dwelling.

This ballot measure would alter the law to make the occupancy limit equal to the number of bedrooms plus one individual house, for example).

In a city with a housing crisis like Boulder’s, we feel this is an appropriate step to ease the pressure slightly.

We also believe the members of the new council should, as allowed by law, to enact affordability requirements for ber of unrelated occupants.

Opponents of the Bedrooms are for People measure point to the possibility of unintended consequences should this be enacted as law: predatory developers enlarging houses so they have 12 rooms and become “stealth dorms” and lawsuits from developers to stop the council from amending the law to include affordability measures.

The group opposing this measure argues that Section 54 of the city charter would handcuff the council from making smart changes to the law. That law says the council cannot amend an initiative passed by voters “provided that the amendments do not alter or modify the basic intent of such ordinance . . . ” We understand how that would prevent the council from, say, limiting the number of bedrooms, but in a case where the council amended the law to require that rents in a residence with eight or more people must be 25 percent under market rate, we don’t see how the measure’s stated intent to increase occupancy.

We’re a Yes on Bedrooms are for People.

BALLOT MEASURE 301: HUMANE CLOTHING ACT Yes/For No/Against This initiative would ban the manufacture and sale of many new fur products in Boulder. sure, and hence neutral on picking a side 16

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on this one.

On one hand, we agree that the fur

annexation. They say that CU is using leverage to develop parts of the property

tive’s backer’s website at furfreeboulder. com if you need details.

Yet on the other hand, there are

university would like. They also argue enough.

Opponents of Ballot Question 302, like Protect Our Neighbors, argue that

ufacturing the fur products this initiative be impacted by the ban on selling such products.

This proposed fur ban is a symbolic

it now. With a climate crisis impending, there is no knowing when the next big

science to decide if you’ll cast a symbolic vote to prohibit a problematic industry that we don’t have here in Boulder.

city act sooner rather than later—even if

BALLOT QUESTION 302: LET THE VOTERS DECIDE ON ANNEXATION OF CU SOUTH

Mayor Sam Weaver has repeatedly called this ballot question a “poison pill,” because he says it won’t save anyone,

Yes/Against the current annexation agreement No/For the current annexation agreement On September 21, Boulder’s city council voted to annex the CU South property (“Annexed by emergency vote,” Boulder Weekly, September 23, 2021).

The council wanted to move forward with the annexation agreement with CU as would go to the City of Boulder—119 acres of which will become permanently protected open space, and 153 acres of the property will remain available for CU to develop. The current plan will also residents of South Boulder.

That emergency vote happened several weeks ahead of this November’s election, and it set in motion a series of political events that changed the nature of Ballot Question 302.

Prior to that council vote, 302 would have put the question of annexation entirely in the hands of voters, and would have forced conditions favored by groups like Save South Boulder into the annexation agreement. Those conditions (which are still part of Ballot Question

agreements and permits from all city, county, state, and federal agencies; an lution control plan among several other conditions, all before breaking ground on the site.

Proponents of 302, like Save South Boulder, say that these conditions are standard in other examples of city l

ation agreement, and even if it means

A referendum petition to overturn the city council’s emergency vote is already under way. If 302 is passed, and if that referendum gets enough signatures to overturn the city council vote, then the annexation fails and the city has to move this ballot question. If the referendum doesn’t get enough signatures, the vote on this ballot question becomes merely symbolic.

Conversely, if ballot question 302 is voted down, and the referendum does get enough signatures to overturn the council’s vote, annexation still fails. But the conditions in 302 are null and void and everyone starts over from scratch.

There is no simple way to explain bated issue. But in the most basic sense: a Yes vote on 302 means no to the mitigation and CU construction will have to wait until the conditions are met); and a No vote on 302 means yes to the Boulder needs it now).

Having witnessed the devastation in South Boulder, and having heard testimony from many South Boulder residents on the verge of tears begging city council to act now and save their neighborhoods, Boulder Weekly encourages a No vote on 302. Delaying the annexation of CU South any longer would put those neighborhoods and our community members in direct and imminent danger. see VOTE GUIDE Page 18

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CITY OF LONGMONT

Longmont is no sleepy outpost for commuters into Boulder; it’s a distinct community with a robust arts and culinary scene, expanding secondary educational opportunities, and a number of advanced technology companies.

We don’t have to get bogged down in the exact numbers to tell you what you already know: Longmont’s growing. It’s been growing. And while the pace of growth is a point of contention, there’s no question that the cost of living is going up.

In that way, Longmont is experiencing the same growing pains Boulder has, and is answering the same questions about “who” it wants to be as a city: how it creates affordable housing, how it provides for its unhoused community, how it creates opportunities for education and cultural engagement. Expanding public transportation is a keystone issue in Longmont, particularly since RTD has pushed buildout of the B Line light rail—connecting Boulder and Longmont to Denver—to at least 2042.

Other critical issues around affordable living, sustainability, and livability easily tie into access to transportation.

We focused on these issues primarily in our talks with Longmont City Council candidates, allowing them the opportunity to bring other topics to the table if they chose.

LONGMONT MAYOR Gregory Harris Joan Peck Tim Waters Boulder Weekly supported both Tim Waters and Joan Peck in 2019 (Peck each year since her election to council in 2015), and we’re glad that no matter the course of the mayoral election, both will retain their current seats—Waters as the council member for Ward I, Peck as an at-large council member—through 2023. But we lean slightly in favor of selecting Tim Waters for mayor.

We believe that while Waters is a bit more conservative (he supported increasing the water capacity of the Windy Gap project, which many environmentalists believe is just another er), he’s still progressive, fair minded, policy oriented, and we believe he has the strongest ability to work with people on all sides.

Waters is realistic about the power of a mayor in a “weak” system like Longmont’s: He sees the importance in the sequencing and timing of when issues are brought before council, al18

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lowing some issues to “ripen” as council and the public learn more. He, and most council members we spoke to, wants to continue to provide services to Longmont’s unhoused community, focusing on the Housing First approach

You can only choose two candidates for Longmont council member at large, but we feel there are three candidates worthy of your consideration.

If elected, this would be Sean McCoy’s second term on council, having

those experiencing homelessness.

Like Peck, Waters does not see RTD as the answer to Northern Colorado’s transportation woes; both believe that the Front Range Passenger Rail is the answer, a “blended” project led by the Southwest Chief & Front Range Passenger Rail Commission, CDOT, and a consultant team that would take passengers from Fort Collins to Pueblo on heavy rail. Along with Ward II council member Marcia Martin, Waters supports the creation of a subscription electric bus service that local businesses, like Smucker’s, could buy into to give employees a free, environmentally-friendly option for getting to and from work.

Waters would like to see Longmont partner with Boulder County and other municipalities on a regional solution to solid waste diverging in

Ward III representative. As a school teacher at Monarch High School in Louisville, McCoy is intimately familiar with the needs of the working class.

He believes that the open parking lot at Hover and Nelson roads could be used as a space to build more services for Longmont’s unhoused

and reduce methane gas. He’s also been on the right side of the debate on fracking, vocally supporting SB 181’s mission to empower municipalities with the authority to restrict oil and gas operations, and voting with council to end all surface operation in Longmont (which, we will argue, doesn’t prevent operators from vertically drilling under the city, but we digress).

With a quarter-century career in education (as a practitioner and researcher), Waters is deeply focused on children and education. He believes that affordable access to childcare is a critical component to creating workforce stability, and to fully recovering and evening expanding Longmont’s economy post-pandemic. Waters is also a big supporter of bringing a four-year post-secondary campus to Longmont.

That said, Joan Peck has been a tireless advocate for better transportaas a stronghand for environmental policy. She’s done the job well for six years, and we believe she has Longmont’s best interest at heart.

LONGMONT COUNCIL MEMBER AT LARGE (choose two) Diane Crist Jeremy Dejuan Johnson Sean McCoy Aren Rodriguez Tallis Salamatian Shiquita Yarbrough OCTOBER 7, 2021

mental health and addiction second, then getting people employed.” He’d also like to create a program to digitize important documents, like IDs and birth homelessness, to eliminate the issues often exacerbated when things are lost during encampment sweeps. McCoy believes that Longmont has to look to and affordable housing goals, creating a walkable community that takes cars off the road. He’d like to see all public buildings have solar panels to begin moving Longmont’s grid closer to 100 percent renewable energy.

Born and raised in Longmont, performing musician turned real estate appraiser Aren Rodriguez makes an ideal council member, with a strong understanding of the culture of the town and an equally strong vision for how to shape Longmont’s future. Rodriguez, like all of the candidates Boulder Weekly supports, believes in continuing to provide support for the unhoused community, and rejects Boulder’s approach to criminalizing homelessness through “draconian” measures like the camping ban and encampment raids. He takes a “proactive” approach to improving infrastructure, particularly in historic parts of town where water pipes are sometimes 100 years old.

He looks to practical solutions for sustainability, like creating policies that will include more solar power running through Longmont’s grid, with better incentives for homeowners to install solar. Rodriguez’s ideal solution for transportation would be to pull away from RTD completely and create a special transportation district and work with surrounding municipalities to create a regional transit system.

Shiquita Yarbrough brings a number of critical perspectives to the table: She’s the only candidate running for Longmont City Council who rents; she worked for a number of years as a property manager for the housing authority in Austin, Texas; and, if electl

on council in Longmont’s 150-year existence. Since moving to Longmont in 2012, Shiquita has been deeply involved in the community, managing core programs at the YWCA, serving on the Housing and Human Advisory board, hosting a KGNU program called “Victorious Single Parents,” and co-founding Families of Color Colorado. We think Longmont could use Yarbrough’s perspective, and we believe Yarbrough will develop more solid plans as she has time to grow on council.

