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Longmont’s Veterans Community Project breaks ground as Boulder still debates ADUs and tiny homes

by Emma Athena

Empowering the survivor voting block

by Angela K. Evans

Schedule an appointment with yourself today

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buzz:

Melanie Walker’s photography is part of a 100-artist collaborative project celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment

by Caitlin Rockett

events:

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beer:

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feast:

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Magic, fundraisers, live music, a chocolate club and more to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do...

by Boulder Weekly Staff

Celebrate Beer and Pizza Day at Erie’s Echo Brewing

by Michael J. Casey

New food hall Avanti Food & Beverage opens in renovated Pearl Street building

by Matt Cortina

FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEART, WE WANT TO THANK OUR COMMUNITY FOR SUPPORTING LOCAL BUSINESSES!

departments 5 6 18 19 20 21 23 29 30

Guest Column: Why Trump will leave office if he loses the election Letters: Signed, sealed, delivered, your views Home Viewing: ‘Cameraperson’ Words: ‘Wanderer’ by Amanda Boyer Astrology: by Rob Brezsny Film: ‘Dick Johnson is Dead.’ Long live Dick Johnson.

Food/Drink: What to try this week in Boulder County Savage Love: Threesomes Weed Between the Lines: Denver-based GreenScreens isn’t just a digital ad network for dispensaries

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OF COUNTY 2020 WINNER

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OCTOBER 1, 2020

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Publisher, Fran Zankowski Editor, Matt Cortina Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Senior Editor, Angela K. Evans Arts and Culture Editor, Caitlin Rockett Special Editions Editor, Michael J. Casey Adventure Editor, Emma Athena Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Sarah Haas, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Christi Turner, Betsy Welch, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Sami Wainscott Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman Graphic Designer, Daisy Bauer CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer Cover photo, Courtesy Veterans Community Project October 1, 2020 Volume XXVIII, Number 7 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@ boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2020 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@ boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Why Trump will leave office if he loses the election

by William Cooper

T

here is widespread concern that President Trump won’t leave office if he loses the election. This angst is understandable. Trump has, after all, refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

But if Trump loses he will leave. Not, of course, because he wouldn’t want to seize power and stay in office. But because he couldn’t get away with it if he tried.

A fight about the election would ultimately go to the Supreme Court — just like it did in 2000. Trump won’t stay in the White House if the Supreme Court rules against him. Why? Because staying would require Trump’s entire administration, the military and nearly three dozen senators (to withstand impeachment and removal) all conspiring to violate two sacred principles of our constitutional system: that courts are the final word in constitutional disputes and there are peaceful transitions of power after elections.

It won’t happen.

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There is broad recognition among liberals and conservatives alike that court orders must be followed.

Always. Indeed, despite Trump’s many losses in court — and despite his incendiary rhetoric targeting the judiciary — he has not disobeyed a court order.

This principle began in 1803 with Marbury v.

Madison, when Chief Justice John Marshall declared that it “is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” Ever since, federal courts have issued orders resolving disputes — and the rest of the government has obeyed and enforced them.

This was true when President Eisenhower sent federal troops into Arkansas to enforce Brown v. Board of Education. It was true when the Supreme Court ordered President Nixon to hand over his oval office tapes. It was true when the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election. see GUEST COLUMN Page 6

OCTOBER 1, 2020

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On online petitioning Thanks for the great article discussing Boulder’s slow walk toward online petitioning (Re: News, “Advancing Democracy,” Sept. 24).

Here are a few observations on this ill-managed process. FYI, I was a member of Boulder’s Campaign Finance and Elections Working Group, and also served 10 years on the Boulder City Council: 1) There is no reason at all to not have both paper and online petitioning. It’s a relatively trivial job for the city staff to check the names on paper petitions against the electronic record of online endorsements, once they have verified the signatures.

Besides, relatively few people will use paper, so it won’t be a huge burden.

But more importantly, a citizen who is not set up to do online activities wouldn’t be excluded.

2) The security concerns were not being handled in the most efficient way, at least as of the last time this was publicly discussed. The fundamental problem is that the Secretary of State wouldn’t allow cities to use the SOS’s website’s secure sign-in process to validate a voter’s identity.

Given that difficulty, the simplest approach might have been to use credit cards to sign in or send out postcards with a sign-in verification code. But those were not even explored.

3) This is NOT voting. This is just about getting something on the ballot. Comparing this to an actual election is a creating a concern that is not legitimate.

4) The proposed telephone approach to sending out sign-in verification codes (as discussed by the city staff in December 2019) is counter-productive. A lot of people don’t want to make their phone numbers public, and the County Clerk could not, at that time, share non-public information with the City. Hopefully the City has gotten better access to emails that could be used to verify who is endorsing what.

5) The City could have asked MapLight to develop their process, which the company said as late as January this year that they could have up and running in 90 days, and 6

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would do it for free, not almost a half a million dollars! Then they City could have tested it and seen if they liked it well enough. If the City’s website is secure enough to handle council and staff internal communications, utility billing and credit card payments, a multi-hundred million dollar budget, huge construction contracts, municipal court functions, etc., it ought to be secure enough to handle people signing up to put something on the ballot.

Steve Pomerance/Boulder

Demanding action from COGCC A few years ago, as a freshman in high school, I arrived at my first cross country race. I was anxious for all of my hard work to finally pay off in my first race at Mead High School. But as I stepped off the bus, I saw it. My mouth dropped open.

I’d honestly never seen one up close before. It was a fracking site.

It looked less than a few hundred feet from the course I was about to run. Kids go to school here? THIS close to a fracking site? I was shocked. I was running a race knowing I was breathing in toxic gasses.

Even more unbelievable, kids were going to school next to this everyday.

The oil and gas industry was actually profiting off of putting children’s lives at risk.

Now, state law will continue to favor the oil and gas industry over our health.

The COGCC’s draft rules for setbacks provide multiple loopholes for the oil and gas industry to exploit. I urge COGCC to enact firm setbacks of no less than 2,500 feet from spaces where children learn and grow. Extensive research indicates greatest harm to people living within 2,500 feet of fracking, so that should be the firm, non-waivable minimum setback to protect Coloradans.

I’m now a senior in high school, desperate for any adults with power to protect us from fracking.

COGCC — please stop talking about how much you care about Colorado’s children because if you actually cared, you would show us.

Megan Neufeld/Lyons OCTOBER 1, 2020

GUEST COLUMN from Page 5

TRUMP couldn’t get his

And it’s true now.

Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr recently embraced this principle. Barr was asked: “Should the Supreme Court have the exclusive power to interpret the Constitution?”

His response: “Yes.” If Trump “believes that he has the power to do something under the Constitution,” Barr continued, “he should be able to exercise that power.

And if the Court disagrees and orders him not to, then he’s lost the case.”

And last week a unanimous Senate passed a resolution reaffirming its commitment to a peaceful transfer of executive power.

True, Donald Trump has probably never heard of Marbury v.

Madison. His allies are prone to making false statements. And he would happily disregard the Supreme Court to stay in office.

But it’s not up to him. It’s up to the many executive branch, military and congressional leaders who must legitimize his presidency and carry out his orders. As we learned from the Mueller report, Trump couldn’t get his own White House counsel to fire Bob Mueller; he’s not going to

get his entire administration to seize the government.

Indeed, seizing power would be exponentially worse than anything Trump has attempted. It would be akin to signing and spending the annual budget without Congress’s approval; refusing to recognize or participate in an impeachment process; or issuing an executive order firing a life-tenured Supreme Court Justice.

We should expect a partisan battle over the election. We should expect Trump to fight hard in the courts. We should expect tense moments. Surprises.

Disappointments. Shocks. But, ultimately, Trump will not defy a court order and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Not because he wouldn’t want to.

But because he can’t.

William Cooper is an attorney who has written for The Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News and USA Today, among others.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

own White House counsel to fire Bob Mueller; he’s

not going to get his entire

administration to seize the government.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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KEVIN SIPPLE for COLORADO Common Sense for Colorado

Candidate for Representative – State House District 13 ABOUTKEVIN KEVINSIPPLE SIPPLE ABOUT

Rule of Law:Government Governmentagencies agenciesand andofficials officialsshould should follow follow the Rule of Law: the law, law, not made up.up.

If the government won’t follow BackgroundininBusiness Business -- One One of of founders theirown ownpreferences preferencesororlaws lawsthey’ve they’ve made If the government Background foundersofofEldorado EldoradoArtesian ArtesianSprings, Springs,Inc., thenot their thefollow Laws, why shouldwhy anyone? bottled water company.

Inducted Inducted into the Boulder Business won’t the Laws, should anyone?

Inc., the bottled water company. into theCounty Boulder CountyHall of Fame Enforcement:I’mI’ma strong a strongsupporter supporterofofLaw LawEnforcement.

