Boulder No Kings: March 28, 2026

Thousands gathered at the Central Park Bandshell at 1 PM Saturday to start a march where we would wrap around Boulder's downtown, with local police closing portions of busy streets like Canyon, 9th, Pine and Broadway to assist, along with volunteers, in managing a large crowd...

It was a diverse, all-ages, multi-ethnic crowd, with students, families bringing small children, and some people in wheelchairs.  We saw no evidence of counter-protests or incidents of violence.  This protest was entirely a peaceful one...

"The wrong ICE is melting" echoes the concern of another sign that urged saving Boulder's National Center for Atmospheric Research, under attack by the Trump regime for "climate alarmism." University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit representing 129 universities, has sued the Trump administration over its effort to dismantle NCAR, for many years one of the best scientific resources for information on climate change caused by man.

There was a certain amount of poetic license exercised with regard to correct spelling.  Barron Trump spells his first name with 2 Rs, and fascism is usually spelled with an S before the C...

This being Boulder, there were dogs galore, some with their own messages to convey.  It was a warm Saturday, and I made a mental note to bring my thermos of cold water with built-in dog dish to the next event...

Use of abbreviations on display was widespread and clever...

The crowd included veterans of past wars, as well as their sons and daughters...

Tee shirts created for the occasion, like the posters that went with them, didn't need anything in the way of translation... 

Nationally, it turned out to be the biggest mass demonstration since Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million turned out.  This time, the turnout was estimated by several news sources at 8 to 9 million, which represents just under 2.6 % of the US population. According to researcher Erica Chenoweth at Harvard University, the threshold participation figure for non-violent protest that never fails to result in regime change is 3.5%.  So we may be getting close.  Next time we should invite more dinosaurs...

*Footnotes:  

An earlier post on a public commemoration in Boulder, the bicycle rally in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, appeared on January 31, 2026 under the title "Reflections on Kindness and Risk."

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.

Annals of Design: Worst Car Designs Part 6----Jaguar 00 vs. Tesla Cybertruck

Some political types, including a U.S. President with his own social media company, recently took time off from planning (or more likely, failing to plan) a war to denounce a Jaguar ad campaign for being "woke".  Apparently this was because a commercial featured multi-ethnic people of sometimes undefined gender wearing bright, high-fashion clothing that looked a bit to this writer like balloons. Oddly, though the commercial referred to a new Jaguar EV that "copies nothing", it failed to show any shots of the car.  When we got a look at the new Jag 00 (that's zero zero) we understood why...

The new all-electric concept car promises a thousand hp, and designer Gerry McGovern claims it was inspired by Jaguar's E-Type, a car that first appeared in April 1961.  Back in that era, in the back pages after the end of a paperback novel you'd see ads that might claim if you liked "All Quiet on the Western Front" you'd enjoy something from Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series, or that if you appreciated "Ship of Fools" you'd go for "Valley of the Dolls."  McGovern's claim to have been inspired by the E-Type seems to fall into the same category of fabricated links.  Just in case you weren't around for that new model intro in 1961, here's a shot of an early E-Type coupe to jog your memory...

Fail to see the resemblance between the E and the 00?  Apparently you have to squint really hard.  Or maybe take some kind of psychedelic medication...

The minions of Jaguar Land Rover have even gotten rid of the time-honored Jaguar type font on their concept car, along with the "leaper", the famous leaping cat symbol.  This may be part of an effort to get potential purchasers to lower their expectations, because the makers have also seemingly hit the delete button on any awareness that a car, even one with a thousand horsepower, must pass through the air.  Back when Malcolm Sayer designed the E-Type, he'd kept that in mind.  By contrast, the bluff-fronted 00 looks more like an escapee from a design studio full of truck mock-ups.

Ian Callum had aerodynamics in mind when he designed the F-Type, a very belated follow-up to the E-Type which began production in 2013 and sold nearly 88,000 copies over its production life of eleven years.  That's more cars than the E-Type sold over 13 years of production.  It all ended, though, in June 2024, when Jaguar stopped production of this and other car lines to prepare for producing a line consisting entirely of electrics with higher price tags.