LONGMONT COUNCIL WARD II Marcia Martin (unopposed) Though she lacks an opponent, we still support Marcia Martin’s bid to retain her seat as Ward II councilor. In her four years on council, she placed great emphasis on sustainability, helping Longmont commit to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 and advocating for change to Longmont’s policy for solar generators to give homeowners incentive to install rooftop solar. Martin supports the unhoused community in Longmont by advocating for a lower barrier to entrance at shelters. When it comes to transportation, Martin’s “answer is in urban planning for density and the reclamation of asphalt.” She wants to make Longmont a walkable city (by building and repairing sidewalks) and supports negotiating with RTD to use Longmont’s tax revenue to fund intercity transit only, and says she’d insist that future RTD local transit projects be piloted in Longmont instead of Denver.

LONGMONT JUDICIAL RETENTION: JUDGE ROBERT J. FRICK Yes/For No/Against pointed in 2008 as the presiding judge of the City of Greeley, and in the years since he’s served as an associate, assistant, substitute, or special judge for the communities of Edgewater, Elizabeth, Frederick, Greeley, Lakewood, Loveland, Nederland, and Wheat Ridge. Boulder Weekly supports his retention, as we did in 2019, and as same year.

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PAID FOR AND AUTHORIZED BY TARA WINER FOR COUNCIL

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CITY OF LAFAYETTE

LAFAYETTE CITY COUNCIL (choose four) Tonya Briggs Enihs Medrano Nicole Samson Brandon Stites Brian Wong Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 cyber attack that left the city scrambling for ransom money, Lafayette has faced some unique challenges in the last two years. Add those to the city’s ongoing struggles with development, housing, mental health and human services, public safety, oil and gas development, and a changing climate, and it has been a busy term for the city council members— with potentially even busier terms to come.

Many of the issues important to Lafayette’s voters echo those facing other cities in Boulder County: Lafayette is in need of creative solutions for affordable and attainable housing; many residents have been devastated emotionally and economically from the COVID-19 pandemic; local businesses are struggling; and emergency services are under-resourced.

At the same time, the city is striving for sustainability and environmental consciousness. It’s trying to make itself a welcoming and affordable place for people and businesses—a safe place that supports its residents’ needs.

To most of Lafayette’s city council candidates, those are among their top priorities to address, should they be elected. Some have other unique goals, but they all acknowledge that the “small-town feel” of Lafayette is essential to its character—something they’re determined to maintain.

There are just five candidates running in Lafayette—Tonya Briggs, Brian Wong, Nicole Samson, Enihs Medrano and Brandon Stites— all competing for four City Council seats. And with several incumbents running, plus a grant administrator and a couple of young, up-andcoming local activists, it’s shaping up to be an interesting race.

And not just because it’s a musical-chairs-style vote with five candidates and just four open seats, but because all five of these candidates bring different passions for their city to the table, different perspectives, and, in many cases, unique ideas for solving the challenges that face Lafayette.

We chose our top candidates based on the clarity of their visions for Lafayette, the direction they’d like to see the city move in, their experience, and their history with the city.

TONYA BRIGGS (INCUMBENT) Tonya Briggs grew up in Boulder County, and has lived in Lafayette with her family for 13 years. She fosters cats, dogs, and sometimes chickens.

But perhaps the most telling detail about Tonya Briggs’ personality and political candidacy is that she’s a plumber against pipelines.

She and her partner own a local plumbing business, but she’s vehemently opposed to gas pipelines and the oil and gas development that comes with them. She puts environmental stewardship over almost any other priority.

Except, she says, over protecting Lafayette’s mobile home parks and their residents. She understands how hard (and expensive) it is to live in her community, and wants to find ways to make it easier for people who work there to live there.

As a small business owner herself, Briggs understands the struggles and needs that other local businesses have. She says she enjoys helping business owners in her community navigate processes like assembling grants or obtaining business licenses.

Briggs has served two years on the Lafayette City Council and she’s excited about the direction that the city is moving in. Although Lafayette’s Comprehensive Plan won’t be published until January 2022, she says she’s hopeful it will finally give the council a real opportunity to dig into zoning code issues, and housing initiatives in the coming years.

ENIHS MEDRANO As the youngest candidate running for a seat on Lafayette’s city council, what Eniihs Medrano, 20, lacks in experience she makes up for with her passion for social change. Medrano grew up in Lafayette and is currently a junior-year student at CU, studying sociology.

As a young Latina woman, she believes that her representation is badly needed on Lafayette’s city council. Not only would she be bringing a Gen Z perspective to a generally older council, but she’d also bring the perspective of a Hispanic community member— who account for 16.4 percent of Lafayette’s population.

Medrano says her biggest priorities should she be elected would be affordable housing, sustainability, and education/youth involvement. She’s eager to get involved and to serve her community, and says she’s excited to continue investing her time, energy, and self into the community that raised her. She may be green, but she’s extremely bright and very energetic, which is why she earned our support. see VOTE GUIDE Page 22

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In store • Online • Curbside

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VOTE GUIDE from Page 20

JOIN THE COALITION

A partnership of community groups, each dedicated to making our city more inclusive, safe, livable and welcoming for all people.

UNITED CAMPUS WORKERS

BOULDERCOALITION.ORG Paid for by The Coalition. Not affiliated with any candidate or candidate committee.

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NICOLE SAMSON As a grant administrator, Nicole Samson doesn’t just bring budget management experience to the table, she’s also spent years working with nonprofits, held positions in local government, and has a master’s degree in public administration. She’s even served on Lafayette’s city council before, albeit temporarily in 2019 to fill a six-month vacancy.

She’s qualified for the position, and her priorities are in the right places: She wants to create and implement affordable housing solutions, not just to reduce homelessness but also to make living in Lafayette a real possibility for the teachers, firefighters, and police who serve their city. She wants to protect small businesses and make Lafayette a place where they flourish in order to sustain the small-town feel of the city. She also wants responsible public safety, meaning more firefighters, more police officers, and more resources for both.

Our only hangup in supporting Samson was her hesitation regarding the Mental Health and Human Services initiative on Lafayette’s city ballot this year, which would support the availability of such services within the community. Samson is concerned that a sales tax is the wrong way to fund the program.

Though we disagree with Samson on that ballot question, we’re supporting her candidacy in large part because of her experience and qualifications.

BRIAN WONG (INCUMBENT) Brian Wong moved to Lafayette in 2007 because he’d been priced out of neighboring Louisville. He’s been an active and passionate member of the community in the years since, having spent seven years on the city’s planning commission (of which he is now the chair) and having already served two years on the Lafayette City Council starting in 2019.

Today, Wong is watching the same thing happen in Lafayette that brought him there in the first place: A lot of his community members are being priced out of the town. Which is why, to Wong, every housing option should be on the table: mobile homes, tiny homes, ADUs . . . He thinks the city’s l

zoning codes need serious reevaluation, and he thinks the cost of land could be offset with incentives for developers to make it cheaper and more attractive to build affordable housing units.

Wong has good ideas, though some of his priorities seem to come out of left field. He is interested in establishing municipally-funded elections, and is fixated on obtaining municipal broadband similar to Longmont’s. To Wong, access to the internet is a civil rights issue—it should be cheap and attainable for all residents.

Especially in an era when so many (like Wong) are working from home.

LAFAYETTE ORDINANCE NO. 12: FAIR CAMPAIGN PRACTICES; ENFORCEMENT OF MUNICIPAL CAMPAIGN FINANCE COMPLAINTS Yes/For No/Against In 2019, Governor Polis signed into law an amendment to the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act that changed the law to provide that complaints originating from a municipal campaign finance matter be exclusively filed with the clerk of said municipality. Prior to this amendment, all such complaints were filed with the Colorado Secretary of State.

Ordinance No. 12 establishes the process for campaign finance complaints to be filed with Lafayette’s city clerk, bringing the code into compliance with state law. We encourage a Yes vote.

LAFAYETTE ORDINANCE NO. 13: AMENDMENTS TO THE HOME RULE CHARTER PERTAINING TO GENDER NEUTRAL REFERENCES and LAFAYETTE ORDINANCE NO. 14: AMENDMENTS TO THE HOME RULE CHARTER PERTAINING TO REMOVAL OF ARCHAIC LANGUAGE Yes/For No/Against These ordinances are clear-cut: The former “proposes amendments to the Home Rule Charter to remove masculine and feminine pronouns and

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

replace them with neutral, gender-free designations,” while the latter “proposes amendments to the Home Rule Charter to remove and replace archaic language with more modern terminology, including certain instances of the word ‘citizen’ and the term ‘master.’”

Neither ordinance will incur an additional cost on taxpayers, and both will bring the city’s charter in line with more inclusive language. Municipalities around the country are making similar changes.

It should be noted that in Ordinance 14, the switch from “citizen” to “resident” (or “the public,” “the people,” and “community”) will occur in places in the charter where no distinction based on citizenship is necessary or legally required, such as when someone is leading an initiative process (signers must still be citizens, but anyone can lead the charge on an initiative); when referring to any members of the public who may be called upon by the mayor to assist in an emergency; or when referring to individuals speaking to the city council.

We wholeheartedly support both ordinances.

Lafayette does not have a municipal department to help with human services. This ballot measure would allow the city to partner with nonprofit organizations in Boulder County to support mental health, medical care, domestic violence victims, and families who need assistance funding rent, childcare, utilities, or food.

If approved, the mental health and human services measure will add 0.10 percent sales and use tax, or 1.0 cents on a $10 purchase, to help fund these services.

With the exponentially exorbitant cost of living in Boulder County, coupled with the pressures of an ongoing pandemic, having safety net programs like the ones that Lafayette hopes to produce with this measure are a step in the right direction—especially when the cost is this low. Boulder Weekly strongly supports a Yes vote on this.

LAFAYETTE ORDINANCE NO. 15: AMENDMENT TO THE HOME RULE CHARTER TO SHORTEN THE RESIDENCY REQUIREMENT FOR CITY COUNCILORS TO ONE YEAR

If approved, Lafayette’s public safety ballot initiative will increase the sales and use tax by 0.27 percent, or 2.7 cents on a $10 purchase, to fund public safety services, including hiring more police officers, firefighters, and medics; replacing aging and outdated equipment for city firefighters and first responders; purchasing body cameras for police and paying for the storage of body camera footage; and hiring mental health co-responders to accompany police on calls involving behavioral health issues.