Enforcement. in 2010, Hall numerous other community awards.

LawLaw Enforcement: Business of Fame in 2010, numerous other community awards.

Defunding the Police supporter is a terribleofidea.

Military: I’m a strong the Military and Veteran’s Services.

Expertisewith withRegulatory Regulatory Agencies, Agencies, Including various Expertise Includingthe theEPA, EPA,FDA, FDA,CDPHE CDPHEAlso Also Military: I’m a strong supporter of the Military and Veteran’s Services.

Agriculture: I’m a strong supporter of Agriculture.

County and City Agencies including Land Use, Zoning, and Building Departments.

Agriculture: I’m a strong supporter of Agriculture. various County and City Agencies including Land Use, Zoning, and Building Environment: I support maintaining strong enforcement of our Environment: I support maintaining strong enforcement of our environmental Departments.

PUBLIC SERVICE environmental regulations in order toland, keepand our water air, land, and water clean. regulations in order to keep our air, clean.

Volunteer in various Boulder County Agencies. 1992-2002 Placement I support maintaining thetheEndangered Species Act. PUBLIC SERVICE I support maintaining Endangered Species Act. Alternatives Commission, an appointed Board managing seven social services Constitution: a strong Volunteer various to Boulder County together, Agencies.and1992-2002 Placement Constitution:I am I am a strongsupporter supporterofofthe theprotection protection and and enforcement enforcement of our programsindesigned keep families Victim Advocate with the of our Constitutions.

These documents a large the reason our and Alternatives Commission, an appointed Board managing social Constitutions.

These documents are aare large part ofpart the of reason our nation Boulder County Sheriff’s Office 2001 to present, a programseven that provides nation and state are such a good place to live. state are such a good place to live. services programs designed to keep families together, and Victim Advocate assistance to victims of crimes, personal tragedies, and natural disasters.

I support thethe development Solar, Hydro, Energy: I support developmentofofallallforms formsofofenergy, energy, Wind, Wind, Solar, with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office 2001 to present,Member a program Member of Colorado Organization of Victim Assistance. of thethat SuicideEnergy: and and FossilFossil Fuels.Fuels.

Fossil Fuels will be necessary until wind and solar power are provides assistance of crimes, andBillnatural Prevention Coalitiontoofvictims Colorado.

Stronglypersonal supports tragedies, the Taxpayer of Rights. Hydro, more developed disasters.

Member of Colorado Union of Taxpayers.

WHY I’M RUNNING FOR OFFICE WHY I’M RUNNING OFFICE ISSUESI ISUPPORT SUPPORT Twenty-six years ago whenFOR I entered public service as a volunteer, ISSUES Twenty-eight when satisfaction I entered public as a volunteer, FiscalResponsibility: Responsibility: The The Government Government should the years great ago personal thatservice came from helping I discovered Fiscal shouldspend spendour ourtaxtaxdollars dollarswisely. I discovered the great personal that came from people.

I consider I support sensiblesensible spending, no new taxes, not wasting moneyour on people.

I consider thesatisfaction pursuit of public office in helping the State Legislature an the wisely.

I support spending, no newandtaxes, and notour wasting pursuit oftopublic officemy in public the State Legislature an opportunity to continue my “showboat” projects. projects. opportunity continue service. money on “showboat” public service.

Why Why Vote Vote for for Me: Me: I believe I believe that that you, you, notnot thethe government, government, areare in in thethe best best position position to to make make decisions decisions about about what what is right is right forfor youyou and and your family. your family.

It’s not the It’s not rolethe of government role of government to dictate to dictate or regulate or regulate anyone’s anyone’s personal personal choices.choices.

If elected, If elected, I pledgeI pledge to do mytobest do my to keep best to alive keep free alive choice, free choice, fairness, fairness, and the andAmerican the American Way.Way.

www.KevinSipple.com BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OCTOBER 1, 2020

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EMMA ATHENA

A tiny house, a big step

Longmont’s Veterans Community Project breaks ground as Boulder still debates ADUs and tiny homes

By Emma Athena MASYN MOYER, vice chair of Boulder’s Housing Advisory Board, hangs out in her converted school bus.

She has spent the better part of the last decade advocating across the country for accessory dwelling units, like tiny homes.

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tanding on a two-acre plot of land in southwest Longmont, Navy veteran Paul Melroy surveys the scene: Upon this tractor-raked swath of dirt, there will be 26 new tiny homes and a community center by the end of 2021, if all goes according to plan.

The miniature dwellings will be transitional homes for veterans in Northern Colorado experiencing homelessness. And at the community center, the Veterans Community Project (VCP) will headquarter its Longmont chapter, providing supportive and recreational services to housed and unhoused vets alike.

Homelessness “is a problem that we’ve spent decades trying to grapple with somewhat unsuccessfully as a nation,” says Melroy, executive director of VCP’s Longmont operation, who’s been working on the development since he arrived in Colorado five months ago. “There’s no cookiecutter solution to any of this, and you have to be willing to attack things from a lot of different angles.”

VCP was founded five years ago by a group of combat veterans in Kansas City tired of watching vets fall through cracks in the city’s homelessness framework. Some services can exclude veterans due to discharge status, Melroy says, and for psychological reasons, it’s particularly difficult for some vets to go straight from living on the streets to living in an apartment — which is the singular strategic focus of the popular OCTOBER 1, 2020

Housing First model to which many cities, including those in Boulder County, subscribe (see News, “An incomplete picture,” Aug. 27).

So, VCP designed a tiny home village in Kansas City — Habitatfor-Humanity style, the organization crowdsourced volunteer labor to build 49 less-than-400-square-foot homes where vets can live, free of charge, for up to two years, while seeking permanent housing. Since opening in 2018, VCP has helped dozens of vets exit homelessness and served thousands more through its community center with a robust wrap-around service system.

Now, despite months of COVID19 delays, VCP has broken ground in Longmont, its first expansion location. Alternative housing models are finally gaining traction in local and national conversations about reducing homelessness and housing insecurity, Melroy says. “We’re starting to get clever.”

Other cities like Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland have been using micro communities to help serve a variety of low-income and homeless individuals for years, but the concept has been slow to take root on the Front Range. Colorado Village Collaborative (CVC)’s Beloved Community Village, a collection of 19 transitional tiny homes in Denver, grew out of a 2017 pilot program and again expanded in 2020. VCP’s village in Longmont will be the first of its kind in Boulder I

County.

With small footprints, minimalist designs and independent privacy, tiny homes present a cost-effective way for vulnerable community members to gain some stability, advocates claim. (CVC tiny homes cost about $15,000 to build; VCP’s about $10,000.) But others contend the high-density village designs will disrupt neighborhood traffic patterns and aren’t viable in space-starved cities. More argue transitional housing is a financial distraction from the ultimate homelessness solution: permanent housing.

Permanent housing has been the exclusive focus of Housing Solutions for Boulder County (HSBC, the inter-governmental body responsible for implementing the local Housing First strategy). Since 2017, HSBC reports 465 people have successfully exited homelessness into permanent housing, but officials also acknowledge a major factor limiting the program’s success: the short and slowgrowing supply of affordable housing.

This summer, more than a dozen rent vouchers went unused due to difficulties in matching people with apartments.

As folks wait for opportunities to open up, the limited services make it increasingly difficult to cope, and marginalized individuals experiencing homelessness in Boulder are disproportionately prone to compounding hardships. But, advocates say, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), the BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

technical classification of any sub400-square-foot living space including tiny homes, could help the situation in Boulder and complement the Housing First mission.

Masyn Moyer, vice chair of Boulder’s Housing Advisory Board (HAB), has been advocating for ADUs for more than a decade.

Because “everyone loves vets,” she says, and because the need is so great — in Colorado, 9% of the unhoused are vets even though they only comprise 7.6% of the population — the VCP may be a palatable way to demonstrate the viability of tiny homes to the community.

For the hundreds more individuals experiencing homelessness with no history of military service, and thousands more who are vulnerable to the region’s ever-rising housing costs (seniors, young families, low-income workers), Moyer argues ADUs could help prevent more homelessness in Boulder County, in addition to helping solve it.

Creating micro-communities, however, is far from simple. In Boulder, the concept has been routinely dismissed over the years, primarily due to concerns about neighborhood density and land use.

For much of the 2010s, Moyer traveled around the country, advocating for ADU legislation on a national level, including the expansion of ADUs in the International Building Code. According to Tiny House Society, which tracks tiny home legislation in different states, tiny homes might be growing more popular on a conceptual level, but city codes and restrictive development regulations may lag behind due to cumbersome public policy processes. While VCP has experienced a relatively smooth and straightforward development process in Longmont, with city officials directly championing the project, that hasn’t been the case elsewhere in Colorado.

