* If this Guardian piece was an intentional parody a la Onion, i.e. someone saying “the recipe for a happy U.S. is a place with 88% whites and 1% blacks”, everyone would be screaming from the top of their lungs that you can’t be so racist, oblivious and insensitive. But apparently if you are the Guardian you can be as oblivious as you like, so long as you take snipes at the Donald.
* This is hilarious. Boulder is absurdly expensive, rabidly leftist/socialist, and looney bin crazy. You can stroll the main pedestrian shopping drag downtown, buy a $500 ski parka, then catch a $500 fine if you spark up a cigarette (but not a joint) outside (or even in your own car). Trustafarians abound (like in Vail). Traffic is horrible. Not too long ago you could swiftly escape to a more authentic hippie culture up the canyon in Nederland, but lately that too has become increasingly trustafarian. Every other storefront is selling wildly overpriced “art” or crystals and related new age crap from white people in dreadlocks.
From my perspective, the only redemption comes from ripping down the canyon with no opposing traffic in a sports car (i.e. Left Hand Canyon), but Boulder is far from the only place in the Colorado Rockies where there are spectacular enthusiast driving roads. That pretty much leaves us with the overwhelmingly white and low crime population and springtime rafting.
* Boulder IS awesome – even if you don’t subscribe to the left wing politics of the place, it’s got nature in spades, safety, lots of smart people, and decent culture and dining. Of course as Steve points out, the author glaringly omits the key characteristics of who lives there and who doesn’t, because readers might accidentally think that high concentrations of educated white people tend to result in really high quality of all around living as opposed to vibrant diversity all over the place being the highest good.
I’d probably toss Madison, Wisconsin in there as well – love it and could live there even as a huge political outlier because everything else about it is pretty great.
* It has 100K people, with a university that enrolls 30K students. Probably half the city is either attending the university or employed by it.
In other words, they don’t have to actually produce anything, and are completely subsidized by the government and rich parents sending money to their kids. Of course it’s a nice place to live.
* It’s worth noting that almost all of the non-whites in the Boulder census are students obtained by U. Colo. diversity incentives. I’ve never seen a nonwhite outside of the campus, or Pearl Street mall. And when I’ve seen them, they are surrounded by crowds of adoring dreadlocked trust fund millennials who appear desperate to have some of that cool blackness rub off on them.
* “It has been voted the US’s brainiest city, its happiest city, the country’s foodiest place and the number one city for health.”
Why is Boulder more brainy, happy, & healthy than Ferguson and San Bernardino for example? Isn’t diversity suppose to be our strength?
* I’ve always felt like the best place in the world to live would be a liberal city inside a conservative state & country. Like Boulder, or Austin.
In a small, concentrated group, lefties can really contribute to quality of life: They tend to produce good food, coffee shops, music scenes, a literary element, etc…
The trouble is when they get to be in charge of the larger society. Then they ruin everything.
* Boulder is also the home of Soldier of Fortune magazine and Paladin Press, publisher of such titles as Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors.
* Jim Goad has said that whenever White Liberals call him a racist, he responds by saying he lives in 75 percent Black Stone Mountain, Georgia and than he asks them what percentage of their neighborhood or suburb that they live in is Black?
Stone Mountain would scare the shit out of most White Liberals, especially since most Blacks in Stone Mountain are lot less Whitewashed than Obama in how they speak and dress. Stone Mountain has a lot of World Star Hip Hop culture.
