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"Denver Is Stuck In The 90s" (denver80222) 08/21/2014 at 14:55 • Filed to: Dots

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Seen in Boulder after having lunch with BoulderZ

MonkeePuzzle > Denver Is Stuck In The 90s 08/21/2014 at 14:57

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subie dubie dooo

Denver Is Stuck In The 90s > MonkeePuzzle 08/21/2014 at 15:00

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you should've had lunch with us

Chairman Kaga > Denver Is Stuck In The 90s 08/21/2014 at 15:04

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By the by, how do you guys like Boulder? The wife and I are starting to think about vacating Austin before we go nuts. This place is just getting silly... Looking for a nice, but odd, medium sized, family oriented city. And somewhere I could justify another WRX.

Denver Is Stuck In The 90s > Chairman Kaga 08/21/2014 at 15:06

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I actually don't live in boulder, I live in metro Denver. I like it a lot, very good place to start a family

Chairman Kaga > Denver Is Stuck In The 90s 08/21/2014 at 15:23

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Well, we already have two. I'm not sure Austin is the kind of place, these days, where I'd want to raise them. I'd really prefer a smaller city that's a little more neighborhood oriented. Austin has apparently decided it wants to be Dallas. Dallas sucks.

Denver Is Stuck In The 90s > Chairman Kaga 08/21/2014 at 15:26

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Metro Denver is great for that, it's away from the city, but it's not isolated

Nibbles > Chairman Kaga 08/21/2014 at 15:32

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"Odd" is being too nice to Boulder. It's expensive, cramped and irritating to people who like to drive cars.

BoulderZ > Denver Is Stuck In The 90s 08/21/2014 at 15:57

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Nice meeting up with you! Hope the rest of move-in day goes well for you and your family!

BoulderZ > Chairman Kaga 08/21/2014 at 18:05

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That's a very complicated question, so the answer is long. Sorry. TL/DR: it might be worth your time to check out Boulder and the Front Range.

For Boulder: I love it. I've lived here since '96. I wasn't born here. I didn't grow up here. None of my family, outside our household of 3, is even in this timezone. I am very happy to call Boulder home. But, everyone's different. Like any other place, the best way to decide if it's a good fit is to visit. If you previously liked Austin, or things about it, and are not fond of Dallas, it might be a good match. I have several friends who've moved to Boulder or other Front Range communities from Austin and have been quite happy. Denver (aka Mini Travis) is right, too. Lots of parts of Denver and the surrounding area might be really good candidates. Fort Collins might be worth a look (less access to Denver, skiing, airport, etc., though, if that matters to you).

The thing you'll find when you ask about Boulder is you get only absolute love/hate answers, and almost overwhelmingly from people who don't actually live here, and maybe never have. It's not for everybody; no place is. Here are the things I love about it (again, this is just me):

big enough to have some different types of neighborhoods to choose from, etc. but not A Giant City

BVSD schools are very good

tons and tons and tons of open space parks and trails

great cycling (on and off road)

lots of very good restaurants, breweries, food, etc. (less than 10 minute walk to a brewpub from my house, good grocery stores).

easy to get to a real airport (bus from the end of my street to DIA terminal, or an easy 45 minute drive).

low unemployment with lots of opportunities in my and my wife's career fields.

college/university town

lots of great music/concerts, especially with Denver close by.

left/progressive/liberal politics (again, this is my list of pluses, others might hate this)

easy access to awesome mountains, whether right next to us (Flatirons, Indian Peaks) or up I-70 in to the Rockies, and so on

4 real seasons, with snow that doesn't hang around long in town and summers that aren't too hot, and low humidity

decent gardening climate

short drive (90 mins, I think) to HPR, an excellent and inexpensive amateur road course. Bandimere is close, too, if drag racing is your thing.