CVC’s village had a tumultuous start, with intense community debate around the village’s location. Though it’s now situated on city-owned property in the working-class Globeville neighborhood, the project faced rounds of public scrutiny that nearly thwarted the process. After the first year of operation, however, an independent study found nearly 90% of Globeville neighbors reported no impact or a positive impact on their BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

sense of community; nearly 80% reported no impact or a positive impact on their traffic, safety and noise. Also, crime rates didn’t increase near the village, despite concerns it would. Building off this success, in July, CVC broke ground on a new Women’s Village, designed in partnership with the City and County of Denver, which will feature 14 tiny homes and other amenities on a previously vacant city block in the Cole neighborhood.

The situation in Boulder has been different.

“We’ve over time made it harder to do that kind of thing,” explains geographer and community activist Claudia Hansen Thiem.

Decades ago, ADUs — in the form of tiny homes, “carriage houses,” stand-alone apartments, mother-in-law suites, converted trailers or school buses — used to be commonplace in Boulder.

Take a stroll down the historic Mapleton Avenue and many of these small dwellings are visible, Hanson Thiem notes. But current zoning and land use codes have evolved over time to intensely regulate new construction of any ADUs. Beginning in the 1970s, Boulder began a concentrated effort to “downzone” neighborhoods and minimize the variety of housing development options, Hanson Thiem says. To preserve neighborhood character and suburban values, the stricter codes and zoning requirements eliminated opportunities for higher-density living, such as triplexes, small apartment complexes and/or ADUs. In exchange, developers prioritized single-family residences, which many community activists now cite as a major contributing factor to the city’s current lack of affordable housing. While expansion and development opportunities in general remain limited in Boulder, some building diversity has slowly come back.

In 2018, after the International Building Code was ratified to include ADU-specific code, Boulder’s City Council adopted an ordinance to allow incremental new ADU development — less than one-half of 1% of growth each year. “That took us 10 I

years to negotiate,” Moyer says, recalling the sheer exhaustion of the public process. “And that’s all we got?”

Hanson Thiem, who once lived in an ADU in California, says it’s still a start. “If you start looking at housing insecurity, which obviously is a precursor to homelessness in a lot of cases, I think anything that you can do to create more small-scale options for people is going to help that situation.”

The ability to add one or two ADUs to a neighborhood is a far cry from creating a tiny home village, however, and even farther from one

nonprofits, other service providers, individuals and faith congregations.

HSBC continues to focus funding exclusively on providing permanent housing opportunities.

In July, HSBC presented a homelessness strategy update to Boulder’s City Council, wherein tiny homes were acknowledged as a potentially helpful response to homelessness, but not an ideal one and not something HSBC will itself pursue.

“Tiny homes could meet the goals of the Homelessness Strategy,” the report states. “However, concerns about land usage, placement, structure and need may not align VETERANS COMMUNITY PROJECT with Homelessness Strategy 3,” which directs staff to use datadriven results and maximize service efficiencies during decision-making.

HSBC has not commented publicly on VCP’s Longmont project, and does not plan to fund or facilitate future tiny home village projects.

Back in 2016, after some members of Boulder’s City Council visited Portland to research homelessness that includes a transitional program responses, Council member Aaron for unhoused community members.

Brockett recalls: “I came back with a First, a concentrated number of tiny lot of energy to see if we could [replihomes would violate the current ADU cate a] tiny home village in Boulder,” development allowances, and second, he says. But when he and then-Counthere’s a history of resistance to addcil member Jan Burton proposed some ing homelessness services to Boulder potential sites, Council majority voted neighborhoods. down the idea. “We were never able to On a logistical level, the creation move forward on that.” of a tiny home community in Boulder, Though VCP hasn’t received fedregardless of its purpose, “would need eral or state financial support (funding to [have] a different kind of land use is sourced from private individuals, zoning in place,” Hanson Thiem corporate donors and fundraisers), it explains. This is possible through pubhas received plenty of encouragement lic process, however, if City Council from local and state officials, which were to take up the issue and if there can go a long way in helping destigwas enough community interest. matize community perceptions of “I think there is interest, but that homelessness, or at least homeless interest is not reflected in the leadervets. “My understanding is the neighship that we’ve elected, and that’s a bors were actually great, that we did big disconnect,” Hanson Thiem says, not get a lot of NIMBY-type pushas she’s spent years working within back here,” Melroy says. various community groups like For the moment, however, VCP’s Boulder Progressives on the issue. only neighbors are an RV service cenBut Boulder’s City Council has ter and self storage buildings. Soon continued on what many say is a con- that will change. servative Housing First path, routinely The VCP village site is a donation directing ideas for new transitional or see TINY HOMES Page 10 service-oriented programs to private OCTOBER 1, 2020

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TINY HOMES from Page 9

303.449.0011

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from HMS Development. A couple years ago, Kevin Mulshine, an HMS partner, visited VCP’s Kansas City village and was impressed enough to lobby for its expansion in Longmont, offering to be its host. While VCP will occupy a tiny corner of the property, HMS is planning a residential subdivision for the rest of the 65-acre lot. Eight Habitat for Humanity homes will also be constructed and financed for low-income families.

“It’s the first situation we know of in the country where transitional homeless housing is being built in conjunction with a subdivision where the top price on some of the properties will be about $900,000,” Melroy says. “Of course we’re going to want to be good neighbors.”

Despite the popularity of new national TV shows like Tiny House Nation and Tiny House, Big Living, convincing neighborhoods to welcome tiny homes has been a substantial, sometimes fatal, roadblock for village ventures across the country.

Neighborhoods in many cities — Des Moines, Iowa; Charlotte, North Carolina; Tallahassee, Florida; and Denver, to name a few — have organized robust campaigns opposing tiny home villages.

In Des Moines, which faces homelessness problems similar to Boulder with fewer shelter beds than people in need of shelter, the homelessness advocacy organization, Joppa, has been specifically lobbying for a transitional tiny home community for years.

Even after securing independent funding and services partnerships, a 2017 proposal was dismissed due to neighborhood opposition. According to

A VET MOVES Joppa’s website, into the Kansas City “The bottom Veterans Community Project line: land use is tiny home village. the only thing holding up this proven solution.”

In 2018, when the City of Boulder entertained proposals for use of the 22-acre Hogan Pancost property in East Boulder, Kurt Firnhaber, director of Housing and Human Services, put forward alternative and affordable housing ideas, including a tiny home village. It was briefly, but not seriously, entertained — no feasibility analysis was ever conducted, and the property was ultimately absorbed into open space.

Hanson Thiem, who recalls the Hogan Pancost debate, says it probably echoed the ’70s down-zoning movement: pro-single residencies, anti-high density. “I think the concerns then were probably the same that they are now, just about overcrowding, about parking,” she says.

“I don’t think ADUs are an answer to homelessness, but they are part of this puzzle about housing security in the city,” she adds. ADUs “are creating options for people who don’t necessarily fit into the standard categories of affordability, but who still need housing in the community. … By doing so, you can also open up other options so that the people who live in ADUs are not competing for the apartments in the same way. You give everybody a little more slack in the housing market to find what they need.”

Moyer is one of those people who doesn’t quite fit into standard housing situations. She spent years

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

of her youth experiencing homelessness and eventually grew into and then out of being a homeowner in Boulder. She knows intimately both sides of the coin: what it’s like to be powerless and powerful in urban environments.

When her kids grew up and left home a few years ago, she realized tiny-house living was the best fit for her lifestyle. “It’s where I resonate,” she says. “My goal was to shrink my footprint. I didn’t need a large house anymore. I didn’t want to have roommates. ... I’m also coming up on being a senior, and I was one of the individuals who didn’t plan well young, based on my trauma [and] being homeless ... so I don’t have a retirement plan.”

To stay in Boulder — reducing her living expenses, maximizing an environmentally conscious lifestyle, and maintaining her clientele as a hairdresser of 20 years — Moyer converted a 98-square-foot school bus into a cozy mobile apartment with a full suite of amenities, like a kitchen sink, convection oven, toilet, guest bed and a lounge area for Gus, her dog. She lived happily in the “schoolie” until she was tapped for a seat on the Housing Advisory Board in 2017. Due to city rules, board and commission members must reside within city limits; if Moyer wanted to serve on HAB, she’d need to provide a physical address.

It’s one of many city policies Moyer condemns for discriminating against the poor and working classes of Boulder. “As much as we pay lip service to wanting to have all stakeholders [represented] in our community, that completely leaves out our unhoused,” she says.

What’s more, when it comes to the public process, Hanson Thiem has observed older, wealthier homeowners, those already established in their neighborhoods and “who tend to have a NIMBY-ish reaction to these kinds of policies,” are the ones who continually show up to public meetings. “And so when we have had proposals for liberalizing these kinds of housing rules, they get chipped away at over time,” she says.