While Boulder Weekly does not support enlarging police forces, it does support many of the other goals of this resolution, particularly hiring mental health co-responders to accompany police. We believe this kind of response minimizes violence, arrests, and the use of jails. For this reason, we strongly support a Yes vote on Resolution 54.

Yes/For No/Against Lafayette’s Ordinance No. 15 simply brings the town’s home rule charter in line with statutory provisions requiring a city councilor be a resident for one year prior to the date of an election (the current language states a councilmember must be a resident for one year prior to the last day for filing to run for the office). This is a no-brainer, please vote Yes on this ordinance.

LAFAYETTE RESOLUTION NO. 12, SERIES 2021: MENTAL HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES BALLOT MEASURE Yes/For No/Against

LAFAYETTE RESOLUTION NO. 2021-54: PUBLIC SAFETY BALLOT MEASURE Yes/For No/Against

see VOTE GUIDE Page 24

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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VOTE GUIDE from Page 23

CITY OF LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE CITY COUNCIL Unlike elsewhere in Boulder County, Louisville has a lot of open land zoned for development that is going unused. But the city is trying to do something about it. One of the most important and long-debated topics in the city for several years

cant tax and development revenue for the city.

Louisville is also currently considering a number of transportation improvements that are on the ballot this year. Namely, installing six underpasses and new bike trails throughout the community to make foot, bicycle, and multi-modal forms of transportation easier, and to make the community million price tag on this ballot initiative has caused some hesitation—but to many in the community it’s an affordable price for a much needed municipal amenity. city council’s dockett. Each of Louisville’s candidates from each of the city’s three wards have similar ideas for handling these issues, and they

progress to make on these fronts and others, including airplane noise and the affordable housing crisis, which has made it harder to adequately medical vehicles, and police departments. council seat open. In Wards 1 and 2, the candidates—Maxine Most and Kyle Brown—are running unopposed. Nevertheless we spoke with all of them, and we’re backing those who best understood Louisville’s needs, the issues facing their community, and who had the most concrete ideas for how to achieve Louisville’s potential.

see VOTE GUIDE Page 26

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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FOR BOULDER CITY COUNCIL Michael Christy is a non-partisan problem solver with a deep commitment to community.

F OR B OULDER CITY COUNCIL He brings to the table: BOULDER CITY U N C IL IntegrityFOR | Experience | CO Sensibility

· Years of public service,

Integrity |active-duty Experience Sensibility As a non-partisan problem-solver, I will military be| an active and including

service, volunteering the F OR B OUL DER CITY COUNCIL effective voice Boulder City Council.with As Ian attorney and and As aon non-partisan problem-solver, will be an active

unhoused, and membership mediator, developed the unique ability to bringAs people effective voice Boulder City Council. an attorney and Integrity | IExperience | on Sensibility on the Cannabis Licensing mediator, I developed the unique ability tohistory bring people together and find creative solutions.

My extensive of

As a non-partisan problem-solver, I will be an active and ENDORSED BY ENDORSED BY:

and Advisory Boardsolutions. My extensive history of together and find creative

public service, including active-duty military effective voice on Boulder City Council.

As an attorney andservice,

public service, including active-duty military service, and

volunteering with Boulder Shelter for the Homeless mediator, I developed the the unique ability to bring people · Professional skills developed

volunteering withMy the Boulderhistory Shelter Homeless and together and find creative solutions. of for the the Community Mediation andextensive Resolution Center, and

ENDORSED BY:

as an attorney and mediator

the Community and Resolution Center, and public service, including active-dutyMediation military service, ENDORSED BY:

serving on the Cannabis Licensing and Advisory Board,

volunteering with for the Homeless and serving on Shelter the Cannabis Licensing and Advisory Board, VOTE · the A Boulder desire for open discussion

reflects my deep commitment to our community.

the Community Mediation and Resolution Center, and reflects mydevelop deep commitment to our community. and to creative serving on achieve the Cannabis Licensing and together.

Advisory Board, Let's great things

solutions on what's Let's achievebased great things together.

reflects my deep commitment to our community.

best for Boulder

Let's achieve great things together.

Let's achieve great things together...

Ensure our city and our police have all the necessary tools and resources to maintain public safety Enact proactive, thoughtful, and strategically planned growth to improve housing affordability and diversity Enhance access to safe, environmentally sound, and affordable multi-modal transportation networks

Preserve, enhance and maintain our Open Space for current and future generations

GUIDE from Page 24

WARD 1 Chris Leh (incumbent) Keith Keller As a career litigator, 20-year Louisville local, and incumbent city council member, Chris Leh has a good handle rent goings on. He has an answer and

Advocate for the small business community to ensure they have what is needed to withstand challenges and prosper

portation improvements to developing the ConocoPhillips campus (though

Ensure that all city actions and policies are aligned with Boulder’s social equity goals

development).

Leh is pro-sustainability and has

Support energy conservation and the use of renewable, clean energy

should he be elected to a second term.

We encourage you to help make that happen.

WARD 2 Maxine Most (uncontested)

about the latter issue due to the counisville since 2006, when she moved her and her young daughter. “I think decisions that were made even 20

buildings. He is dedicated to preservdevelopers have had their way with stimulating its economic development council, and she wants to enact polments on the ballot this year, which

opment, like a 30 percent open space

to connect the community as well as

transportation connectivity ballot measure in Louisville, and emphasizes her

INTEGRITY | EXPERIENCE | SENSIBILITY

Michael4Boulder.com

The housing crisis in Louisville is these were little towns that were run

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

people here, a more sophisticated citizenry, and expectations are higher.”

We believe Maxine Most will meet her constituents’ expectations.

WARD 3 Kyle Brown (incumbent, uncontested) As a self described life-long public servant, Kyle Brown is exactly the kind of person that cities should want on their council. By day he works at the state capitol, advising the governor, lobbying for affordable healthcare for Louisville and all of Colorado, and he’s worked with two different U.S. Senators. By night he’s working in Louisville’s city council chambers, protecting open space, supporting COVID relief programs, creating an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, promoting mask-wearing, and generally working hard to make Louisville a better place to live.

Brown grew up in Louisville, married a Louisville woman, and is now raising his family in Louisville.

He’s invested in this community, and that’s apparent by how seriously he takes his role as a public servant and city councilmember. He’s served two years on the council already, and is running for reelection because he’s proud of the work he did and feels he genuinely helped his community navigate some of the hardest times it’s ever endured.

But he also recognizes that there’s a lot more that needs to be done. Brown is in full support of the transportation improvement program and is a big proponent of environmental sustainability. But he says his biggest priorities, if reelected, will be to promote economic vitality and to do everything he can to attract businesses to Louisville—to develop the city’s currently vacant properties so that they can start generating tax revenue for the city.

LOUISVILLE BALLOT ISSUE 2A: DEBT AND TAX INCREASE FOR TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS Yes/For No/Against

There have been more than 15 traffic-related fatalities in Boulder County in 2021, some involving bikes and pedestrians. For the last several years, Louisville has been engaging with its residents on projects the city could take on to improve safety and connectivity in its transportation system. They landed on six underpasses: South Boulder Road at Main Street, Highway 42 at Short/South/ Caledonia, Power Line Trail at Dillon Road, South Boulder Road at Via Appia, Burlington Northern Railroad in the proximity of the Highline Lateral Trail, and South Boulder Road at Highway 42.

This measure would increase property taxes so the city can finance the construction of six underpasses for $51,420,000, with a repayment cost of $90,240,000. The tax increase would begin in 2023.

The city would use some of its sales and use tax, as well as contributions from the Louisville Revitalization Commission, to repay a portion of the debt, which the city says should reduce the tax increase for residents.

The estimated annual impact on residential property taxes could be as much as $390, while commercial property taxes could increase by as much as $1,581 annually.

The city of Louisville says that it cannot sustain the costs of the proposed improvements with current funding. However, the current bond package maxes out Louisville’s bonding capacity for a number of years into the future, which could limit options if emergencies (like the need for significant water infrastructure improvements, for example) arise. While Colorado has some of the lowest property tax rates in the nation, the cost of living is fairly high in Boulder County, and this increase could have a disproportionate impact on certain demographics, like those on fixed incomes.

For these reasons, we weakly encourage a Yes vote on this measure, with the understanding that these types of infrastructure improvement are important but difficult to fund. see VOTE GUIDE Page 28

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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VOTE GUIDE from Page 27

BOULDER VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF EDUCATION District B Nicole Rajpal William Hamilton Gala W. Orba Sky Van Horn District E Beth Niznik Deann E. Bucher Kara Awaitha Frost District F Kitty Sargent (unopposed) It’s never been more evident than it is now—to parents, teachers, and school faculty across the country—just how important the makeup of a school district’s board of education is. They’ve always served substantial roles: approving the district’s budget, supervising the superintendent, guiding policy change and generally acting as a bridge between the community and the school district.

But, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the board of education has become decidedly more robust. The pandemic shook school districts across the country, and changed what was required from almost every role in education. Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) and its school board were no exceptions.

BVSD is grappling with some of the biggest challenges it’s ever faced: divided parents, declining enrollment, lack of staff and faculty, and widening gaps in learning, achievement, and equity. Not to mention the recall petition circulating that aims to remove several current BVSD board members for their support of mask mandates.

These are just some of the issues that BVSD’s board of education will have to help the district navigate. They aren’t unique to BVSD’s foreseeable future.

Three of BVSD’s seven board of education seats are open this election (one of which is term-limited): District B, District E, and District F. While each candidate is required to live in the Director District they’re running from, the entire BVSD community

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votes on these seats.

After conversations with each of the candidates about all of the challenges they’ll be helping BVSD to manage and discussing their solutions and visions of direction, here are our three selections.

