A free day on Pearl St.

Yesterday we had a day free of scheduled meetings to explore Boulder. The goal was to experience the culture of city while continuing to think about how it plays a role in the success of the startup community. For me, this meant physically exploring “lifestyle businesses” while also mentally exploring how these kinds of business play a role in the community. Most of our free time was spent on the enchanting and eclectic pedestrian mall on Pearl St.

Jill and I started our day of uncharacteristically early to walk to The Laughing Goat coffee shop with John and Fareed at 6:45 am. I ordered a soy latte and vegan zucchini bread and sat down in a quiet and cozy back corner. Not only was the coffee delicious, but the shop was welcoming and unpretentious. Jill, Fareed, John, and myself had some stimulating discussions concerning race, gender, diversity, and inclusivity in startup communities. We also discussed how places like The Laughing Goat are an important part of startup communities. Lifestyle businesses, like coffee shops, bicycle stores, book stores, and restaurants, work symbiotically with entrepreneurs and other professionals. A startup community isn’t just about having a lot of great coders or marketers, these people need places to eat, relax, shop, and congregate and for this they go to lifestyle businesses. These businesses support their lifestyle and they support these business with their patronage.

After a couple hours of relaxation, discussion, and caffeine at The Laughing Goat, other members of our group met up with us the discover more of Pearl St. Our first stop was Rocket Fizz Soda Pop & Candy Shop , where I scored a set of Edgar Allan Poe temporary tattoos and was pranked by an employee (have you ever heard of rattlesnake eggs? I hadn’t!). This store had every flavor of pop imaginable, including flavors like green tea, peanut butter & jelly, and cucumber. In the interest of comparison, and maintaining reasonable caffeine levels, it wasn’t long before we stopped into another one of Boulder’s great, local coffee shops, Ozo Coffee. Once again, the atmosphere was welcoming and friendly. Although it was a busy time of day, the service didn’t suffer. I order a refreshing iced coffee and Jill ordered the house special, a Bhakti chai. We made a quick stop into the vintage-esque hat shop Goorin Bros where we were once again experienced excellent customer service, despite it being fairly obvious we weren’t buy any fancy hats. We then perused some incredibly magnificent local bookstores, including Boulder Bookstore and The Trident. In addition to great literary finds (a swoon-worthy blue-and-white covered collection of Nabakov) and reasonable prices, both bookstores were teeming with local pride. Next we stumbled upon a hilarious and exciting street performance by Sam Malcolm, the fire-juggling comedian. More funny than thrilling, the performance was a great unexpected break from walking, shopping, and over-caffeinating. The presence of street performers speaks to the creativity and risk-taking that is a part of the Boulder culture and helps vitalize its startup community.

After a short rest at our hotel, we met up with my friend from WMU, George, who now lives in Denver. We took a beautiful, scenic walk to University of Colorado, Boulder’s campus. We wandered through the sunny and snowy campus with its elegant architecture and tranquil scenery and discussed some of the differences between college life in Colorado and and Kalamazoo. At the other end of campus began the student neighborhood affectionately referred to as “The Hill”. The area was brimming with students and the expected energy of a Saturday evening in a college town.

To end the evening, we had an superb dinner at Aloy, a Thai restaurant near our hotel. Here we enjoyed our food and the friendly service as a whole group while we shared our different activities of the day, planned for the next day, and discussed what we learned about Boulder’s startup community from exploring on our free time. For myself, the biggest take away from the day was that lifestyle businesses are important in a startup community because they help foster a positive and a welcoming community that improves quality of life and makes people truly want to live, work, and play in a city like Boulder.