The 00 designer Gerry McGovern is best known for his work on the latest Land Rover Defender, which is not a paragon of aero thinking, and has managed to revive running boards, along with an odd floating square of what looks like painted metal running over the C-pillar into the side rear windows.  Like just about any SUVs in the current market, it seems to be selling well.  But you don't need to be very old to recall what happened to SUV sales back during the great recession, when gas prices peaked in 2008.  

If there's something on the road that shares any design themes with the flat-fronted Jag 00, it could be Tesla's Cybertruck.  Despite being in the environmentally-friendly category of EVs, the Cyber manages to look as hostile as the 00.  Apparently in an effort to manage the difficulty of forming stainless steel, the designers went with flat panels.  This led to sharp edges all over the place, and with panels flying off some early examples.  The resulting form looks like it was designed to kill whatever it hits, and the nearly 7,000-pound vehicle has not been authorized for sale in the European Union.

Even wheels and tires, which are, after all, unavoidably round objects, are framed by crude looking angular cutouts. 

Who knows, perhaps the fashion for sharp-edged, angry-looking vehicles will go the way of other fashions like bell bottom jeans and waterbeds (they're gone, right?).  Fashion, in any case, has always been a mystery to this writer.  During an ominously warm winter of repeated wildfire alerts here in the West, it's appealing to remember that the best industrial designers are usually concerned with maximizing efficiency and avoiding waste, with the aim of getting the most from limited resources.

*Footnote:   The Jaguar E-Type has been featured in our posts before, on 8-13-17 ("Racing Improves the Breed") and  5-31-19 ("Buy an Old Jag; Save a Marriage"), and most recently on Sept. 30, 2025.  Previous posts in the Worst Car Design series appeared on 7-28-2016, 7-31-2016, 8-3-2016, 8-11-2016, 8-1-2017 and 6-20-2021. 

Photo Credits:

Top, 2nd & 5th from top:  Jaguar Land Rover

All other photos are by the author.

Dog Tales: Recent Visitors at Watson's Bone Lounge

A long time ago a philosophy professor began his classes with the question, "Did you see anything you liked today?"  It's proof of what a lazy student this writer was that he cannot recall that prof's name. But it seems that for anyone who loves dogs, the answer to that question on any day involving a dog walk or even a dog visit is "yes"...

We recently had two dogs in the Bone Lounge, which has not seen many of them since Bone Lounge Management Watson* took his last walk with this writer (Watson's pal for 66 seasons) in late August.  After Watson had moved his toys into our breakfast room addition 9 years ago, it seemed reasonable to rename it the Bone Lounge. The visiting pooches appreciated how floor to ceiling glazing allowed them to watch a squirrel scamper up a tree, and we've posted a video below. The canine visitors might have loved to see the herd of mule deer* that visited recently, or (from inside the glass) the black bear we saw a few autumns ago.  But that squirrel served to provide them a bond of common interests and maybe even an appreciation for mid-century modern architecture.

Spaniel-poodle mix Ella is 21 months old, with the curiosity and enthusiasm that implies.  She's been a Thursday morning visitor while her human Carol attends Spanish class.  We immediately nicknamed her Ellie.  She made herself at home, and because she is known as a somewhat picky eater, we took it as a sign of confidence that she's now happy to have brunch at the Bone Lounge...

On Thursday Ellie had a canine companion in Mufi, a rare breed of French sheepdog, actually the only Stateside example of her kind.  Architect intern Peyton Floyd was taking care of Mufi for a few days, and we got permission from the dogs' respective humans to introduce them...

They got along fine, sharing a big walk and treats.  Ellie, like some humans, might've taken Mufi for some exotic species of bear, if not for her floppy ears and big, waggy tail.  After taking this profile photo, we tried to get a face shot of Mufi with more detail...

But the furry curtain in front of her eyes hides them, and probably makes for a unique perspective from Mufi's point of view.  She'd been brought from France as a pup, and so it's unlikely anyone has been able to put her working dog shepherding instincts to use over here.  The lack of sheep to mind doesn't seem to have affected Mufi's enthusiasm for life at age 8. The key difference between dogs and humans seems to be that dogs never seem to lose the innocence and joy for living that reminds us of children, and binds them to children. It's a reminder, too, that we have a world to protect, if for no other reason than to provide a safe future for those beings who enjoy living in the moment. 