Nicole Rajpal has a bachelor’s degree in science and nutrition and a master’s in curriculum and instruction, she’s worked as a dietary nutritionist in pediatrics, and she’s helped prepare students for careers in healthcare as an instructor at Front Range Community College. Rajpal served six years on school accountability committees in BVSD, has decades of volunteer experience under her belt, and two children currently attending in the district. She’s dedicated to en decisions about health and safety in schools. Rajpal wants to make sure that the district stays on course to achieve the equitable opportunities outlined in BVSD’s strategic action plan.

With over 15 years in education Beth Niznik has worked as a special education teacher, a school psychologist, and a special education administrator before she got a job working for the Colorado Department of Education. She’s worked at every level of the education system, which has granted priorities on the board would be to address BVSD’s declining enrollment and the current immediate challenges that COVID-19 has created. Having worked in state government and education for so long, Niznik is very familiar with budgeting and has an intimate understanding of how the state Department of Education works and relates to individual districts.

Kitty Sargent is a former teacher and social worker who specialized in child abuse prevention. For 19 years, while her children were in school, she volunteered for BVSD in different roles. And for the last four years she’s served on the BVSD board of education. Sargent is running for reelection (uncontested in her Director District). Her biggest priorities in a second term would be closing the achievement gap and reviewing the policy review system.

see VOTE GUIDE Page 30

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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VOTE GUIDE from Page 28

ST. VRAIN VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT

is married to an assistant principal in another district whose parents are both

District B: Karen Ragland (unopposed)

committed to accessibility and listening

District D: Meosha Brooks Tyler Gearhart

sit down and have discussions where goal.”

District F: Natalie Abshier Sarah Hurianek

STATE OF COLORADO STATE AMENDMENT 78: REQUIREMENTS FOR SPENDING CUSTODIAL MONEY

The St. Vrain Valley School District, which includes Longmont, Lyons, and Erie schools, as well as parts of ties, is highly regarded by parents and teachers alike for its academic success

Yes/For No/Against

has steadily increased for more than a decade, the district excels at offering a varied selection of educational tracks for its students, and its teachers receive regular salary raises.

The district has also seen success with its race and gender equity training for teachers and resultant inclusive

This measure would amend the

Queer Endeavor, the LTBQ+ advocacy

approval.

Passage of this bill could hinder swift delivery of emergency funds to communities in need by requiring

VSD proceed forward with its academic excellence and equity goals, despite

bad idea.

vocal minority of parents.

The candidates on our slate are all mothers of SVVSD students, committed to inclusion and equity, and supportive

I’m a Boulder native running for a more sustainable and culturally balanced Boulder. If elected, I will support private solar grants, community solar gardens, greywater recycling, and a single use plastic fee. I will advocate for an expansion of city council’s cultural engagement, through more city-sponsored events. I will support policy to ensure that our police force is properly funded and trained to protect all residents. I will advocate for affordable housing, which respects existing communities while allowing high-density areas through zoning regulations. Together we need to find ways to encourage members of the homeless community to gain social and economic stability through existing resources.

As a life-long local, I intuitively know the political and cultural atmosphere, and because of this, I will engage fairly with diverse opinions as we prepare Boulder for its future.

health during the pandemic.

Karen Ragland, a community mental health counselor, is unopposed in her campaign to retain being an excellent steward of taxpayer is how she characterizes herself.

Meosha Brooks is an aerospace engineer with four children attending St. Vrain schools, and aims to focus on promoting STEM education as well as within the St. Vrain system.

Sarah Hurianek educator with two children at Mead

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General Assembly to determine how “custodial money,” like federal grant money and private donations, is spent.

This is a reactionary measure by

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No vote on

ballot, alleging its presence on the ballot are reserved for issues related to the STATE PROPOSITION 119: CREATION OF AN OUT-OF-SCHOOL EDUCATION PROGRAM AND MARIJUANA SALES TAX INCREASE INITIATIVE Yes/For No/Against There is a simplicity to Proposition leading at once.

demic Progress (LEAP) program. LEAP would offer tutoring, music, dance, and BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

struction, career and technical training, mental health services and physical therapy, support for students with special needs, mentoring, and more. The sales tax would start in January 2022 at 3 percent and would incrementally increase over two years to 5 percent by 2024—at which point, cannabis sales tax would be at 20 percent, far higher than any other legal product.

LEAP is meant to help level the additional resources for supplemental education. Some parents in Colorado spend thousands of dollars a year on things like language or exam tutors, extracurricular activities, and clubs— costs that a lot of families in Colorado simply can’t afford. LEAP would ensure that those students have access to the same opportunities and attempt to help close the state’s tenacious achievement gap. Families making between $25,000 and $50,000 annually could apply, and if selected, they would receive priority for a $1,500-a-year stipend which can instructor of their choice.

But the funds for LEAP won’t just be funneled from cannabis sales taxes.

Proposition 119 would also divert $21 million in 2021-22 and $22 million in 2022-23 from the State Land Trust to the State Public School Fund. That money would not be subject to constitutional spending limits, and once distributed, it would go to private contractors and providers who could potentially be based out-of-state.

Proponents of Proposition 119 argue that it’s an easy way to bolster student achievement, and uplift underserved families with supplemental educational opportunities. Some claim that it will help remedy the academic damage wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and bridge the achievement gap.

Opponents of this bill (which notably include the Marijuana Industry Group and Colorado NORML, two cannabis advocacy groups) see this as an untenable tax hike on the state’s cannabis users. Colorado NORML argues that the state is already reaping over $32 million in marijuana taxes and fees annually, and asks, “When is too high too HIGH?!”

There are also questions about how accessible the funds from Proposition 119 would actually be for rural and low-income students. The Colorado Education Association withdrew its support for Proposition 119 in June, publicly of funding for education instead of

increasing cannabis sales taxes.

There’s also the fact that Proposition 119 would divert money out of the Public Land Trust and into the hands of private service providers. Some educational service providers would be eligible for LEAP. While we at Boulder Weekly agree completely that Colorado’s under-served students need a program gain access to supplemental education opportunities, we aren’t convinced this is the right approach to achieve that.

Cannabis shouldn’t be the state’s go-to money tree every time it wants to raise resources for something Colorado needs. That’s why we’re urging you to vote No on proposition 119.

STATE PROPOSITION 120: REDUCE PROPERTY TAX RATES AND RETAIN $25 MILLION IN TABOR SURPLUS REVENUE INITIATIVE Yes/For No/Against Proposition 120 was initially intended to cut property taxes on all homes and businesses, but a last-minute bill in the General Assembly drastically limited the proposition’s impact—but not in time to alter the ballot language you’ll see this November. Long story short, Prop 120 will now only reduce taxes for multifamily residential units and commercial lodging properties. Conservative nonprofit Colorado Rising State Action has backed Prop 120, and says that if voters say yes to the limited scope of the proposition, the group will file a lawsuit aimed at implementing the full amount of the tax cut as originally proposed.

Boulder Weekly strongly encourages a No vote on Prop 120. While most counties in Colorado are not financially strapped in the wake of pandemic-driven federal infusions of cash, property tax cuts would decrease the amount of money that counties and districts can budget for future years to maintain things like water, transportation, education, and emergency services. Tax cuts would affect counties unequally, with densely populated areas containing many multi-family and lodging properties (Boulder, Broomfield, Denver) losing the most property tax revenue.

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I

t was the cover. The cover kind of said something, and then it kind of said something else, because the times and the world had changed around it. Art does that. Art is supposed to do that.

There was a tornado on the cover.

In 2019, Pat Metheny had gotten off the road with his band—drummer Antonio Sanchez, pianist Gwilym Simcock and bassist Linda May Han Oh—and wanted to record.

Opting against a straightforward quartet record, he embraced a broader vision for where he wanted to take this now well-functioning and well-traveled band, composing more than a dozen new pieces of music, completely different from the setlist the band had taken out on the road and, as he explains it, and threw pages of new material at them. In the studio.

“No rehearsals,” Metheny says. “‘Let’s just go in with a pile of music I would compose just for this crew—an entirely different book from what we had been playing live—and see what happens.’ The Miles quintet approach.”

The result was From This Place, a vast, occasionally brooding and amber-shaded offering—glimpses of his own prairie-folk jazz melodicism bob to the surface, and a few moments catch the longtime Metheny listener by surprise, not the least of which was Meshell Ndegeocello contributing vocals to the title

SHORE FIRE MEDIA

lines and voicings into subsequent orchestration was not only a new kind of arranging; it resulted in a different kind of sound and music.

“It was a way of presenting music that represented the impulses of the players and the improvisers at hand through orchestration in an entirely new way. I loved those records.”

To be sure, From This Place represents a

IT’S ABOUT TIME

ON THE BILL: Pat Metheny SideEye with James Francies and Joe Dyson. 8 p.m.

Thursday, October 7, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder Tickets: $60-$85.

Pat Metheny shares a few thoughts about his instrument and keeping a light touch

by Dave Kirby

Grammy-rich career (he has 20). But timing, someone once said, is everything, and just as it was released, COVID dropped a hammer on the whole world, and that tornado, which one may have seen as an expression of the turmoil surrounding the fraught politics and social agita of pre-election America, suddenly looked a lot like the revenge of an angry atmosphere, plowing across the barrenscape of our lives. What do you do when the air itself is the enemy?

But Metheny shrugs it off. Well, the unfortunate timing thing, anyway.

“I think FTP came out something like February 23, 2020. There was a lot of excitement on the release. It actually was in the top 10 Billboard chart that week—it placed higher than Justin Bieber, which we all got a kick out of. But as we know, a week or two later, the world changed.”

improvisation, the offering burns with a low But what caught most reviewers’ ears was the orchestration—after the players had Metheny found himself reworking the songs to accommodate orchestra strings, with veteran arrangers Gil Goldstein and Alan Broadbent building out a lush, at times almost Brahms-like fabric to the compositions, with Joel McNeely conducting the Hollywood Studio Symphony.

It felt new and somewhat daring to Metheny’s critical audience—although very few, if any, bothered to note that Metheny had been here before, both in soundtrack work and on his 1992 Secret Story release. We asked him if Secret Story in any way had provided a template for this expansive arrangement.

