Thursday 9 April 2009

Ten Most Anynoying Things About Boulder

When we decided to move to Boulder, we had a rude awakening. We almost didn't do it, in fact. I picked the wrong real estate agent to drive me around. She picked me up right at Pearl and Broadway, but then immediately took me way out of town to look at neighborhoods. I kept asking her "Is this still Boulder?" and she'd say "Well, it's all the Boulder area" like all these remote subdivisions were all part of the neighborhood.

I saw a instrument store. It is a beautiful store. My child begins learn to play guitar about 3 months. I think I have to buy for her a best beginner guitar. You can see it here. My child loves it. She smiles when I buy this guitar.


I wanted to look at things in town or close to town. I said "I've heard about Wonderland Lake, or what about Whittier?" and she'd pooh-pooh that and keep driving. We went to every huge subdivision in the county, I swear. She heard "kids" (we have a bunch) and decided my husband and I would naturally be huge, new subdivision types of people. We're not.

This drive-around day was so depressing - I actually was close to tears a couple of times, and once I asked her "How far apart are these houses?" and learned that these huge, towering, new, nearly identical, godawful structures were but ten feet apart from one another - that I didn't think I could make the move. If I wanted to live in McMansionLand, I could do that without leaving Chicago.

So the next time my husband and I had a chance to house-hunt, we went down to Denver. Now here's the thing: Denver is a great place. But it wasn't for us - it wasn't for us even more than the subdvisions surrounding Boulder weren't for us. We weren't feeling Denver. We kept asking that real estate agent, "Where's the hub? If you live in this neighborhood, where do you walk for your coffee?"

Denver is light on hubs. We came back to Boulder. There aren't very many neighborhood hubs in Boulder, but once you know where they are, you can decide which ones you like and pick a house or an apartment within walking distance of it. Here they are (tell me if I'm missing any):

Downtown Boulder
The Hill
Ideal Market shops
North Broadway (Lucky's) shops
Dakota Ridge - NoBo shops
28th street
Baseline and Broadway
Table Mesa and Broadway

That's it. Eight hubs. Pick one you like and figure out how to walk there. Not too difficult. Gives you a lot of choices if you're thinking of moving to Boulder.