Here's a video of Ellie and Mufi watching that squirrel clamber up a tree in the Bone Lounge garden. We'll be welcoming Ellie back for a stay while her human, Carol, is on vacation.  And as Ellie's previous stay was enlivened by the presence of Mufi, we expect she'll be looking for her new furry friend, and sniffing around for her, when she returns for her own vacation...

*Footnote:  For the story of 66 seasons of adventures with Watson, you might want to see "10th Anniversary Post: Remembering Watson, the World's Best Dog", posted here on August 25, 2025.  For a photo essay on the herd of mule deer that recently visited the Bone Lounge garden, there's "Wild Animal Encounters Part 3:  Reflections on Kindness and Risk", posted January 31, 2026. 

 

Photo Credits:

The top photo and the video are by Peyton Floyd; the other photos are by the author.

Roadside Attraction: Boulder Eats Exhibit at the Museum of Boulder

Just because you've been living in a town for a good while doesn't mean you know its history all that well.  There are always stories to discover, so when a friend told me there was an exhibit at the Museum of Boulder about local restaurants I might remember, I decided to go.  The museum, at 2205 Broadway, is right next door to the Carnegie Library for Local History where we'd researched the Boulder Theater story*, at the intersection of Pine and Broadway.

The Boulder Eats exhibit begins with a riot of signs and menus from Boulder restaurants that will call up fond memories for some visitors (well, this one for sure), including Tom's Tavern, Juanita's, the New York Deli, Daddy Bruce's BBQ, and the Zolo Grill.  Along with more than 300 objects from their collection, the museum provides some history you might not have known...

It was news to this writer that Daddy Bruce Randoph, who died at 94 in 1994, was not the first African-American to open a restaurant in Boulder. That honor belongs to O.T. Jackson, who managed the Chautauqua Dining Hall in 1898, and later owned a seafood restaurant and an ice cream parlor. The exhibit notes his involvement in the 1910 founding of Dearfield, a farming community for African-Americans south of Greeley.  Daddy Bruce made a more recent imprint on local history, also because of his community spirit. In the 60s he began serving free Thanksgiving dinners in Denver's City Park, at first offering a couple hundred meals from a portable grill.  By the middle of the 80s Bruce was serving thousands of free dinners at his restaurant in Denver's Five Points neighborhood. 

Exhibit displays a history of kitchen appliances including a Victorian-style cast iron stove, a later 1920s model, a circular metal ice box with 100-pound capacity, a Fifties-style stove and fridge, and a microwave.  Exhibit historian and food writer John Lehndorff helped provide a timeline of Boulder's natural food businesses, including the 1969 founding of Celestial Seasonings followed in 1970 by the Green Mountain Grainary, the first health food store downtown, and first to offer Celestial Seasonings tea, the 1976 founding of Rudi's Organic Bakery, and the 1987 founding of Wild Oats Market, which became the 2nd largest natural foods chain nationally.

Owing to recent raids on food businesses in other states by ICE, the exhibit curators decided not to display photos of immigrants working in local food businesses.  Instead, they posted the silhouette of a worker, and noted the large part immigrants have played in harvesting and preparing food.  

The curators decided, however, to post a photo of a guy who worked as a janitor at The Sink on University Hill during his student days at CU. That was Robert Redford, who left us back in September.  The Sink is still in business, though, at 1165 Thirteenth Street...

There's also an ongoing, award-winning exhibit in the Boulder Experience Gallery that provides a panorama of local history including racing bicycles recalling the Red Zinger classic (1975-'79), runners and wheelchair racers from the Bolder Boulder 10k that began in 1979 and has continued on every Memorial Day since, and a satellite recalling Ball Aerospace, also in Boulder. 

The Boulder Experience also displays artifacts from deeper history as well, beginning with the stories of Chief Niwot and the Arapaho tribe, the true "legacy Americans" who first lived here, along with photos, musical instruments and clothing from the era of cattle ranches that began to take over after the 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise restricted tribal land access.

Downstairs from the main level where you enter, there's an interactive children's area with geometric toys on the wall, and a mural of a VW Microbus with colors and symbols from the Summer of Love era.  That seems appropriate (this is, after all, Boulder), and though I'd thought the artist had made a bit of an error in choosing the "bay window" bus with its curved windshield, I was off base.  The "bay window" bus first appeared in August 1967, when it was still the Summer of Love, for the 1968 model year.  In May of that year, students joined union workers on a national strike in France.  But that story is for someone else's history museum...

