Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Construction, Demolition, and SWAT training grounds

So, a month or so ago, I left my apartment to see a demolition crew tearing down an old abandoned house that has been sitting on the edge of a weed-choked vacant lot next to my complex for years. I felt a small pang of nostalgia but mostly relief; the place was an eyesore and probably some kind of publica hazard, and at least I would no longer have to give friends directions to my apartment by telling them, "Go past the junkyard and the abandoned house and my driveway is the next one on the right. If you get to the trailer park, you've gone too far." It makes it sound like I live in the ghetto and for what I make in income and pay in rent, I don't really like feeling that way.

I was blown away when the house was not only totally torn down but also hauled away by the time I got home from work that evening. There were also the makings of a crude parking lot for...what? Within the next few days, a pedestrian crosswalk had been erected, the kind with flashing lights to alert traffic to pedestrians crossing the street. While there was a fair amount of foot traffic in my part of town it was hardly downtown Boulder, and the whole thing remained a mystery until construction crews turned up across the street from my complex and, it seemed, turned the parking lots for the Shady Hollow East complex as well as the public works building nearby into rubble. The crude parking lot across the street was laid down so that residents would have somewhere to park their cars until the area looked a little less like this:
(Photo credit: Jeremy Baggs.) This was taken from my complex's lot...as you can see, there's not really anywhere for Shady Hollow residents to park there anymore, and what's been interesting to watch is how they, almost as if in some sort of passive rebellion, refuse to use the crosswalk. They'll be ten feet awat from it but refuse to press the button, activate the flashing lights, and cross in the actual crosswalk. An act of defiance, I suppose, in some form. Anyway...

The trailer park is also being demolished. I don't even want to know why, really, but I was really rather entertained to hear that due to the fact that it was slated for demolition the Boulder Police Department SWAT team, never one to miss an opportunity for any kind of staged-real-life practice, was going to descend upon the fenced-in trailer park for tactical training on Wednesday, March 25. On Monday we residents ofTwoMile Creek Condominiums were greeted by the following notice posted at all of the external entryways:
Presumably, we were warned so as not to be concerned about the myriad explosions and gunfire that would be quite audible, not to mention the dozens of armed cops clearly labeled with SWAT across their backs. I wish I'd called in sick from work, though I'm sure I would have been shooed away from any kind of snooping I would attempt. With my luck, I'd be arrested for disturbing the cops who were disturbing the peace. My indomitable boyfriend, never one to miss a photo op, shot a couple of quick digital pics from his car as he drove by and one of them looked pretty interesting:
(Photo credit: Jeremy Baggs) It's really probably a good thing I wasn't home. I wouldn't have been able to keep my snooping to myself.

I Love Boulder

Ahh, Boulder. Outside of Colorado, Boulder is known, I think, mostly, as:

a) an enclave of endurance athletes the world over, a kind of near-mythic utopia where Kenyans, Ironmen/Ironwomen, Olympians and various other superjocks come to train as we mere mortals gaze in awe as they fly past us and choke gratefully on their dust

b) the home of the University of Colorado, one of the nation's biggest party schools as rated by Playboy

c) that sleepy little town where that little girl was killed on Christmas, or

d) the setting for Mork & Mindy

There may be other associations of which I'm unaware, but I think this pretty much covers it. Inside of Colorado, it's a different story. Boulder is the liberal holdout, that trippy-hippie pseudo-city where, it was once rumored, California liberals headed when Berkeley got too conservative for them. Conversationally, anyone's perception of you shifts immediately once they realize you're from Boulder. Get a Letter to the Editor published in a Denver newspaper and you're bound to see a response in a day or two blasting whatever it is you wrote about based on the fact that you reside in Boulder.

That said, I love living in Boulder. I'll take my self-indulgent, overly intellectualized, flagrantly liberal, often entitled little city over anywhere else on the planet any day of the week. We get over 320 days of sunshine annually here. We have more grocers selling locally-grown, organically-harvested products than we know what to do with. We have a generally healthy, upper-middle class population and consistently rank as one of the healthiest places to live in the United States. Kids start hiking, cycling and rock climbing when they're still toddlers. The accolades go on...and on...and on.