Moyer feels a community disconnect, too. “You know, our pragmatic elders say, don’t spend more than 30% of your income on housing. Yet, we try to do that and we’re vilified for living with multiple people or creating comBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

munity or creating alternative housing — all shit they did when they were younger,” she says. “I mean, living in buses was cool back in the day.”

Moyer hopes if the VCP village can set a good example for local ADU communities, it could open doors to permitting mobile tiny homes on wheels, like her schoolie, which are not forms of residence currently allowed in the city.

And for its part, VCP has been doing all it can to set itself up for success. The inaugural Kansas City site has moved 76% of village participants into permanent housing — about double that of similar programs, Melroy says. He attributes the success to hearty supportive services like health and wellness programming, various types of counseling, educational opportunities, a donation center and recreation area.

Replicating the project in Boulder County, “It’s this little bit of a grand experiment,” he says.

VCP has spent years building relationships throughout the County, primarily with the nonprofit HOPE (Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement), which has started to refer veterans to VCP for specialized assistance. Partnering with existing local organizations, “is the key to success for us. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” Melroy says.

Though to others, it certainly looks like VCP is paving the way. In the last two or so years, VCP has received thousands of inquiries about tiny home logistics from all over the country, 700 or so of them serious, including offers to gift land in exchange for VCP coming to town.

The organization’s goal is to build eight more tiny home villages in the next two years in various cities across the country. St. Louis is next on the list.

“We seem to have caught on with something in the community psyche; it’s a beautiful thing.”

With VCP charging ahead, advocates hope it’ll drum up support for pilot opportunities for non-veteran unhoused populations and working class folks in Boulder. Both HAB and the Human Relations Commission have been exploring the possibility of tiny homes as transitional and affordable housing options, and plan to make their case in front of City Council in the coming weeks.

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Empowering the survivor voting block

by Angela K. Evans

T

he passing of Supreme Court Justice and women’s equality champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in conjunction with National Voter Registration Day, brought a surge of voter registration and requests for mail ballots across the country — a 118% increase over the previous weekend according to the national nonpartisan technology platform vote.org.

But for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, registering to vote can come with significant consequences: residential addresses become public record, making it easier for abusers to find them.

Over the last decade, Colorado has worked to guarantee survivor confidentiality in the voting process.

“Everyone has the right to participate in our democracy,” Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick says. “And we should be doing everything we can to ensure that reality can be achieved for people who have experienced domestic violence, for people who are survivors.”

Statewide survivor data is hard to quantify, says Lydia Waligorski, public policy director at Violence Free Colorado. But national statistics show that on average 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men across the country will experience rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner; 29% of women across the country have reported such experiences, including the fact that it impacts their functioning in at least some way, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Those still living with abusers face barriers to voting, like isolation leading to a lack of access to election information, the ability to request absentee ballots or leave the house to vote in person, according to a 2018 Center for American Progress policy brief. There can also be pressure to vote for a particular candidate or in a certain way.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Many abusers will go to great lengths to find survivors after they’ve left. Although it can be difficult to determine how an abuser tracks down a survivor, Waligorski says she’s worked with several clients whose abuser found them using public voter registration information.

“What we know about abuse is that it’s all about power and control.

And when an abuser loses that power and control of you, they will do pretty close to anything to get that feeling of

control back,” adds Rebecca Zimmerman, domestic violence researcher at Denver University’s graduate school of social work, who also works with Violence Free Colorado.

In Colorado, finding a current address through the state’s voter registration website, govotecolorado.gov, only requires knowledge of a person’s full name, birth year and zip code.

Fitzpatrick says what’s publicly available is determined by state statute, and includes a voter’s address, party affiliation, birth year and vote history.

Data requests for voter information are also common, as campaigns ask for a variety of different lists of voters in their election efforts.

Addresses are required in the registration process to ensure people vote in the right district, but Colorado, among other states, offers a few programs for survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse and even stalking, which makes up a large portion of the population seeking address confidentiality. (Anecdotally, Zimmerman says a friend of hers was recently stalked by someone who disagreed with her I

politics — the stalker found her home address through her voting records, sending her terrible mail.)

Colorado’s Address Confidentiality Program (ACP) was passed by the state legislature in 2007, following the state of Washington’s lead, which instituted the first such program in the nation in 1991.

“Once in a while we do hear from survivors that this program has saved their life,” says Program Director Jackie Cash, although she’s hesitant to share specific examples in order to protect any identifying information.

Working with the U.S. Postal Service, ACP creats ghost addresses for survivors, all of which have the same address in Centennial but with different apartment numbers.

Staff at ACP then bundles mail and sends it to the survivor’s physical address or post office box.

“All state and local government agencies must accept the ACP address as the person’s legal address,” Cash says. “The idea is that the ACP is the only repository of survivor information.”

The program is beneficial beyond voter registration as well: survivors can use ACP to enroll children in schools, on their driver’s licenses, even in court. Enrolling in the program really only works if a survivor has just moved or is planning to move, so that all records already out in the community would need to be updated.

ACP sees new participants enroll every month, Cash says. Some 8,0009,000 people have passed through the program, since it began in 2008, with 4,000 people currently enrolled. While some people are only in the program for a few months, about 25% of survivors have reenrolled after the initial enrollment period of four years.

Survivors can leave the program whenever they want and on their own terms.

Currently, 36 states around the country have such programs and survivor protection laws, and the number keeps growing, Cash says.

“The more difficult it is for people to vote, it just magnifies that experience for domestic violence survivors,” Anne Tapp, executive director of OCTOBER 1, 2020

Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN) Boulder, says. “I think states that are really committed to reducing barriers to voting are ones that have taken into account the additional concerns domestic violence survivors have about participating in the process safely.”

Most of SPAN’s staff are trained ACP liaisons who can help survivors enroll in the program.

“We’re interested in ensuring that survivors aren’t disenfranchised from that very important ability to vote and have their voices heard,” Tapp says, but, “if you’re in the middle of a crisis and trying to simply survive and stay alive, voting is sometimes not a priority.”

County clerks around Colorado also have confidential voter programs, which keeps identifying information off of public voter lists. Survivors can sign up directly through county clerk offices by filling out paperwork, providing identification and paying a $5 fee.

Through this program, the voter still gets their ballot mailed to their actual address, but that information doesn’t appear on public records requests and isn’t available at the statewide voter registration website.

As such, the voter will not be eligible for the statewide ballot tracking program, and they will have to fill out paperwork in a county clerk’s office to change or update their registration, Fitzpatrick says. Boulder County currently has approximately 575 confidential voters.

Not all survivors are stalked by their abusers, however, and many share children or rely on protection orders and arrests to keep their abusers away, Waligorski says. But even if these confidentiality programs aren’t necessary, Violence Free Colorado works to educate survivors about the importance of voting.

“The way our society is governed and what the rules are, have a daily effect on if survivors get justice, if survivors are protected, if survivors are able to regain their voice and their life,” Zimmerman says. “Survivors have the power to become a really effective voting block... And I hope that as people begin speaking out more about their experience of surviving violence that will materialize: survivors as an empowered group making change.”

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Outside the frame

Melanie Walker’s photography is part of a 100-artist collaborative project celebrating — and re-examining — the centennial of the 19th Amendment

by Caitlin Rockett

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‘MIS-ALLEGIANCE’

ON THE BILL: ‘A Yellow Rose Project.’

Oct. 9-Nov. 21, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, 1070 Bannock St., Denver.

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rowing up in the ’60s, when Melanie Walker and her sister would come home complaining about a problem at school, their father would joke, “It’s Miss Understood, 1965,” as though they’d been crowned in some Bizarro World beauty pageant.

The recurring joke stuck with Walker, who shared her father’s love of puns and word play, as well as his passion for photography. Later in life as a photographic artist, she found herself mulling over the prefix mis-: when added to a word it means “badly” or “unfavorably” or “in a suspicious manner.” Why, Walker wondered, are women called Miss followed by their father’s name until marriage — what biases are implied through this language?

Her thought became a project she launched in the early ’90s dubbed The Mis-Nomer Pageant. In this series of self-portraits, Walker became “Mis-Allegiance,” a forlorn-looking Lady Columbia in her American flag gown, holding the Earth in her arms like a baby, the environment behind her scorched and barren; she became “Mis-Justice,” a stern and noir Lady Justice offering up heavily tipped scales; she became “Mis-Ology,” a human lamp casting light from her skull into a dark and nearly empty room.

“Nobody really paid much attention to [the project] when I did it initially,” Walker says.

“After the 2016 election, I felt like it was time to bring it back to life. I feel like so much of my drive with that project has to do with the urgency of the times that we’re living in right now.”