*Footnote: The Boulder Eats exhibit on the history of food in Boulder will be open through July 26, 2026.  The Museum of Boulder is open Mondays and Wednesday through Sunday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM and is closed on Tuesdays.  June through August, Monday hours change to noon to 8:00 PM.  You can visit museumofboulder.org to confirm ticket prices, but we saw that children under 5 are free, kids 5-17 and college students are $8 (along with seniors), and that standard tickets are $10.

 

And "Roadside Attraction: The Boulder Theater", our history of the recently-restored Boulder Theater, appeared as our blog post for December 15, 2025. 

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.

Wild Animal Encounters Part 3: Reflections on Kindness and Risk

A couple of weeks ago on an unseasonably warm Thursday morning, a trio of these mule deer showed up in my garden. They wandered off before I could get a picture, but came back with six friends during the afternoon rush hour, maybe not a safe time for a herd of deer to be on Broadway.  I followed them when they crossed into a neighbor's front yard.  For a minute it seemed they might wander off to the north and east, which seemed a safer direction. But then they decided to come back to the driveway, close to the speeding cars and trucks. So, maybe because I didn't want to see any of my fellow mammals hurt (either these furry ones or the ones driving by), I walked out onto Broadway with my hand up. Southbound and northbound traffic, all 4 lanes of it, stopped. To my surprise, all the deer but one followed; maybe they'd wanted to graze at North Boulder Park, 3 blocks west, anyway. I motioned to the lone straggler, a male, and yelled "Come on."  He did, and crossed safely.  A BMW driver gave me a thumbs-up, and traffic flow resumed.

Why am I telling this story?  Because what might have seemed like a foolish action to others seemed like the only thing to do. I didn't want to witness an accident, and it seemed like simple kindness to prevent one.  Maybe my six years of Saturdays volunteering in the vet clinic at the local Humane Society* came into play. There was some risk involved, but it seemed worth it.  On the subject of kindness and risk, it would seem that in everyday human interactions, kindness should not be punished, but it recently was, in Minneapolis.  On January 24 in that city, Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse employed by the Veterans Administration, was filming a demonstration against Operation Metro Surge on his phone when he went to the aid of a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by ICE* agents.  When he attempted to shield her with his own body, he was pepper-sprayed and thrown to the ground by ICE agents, who fired at least 10 shots at close range, with 6 shots fired after Mr. Pretti's body had gone motionless.  His last words to the woman he'd tried to protect were, "Are you okay?"  As they had following the ICE killing of Renée Good on January 7, federal officials refused access to the crime scene by Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  In the case of Ms. Good's shooting by an ICE agent, a medical doctor offering to aid the victim was ordered to stand back by the shooter. Minnesota authorities recently sued, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to block the Dept. of Homeland Security "from destroying or altering evidence." 

Gauging public sentiment by the number who'd written Congress demanding independent investigations, attending street demonstrations, and organizing memorials, the ICE attacks seem to have struck a nerve that previous scandals have not, with outrage amplified by multiple videos depicting two crime stories completely at odds with ICE or DHS explanations.  Today, there were memorial bike rides organized in around 250 towns and cities around the world, including this one that began in Boulder... 

We started in North Boulder Park with a group of over 760* cyclists of all ages, and rode eastward across town to Carpenter Park, with local police and volunteers directing traffic, often to the sounds of honks by approving motorists.  By the time we'd circled west again along Boulder Creek to the Central Park Bandshell, the crowd greeting us seemed to number well into 4 figures.  A poster we noticed read, "Whenever cruelty becomes normal, compassion becomes radical."

*Footnotes:  

Our local Humane Society is the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, providing adoption services, offering classes, training volunteers and accepting donations at 2323 55th Street, Boulder, CO 80301, tel. 303-442-4030, and at their website: boulderhumane.org. 

ICE is a reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The initial estimate of participating cyclists was provided by volunteers posted at the exit from North Boulder Park, and is likely an undercount of the final total, because there were many cyclists behind our group.

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.