Central Boulder

The neighborhoods immediately surrounding Downtown Boulder are beautiful...and expensive. It really is a dream spot if you want to be in the city but still have that mountain town feel. Boulder has grown a lot in the last decades and the traffic and costs are sometimes frustrating, but having lived in Boulder since 1995 and raising my daughter here I must say I still love Boulder. As a midwestern girl who escaped, I fall in love with this place again and again.

As a perpetual renter just a few miles from downtown, I would love to live near the center of town but can't even dream of affording it. There are some stellar homes and properties near downtown where you can walk or bus to Pearl Street (the famous pedestrian mall) to eat, shop or just people watch. The nightlife is feisty and fun, the restaurants are diverse and many are reasonably priced, locally stocked and interestingly eccentric. Boulder is a unique place in Colorado, I don't think you can compare it to anywhere else in the state. You can go to an oxygen bar, visit the farmer's market then watch a lanky street performer bend himself into a box. That evening you can stroll or bike along the Boulder Creek path then take in an orchestra or Shakespeare festival play up at the University of Colorado which is only a mile or so south of Pearl Street. For the open minded adventurous types there are endless nooks and crannies to discover in Boulder and miles and miles of amazing hiking and biking trails. There is a bumper sticker I keep seeing around town over the years, "Keep Boulder Weird" that says it all.

The University of Colorado is a big part of town, but so are the many science institutes and technology companies (NOAA, NCAR, NIST, Southwest Institute, Google). I heard once that over 50% of working adults in Boulder who are in some shape or fashion self-employed. There are so many people walking the streets and visiting the cafes day and night that I don't doubt it. There is a sort of European atmosphere to downtown Boulder, unlike most America towns there is a centre and there are people walking and smoozing around. Yes, many of them are students, dogs or tourists but the locals mingle! There is a non-conventional feel to almost everything about the big little city of Boulder, Colorado.