“There is a connection to Secret Story,” Metheny says of the expansive arrangement of From This Place, “in terms of scale and . . . orchestration, but there is a “Secret Story was originally going to be a record where I played everything myself, and in fact there was an early version of it that was like that. I correctly realized . . . the project would be much better served by having the parts I was playing in a just okay way played [by] folks who do whatever ‘that’ was all the time. And of

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

actual orchestra rather than the Synclavier. It was a fairly arduous process, a bit like working backwards.”

As Metheny’s band played, the guitarist started hearing things that weren’t on the page—yet.

“I understood quickly that these pieces were demanding orchestration, expansion, and color,” he says. “Somehow while composing, I had the sense that the nature of what I was working on for these upcoming sessions contained a broader view of something, but I wasn’t able to identify it until we actually started recording.”

Unexpectedly for anyone familiar with the times, Metheny points to an unlikely early inspiration for the strings-plus-improv model—the Creed Taylor (CTI) jazz records of the 1970s.

“It is unlikely,” he notes, in characteristic Metheny understatement, “that the recordings of the CTI label of that time would likely never be thought of as “avant-garde” by garden variety jazz critics of that, or probably any other era. But from my seat as a young fan, the idea of an excellent and experienced arranger like Don Sebesky taking the improvised material of great musicians like Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter and weaving their l

OCTOBER 7, 2021

but it “isn’t a huge thing for me,” he says.

“It takes a while for things to sink in, but good notes have a way of sticking around, so I am always just aiming for good notes.”

For a guy who has, for years, fairly assiduously maintained a schedule of tour-album-tour, Metheny settled into the pandemic with relative ease.

“In a bunch of ways, staying in a room for 10 or 12 hours a day (mostly) by myself working on music in whatever form it happens to take is just about my favorite thing to do,” he says. “This period has easily been the most civilian life I have had since junior high school. And it makes me understand why people like civilian life.

In other interviews he’s done recently to support this tour, Metheny has occasionally referenced a question that a French critic asked him years ago, that he still of the new guys?”

A quisling difference-splitter might argue that Metheny is kind of both, and kind of neither, and a METHENY from Page 34 l

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METHENY from Page 33

lengthier explanation for that conclusion probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble to write or read.

The distinction seems relevant across one dimension. Metheny came up as a teen working an active jazz bandstand scene in the Kansas City area, spending much of his early gigging years just trying to stay on top of the changes and tempos and nuanced JUST ANNOUNCED

JUST ANNOUNCED

DEC 11 ............................................................................................................... PROF JAN 8, 2022 ............................................................................................ CVPTVGON JAN 22, 2022 ............................................................................................. BURY MIA

APR 2, 2022 ....................................................... AND THAT’S WHY WE DRINK MAY 8, 2022 ............................................................................ HENRY ROLLINS MAY 21, 2022 ........................................................................... GUS JOHNSON

THU. OCT 7

THU. OCT 7

STRICTLY PRESENTS:

PAT METHENY SIDE-EYE W/ JAMES FRANCIES & JOE DYSON

MOST GUTTER, WILDCARD, AUGUST LIGHT SAT. OCT 9 PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

THE SPONGES & MUZZY BEARR SUN. OCT 10

SHOVELS & ROPE “THE BARE BONES TOUR” WED. OCT 13

MATCHSTICK PRODUCTIONS THE STOMPING GROUND FRI. OCT 15 PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS & TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENT

SHLUMP

ONHELL, PASHMONIX SAT. OCT 16 PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

CHAMPAGNE DRIP MIZE

or something else.

But Metheny isn’t sure there are perils of learning the instrument from a computer screen.

SHORE FIRE MEDIA

SAT. OCT 9

music and what being a musician is from a

VERTICAL FUSION PRESENTS: HADES’ CIRCUS SUN. OCT 10 NEW MEDIA TOURING PRESENTS

CHRIS FLEMING: TRICKY TRICKY

often arrived in the same package that it was hard to separate one from the other.

THU. OCT 14 ROOSTER & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

MALAA

HARVE B2B KAEGI, GANO, RYNE CUNNINGHAM MON. OCT 18

Norwegian or Dutch or Swahili or any other language. Fluent to the point of being an expert in the construction and grammar of every sentence.

“But, if what you have to say isn’t that interesting to the other Norwegian speak-

107.9 KBPI PRESENTS: THE HUN TOUR

THE HU THE HAUNT

TUE. OCT 19 THE CELTIC CONNECTION, 88.5 KGNU & BOULDER WEEKLY PRESENT: THE HOME FROM HOME TOUR

THE HIGH KINGS SAT. OCT 23 97.3 KBCO PRESENTS

JOHN HIATT & THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND

TUE. OCT 19 WESTWORD PRESENTS

WHITNEY

SUN. OCT 24

RENEE REED

105.5 THE COLORADO SOUND & WESTWORD PRESENT

DAR WILLIAMS

THU. OCT 21 BACK 2 BUSINESS FEAT.

HARVE B2B KAEGI, BATHROOM BREAK, PŠMITYŸ B2B GANO & MORE FRI. OCT 22 PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS & TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENT

WRECKNO

TUE. OCT 26 97.3 KBCO PRESENTS

THE DEL MCCOURY BAND THU. OCT 28 MONSTER ENERGY UP & UP FESTIVAL PRESENTS

LOUD LUXURY FRI. OCT 29

SAT. OCT 23

ROOSTER & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT: SOME CREATURE TOUR

AQUEOUS - 3 SETS!

GETTER

SAT. OCT 30 97.3 KBCO, WESTWORD & BELL’S BREWERY PRESENT: AN EVENING WITH

SUN. OCT 24 THE COLORADO SOUND & WESTWORD PRESENT

BIRDTALKER

THE MOTET

LONAS

SUN. OCT 31 ROOSTER & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT: SWIMMING WITH THE CLOUDS TOUR

SATSANG

TIM SNIDER AND WOLFGANG TIMBER SUN. OCT 31 ROOSTER & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

JUSTIN MARTIN FRI. NOV 5

97.3 KBCO, BOULDER WEEKLY, GRATEFUL WEB PRESENT

LAWRENCE SAT. NOV 6

piano, by the way.

“So the thing for me has always been to prepare a lot, to play, to write and to

WHETHAN TUE. NOV 2

PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS: GRAVY BACK IN BUSINESS TOUR

YUNG GRAVY SAT. NOV 6

Metheny brings his current Side-Eye tour to the Boulder Theater, a trio with drummer Joe Dyson and keyboardist James Francies, in support of a tidy and energetic live

PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS: MÁQUINA TOUR

BOOMBOX CARTEL GREAT DANE, SUAHN

NOV 17 ....................................................................................... CARIBOU NOV 18 ............................................................................. BRETT DENNEN NOV 19 ....................................................... THE LAST WALTZ REVISITED NOV 24 ............................................................................... DIRT MONKEY DEC 2 ................................................. ROBERT GLASPER + CORY HENRY

SWATKINS

message is a pretty boring message.”

But getting Metheny to expound on guitar technique as a thing is decidedly a challenge.

“Playing the guitar itself was never much of a thing for me one way or another,” he

HALLOWEEN 2021

SAT. OCT 30 TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENTS

message is compelling to hear.

HEATHER MALONEY

MEGAN HAMILTON TERRAPIN CARE STATION PRESENTS

or not what you have to say is vital and interesting to the person you are addressing

pieces (including the marrow-stirring, synth-spiked “Zenith Rising”) and a few old saws, format brings Metheny back to a smaller, more intimate scale, and results are predictably luminous, provocative and grin-inducing.

WACHITO RICO NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

BOY PABLO SOFIA VALDES

NOV 7 .................................................................................... SIERRA HULL NOV 10 ............................................................................... BOOKA SHADE NOV 12 ................................................... PIGEONS PLAYING PING PONG NOV 13 ................................................................ THE RECORD COMPANY NOV 17 ...................................................................... BOY NAMED BANJO

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see writing stuff for. This is really a setting that is built to set that up.” l

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Up to 50% Off Local Dining Discounts September Dawn

by Noah Turner

Save on local dining, entertainment, retail and wellness. bestofboulderdeals.kostizi.com Go to website to purchase

The swift and cold pre-autumn rain, Will not, dear life, have come in vain.

The last burst of green life given In dried beds of aged creeks riven,

Private Yoga

To the e’er yellow turning leaves And growing light of morning eves, To give short hope again to all.

Yin or Iyengar Yoga Private instruction In Home studio Plentiful props provided Alignment based instruction

And lest the grey skies cry once more, So thicket branches, wet, uproar, The Limbo balanced leaves will wilt To summer’s light, left dry, and spilt On bleached stone and stem dyed white, Will all leaves, green, confront the bite Brought in bleak lack of harvest’s rain, ’Til Earth’s kind tears cascade again.

$54.00 for an hour, or 2 people for $72.00

Noah Turner is a high school student living in the mountains of Boulder County,

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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E VENTS

The Russian Film Series at CU Boulder

EVENTS

6:30 p.m. Thursday, October 7, (additional dates: Thursday, October 21, Thursday, November 18), University of Colorado Boulder, Regent Drive at Broadway, Boulder.

Kick off CU’s Russian Film Series with Bakur Bakuradze’s The Hunter most original directors working in Russia today. It tells the story of a hunter whose life changes when workers from a local women’s prison colony land on his farm.

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

Out Boulder County wants to know How Would You Spend $63 Million? [un]WRAP: Emerging Global Citizenship in Transcultural Fusion Dance (virtual event)

7:30 p.m. Friday, October 8 (additional dates: Saturday, October 9 and Sunday, October 10). Tickets are $10. Virtual Event URL: bit.ly/3irzNJV Showcasing dance submissions from across the globe, this season’s [un]WRAP embraces Transcultural Fusion Dance (TcFD) to imagine what fair trade cultural exchange should look like. These works ask what it means to let nation-state boundaries fall away and be part of a deliberately and thoughtfully blended global family. Featuring a week of interactive symposiums that culminate in a streamed, virtual performance, [un]WRAP invites audiences to lean in and engage with the ever-evolving landscape of dance.