Her work caught the eye of photographers Meg Griffiths and Frances Jakubek, who were dreaming up a project to celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. But Griffiths and Jakubek wanted to place the milestone in the light of historical context: Many black women (and men) were unable to vote for decades more under the racist burdens of state-legislated poll taxes and literacy tests.

“In order to have a rich and thoughtful response to this anniversary, which is not an anniversary for all to celebrate, we wanted to invite a diverse group of women whose perspectives would not be the same,” Griffiths told NPR in late August. Griffiths was inspired by a Sojourner Truth quote: “Women’s fates were linked, but not because they were the same.”

In the summer of 2019, Griffiths and Jakubek asked 100 women across the United States to join in A Yellow Rose Project, a photographic collaboration socalled because of the flowers women wore on their lapels as they stood shoulder to

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

shoulder in front of the Tennessee State Capitol (the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment). The project, including pieces from Walker’s MisNomer Pageant, will be on display at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver from Oct. 9 through Nov. 21.

Walker has just wrapped up an online class for one of her courses in photography at CU-Boulder when we connect. It’s the afternoon before the first presidential debate, and though Walker fully intends to vote, she can’t bring herself to watch what she knows will be a spectacle in the worst sense of the word. She’s been “in panic mode” since the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“I’m trying not to indulge in the news too much,” she says. “Trying to just keep my nose to the grindstone.”

Walker’s had her nose to the proverbial grindstone since she seriously began taking pictures at around 15. Her father, Todd Walker, was a prolific photographer, printmaker and bookmaker for more than 60 years of his life. His advertising photographs were featured in national magazines such as Life and the Saturday Evening Post. Her father’s work, often credited with pushing the conventional boundaries of photography, gave a young Melanie a glimpse at the magic of film at an early age.

“I remember being shocked to find out that not everybody’s father made pictures,” Walker says. “And I also remember being shocked to find out that my father making pictures was how he supported the family. He would work all day at the studio that he shared with an old family friend and then he would come home and be up until like 2 or 3 in the morning, just working in his own space, exploring and pondering and finding out what he could do to push the envelope in terms of photography.”

Walker found her own path in the artform, often blurring the line between

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

TRADITIONAL VIETNAMESE PHO HOUSE

real and imagined through techniques like gum printing, which gives photographs a painterly quality. Legally blind in one eye, much of Walker’s work plays with mismatched patterns and layering with transparent materials “to try to convey how I experience the world.”

“My hope with my work is that maybe it’s a window to compassion and understanding for people who are fully sighted,” she says. “I feel like I have the potential to be a bridge between the blind and the ‘MIS-JUSTICE’ sighted communities.”

Likewise, A Yellow Rose Project hopes to be a bridge between the past and the present, a window to compassion for those this country has historically disenfranchiased, and a reminder of how many are still disenfranchised today. Across the world, the U.S. is the only democracy to permanently deny voting rights to felons for all crimes — and a disproportionate number of them are black.

Humans often deal in absolutes, binaries, systems that allow us to simplify the world so we can understand it.

U.S. culture has done the same to history, often framing what we want to see instead looking at the larger picture.

“I grew up with this innate understanding of the power of the image and how people believe images without considering the manipulation that goes on behind them, whether it be psychological or a slight shift in perspective,” Walker says. “I’ve always been really interested in what goes on outside the frame.”

Outside the frame of most U.S. history classes, many in this country still have no voice in our democracy. From purging tens of thousands of presumed felons from voter-registration records in Florida to refusing to adopt mail-in voting in Mississippi, voting is still a privilege for many, not a right. Artists like Walker help re-frame history so we can see the whole picture.

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events

events

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email Caitlin at crockett@boulderweekly.com.

ACLU OF COLORADO HOSTS VIRTUAL BILL OF RIGHTS EVENT.

6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, Livestream in English via YouTube and Spanish interpretation available via Zoom, aclu-co.org.

Free, registration required.

Although this annual ACLU of Colorado event is shifting to a virtual platform, this year’s program will continue to honor the event’s legacy of celebrating community leaders, commemorating civil rights and civil liberties successes, and educating the community, activists and partners.

Registration is free and Spanish and ASL interpretation will be available. This year’s special keynote conversation will be between CeCe McDonald, a transgender activist working to dismantle the prison industrial complex and Elisabeth Epps, founder of the Colorado Freedom Fund, prison abolitionist and ACLU of Colorado’s smart justice organizer. The event will close with a special performance from Denver-based singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff. All funds raised by the event provide crucial support to sustain and expand ACLU of Colorado’s legal, communication and education work throughout the state.

THE SPARK PRESENTS TALES ON THE TRAILS: THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ.

Noon, Sunday, Oct. 4 (additional dates: Oct. 11 and 16), Niwot Sculpture Park, west corner of Niwot Road and N. 79th Street, Niwot, thesparkcreates.org. Price: $8-$12.

The Spark is taking theater out into the open air and inviting the youngest audience members to imagine the world of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in a non-traditional setting.

Small, socially distanced audience groups will be led by cast members through easy trails, meeting a colorful array of characters along the way.

BOULDER BOOK STORE CHOCOLATE CLUB.

2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4 via Zoom, boulderbookstore.net. Price will vary depending on chocolate selected.

Do you love chocolate?

Legendary local foodie and host of Radio Nibbles, John Lehndorff, hosts the Boulder Book Store Chocolate Club on the first Sunday of the month (virtually on Zoom) at 2 p.m.

Every meeting will have a different theme exploring the world of chocolate. To attend a meeting, purchase a ticket that includes that month’s featured chocolate plus at least two more bars from that month’s theme.

BACKPORCH SERIES AT THE DAIRY: MAGIC SHOW WITH BRADEN CARLISLE AND ALEC MUELLER.

PAWS IN THE PARK — VIRTUAL WALK FOR THE ANIMALS.

Oct. 3-11, longmonthumane.org. Price: $15- $25.

Paws in the Park has gone virtual! Walk, run, stroll or hike between Oct. 3 and Oct. 11 and help support the animals cared for by Longmont Humane Society. Multiple registration and fundraising opportunities to suit various interests.

WOMEN LEADING REGENERATION ON THE LAND SUMMIT.

Noon, Oct. 1, regenerativerising.org. Price: $29-$179 via Eventbrite.

The Women Leading Regeneration on the Land Summit is Longmont-based Regenerative Rising’s celebration of the spirit and power of women leading from within a diverse spectrum of industries and backgrounds. Speakers at the summit will explore the vital role of women in designing organizations, businesses and their own lives from a worldview of potentiality, and using relational, regenerative and holistic principles that foster the healing of the land and people. The keynote speaker is Judith D. Schwartz, an environmental journalist and author.

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4:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, thedairy.org. Price: $20 per person.

With elections a month away, we could all stand a little magic.

Luckily, the Dairy Arts Center is hosting a show featuring Alec Mueller and Braden Carlisle. Mueller is a young mentalist and magician. If you’ve ever wondered if someone can tell you exactly what you’re thinking, come see Mueller do it in person. Braden Carlisle’s magic is funny, sharp and relies on a lifetime of practice and performing experience. Come see the funniest magic show you will ever experience.

You’ve seen a rabbit pulled out of a hat, but have you seen a grown man swallow a balloon roughly the size of a small child?

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LIVE

MUSIC

Live and livestreaming shows

THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS LIVESTREAM FROM FOX THEATRE.

Oct. 2-4, foxtheatre.com. Price: $19.95 to $126.97.

The Dusters are back, livestreaming three shows from Fox Theatre via luck.stream. The Friday and Saturday shows begin at 8 p.m., followed by a special 1 p.m. matinee on Sunday. Friday evening will offer an old-fashioned two-set show, while Saturday will feature a “classics and covers” experience. On Sunday, enjoy a matinee Dusters experience like never before in “Bluegrass, Brunch and Bingo,” featuring live fan interaction in an open-form, game show setting, with a special set of music.

SUZANNE VEGA: AN EVENING OF NEW YORK SONGS AND STORIES LIVESTREAM.

7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, http://bit.ly/SuzanneVegaBT. Cost: $20.

Grammy Award-winning artist Suzanne Vega will celebrate the release of her new, career-spanning live album, An Evening of New York Songs and Stories, with a livestream event from New York’s iconic Blue Note Jazz Club on October 7 and 8. A portion of proceeds will go towards supporting the Boulder Theater. The first of the two performances will be timed for North American audiences and the second for U.K. and European fans. The full-band set will feature the album’s New York-centric repertoire, honoring Vega’s long musical relationship with her city.

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JESSE MANNO LIVE: MUSIC, DANCE ART IN THE PARK WITH CREATIVITY ALIVE.

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hbwoodsongs.com

ART

4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, Holiday Park, 14th Street and Yaupon Avenue, Boulder. Creativityalive.org. Suggested donation: $15-$30. (All are welcome regardless of ability to donate).

