My sister Susan and I, along with her dog Blackberry, drove up to Boulder a few weeks ago to walk around and enjoy a lazy Monday afternoon up there. The Boulder Mall is the heart of that city, and many of the commercial buildings date from the 1870s, such as the one housing the Free People store in the photograph on the left. And what do they sell at the Free People store? Beats me. Hopefully not people.
The mall has a lot of unique, locally owned businesses, such as the kite store in the photograph on the right. Back when I was a kid growing up in the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago, you used to be able to buy kites at the local dime store in downtown Brainerd for next to nothing. They were not elaborate, like the ones sold at Into the Wind, but they flew up into the sky just as well as I imagine the pricey ones do in that shop. And do I sound like an old curmudgeon or what? Don't answer that!
The best part of Boulder is, of course, its location, right underneath the Flatirons, as seen in the photograph on the left. You can walk from the Boulder Mall west along Pearl Street and in no time be in those mountains, which is a truly wonderful thing. Even if you can't afford to live there (it is the 7th most expensive housing market in the country), Boulder is only a 40 minute drive from Denver, and so everyone in the metro area can enjoy it whenever they want. What could be finer?
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