“If You Pay More For Everything, Then Life Is Better, Right?”
Every town has its unique features–those little lifestyle elements that contribute to the feeling of the place. Such features are often taken for granted by longtime residents, but, man-o-man, are they noticed by the newbies and visitors.
For example, as has been intimated in previous posts, when I first moved to Austin, MN, more than a decade ago, I noticed (a tame term for something that was more of a physical recoil coupled with violent gagging) the smell of the SPAM cooking at the Hormel plant. I also filed away the sound of the pigs heading into the kill line, literally Auschwitz-style on a train chugging into the compound of the plant, in my Permanent Sense Memory files. Even though I’ve now been seven years away from that town, I still remember the frantic squeals.
Earlier than Austin were my years in the panhandle of Idaho, where lifestyle consisted of an unthinking respect of guns, even when shot at children during the Ruby Ridge incident, Another facet of lifestyle up there was a belief in White Power. Goooo, um, white folks with guns. If you own’t fight for your liberty, how will you ever enjoy equality?
Long before that, even, I lived in my hometown in Montana (Idaho’s kissing cousin), a place typified by gun racks hanging in the cabs of pick-up trucks–and these in the parking lot of my high school. There was nothing like hearing the bell ring at the end of the school day, slamming my physics book into my locker, fluffing my bi-level hair and enormous shoulder pads, and heading out to the parking lot to admire who had the most firepower on wheels. Then I’d head home to eat a pound of beef straight from a cast-iron skillet.
Suffice it to say, I’m a lifestyle connisseur by this point, always inventorying what makes a place tick. In my current hometown, one I chose on purpose, there is a clear sensibility, one that is built around kayaks, canoes, Subaru Outbacks, black labs running wildly off-leash, and ore ships. As I harken back to my upbringing surrounded by the arid Rimrocks in Montana, I can hardly reconcile the sound of a foghorn that permeates so many of my adult days. Startlingly, I now live in the midst of a water-obsessed cabin culture.
Thus, when I’m on vacation, as now, you can slap your chaps with complete confidence that I’m taking stock of the vibe of each place. And here in Boulder, in Colorado, my work is easy.
Because, you see, Boulder is a loud and proud lifestyle city.
For a million bucks, you can buy a shack. For five dollars, you can buy a candy bar. It’s all rather New York, eh? What’s so fun and trippy about Boulder is that the dominant feeling is “we’re hippy-dippy and have tattoos on the napes of our necks hovering just above our yoga-toned arms which are highlighted by our $60 tank tops while we’re out running the trails in between trips to the oxygen bar.” The place, purely and simply, is about living deliberately and embracing health and sun and skiing and two hundred dollar dinners, all of which are, in turn, punctuated by buskers on the walking mall singing “Peace Train” off key.
Even though it’s all so very high maintenance, I dig it. And it will be okay to leave it in a few days, too.
Let me present you with this case study as evidence of Boulder life: we are staying in the home of dear, dear friends of mine this week; they currently happen to be on vacation with their two daughters, but they are generously letting us stay in their empty home. I yuv them.
At the same time, I can tell tales from their cupboards–stories about the Spirulina Powder, the Vegan Vanilla Rice Protein Capsules, the Whole Psyllium Husks, and the Bio-Cleanse Capsules. If these were the only things in the kitchen cupboard, I would be scared of my own friends.
Reassuringly, though, they also have delicious and toxic Cheez-Its in the cabinets, and the house is littered with stores of Happy Meal toys (our kids stumble across them and shout out in recognition). Really, if we took away the Spirulina Powder, the Vegan Vanilla Rice Protein, the Whole Psyllium Husks, and the Bio-Cleanse Capsules, it would be just like home.
Except a hell of a lot cleaner. They have a cleaning woman, you see. In Duluth, we just call that a “Jocelyn.”
Cheaper, at any rate. And we do find we get what we pay for.
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So do tell, readers: what are the lifestyle trademarks of your town? Gertrude Stein famously said of Los Angeles, “There’s no there there.” What puts the there into your place?
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