Come dance (or just listen) to Jesse Manno, multi-instrumentalist and dance accompanist extraordinaire. Experience strong social connection with safe physical distancing. Part of the Music, Dance, Art in the Park with Creativity Alive series. See full details and sign on for direct invites, updates and rain dates at CreativityAlive.org.

ART

OPEN STUDIOS AT THE MUSEUM OF BOULDER.

Oct. 2-Oct. 18.

This exhibit features one piece from each Open Studios artist. Pick your favorites and schedule a studio tour with Open Studio’s new Online Booking feature (openstudios.org). Painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, mixed media, jewelry — this exhibit represents the diverse Boulder creative visual arts community.

LONGMONT MUSEUM’S ANNUAL DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS.

Tuesday–Saturday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Oct. 2-Jan. 9, Longmont Museum, 400 Quail Road, Longmont.

Admission: $8 adults, $5 students/ seniors, ages 3 and under free, Museum members free, downtownlongmont.com.

The Día de Muertos exhibition returns to the Museum’s temporary exhibition gallery this fall featuring ofrendas (altars) built by community members and the work of internationally recognized Colorado artist Tony Ortega. The gallery exhibition includes his book illustrations and a family ofrenda. Visit in person or view the exhibition in a 360 gallery on the City of Longmont’s website. see EVENTS Page 18

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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2020

EVENTS from Page 17

Gallery WINNERS Taylor moving

HOMEVIEWING ‘Cameraperson’

by Michael J. Casey

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or more than 30 years, Kirsten Johnson has seen the world from behind the camera. “[It’s] taught me to be quiet,” she says. “To wait for things. And listen and look at people’s bodies and the way they move as something separate from the words coming out of their mouth.”

Johnson is a cameraperson. Documentarians hire her to jet around the globe, drop into situations and film. She says it’s overwhelming and bewildering, but it’s also taught her “about systems in the world,” commonalities and specificities everywhere, and, “in many ways, it’s taught me to become myself.”

And what do you do when you learn so much? You share it.

Released in 2016 and airing Oct. 7 on TCM — as part of the Women Make Film series — Cameraperson is Johnson’s memoir, a collection of previously unused footage she shot over 25 years as a documentary cinematographer.

“It grew out of a LINDSEY ADDARIO/JANUS FILMS need to contend with this accumulation of footage I had filmed over all of these years,” she says. “It was just a growing need in me that I didn’t understand when I started it.”

The results are stunning. Though there is no strict narrative to the film, Cameraperson is expression through juxtaposition: Two children playing in Johnson’s living room mirror two children playing in Bosnia; violent crimes at home, violent crimes abroad; a boxer stalking the halls of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center searching for his mother and Johnson’s camera searching her mother’s face for signs of recognition.

“When it was finished, it was so new to me,” Johnson says. “It was such a revelation. ... I assumed I would be looking at this footage I had shot with a new perspective. But what I didn’t understand was that this footage contained evidence of me and who I was, and that the putting together of that footage in a certain order would really reveal things about me that I had no awareness of.”

That “certain order” also works wonders for the audience. Like all great works of art, Cameraperson is a Rorschach test, one that changes every time you watch it.

“Film gives you new ways of seeing what you already know about life,” Johnson says. “What we think we’re seeing and what we project on what we’re seeing.”

For instance: “You can see a person who’s got amazing smile lines and is constantly smiling, but you’re seeing eyes that look far away or eyes that are full of pain.”

Some might call that the iceberg theory, for others it’s observation. Johnson prefers the word “searching,” and it’s what makes Cameraperson a powerful piece of work.

“That searching,” she says, “searching for the difference between what a face tells about what someone has been through, and then what eyes tell about where they are in that very instant.”

Cameraperson airs 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7 on TCM.

2010 10th St., Boulder 18

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‘TULIPS AND OTHER FLOWERS IN A GLASS BOWL’

BY AMBROSIUS BOSSCHAERT THE ELDER (1573-1621)

WANDERER

by Amanda Boyer tea leaves spell out my thursday blues my mother calls it restless mind.

Plastic tulips sit on my nightstand so that at least one thing is timeless every morning the sun sinks into my chambers invitation only I make groundless decisions within these buoyant walls.

Amanda Boyer is a CU-Boulder graduate and creative personality who writes poetry and fiction and spends her off days with her golden retriever, strongly defending hops over malt.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OCTOBER 1, 2020

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LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: In her high school

BY ROB BREZSNY

ART & CRAFT FESTIVAL October 3 & 4, 2020 New Location Central Park West

Along the Boulder Creek, West of Broadway

ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: “I am, indeed, a king,

because I know how to rule myself,” wrote 16thcentury author Pietro Aretino. By January 2021, Aries, I would love for you to have earned the right to make a similar statement: “I am, indeed, a royal sovereign, because I know how to rule myself.” Here’s the most important point: The robust power and clout you have the potential to summon has nothing to do with power and clout over other people — only over yourself. Homework: Meditate on what it means to be the imperial boss and supreme monarch of your own fate.

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GEMINI

SAGITTARIUS

poet Emily Dickinson. I invite you to adopt this motto for the next three weeks. It’s an excellent time to intensify your commitment to expressing compassion, empathy and tenderness. To do so will not only bring healing to certain allies who need it; it will also make you smarter. I mean that literally. Your actual intelligence will expand and deepen as you look for and capitalize on opportunities to bestow blessings.

(P.S.: Dickinson also wrote, “My business is to sing.”

I recommend you experiment with that mandate, as well.)

a visionary who loved to imagine ideas and objects no one had ever dreamed of before. One of his mottoes was, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” I recommend that you spend quality time in the coming weeks meditating on butterfly-like things you’d love to have as part of your future — things that may resemble caterpillars in the early going. Your homework is to envision three such innovations that could be in your world by Oct. 1, 2021.

CANCER

filmmakers decided it would be a good idea to create stories based on graphic current events: for example, American Marines waging pitched battles against Japanese soldiers on South Pacific islands. But audiences were cool to that approach. They preferred comedies and musicals with “no message, no mission, no misfortune.” In the coming weeks, I advise you to resist any temptation you might have to engage in a similar disregard of current events. In my opinion, your mental health requires you to be extra discerning and well-informed about politics — and so does the future of your personal destiny.

that ain’t been found,” sings Cancerian rapper Curtis Jackson, also known as 50 Cent. “I’m the underground king and I ain’t been crowned,” he adds. My reading of the astrological omens suggests that a phenomenon like that is going on in your life right now. There’s something unknown about you that deserves and needs to be known. You’re not getting the full credit and acknowledgment you’ve earned through your soulful accomplishments. I hereby authorize you to take action! Address this oversight. Rise up and correct it.

JULY 23-AUG. 22: The author bell hooks (who doesn’t

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NOV. 22-DEC. 21: Inventor Buckminster Fuller was

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: During World War II, Hollywood

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: “Pretending is imagined possibility,”

LEO

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OCT. 23-NOV. 21: Scorpio-born Prince Charles has

that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.” Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield made that brilliant observation. It’s always worth meditating on, but it’s an especially potent message for you during the first three weeks of October 2020. In my view, now is a highly favorable time for you to extract uplifting lessons by dealing forthrightly with your knottiest dilemmas. I suspect that these lessons could prove useful for the rest of your long life.

APRIL 20-MAY 20: “The basic principle of spiritual life is

JUNE 21-JULY 22: “I’m the diamond in the dirt,

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SCORPIO

been heir to the British throne for 68 years. That’s an eternity to be patiently on hold for his big chance to serve as king. His mother Queen Elizabeth just keeps going on and on, living her very long life, ensuring that Charles remains second-in-command. But I suspect that many Scorpios who have been awaiting their turn will finally graduate to the next step in the coming weeks and months. Will Charles be one of them? Will you? To increase your chances, here’s a tip: Meditate on how to be of even greater devotion to the ideals you love to serve.

TAURUS

MAY 21-JUNE 20: “My business is to love,” wrote

Benefitting the Imagine! Foundation

yearbook, Libra-born Sigourney Weaver arranged to have this caption beneath her official photo: “Please, God, please, don’t let me be normal!” Since then, she has had a long and acclaimed career as an actor in movies. ScreenPrism.com calls her a pioneer of female action heroes. Among her many exotic roles: a fierce warrior who defeats monstrous aliens; an exobiologist working with indigenous people on the moon of a distant planet in the 22nd century; and a naturalist who lives with mountain gorillas in Rwanda. If you have ever had comparable fantasies about transcending normalcy, Libra, now would be a good time to indulge those fantasies — and begin cooking up plans to make them come true.

capitalize her name) has spent years as a professor in American universities. Adaptability has been a key strategy in her efforts to educate her students. She writes, “One of the things that we must do as teachers is twirl around and around, and find out what works with the situation that we’re in.” That’s excellent advice for you right now — in whatever field you’re in. Old reliable formulas are irrelevant, in my astrological opinion. Strategies that have guided you in the past may not apply to the current scenarios. Your best bet is to twirl around and around as you experiment to find out what works.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: “Your relationship with yourself

sets the tone for every other relationship you have,” says motivational speaker Robert Holden. Hallelujah and amen! Ain’t that the truth! Which is why it’s so crucial to periodically take a thorough inventory of your relationship with yourself. And guess what, Virgo: Now would be a perfect time to do so. Even more than that: During your inventory, if you discover ways in which you treat yourself unkindly or carelessly, you can generate tremendous healing energy by working to fix the glitches. The coming weeks could bring pivotal transformations in your bonds with others if you’re brave enough to make pivotal transformations in your bonds with yourself.