‘HIGHS & LOWS,’ BY THINH DINH

Firehouse Art Center presents ‘Lazarus’

2-6 p.m. Saturday, October 9, Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Avenue, Longmont. Free.

In Lazarus, the Firehouse Art Center brings together artists addressing immigration and American identity from a variety of perspectives, media, and methods. Featuring Joy Nagy, Boryana Rusenova Ina, Grace Gutierrez, Thinh Dinh, and Gregg Deal.

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6-7 p.m. Tuesday, October 12, via Zoom. Join the event here: bit.ly/3iD2Wl8 Out Boulder County invites you to provide your input and ask questions about how Boulder County will spend the $63 million dollars it will receive from The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). A portion of the $63 million has already arrived, with the rest expected in 2022. Boulder County Commissioners, in conjunction with Community Foundation Boulder County, have developed a survey and they want to hear from the LGBTQ+ community about how these dollars should be spent. We will be discussing possible uses for the county’s portion of ARPA funding and then encouraging everyone to take a brief survey that the county will then use to guide their decisions.

Creative Nations Indigenous Arts Market and Festival

October 7-11, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder. All events are free except for the concert on Saturday, October 9.

The inaugural Creative Nations Indigenous Arts Market and Festival will feature artists booths, traditional/ plus indigenous food to enjoy.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

E VEN T S

EVENTS

Pumpkin Pie Days Vintage and Antique Market

Day of the Dead Family Celebration

2-6 p.m. Saturday, October 9, Dickens Opera House, 300 Main Street, Longmont.

The Día de los Muertos Family Celebration is back in downtown Longmont, featuring a street festival, music and dance performances, arts and craft activities, cultural education, delicious food, downtown business altars, the Gigantes Procession, and the Firehouse Art Center’s Catrina Ball. Día de los Muertos exhibitions at both the Longmont Museum and Firehouse Art Center will also be open and free. Park downtown or at the Longmont Museum and take the free shuttle between locations so you can enjoy all the activities of the day. Schedule: Family Fiesta, 2-6 p.m.; Gigantes Procession, 6-6:30 p.m. starting at the Fiesta; Catrina Ball, 6:30-10:30 p.m., $15 general admission, $25 VIP.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, October 9 and 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, October 10, Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Road, Longmont.

Admission: $5 per person, children under 12 free.

The leaves are turning and the air is getting crisp, which means it’s time for Pumpkin Pie Days Vintage and Antique Market, featuring a wide array of dealers from around Colorado and out of state. Over two days you furniture, home décor, and more. The show is a fundraiser for the St. Vrain Historical Society and its mission of historic preservation and education. Masks are required for all participants ages 2 and up regardless of vaccination status.

Tracy Gray Hypnosis Show

8 p.m. Friday, October 8, The Louisville Underground, 640 Main Street, Louisville.

Tickets: $15.

Hypnotist Tracy Gray

Cirque Mechanics: ‘Birdhouse Factory’

7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 9, Macky Auditorium, 1595 Pleasant Street, Boulder. Price: $23-$90.

Following last season’s sold-out performance, Cirque Mechanics returns to Macky with Birdhouse Factory, the simple story of daily life

comedy hypnosis show. Each show is interactive with music and opportunities for audience participation.

everywhere, from classic Rube Goldberg machines to Charlie Chaplin, building an unlikely world full of bewitching delights.

Hades’ Circus: An Underworld Allurement of Pole & Aerial Dance ‘You Know Me’

7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 9, The Spark, 4847 Pearl Street, Suite B4, Boulder. Price: $12-$15, available via Eventbrite, bit.ly/3B9ghce Based on the viral hashtag, these true-life stories chronicle six personal experiences with abortion, and explore the nature of choice. Women from our community share ways safe access to this procedure has shaped, and saved, production will go to the ACLU. Audiences should note that this show contains

8 p.m. Saturday, October 9, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $30-$50.

Vertical Fusion Pole and Aerial Studios take the stage at Boulder Theater to bring you its renowned Halloween show. Prepare to become powerless in the face of Hades herself, who will prey on the buried contents of your mind. Welcome to Hades’ Circus! Let your Underworld misadventure begin!

see EVENTS Page 38

triggering.

For more event listings, go online at boulderweekly.com/events

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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EVENTS from Page 37

COURTESY FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UCC-BOULDER

Erin Wolf: ‘Lift Off! The James Webb Space Telescope’

NASA/CHRIS GUNN

7 p.m. Monday, October 11, virtual event URL: bit.ly/3oE9V1i The most anticipated observatory ever built—the James Webb Space Telescope—will soon be launched on one of the world’s largest rockets. Webb must be preciseand then once deployed it must precisely unfold—a series of minute steps that Webb’s international team will anxiously monitor. Ball Aerospace built Webb’s optical system and is supporting NASA’s integration and test and will support the launch and commissioning as Webb travels one million miles to its orbit point. This talk will

JustUs: Stories From the Frontlines of the Criminal Justice System with Reverend Pedro Silva (virtual event) 5 p.m. Sunday, October 10 via Zoom. Free. RSVP at motustheater.org/events

a Ball Aerospace program manager. Wolf has worked on

will be reading aloud Brandon Wainright’s autobiographical story of systemic ignore humanity. The reading will be followed by both personal and theological

2 instrument and to Hubble Servicing Mission 4.

into the shoes of a person who was formerly incarcerated.

Nederland Community Library screening of ‘End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock’

5 p.m. Sunday, October 10, HubNed, 80 Big Springs Drive, Nederland. Free.

Registration is required: nederland.colibraries.org EndoftheLine:TheWomenofStandingRock Emmy Award-winning producer and director

Smokus Pocus: A 420 Magic Show

7 p.m. Friday, October 8, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder. Tickets: $26. and seating is limited.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

with our prescription ski goggle inserts. Say goodbye to dry eyes from contacts as well as the fogging and discomfort caused by cramming glasses underneath your goggles.

locally owned and family run since 1993

Located on the Hill across from Fox Theatre

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(for single vision, clear lenses with goggle insert) 39

EVENTS

EVENTS from Page 38

CONCERTS

Thursday, October 7

ILLENIUM BY NAINOA LANGER

Denny Driscol Plays with Strangers. 6 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt Street, Longmont. Free.

Illenium with Wooli, Kaivon, Faybl.

6 p.m. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison.

Tickets: $49.95-$99.

Pro Musica Colorado: Rainbow Strings. 7:15 p.m. Longmont Museum, 400 Quail Road, Longmont. Tickets: $15-$20.

Rett Madison and Brianna Straut.

7:30 p.m. Chautauqua Community House, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder.

Tickets: $15.

Joni Mitchell “Blue” tribute concert with Katie Boeck. 7:30 p.m. Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder. Tickets: $25.

Pat Metheny Side-Eye with James Francies and Joe Dyson. 8 p.m.

Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $60-$85.

Most Gutter, Wildcard and August Light. 8:30 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $17-$21.

Friday, October 8

Friday Afternoon Concert: Trio Arcadia. 2:30 p.m. Longmont Museum, 400 Quail Road, Longmont. Tickets: $8-$12.

Illenium with Blanke, Brondo, James Egbert. 6 p.m. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison. Tickets: $49.95-$99.

Los Cheesies. 6 p.m. Großen Bart Brewery, 1025 Delaware Avenue, Longmont. Free.

Latin Opera Night. 6 p.m. Caffè Sole, 637 S. Broadway, Boulder.

Suggested donation: $15 at the door.

Brothers Osborne with special guests Travis Denning, Tenille Townes.

7 p.m. Mission Ballroom, BROTHERS OSBORNE BY NATALIE OSBORNE 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $49.50$75.

Nick of Time—A Bonnie Raitt Tribute.

7:30 p.m. Dickens Opera House, 300 Main Street, Longmont. Tickets: $18.

Dawn & Hawkes.

7:30 p.m. Chautauqua Community House, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder.

Tickets: $20.

Seeing Stars. 6 p.m.

Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt Street, Longmont.

Japanese Breakfast with Luna Li. 9 p.m. Ogden Theatre, 935 East Colfax Avenue, Denver. Tickets: $39.95.

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Saturday, October 9

CU Boulder Wind Symphony. 1 p.m. The Spark, 4847 Pearl Street, Suite B4, Boulder. Free.

10 Year Echo (covers from the ’70s and ’80s). 6 p.m.

Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt Street, Longmont.

Free.

Illenium with Nurko, Grant, Ecotek. 6 p.m. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison.

Tickets: $49.95-$99.

Opiuo with 1788-L, Esseks, Brux. 7 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $19.50-$59.50.

Jelly Roll. 7 p.m. Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 N. Clarkson

CONCERTS

SHOVELS & ROPE / ALL EYES MEDIA

Up to 50% Off Local Dining Discounts

EVENTS

Emily Reynolds.

Boulder. Suggested donation: $15 at the door.

Levi Platero Band. 7 p.m. Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder. Tickets: $10-$20.

Anavrin’s Day. 8 p.m. The Louisville Underground, 640 Main Street, Louisville.Free.

The Sponges & Muzzy Bearr. 9 p.m. The Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $15-$18.

Andy Frasco & the U.N. with Nick Gerlach’s Cult Conference, Graham Good & The Painters.

Tickets: $22.50.

Save on local dining, entertainment, retail and wellness. bestofboulderdeals.kostizi.com Go to website to purchase

Sunday, October 10

Opiuo and Clozee with LSDREAM, Of The Trees, Potions. 6 p.m. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison. Check axs.come Watsky / Hobo Johnson. 6:30 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $36.95-$59.95.

LAPOMPE. 7:30 p.m. Chautauqua Community House, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness with Zac Clark. 7:30 p.m. Ogden Chris Fleming: ‘Tricky Tricky.’ 8 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $35-$45.

Shovels & Rope. 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $35.

Monday, October 11

The Front Bottoms with Oso Oso, Sydney Sprague. 6:30 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $35-85.

