Wheel Love Author and athlete Kerry Hellmuth on making women’s cycling history by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly 5/2/2024
For some American cyclists, moving to Boulder is synonymous with giving it a go as a professional rider. The city has long been a major draw thanks to its challenging, beautiful climbs and the chance to train at elevation.
On Tuesday evening, I took my 14-year-old daughter to a Boulder Planning Board meeting in the municipal building. We were both mortified. Two representatives of Morgan Creek Ventures (the developer hell-bent on tearing down the iconic, beloved Dark Horse bar and restaurant on Baseline Road) presented plans to demolish the 50-year-old Boulder institution and everything around it to erect a combined commercial/residential village featuring six five-story buildings, with restaurants, shops and 600 apartment units.
“The area around the Dark Horse is broken,” one of the men said a few times. He and his colleague touted the benefits of a gigantic new development at Williams Village, including accessibility for students passing through from nearby student housing. Along with six five-story buildings that would greatly alter that part of town, and the mountain views for some residents in that neighborhood, the developers want to eventually get a pass from the city to build a 70,000-square-foot hotel on the site. They also plan to provide parking, including underground, for 800 vehicles.
My daughter and I heard promises of “open space” on top of a few of the proposed buildings, a small amphitheater for music, and a plaza for food trucks and community hangouts to juxtapose the six gigantic buildings and accompanying 800 parking spots. We also heard the developers’ suggestion that they’re “open to” throwing upset locals a bone by allowing the Dark Horse to move some of its famous decorations into a much smaller new space somewhere amid the new five-story buildings, creating what they called “The Dark Horse 2.0.”
If the area around the Dark Horse is indeed “broken,” why was this public meeting not about fixing it, rather than razing it and building a money-making behemoth on top of it? I have been living in the Boulder area for 16 years. My child has spent only one year of her life anywhere else. The Dark Horse, the Trident and the Boulderado are a few of the places I can now count on just one hand that truly feel like Boulder the moment you walk in the door. Admitting that most of what’s around the Dark Horse is a parking lot that could be made into something wonderful for the community is just fine; in fact, it’s inspiring to imagine Boulder’s residents and government coming together to save the Dark Horse and make Williams Village into a welcoming, even bustling—and green, in foliage and energy—little townlet around it.
The Dark Horse does not qualify as historic, despite its rich 50-year history, so it’s susceptible to “development,” i.e. being torn down and—if we’re lucky, as these developers say—scrapped for parts. Still, anyone who’s lived in Boulder over the last half century knows the Dark Horse’s charm, its tasty food and colorful staff, its pool tables and other games, its karaoke nights and tricycle races, sometimes even live music. The Dark Horse’s layout is strange and vast, including an upstairs and an outdoor patio that some people have never visited even if they’ve been to the Dark Horse dozens of times. And the antique-store decorations? You could visit the Dark Horse every day for 50 years and still smile at something on the walls you’d never noticed.
Doesn’t all that qualify a business as “historic” and worth saving?
I agree with Boulder Planning Board member ML Robles, who said on Tuesday night, “This project is not meeting the intent of a neighborhood center” after the representatives of the developer had spoken. I also agree with Sarah Silver, who said “I would suggest that it be a smaller development.”
Businesses in Williams Village such as Sprouts have already volunteered to close for years and then reopen after construction of the proposed commercial/residential behemoth. If there is to be redevelopment of the area, Sprouts and Cosmo’s and the adjacent liquor store can survive, although it would be far better for the city of Boulder to ensure that they survive in a new Williams Village that is community oriented, beautiful, sparse and green, and overall not aimed at making as much money as humanly possible by cramming as many apartment units, parking spots, businesses and hotel rooms as the developers can convince Boulder to allow.
Does this supposedly creative, unique, funky college town that’s become one of the most expensive places to live in the United States really need one of its few remaining truly iconic, special establishments torn down in order to create even more brand-new, expensive shops and restaurants and brand-new, expensive apartments? If their plan moves forward, the developers, as most of us know, will have the choice to either make a percentage of the 600 apartment units permanently affordable or just pay the city a fee; it’s no mystery how that would go, as Morgan Creek Ventures has already indicated it will pay the city the required fees instead of including affordable housing.
Unfortunately, we cannot portray the Dark Horse like the old man in the movie Up, staying put in a special place, trying to save it while developers crush everything around him, because the owner does not own the building. However, it’s within the city of Boulder’s power to preserve something special, that has been a vital community center for 50 years, and—if Williams Village is to be redeveloped, which obviously it should—build a tasteful, uplifting, and small set of combined commercial/residential buildings around the Dark Horse while leaving it intact, as-is.
I’d like to be able to show my daughter not to fear change but to be a part of it, and make sure it serves her community. I urge people who care about the Dark Horse to attend City of Boulder meetings to speak up publicity about saving it, and also send emails to city council — as many as possible. Lastly, I urge City Council and the Planning Board to let people who care about the Dark Horse, and don’t want six five-story buildings aimed at making some very wealthy people even more wealthy rather than improving the community, can do to either stop the development or have a real voice in it.
Six of the year’s best music books for your last-minute gifting by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly 12/18/2023
It was a great year for new books on music. I was able to get through a giant stack of them in the last few months in order to choose half a dozen that would make great picks as gifts for yourself, your loved ones, or — if you’re that kind of geeky couple — to share with your partner.