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observes actor Meryl Streep. “Pretending is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.” In other words, fantasizing about events that may never happen is just one way we use our mind’s eye. We also wield our imaginations to envision scenarios that we actually want to create in our real lives. In fact, that’s the first step in actualizing those scenarios: to play around with picturing them; to pretend they will one day be a literal part of our world. The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to supercharge the generative aspect of your imagination. I encourage you to be especially vivid and intense as you visualize in detail the future you want.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: “My own soul must be a bright

invisible green,” wrote author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Novelist Tom Robbins suggested that we visualize the soul as “a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses.” Nobel “Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings” for the soul. Poet Emily Dickinson thought that the soul “should always stand ajar” — just in case an ecstatic experience or rousing epiphany might be lurking in the vicinity. In the coming weeks, Pisces, I invite you to enjoy your own lively meditations on the nature of your soul. You’re in a phase when such an exploration can yield interesting results.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

NETFLIX

The long goodbye

‘Dick Johnson Is Dead.’ Long live Dick Johnson.

ON THE BILL: ‘Dick Johnson Is Dead’ premieres on Netflix on Oct. 2.

by Michael J. Casey

D

ick Johnson isn’t dead. Not yet, at least. But he will be. We all will, sooner or later. And it’s sooner for Dick if his daughter has anything to say about it.

Born C. Richard Johnson in 1932, Dick was a Seattle psychiatrist and by the looks of his home and office, a successful one at that. His wife, Katie Jo, was a photographer, but she passed away in 2007 after seven years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. “The long goodbye,” Dick tells a friend.

Dick’s daughter, Kirsten, is a filmmaker, a documentarian whose first feature as director, Cameraperson (see page 18), is one of the best from the last decade. In it, Kirsten captures her mother’s waning days on screen — a portrait that is both heartbreaking and human. Now, it’s Dick’s turn. A dreadful proposition, so Kirsten comes up with an antidote: Kill him. Over and over again; on camera, with stunt doubles, fake blood, deceptive camera angles and all the other tricks filmmakers use to make images appear real even when we know they aren’t.

It’s an unorthodox approach to grief, but Dick’s game. His psychiatric mind isn’t gone yet, and he’s just as curious as Kirsten to see where this will take them both emotionally. Plus, as Dick says, “I’ve always wanted to be in the movies.” Dick smiles when he says that. He smiles a lot. Dick loves life.

He also loves chocolate fudge cake. On the day before his heart attack, Dick ate three slices of double chocolate fudge cake. You’d think a doctor would know better.

There’s something about surviving a deadly encounter that changes your approach to life. It’s like playing with house money. Dick survived his heart attack 30 years ago. It’s hard to say what kind of person he was before the attack, but I’d be willing to bet his unflappable optimism and joy stems from going to the brink and coming back. He still eats cake, by the way. What’s it going to do, kill him?

Besides, nothing wipes away tears like a good piece of cake. Yes, Dick Johnson Is Dead is sad, but not in the way that’ll wrench your heart and leave you feeling despondent. There’s a lot of joy here, mountains of it. So much that not even the cold, hard truth of reality can level it. Remember Sing Street from a few years ago? And the moment when the wanna-be pop musician discovers the secret to music that truly moves people: “Happy sad.” Few words could better describe Dick Johnson Is Dead.

That might sound like Dick and Kirsten aren’t taking his illness seriously. They are: There’s plenty of talk about looking at death and playing at death. But where others find helplessness, Dick and Kirsten find liberation. Because when you kill your father on camera, he doesn’t stay dead. All it takes is for someone to yell, “Cut!” and Dick rises from his coffin and becomes the resurrected dead. We should all be so lucky.

Long live Dick Johnson.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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A Cup of Peace is the place to get bubble tea in Boulder, but may we suggest dipping into its menu of Korean staples the next time you stop in?

Bibimbap, bulgogi, Korean curry, kimchi fried rice — A Cup of Peace’s takes on these dishes are clean, plentiful and bursting with flavor. We opted for the dup bob, a Korean barbecue bowl, on a recent visit: tender chicken mixed with diced carrots, cabbage, squash and zucchini and coated in a thick, spicy (your choice of how spicy) sauce.

Paired with A Cup of Peace’s unique seven-grain rice (including black, brown and white rice, quinoa and millet), the dish yields some quite satisfying bites.

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1 Drink This: WeldWerks Brewing’s Prost Malone Everyone has a favorite, and Denver Nuggets’ head coach Michael Malone is a fan of the Greeley brewery’s iconic Juicy Bits — he name-dropped the brewery and beer in a press conference back in March, which is a far better pick than Peyton Manning’s shameless Budweiser plug following the Broncos’ Super Bowl 50 win.

But we digress. Malone coached the Nuggets to two unbelievable comebacks this postseason, and so WeldWerks is returning the tip of the hat with a beer: Prost Malone, a limited edition Juicy Bits IPA variant brewed with Citra, Mosaic and El Dorado hops. Few Colorado breweries have moved the needle quite like WeldWerks since it joined the scene back in 2015, coincidentally the same year Malone joined the Nuggets as head coach.

The Nuggets have improved every year since, and this year they turned a bizarre and boring NBA bubble into something electric. That’s certainly worth celebrating. Prost, Malone. Available wherever good beer is sold.

BOULDER WEEKLY

TRY THIS WEEK: Dup Bob @ A Cup of Peace

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Two great tastes that taste great together

Celebrate Beer and Pizza Day at Erie’s Echo Brewing

by Michael J. Casey

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020 might be a dumpster fire, but this year’s International Beer and Pizza Day will be Friday, Oct. 9 — it’s high time this sacred holiday falls on a Friday — hot on the heels of National Perogi Day and National Fluffernutter Day, both Oct. 8. With a lineup like that, you’d expect Oct. 10 to be National Head to the Gym Day, but no: It’s National Hug a Drummer Day. This is all pertinent information.

Do we need a day celebrating the combination of beer and pizza — possibly the most common food and beverage pairing out there?

Probably not, but there it is.

But why look a gift horse in the mouth? Head over to Erie’s Echo Brewing and Pizzeria and make the most out of it.

Located in a converted firehouse at 600 Briggs St., the Echo Brewing Co. story began in 2012, in nearby Frederick, when the Richards family — Erie residents Melissa, brothers Daniel and Dennis, sister Katy and husband Shannon — opened the brewery on a seven-barrel system. Two years later, the spacious Erie brewpub followed. Then, in 2019, Steve and Theresa Schirner joined the Richards brothers as owners of the Frederick brewery, prompting a name change to Mirror Image Brewing Company,

BELOW: Echo’s Salciccia pizza and a glass of Two Pup Pale Ale

RIGHT: Tanner and Cas Gifford inside their newly built brewery

which both “mirrored” the different direction the brewery was heading while paying tribute to Echo Brewing’s flagship IPA. But Erie’s Echo Brewing and Pizzeria hasn’t changed one iota as it celebrates its sixth anniversary this month. The beer is still delicious, and

might regret it an hour later when that crust starts expanding, but glory rarely follows caution.

But do try and save room for beer. Echo has 15 on tap (plus a couple of guest ciders), covering the flavor spectrum: From light and crisp kölsches and pilsners to malty märzens and MICHAEL J. CASEY yeasty hefeweizen. Like juicy hops? Hazy Morning IPA is a session IPA weighing in at 4.8% ABV with a surprising amount of body for a session ale, while providing a powerful pop of saturated hops.

Need something denser? Try the Junebug Farmhouse Ale, a full-bodied Bière de Garde that its brick-oven pizza is some of the binds farmhouse sweetness with oldbest around: Tangy sauce, savory world hops. toppings and a cracker crust that’s But the best beer to pair with chewy in all the right places. It’s your pizza has to be the Two Pup superb. The dough is made from Pale Ale, a beautiful balance of scratch: Italian Caputo flour, water, smooth and sweet malt and snappy yeast and salt (gluten-free crust also and citrusy hops: Ahtanum, Citra, available). And the size of the pies is Cascade and Simcoe. It’ll cut through respectable. It’s advisable to split, the spice, should you hit the red chili but if you were in the right headflakes too hard, while also bringing space, it wouldn’t be unthinkable to the San Marzano sauce to life. Happy put one down on your own. You holidays.