John Fullbright. 7 p.m. eTown, 1535 Spruce Street, Boulder. Tickets: $28.

Wednesday, October 13

Open Range Competition Teams Summer Day Camps Classes & Private Lessons

Target & Hunting Full Service Retail Pro Shop & Service Recurve & Compound

High Altitude Archery 455 Weaver Park Rd #500 Longmont, CO 80501 720-491-3309

A Day To Remember with Asking Alexandria, Point North. 5 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $60-$99.50.

Ashley McBryde with Ray Fulcher.

Avenue, Denver. Tickets: $27.50.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

LIBRA

TAURUS

SCORPIO

MARCH 21-APRIL 19:

APRIL 20-MAY 20:

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22:

OCT. 23-NOV. 21:

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20:

SAGITTARIUS NOV. 22-DEC. 21:

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22:

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19:

AQUARIUS

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22:

JAN. 20-FEB. 18:

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22:

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20:

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Scenes from a marriage

Newly released ‘Lamb’ and recently restored ‘Possession’ welcome in the horror movie season

by Michael J. Casey

Call 720.253.4710 All credit cards accepted No text messages

O

ut in the hinterlands of Iceland, a married couple is grieving. Some time ago, they lost a child. It has created a noticeable rift in their relationship, even if they continue to spend every waking moment together on the ranch. They are shepherds, and in this remote landscape, all they have is each other. Each other, and the sheep.

A little bit of patience goes a long way in Lamb, the debut feature from Icelan-

what that is takes time to develop. Using mostly static frames and rigorous compositions, provides the ominous drone of fate marching toward Maria (Noomi Rapace), Ingvar (Hilmir a little lamb named Ada. How Ada comes to Maria and Ingvar is a story best left to Lamb. But Ada does come Maria and Ingvar. When Hlynur Haraldsson), sees question: What is this? Happiness, Ingvar responds.

ON THE BILL: Lamb opens October new 4K restoration of Possession is available now via the virtual cinema (metrograph.com) and comes to theaters on October 15.

ranch is another mystery best left to the movie. Lamb has of Lamb primeval. Early in the movie, Ingvar reads in the paper that home from Lamb.

Marriage, and the distance between, makes for great drama in horror and horror in great dramas. Lamb is somewhere in between, a slow burner of domestic fracture and doubling with a tickle of the supernatural. Possession, newly restored and headed to theaters next week, takes all of that and cranks it up to 11.

Possession also revolves around a lost child, this time a

“The Boulder Mountainbike Alliance ran ads recently in the Boulder Weekly to promote our annual Membership Party and Colorado Gives Day. The campaign was a huge success and BMA raised $34,320 - all going towards improving Boulder County’s trail system! The Boulder Weekly ads led to additional awareness of BMA and played an important part in this extraordinary fundraising campaign. Thanks Boulder Weekly!”

Wendy Sweet President, Board of Directors Boulder Mountainbike Alliance

little off. Then a lot off. Then, get the hell out of Dodge.

Possession clear of the movie and governments tried to censor it. What little audience found Possession But Possession

Nothing in Possession looks inviting. Ditto for Lamb: With a deep valley setting surrounded by craggy peaks, little here is bucolic. These are not love songs but laments

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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S I M P L E

|

L O C A L

|

FA R M

T O

TA B L E LIMITED

TAKE-OUT AVA I L A B L E

S AT & SU N 9 AM - 2 PM

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OCTOBER 7, 2021

TUE-THUR 4:30PM-9PM

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F R I & S AT 4:30PM-9:30PM

S U N D AY 4:30PM-9PM

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

SUSAN FRANCE

The bite is back

Be a taste tourist during Restaurant Week and find new favorite Boulder dining spots

by JOHN LEHNDORFF

R

aise your hand if you only eat or order regularly from FIRST BITE the same six eateries. Be honest. Has that preferred Restaurant Week restaurant list gotten shorter? Raise your other hand if takes place you haven’t eaten in a new Boulder restaurant in the past two years. Just nod your head if your palate is more than for participating a little bored with the usual suspects. restaurants Don’t shrug sheepishly; your food columnist did the same thing during the pandemic, just going with a few safe and familiar favorites. Now it’s time for some novel tastes and scenes, and that’s just one reason why I can’t wait for First Bite.

The other is that Boulder’s most popular, longest-running food event had to be cancelled in 2020, leaving a culinary and emotional void.

First Bite Boulder Restaurant Week, October 8-17, offers multi-course dinner deals at three price points—$29, $39, and $49—at 32 restaurants. Participating eateries range from places serving since the beginning, like the Boulder Cork and “COVID has shown us that we have to choose to support local independent restaurants or we face losing them,” says Jessica Benjamin, owner and producer of First Bite. In 2020, First Bite published a cookbook, A Bite of Boulder: Cooking at Home with Boulder’s Best Restaurants, as a way to enChanging times required a 2021 First Bite reboot, including shifting the event from winter to fall to facilitate outdoor dining.

“There’s still a lot of people who want to dine outdoors, and most of the restaurants have well-established patio setups,” Benjamin says.

In the past, First Bite focused on multi-course, sit-down dining, often with wine pairings. “This year we’re offering different kinds of meal experiences for different diners. We

see NIBBLES Page 46

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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NIBBLES from Page 45

family-style dinners. The wide range of cuisines and dietary persuasions runs from West End Tavern’s meat-laden barbecue platter to Sugarbeet’s bison skewers with corn cakes plus roasted corn soup, Arctic char with pearled couscous and, for the chocolate cookie.

community members to show support for the independent restaurants that have the arm.

SUSAN FRANCE

new places and we get customers who For some diners, the appeal of First Trio—cool dishes each created by one of their three chefs: amarillo yuzu sauce and bayberry plus hearts of palm, bee pollen, cilantro oil, yuzu tobiko and a squid ink tuile.

• A seared petite wagyu steak arrives with garlic soy, garlic chips and creamy miso edamame puree.

• A memorable salad is crowned with lots of real crab and infused with heat. a pumpkin spice cocktail made with a dessert. award-winning goat milk caramel sauces featured in desserts at the Greenbriar Inn,

a mask when asked, be patient, be kind to the servers, and tip generously.

Local food news

pineapple pie.

Words to chew on distinguished from mere feeding, the palate and stomach never ask the hand, ‘What John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:20 a.m. Thursday on KGNU (88.5 FM, online at kgnu.org). Comments: nibbles@boulderweekly.com 46

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Alcohol Delivery available with your order

Gondolier Longmont 1217 South Main St. • 720-442-0061

Gondolier Boulder 4800 Baseline Rd. • 303-443-5015

Take Out & Delivery Available at Both Locations

gondolieritalianeatery.com

Welcome

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK Founded July 2019 Address: 5610 Yukon St, Arvada, CO • 720-389-8627 • elvtdseltzer.com 48

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From their hand to yours 1265 Pilsner is a keeper

by Michael J. Casey

I

n the glass, it’s a thing of beauty. Inside a crystal clear liquid, the color of harvest straw, a swirl of tiny bubbles gathers at the top of the glass. It would look like champagne if not for the mountain of pillowy white foam piling high above the rim. The nose is even better: aromas of freshly baked bread. Then a sip of vibrant hops mingling in a light and cool liquid seals the deal. If you were drinking it with dinner, it would

“We had Polestar for ages, and, sadly, that beer was discontinued, and we had a lull with no pilsner,” Jeff Joslin, director of brewing for Left Hand, says. “That was a sad time.”

Polestar pilsner, a German-style pilsner made with pilsner malt, magnum, Mt. Hood and sterling hops, was a Left Hand classic for years. But tastes change, and classic hops like magnum aren’t in vogue these days.

“Polestar was a different style of pilsner COURTESY LEFT HAND BREWING COMPANY than the kind of pilsner that’s popular today,” Joslin says. “So 1265 is a lot more approachable, crushable, drinkable—whatever adjective you want to use to describe that element.”

From a base of classic pilsner malt of 2-row barley grown in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, 1265 is hopped with sterling, “as knock a Vinho Verde off the table. But it does just as well an homage to Polestar,” Joslin says, “Cascade for the by itself—crisp and refreshing, slightly sweet, but the sexy.”

1265 clocks in at 5.2 percent alcohol by volume—so others, it has the aromatic botanicals of a picnic lunch in you can drink a couple without falling on your face—and the woods. A knockout.

23 international bittering units, which keeps your palate Meet 1265 pilsner, one of Left Hand Brewing’s latest alive and well. additions to its year-round lineup.

“We got a lot of faith in it,” Joslin says. “We love

the beer, and we think if people try it, they’re gonna love it too.”

Easier said than done.

“Unfortunately, we debuted [1265 pilsner] in the spring of 2020,” Joslin says. “Right when the pandemic hit. Draft sale shut down because all the bars closed, and [1265] obviously had no following or foothold yet, so we When the lock down approached in early March 2020, drinkers packed their fridges, pantries, basements and garages with packaged beer from grocery and liquor stores. Sales across the industry shot through the roof. It was a boon for standards but a bust for newcomers. “[1265] didn’t get any of that boost,” Joslin continues. “It kind of languished for a while. And just now, it’s starting to really get its legs under itself.”

The timing is fortuitous. While pilsner makes for a great summer beer, it’s also ideal to have around for warm autumn afternoons, particularly when it comes time Coincidentally, that’s where 1265 got its start. happy with, we need to grow the yeast,” Joslin explains.

But they had discontinued Polestar, their only year-round lager. “And we needed to grow the lager yeast for the So, they had to start brewing a lager again. Joslin “We poured some kegs through the tasting room, but a lot of it just got dumped because we didn’t have a home for it,” Joslin says. on something they liked, and voila: 1265 pilsner—named for 1265 Boston Avenue, Left Hand’s home address in Longmont for the past 28 years. Find it wherever good beers are sold.

Michael J. Casey is the author of Boulder County Beer, a refreshing history of how a collection of young entrepreneurs turned the cities of Boulder, Longmont, Lyons, and beyond into ground zero for craft beer in the Centennial State.