Denver is close by, with major league sports, theaters, concerts, stores, etc. and all the large city benefits that a Boulder-size town wouldn't have on it's own.

very good transit

traffic isn't bad and the region is filled with good drives

lots of national forests and parks nearby

altitude

a lot of gearheads and interesting cars here, for a sparsely populated state, and no straight road salt (we do have deicer spray). My neighborhood looks like a Jalopnik shopping list (new and old). Great car shows and cruise nights nearby.

stable, if expensive, real estate (no crash/rollercoaster) http://www.zillow.com/research/data/

not a giant town, you can be out in farms or canyons in 10 or 15 minutes by bike or car

thanks to NOAA/NIST and CU, there are a lot of international folks living here on temp/exchange programs

Stuff about Boulder that people bitch about:

liberal/communist/lefty/full of hippies. Exaggeration, but it is a left wing town. If that's not your preference, you do have CO Springs, parts of counties around Denver, Fort Collins area, etc. for options.

Expensive. Yeah, you definitely won't get a low $/sq ft here. You won't get a deal on a new 4,000 sq ft McMansion here (though you can nearby). I sorted the median sale price for 3 BR homes sold in July in all 11,271 US zip codes (see that zillow link above). My zip ranked between 850 and 900. Surrounding towns are about as expensive now, too (Superior, Louisville, etc.). Still, compared to all surrounding towns, Boulder is more expensive. Compared to comparable cities/towns/areas, it's about what you'd expect. Nice towns with opportunities aren't cheap, or don't stay that way long. Obviously, we found the price/value tradeoff to be favorable for what we wanted. Others might be very disappointed. Coming from Austin, it may not be much of a price shock for you.

It is about as dry as you can get without technically being a desert. If you want lush greenery, this is not your place.

It is a good 1,000 plus miles from the ocean. If the coast, boating, and lots of open water are your thing, you will be disappointed. We have some reservoirs where people water-ski or sail laps, but it's a pretty sad non-whitewater scene. You can get great fish/seafood/sushi; but, you pay a lot, and it rode on a plane first. I bought fresh tuna in Port Townsend, WA for $4.99/lb a few weeks ago. Same quality here, last week: $25.99/lb.

Cold. We do have a few days every winter where it won't get above zero Fahrenheit. Of course, it's 70 the next week, but those 0 degree days really are cold even with low humidity.

Not very ethnically diverse. It is easy to get yourself in a very white bubble, but there are other ethnicities in town, and you'll find them by branching out in what you do, where you go, what neighborhood you live in (e.g. mine gets a lot of visiting faculty, which is fun), etc. It's not San Fran or Chicago or NYC, though.

Holy crap tourists! Yeah, with CU events (football weekends), and being on the way to/from Rocky Mountain National Park, we do get some very tourist-traffic days. Easy to avoid once you know how, but it is a factor.

Wildfires. Well, not in town, but it is CO, and that's a thing in the West. Smart construction and mitigation are very important if you go rural or edge. I have watched flames on the mountains from my front porch while smoke rolled through town.

Altitude is weird for tuning cars, and you'll see more forced induction and all wheel drive stuff here than most places. Maybe not bad, but it is an adjustment, and carbs are extra finicky here.

Severe weather. We do get hail. Just east of us are tornadoes. We do get blizzards. We get high winds. We do get lightning storms.

The Flatirons pretty much eliminate pretty sunsets. It's more of a light switch, and lops about 20 minutes of daylight off in the heart of winter.

Chairman Kaga > BoulderZ 08/21/2014 at 18:26

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That's an astoundingly comprehensive answer. Thanks. Jibes with anecdotes from around the webs. A good friend of mine and his wife JUST moved to Denver. She's an attorney, he's in real estate. They do well and they love it there. I think they actually live in Englewood? Anyway, I'm planning to go out there in October for a conference and scout around a bit. Might try testing the waters via linkedin or other friends. Who knows. Might be perfect for us!

As for housing by the way, we bought at about $100 sq ft in 2006. Our assessed value is presently about $160 per. That's NUTS. And hence the property tax issue.

BoulderZ > Chairman Kaga 08/21/2014 at 18:46

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Good luck! Like shopping for cars, house/location shopping is simultaneously really fun and really awful. Wow, that's a big delta between the purchase and assessed. In Boulder city limits, the cost per sq ft is pretty high (here's a good current ref with clickable map http://www.realtor.com/local/South-Bo… ). Their stats seem to show average for CO as a whole at $177 / sq ft. Englewood is very nice! I have some Z friends there with great garage setups. October is a good time for scouting, not full winter, not full summer, but you can get an idea of what it's all like.