Wednesday 9 September 2015

Boulder Shock

It's a big shock, moving to Boulder. Depends where you move from, of course, but if you're coming from a place that is old, diverse, and or gritty, you may be in for an adjustment.

We moved from Chicago - actually from Evanston. Everything from the age of the houses here (70's, in spades!) to the whiteness of the people to the blandness of the ethnic food took us by surprise. We love it, but Boulder took some getting used to.

A guy that I worked with, based in Boston, said "I can't see you in Colorado. The people are very....plain." I didn't understand him. He was talking about that East-Coast (and West Coast too, to some degree), fast, snappy, often sarcastic verbal thing. It's not a Colorado thing. People here ARE plain, but I like that about them. When they say a thing, they're done.

People think that Boulder is going to be hippie-ish, but you really have to look for that. It is definitely doggish. And bike-ish. Natural foods? That surprised me. I thought the town would be overrun with healthy restaurants, but it isn't so. I'm not complaining. That was another Boulder Surprise.

The ethnicity thing is the most unsettling for me. I'm so excited to get in a cab in Chicago or New York and hear an accent. Wow! You're Nigerian! Polish! Congolese! It's the greatest. That's a big part of the deprivation here. We get the glorious mountains, but no pierogi.