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TASTE OF THE WEEK:

Heirloom garlic @ Wee Bee Farms

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Culinary calendar

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n the early 1900s, Longmont locals would bake more than 5,000 pumpkin pies to serve visitors at the annual Pumpkin Pie Days. While those pie feasts are gone, pumpkin pie is still on the menu at the 51st annual Pumpkin Pie Days Vintage & Antique Market, October 9 and 10 at the Boulder County Fairgrounds.

Proceeds benefit Longmont’s St. Vrain Historical Society . . .

Longmont Restaurant Week, October 8-17, features meal deals at $18.71 and $28.71 at Blue Corn Tacos, Outworld Brewing, Longmont Public House and other eateries. Menus: longmontrestaurantweek.com

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arlic is just garlic, right? If you’ve tasted one • German Extra Hardy: “It’s my favorite. You can put garlic, you’ve tasted them all. First, the average it raw in guacamole, pesto or hummus without it burning garlic you pick up at most supermarkets is most likely Chinese-grown, selected for shelf-life.

• Korean Red Hot (Asian Tempest): “An intensely It’s been stored for nine months to a year so it gets much more bitter tasting,” says Susan Beeman, a and quick stir frys. farmer who has sold garlic for 25 years at the Boulder • Inchelium Red: “This variety was discovered on Farmers Market. She grows about 30 varieties of garlic the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington. It is the annually at her Wee Bee Farms in Hygiene. Bulbs sweetest and mildest garlic I grow. You can eat it are dried and cured for about a month before selling, raw in salads.”

H Beeman says.

Beeman likes to compare garlic to d o e t g ar an R lic ore fr o “Fresh garlic is like a whole different K c: vegetable. It’s juicy, it tastes way better like, ‘Oh, wine,’ but after a while you when it’s fresher. Many of the varietsee there’s a difference between ies you can eat raw. They are full of red wine and white wine. Then you start to see a difference in cloves very thinly on crackers,” she different types of red wine,” she says. says.

Beeman always liked garlic while Some varieties are highly growing up—“Mom made spaghetti and meatballs”—but she didn’t start on being extra high in allicin, an antimiher path to becoming Boulder’s “Garlic crobial component that inhibits bacteria and Queen” until a friend from Oregon sent her has been used as a lung ailment treatment for six different kinds to plant on her then-new farm. several millennia.

“I got hooked. They’re all so special and unique with the year will probably be October 9, when she expects to Beeman illustrates with four varieties she grows and sells: run out of this year’s crop of garlic for cooking and planting.

• Chesnok: “This is the most popular variety beP.S.—Don’t use that questionable bottled chopped cause it’s best for sautéing. It has a bite and keeps the garlic. Buy a cheap garlic press and use it to make fresh garlic butter, etc. pickling.”

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Farms. Photo: John L ehn d

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Avery Brewery. Photo by Susan France.

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BY DAN SAVAGE

sext with him. But don’t do it when you’re with someone else. Go out on dates, enjoy your dates, fuck your dates. And the next time you’re home alone and bored, MESSAGES, text your ex and tell him you’re out on a date. You’ll get all the same enjoyment out of making him jealous—and he’ll get all the same enjoyment of his cuckold fantasies—without you being distracted during your actual dates.

Dear Dan: I’m a cis woman. I had a quasi-relationship with a man last year that only lasted a couple of months. The sex was great, and sexting was always a big part of our connection. Since the breakup, we’ve fluctuated between staying in touch and radio silence, sometimes going months without speaking. During our periods of contact, though, sexting always makes a comeback. It’s hot until the frustration of not actually being able Dear Dan: After many years of a fulto have sex with him sets in. (We live in filling sex life, I’ve begun to embrace the different countries now.) My issue is, if it perv side of my sexuality and couldn’t be weren’t for the sexting (which he really happier! But I’m looking for a better term pushes), I don’t think he than “perv.” While accurate, ROMAN ROBINSON would converse with me that term seems to carry about life in general. And negative connotations. I’m there are other ways I feel looking for something that this dynamic is detrimental communicates the same to my post-breakup life. For thing while being sex posiexample, he is really into tive. Any suggestions? cuckolding. He wants to —Positively Exploring hear about the dates I go Rhetorical Variety on, the other men I have sex with, how they fucked Dear PERV: I’ve always me, etc. It’s fun to tease liked “perv,” an affectionate him and make him jealous diminutive for “pervert,” and by texting him, especially I consider it sex positive in while I’m out with other men, but I wind the same spirit that “slut,” having been up feeling like my attention is divided reclaimed, is considered sex positive by between him and whoever I’m with, people who cheerfully and defiantly sometimes to a point where I can’t come self-identify as sluts. And since pretty with others because of how distracted I much any word that communicates the am (by him) and how disconnected I feel same thing “perv” does in one catchy/per(from them). cussive syllable has similarly negative —My Ex’s Sexy Sexts Are Getting connotations—deev for deviant, dej for Exhausting, Sorta degenerate, debbies for debauchers/ debauchees—this perv thinks you should Dear MESSAGES: If you feel like embrace the term “perv,” PERV, instead your ex is just using you for sexts and of trying to come up with something new. you don’t enjoy being used like that, MESSAGES, stop sexting with your ex.

Dear Dan: Where can I buy e-stim Maybe you’ll hear from him again after devices and urethral electrode sounds in the sexting stops—maybe he’ll reach out the Detroit area? now and then just to catch up—but even —Sounding You Out if you never hear from him again, that could be for the best. I mean, if you have Dear SYO: You’ll find a nice selection a hard time resisting his sext requests of e-stim devices and urethral sounds— and sexting with him leaves you feeling electrode and otherwise—at all Crowley’s frustrated (because you can’t fuck him) Department Store locations in the greater and prevents you from being in the Detroit area. moment (with the guys you are fucking), you should probably block his number.

Dear Dan: You’ve said that one way But if you enjoy sexting with your ex— to get over a crush is to masturbate about you did say it’s fun for you too—and you it until it passes. I’m going on 2.5 years. I can reset your expectations to avoid dishad surgery in 2019, and I’m still appointment (if you stop expecting more obsessed with my surgeon. I think it’s from him than just sexts), go ahead and trauma bonding, as I had complications BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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and had to have three follow-up surgeries, plus a ton of office visits. I know logically that he’s arrogant, overly impressed with his own sense of humor, and just generally not my type. I haven’t seen him in a year, but I still think about him all the time. Can you help?

—Can’t Understand This Dear CUT: If masturbating about your arrogant, unfunny, and perhaps incompetent surgeon (three follow-up surgeries?!?) hasn’t done the trick. . . maybe it’s time to try masturbating about something and/or someone else? (Or, even better, maybe talk with a therapist about this?)

Dear Dan: You recently told a healthy and active 72-year-old man practicing orgasm denial that “multiple studies have shown a link between frequent ejaculation and a lower incidence of prostate cancer.” I’m a healthy and active 78-yearold man who began masturbating at age 10. I continue to masturbate as frequently as my body will allow, which is about every other day. Yet, I was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a procedure that reamed out most of my prostate tissue. I am now back to masturbating, but not ejaculating. Still, a dry orgasm is better than no orgasm at all. So, studies may show one thing, but life can show you something completely different.

—Totally Wrong About That Fear TWAT: I’m sorry to hear about your prostate tissues, TWAT, and I’m glad to hear you’re able to enjoy the orgasms you’re still capable of having. But I gotta say—for the record—that I didn’t claim frequent ejaculation prevents prostate cancer. I cited studies showing a lower incidence of prostate cancer in men who “zero incidence.” You drew the short straw here, TWAT, and I’m sorry about that. But I can’t imagine you spent all those years masturbating solely for your prostate’s sake, TWAT, which means you still got something out of all those wet orgasms. It’s the same thing you’re getting out of the dry orgasms you’re enjoying now: pleasure.

Dear Dan: After reading the question asked by “The System Called Reciprocity,” the lesbian who wanted a man to do chores around the house in exchange for a handjobs or blowjobs, I had to write in. I’m not sure where she’s located, but if she’s on the South side of OCTOBER 7, 2021

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Chicago, I would be down for some light housework! Feel free to connect me to any of your readers for a deal like this!

—Helping Out The Dykes And Making Nice Dear HOTDAMN: I don’t know where TSCR lives either, HOTDAMN, but even if I knew where she was, I’m not allowed to put my readers in touch with each other. (My lawyer has forbidden me to play matchmaker.) That said, HOTDAMN, there’s nothing I can do to prevent my readers from reaching out to each other in the comments.

Dear Dan: So long as ALPHA—the straight guy who likes to demean and degrade thicc gay boys he finds on Grindr—is upfront with these guys and tells them he’s straight and tells them he has no intention of ever hooking up with them IRL, then what he’s doing is okay, I guess. But if he’s not disclosing all those facts about himself, Dan, then he’s pretending to be something he’s not and that is not okay! Straight guys leading gay guys on for attention is repulsive. We’ve got enough problems out there without you giving straight guys permission to fuck with our heads!

—Too Pissed For Acronyms Dear TPFA: Grindr and other hookup apps are full of guys leading each other on—sometimes intentionally (not interested in hooking up IRL), sometimes unintentionally (circumstances and/or guy trouble can derail a wanted hookup).

Everyone who gets on Grindr knows or soon realizes that not every chat or exchange of pics leads to sex. Like author and Grindr user Alexander Cheves said in that column: “We all enter Grindr chats willingly, and we should do so knowing that anyone we talk to may have no plans of following through with their promises to meet.”

And in ALPHA’s case, I don’t think he’s leading anyone on. He seeks out gay guys who fantasize about masculine, domineering, and unavailable straight jocks. He may be fucking with some guys’ heads, TPFA, but he’s only fucking with the heads of guys who get off on having their heads fucked with in exactly this way and by exactly his type. I mean, who better to fulfill the hot unavailable straight jock fantasy than the hot unavailable straight jock?

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

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