smileboulder -The world is always in transition. It is an endless chain of the old passing the torch to the new. So many of the old guard boulderites bemoan the changes to our marvelous lil town and ! understand your consternation and disappointment. I miss climbing with my cousins on the traincar parked in Central Park. My heart aches when I remember buying comic books from the long-gone garages across the street from where Illegal Pete's now is and then walking a few blocks to meet my dad at Penny Lane to play chess with my bestfriend who now lives elsewhere. Remember searching for used books at the Stagecoach where Salt now is? Or getting pizza at Old Chicago's where there's now a chain store. The town felt smaller back then, more intimate and yet full of wild characters with eclectic tastes. Compared to the era of my memories Boulder is homogenized, the splashy colors traded in for standardized gray tones. But I've learned to embrace this and appreciate the process of a town maturing. The memories that I mentioned were the towns teenage years and now Boulder has grown into a mature and wealthy middle-aged person, respectable and reticent. I won't live long enough to witness this towns dotage years and to be around when the people are gone and the red bricks start to crumble back into the Earth but perhaps there will be a dilapidated door, rusted shut and covered in vines with the semblance of a painted cat on it to bear witness at the end.

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