The Bookworm (3175 28th St., Boulder) is my favorite place to find tomes of all kinds, and their music section is fantastic. Boulder Book Store(1107 Pearl St.) is obviously another great option. But when it comes to the best recent literature on music, my pick is the stealthy Boulder zine Sweet Tooth. An anonymous writer and publisher is intermittently putting out this “love letter to music” at locations around Boulder. Filled with poetic, romantic and thoughtful words on how songs make you feel, consider yourself lucky if you find a copy around town.
Boulder Blues Legend Makes Rare Appearance at Dazzle by Adam Perry for Westword 12/21/2023
Colorado bluesman Otis Taylor, a Chicago native, remembers being at the Rolling Stones’ legendary Hyde Park concert in London back in 1969, but it wasn’t the music he found particularly interesting.
“I didn’t care — I was just chasing girls at the time. I was just doing my miniskirt tour,” he admits. “I didn’t really care that the Rolling Stones were on stage. Thousands of people and all these hot chicks, and I’m, like, ‘Fuck.’ I just had a different attitude about it, but I always had an attitude about that until I got married.”
With a career-long embrace of unlikely instruments like the theremin, sousaphone and bouzouki, Colorado folk outfit DeVotchKa has never been the sort of rock band that fits neatly into a single box. Boulder Philharmonic Executive Director Sara Parkinson says that’s part of what makes their upcoming musical collaboration such an exciting partnership.
“We’re trying to get new people into the hall and appeal to a broader audience,” says Parkinson, who will conduct the orchestra during the upcoming May 6 concert and has performed with members of DeVotchKa in various chamber settings. “We like to amplify local voices and local talent, and putting [DeVotchKa] on the stage for the first time at Macky Auditorium is another special part of this collaboration. It’s about time, right?”
Andy Thorn has always walked a fine line between tradition and experimentation. Even as a kid in bluegrass-obsessed North Carolina, watching banjo greats chop it up at traditional showcases like Doc Watson’s legendary MerleFest, the future Leftover Salmon musician knew he was a little different.
“My banjo playing is always gonna go back to the roots, but I’m fairly progressive,” Thorn says. “Even back then, people in North Carolina thought I played too much ‘hoolyhoo.’ This great banjo player said, ‘Man, you like that hoolyhoo.’”
Fort Collins native Stelth Ulvang captured lightning in a bottle when he co-founded the now-legendary Colorado band Dovekins in 2009. Merging sea shanties with the quirkiness of Paul Simon’s Graceland and the energy of early Arcade Fire shows, the quintet soon carved a name for itself on the Front Range and beyond.
It’s hard to hold on to lightning, though, and by 2012 Dovekins was defunct and Ulvang was a full-time member of a fledgling indie-folk band called The Lumineers. He moved from bass to piano, and accordion, and now joyfully describes himself as not only The Lumineers’ pianist but also its “hype man.”
“Look, NWA has members that are known very well for their lyrics and members that are known for just a good fucking voice,” Ulvang says. “It’s good to be a hype man and I think I’m starting to feel more pride about that being a talent as opposed to an insecurity … which has taken 10 years.”
Lisa Siciliano has certainly grown up from the days when she first fell in love with music as a kid in Ohio — having since developed a remarkable career as a celebrated Boulder rock-concert photographer — but it’s a hoot to listen to her geek out on the musical heroes of her youth. Van Halen’s 1978 party-on-wax debut album, she says, “brings me right back to high school and everything I love about rock ‘n’ roll.”
Over the last 25 years shooting concerts — always on film, almost always in black-and-white — Siciliano has been smelling-distance away from many of the artists she grew up admiring, from the Van Halen brothers themselves to Pete Townshend and B.B. King. She’s also forged many relationships with local bands before they became stars, establishing herself as a vital part of the Colorado music scene in the process. She’s a fixture in the photo pit at Red Rocks, the Pepsi Center and really any renowned venue you can name.
Stay Gold Brian Finn Reminisces On 60 Years of Hoedowns and Good Food at the Gold Hill Inn by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly 7/29/2022
“A lot of people who play Red Rocks started off at the Gold Hill Inn,” says New Orleans blues and jazz musician Washboard Chaz, who was a Gold Hill icon in the ’70s and ’80s. “You’re up there in the mountains at 8,000 feet in a place that’s been happening for 60 years, and the community was around long before that. It’s a little magical place where music is encouraged and appreciated, and the Finns do a great job with dinner and entertainment. They’ve made it a popular place that people like to come to and play.”
Chaz (originally from New York and now well-known in New Orleans—and around the world—because of his appearances in television shows and movies) recalled his time at the inn by phone recently, and the conversation always returned to the Finn family, which has owned and operated the Gold Hill Inn since 1962.
“They accommodate everybody coming through up there,” Chaz remarks. “The Finns are accommodating people. They were really good to people who were outside the norm.”
Boulder painter Remington Robinson, a Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design graduate, has lived here for almost 20 years, but our stunning setting still inspires him regularly.
“The rock formations and the mountains are always fun to paint, either up close or from far away,” he says. “When you have atmosphere involved—if there is weather—that’s always fun to do paintings of. Maybe some days there is snow or rain, or light shining through the atmosphere. Something about the mountains is always fun to paint, but then there’s all the different subject matter within town that has nothing to do with the mountains.”
Read the rest at Boulder Lifestyle’s website here.
Adam Perry 