That said, we are definitely still a liberal haven, as was demonstrated recently by throngs of protesters upset about our country's skyrocketing unemployment and slumbering economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, congregated at the convergence of a couple of main streets in the downtown area:
OK, so, you can see protesters anywhere. In fact, it's kind of welcome in a nation that's enjoyed an incredible span of total public apathy. In other countries, when they don't like what their government is doing, the population takes to the streets. They go out and protest en masse. And they achieve, at the very least, a lot more of their government's attention.

But this is Boulder, and protests are SO the norm, that I was at once convulsing with laughter and nodding in agreeement when I saw the anti-protest protesters:
Talking with them briefly while we were stopped at the intersection they were anti-protesting on, they gamely discussed the need to end protesting in Boulder. They were about a block away from the throngs of actually-protesting protesters, and we thought they were a riot. I love this picture in particular:
because he was actually saying to me, "We need to put a stop to all of this useless picketing!"

Ahh, Boulder. How can you not love this town?

I especially love that I snapped those photos (with my phone, hence the lousy quality) the same day as witnessing other Boulderific sights, such as this guy who was really, REALLY bent on going climbing:
Nice crashpad mounted on his back whilst riding the scooter up to, presumably, a nearby bouldering or sport climbing route. I guess in this case it serves a dual purpose, just in case some overcaffeinated multitasking soccer mom fails to notice his presence and rams him with her SUV.

God, I love this town.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Without A Doubt, The Cutest Kitty In The World

Awwwwwww...............................

Jeff Mason Strikes (Out) Again

This guy must be one heck of a talker to have attracted the kind of attention he has from sponsors. Doesn't matter; if he continues to address his racers this way, he may have an irate public on his hands. I recently received an email from "Boulder Marathon" (I must be some kind of masochist to remain on the mailing list, or perhaps I just do it to keep receiving His Eminent Moron's narcissistic ramblings masquerading as "race news"...whatever the reason, his flounderings make me chuckle and hey, isn't that what it's all about?) addressed to "Dear (Contact First Name)". In the name of all that is holy in marketing! I hope that by the time Jeff has shot himself in the foot so many times he's got nothing left to stand on, I'm in a position to start up the REAL Boulder Marathon.

Dear Uncle Chuck

(An email I sent my uncle after receiving a totally untrue chain email from him about how upset liberals were that Tiger Woods didn't make a political speech during his speaking event at the 2009 Inauguration. Woods has been a very vocal supporter of Obama and gushed his support energetically shortly after the election despite the fact that he has historically maintained a staunchly apolitical public stance.)

Uncle Chuck, why do you hate liberals so much? I'm really, genuinely curious about this. I don't understand what's so wrong about raising taxes on the wealthy while giving the lower and middle classes a break, or embryonic stem cell research, or calling for a massive stimulus package to stagnate skyrocketing unemployment levels and revive a terminally ill global economy. President Bush, after all, handed out stimulus checks twice. The first rounds of checks effectively annihilated the balanced budget achieved by the Clinton administration. The second was a desperate bid to demonstrate that conservative economic ideals of the "spend more than you can afford to" Republican party were fiscally viable. This led to the subprime mortgage crisis, which led to the credit crunch, which led to a terrifying global recession. The companies who desperately need federal funding to stay alive are dragging their feet because the government is not going to write them a blank check; the funds are available for those willing to dramatically reformulate their business plan, because the one they've been using thus far isn't working anymore. Similarly, the $500,000 salary cap that President Obama set on CEOs of businesses receiving federal assistance has sparked an outrage among these CEOs as well as reignited the conservative battle cry about the evils of government regulation. Apparently, asking businesses who stay afloat on federal funds to be accountable to the taxpayers who made those funds possible is socialism, and CEOs cannot possibly survive on $500,000 per year.

As for the accusations in this particular chain mail about us scheming liberals, where exactly is the evidence that Tiger's inviters were "stunned"? Oh, wait...there is none. Darn. Can't pin much more than an unfounded angry Conservative accusation on us. See the snopes research on this here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/tigerwoods.asp

As is noted in the (snopes) article, Tiger Woods often takes the opportunity to publicly address the importance of respecting and honoring our troops.

I love you,
Dondi