Knuckle Puck Brewing

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ocated just east of I-25 and State Highway 66, in the murky region that is sometimes Longmont, sometimes Mead, Knuckle Puck Brewing brings kombucha and beer to the local brewing scene.

Cas and Tanner Gifford started Knuckle Puck three years ago as a small kombucha startup. Production was a barrel and a quarter a week, brewed at commissary kitchens, with canning and distributing to a few local grocery stores.

But, as Cas explains, “We can’t stay in stock.” Expanding is the only way to make the business economically feasible.

When the Knuckle Puck taproom opens this month, the Giffords will have a six-barrel system for kombucha and a three-barrel system for beer, and Tanner aims for one brew a week. The kombucha, which Cas assures is “health-oriented” with no additional sugars, will be the workhorse: Five varieties in cans and four seasonals on tap.

But since it’s hard to drive visits with a kombucha-only taproom, Tanner will brew a couple of beers as well.

“Clean, easy drinking-style beers,” he says.

Cream ales and wheats, both of which can be used for kombucha radlers.

And it’ll be a nice place to drink: Light and airy with seating at the bar, tables by the tanks and a patio. They’re planning on an Oct. 10 soft opening with a grand opening on Oct. 25. Check knucklepuckbrewing.com for more.

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Take a peek: Avanti Food & Beverage in Boulder New food hall opens in renovated Pearl Street building

by Matt Cortina

A

t long last, Boulder’s second food hall, Avanti Food & Beverage officially opens Oct. 3, after years of planning, renovations and finding food-makers to fill out its first lineup of stalls.

It marks the second Avanti location (the first is in Denver), but this one took a little bit of elbow grease to get up and running — you probably saw work being done on the building that used to house the Cheesecake Factory over the last year or so. Now, the 13,000 square feet of space has six food stalls, two bars and a rooftop LUCY BEAUGARD deck.

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breakfast burritos and baked goods in the space, as well. There’s also a full bar. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. to start. Visit avantifandb.com/avantiboulder for more information.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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BY DAN SAVAGE

Call 720.253.4710

Dear Dan: The man I’m seeing is the partners.) But you should stop doing the first person I ever opened up to about thing that doesn’t work — having threemy bisexuality. Over our first year togeth- somes — and do the thing that does er, we had several threesomes, but we work instead: talking dirty to each other both became uncomfortable with them about other women. And if you still want and one day he told me he could not to get with women, LIME, do it solo. He have that kind of sex with a woman he doesn’t need to be there for you to enjoy cares about. We quarantined together an amazing girl. and he felt COVID-19 had forced us to rush things. We decided to spend less Dear Dan: My wife and I have been time together to focus on our careers, married for a little over two years. We which had both taken a hit. Now we only both have demanding jobs, but she see each every two weeks or so. I admits to being a workaholic and spends thought it could be fun to reconnect and almost every night on the couch answerdo some more threesomes. ing emails and bingeHe agreed but asked me to ROMAN ROBINSON watching Bravo. I’ve handle things. I found us resorted to getting high some amazing girls. But as most nights to cover up for in the past, our threesomes the fact that I’m very led to problems. I feel unhappy. Despite being threatened, he feels jealoverworked, she’s started ous. We fight, I cry, he gets a side hustle selling skinangry and acts like an asscare products to her hole. I’m very insecure, friends, most of whom she depressed and have spent rarely sees in person. years in therapy. The threeBottom line: I didn’t sign somes feel like too much up for this. I’m beyond but we have great sex bored and want to travel when we talk about other and explore. But she women. Is there any way we can make refuses to give up the side hustle and this work? dial back her work or her drinking. We —Lost Into My Emotions both earn comfortable salaries and we don’t need the extra income. Would I be Dear LIME: I feel really sorry for the justified in leaving because of her newwomen you two are having threesomes found hobby? with — even if you’re doing your very —Basically Over Redundant special guest stars the courtesy of waitEnrichment ing until they leave to break down in tears, LIME, and even if your boyfriend is Dear BORE: Side hustle or no, polite enough to wait until they’re gone BORE, you aren’t happy, and that’s reabefore acting like an asshole, these son enough to leave. And while you women are most likely picking up on the won’t (or shouldn’t) be doing much travtension and may feel conflicted about the eling anytime soon, you can find a lawsex after they go. If you’re having these yer, search for a new apartment, and inimeltdowns and blowups in front of these tiate divorce proceedings while your wife women, LIME, they definitely leave feelsits on the couch answering work e-mails ing terrible and may worry they did and pushing skin-care products to her something wrong when it’s you two who friends. I would typically encourage are doing something wrong: continuing to someone in your shoes to risk telling the have threesomes despite knowing they truth before walking out — you’re unhapnever end well. py, you’re bored, you don’t want to live While I don’t think a woman should like this anymore — but it sounds like waste her time (or pussy) on a man who your mind is made up. So use your time tells her he can’t have “that kind of sex,” at home over the next couple of weeks i.e. sex she enjoys, with a woman he to make your escape plan. cares about, I can understand why you Send questions to mail@savagelove. might want to keep seeing this guy. net, follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansav(COVID-19 is making it hard to find new age and visit ITMFA.org.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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All credit cards accepted No text messages

OCTOBER 1, 2020

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The power of a platform

Denver-based GreenScreens isn’t just a digital ad network for dispensaries, it’s an effective platform for cannabis advocacy

by Will Brendza

T

COURTESY GREENSCREENS

he physical menu is a dying tradition. Even prior to COVID-19, many businesses were starting to switch over to a digital means of communicating a customer’s options — slowly, menus were being replaced with screens and QR codes.

Now, with the pandemic, that transition has been put into hyperdrive. With a novel virus on the loose, the concept of a physical menu being passed between strangers and around businesses has become something of a hazard.

Restaurants, bars and even cannabis dispensaries are moving quickly toward digitizing their menus — making services like those offered by GreenScreens, a Colorado-born digital cannabis advertising network, an extremely hot commodity. The idea is to make the customer experience easier (and minimize health risks), but also act as a channel to promote cannabis-centric nonprofits. It’s part billboard, part social media outreach, part menu and part political advocacy platform.

“We want to use screens to transform the retail experience,” Shawn Cutter, CEO of GreenScreens, says. “We want to provide information to the people that need it, when they need it.”

Currently in 18 states and Puerto Rico, GreenScreens gives hundreds of cannabis retail dispensaries the option to go “hands-off” with both their menus and their in-store advertising. It offers custom display placement recommendations for every room in a client’s dispensary; it manages all of the back-end parameters for the displays; it even integrates with the dispensary’s digital inventory to display real-time menu availability.

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GreenScreens saves on overhead and streamlines instore advertising. It eliminates the risk of passing around a physical menu or ad, and it makes retail updates extremely easy. All of which is why it’s seen demand for its services spike since COVID-19 hit the scene.

But, as Cutter and his team discovered, GreenScreens is also a functional advocacy platform that can be used to empower customers and promote causes. As Cutter put it, the power it has is the power to communicate — and he wants GreenScreens to use that power to have a bigger impact on the world.

“It’s part of the whole community aspect of the cannabis industry,” he says. “In order for this industry to be successful, we have to put back into it.”

This August, GreenScreens started offering support for Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit dedicated to establishing restorative justice to those who have suffered

OCTOBER 1, 2020

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under cannabis prohibition. Its team of cannabis industry leaders, criminal and social justice advocates and policy and education experts are committed to “freeing every last prisoner of the unjust war on drugs.”

Its new campaign, “Roll it up for justice,” gives retail customers the option to donate to Last Prisoner Project at checkout. And GreenScreens is now donating 10% of its ad network to provide advertising space for the “Roll it up for justice” campaign, as well as promoting it to its partner dispensaries across the nation.

“We’re proud to participate in this important effort to bring justice to and help rebuild the lives of those individuals who have struggled under cannabis criminalization,” Cutter said in a press release about the partnership.

“We’ll be working to get the word out about this important opportunity and convince as many of our 200 retailers as possible to participate in this effort,” he said.

“It’s our belief that working together, cannabis industry leaders can alleviate the inequities created by cannabis legalization.”

GreenScreens’ partnership with Last Prisoner Project isn’t its first foray into the public service space, according to Cutter. It has partnered with the State of Colorado before, promoting PSAs like CDOT’s “Don’t Drive High.”

“We’re trying to raise awareness, and explore other areas that we should be playing a role in, rather than just promotions,” Cutter says. “There’s a lot of our screens around Colorado, and they could really have a big impact.”

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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