Roadside Attraction: Trident Booksellers and Café in Boulder, CO

Trident Booksellers and Café at 940 Pearl Street is such a popular hangout for so wide a swath of Boulder that it feels like it's always been here.  And it has been here a good while, the bookstore having been founded by James Gimian and Hudson Shotwell in June 1980, adjacent to a yarn and fabric shop.  Books have been on offer here since the beginning, but it was a surprise to find out that Gimian and Shotwell, two members of a Buddhist circle, offered locals what turned out to be Colorado's first espresso bar in 1981, when they moved the café into space vacated by that fabric shop.

Today, baristas like cheery, quick-witted Anita serve all kinds of coffee drinks, teas, Italian sodas, and seasonal items like hot chocolate and lemonade, along with tasty croissants and cheese Danii (that's the plural of Danish)... 

And through the wide portal that connects the espresso bar and seating area with the bookstore, you'll find a collection of classic vinyl albums to go with new and used books, notebooks and cards. 

These days the Trident is a bustling place, so busy that unless you arrive early or late in the daily schedule (it's open 7 AM to 9 PM every day) it may be hard to find a table.  It was only recently that it dawned on this writer that there are at least two good reasons for this, and that both are connected to the Covid-19 pandemic...

The first motivation for increased customer visits happened all around us; it was the trend toward working at home that began when many offices were shuttered. That led to more people seeking the community (or alternatively, the quiet space) they lacked at home by taking their laptops to coffee shops. The second thing was something that originated with Peter, the Trident's General Manager, and it may have been even more essential to success.  He suggested the idea of the Trident becoming an employee-owned business, with the option of any employee with a year of Trident experience having the option of buying a share. About 6 months after the pandemic's first impact on Boulder, 8 Trident employees bought a third of the business.  It is now 100% employee-owned, and having voting power as well as a share of the profits provides employees with a sense of involvement as well as an incentive to do their best. 

Among the physical changes Trident's managers made to weather the Covid-19 pandemic was to move the rear (south) fence to expand the outdoor garden seating area, and when weather demands, to hang a plastic curtain under the edge of the roof over the sheltered outdoor space.  Along with the provision of a heating unit, this allowed the roofed area to be employed as conditioned space when needed. 

It also provides an expanded space for poetry readings, musical performances, and book signings.  In January of this year, it was warm enough out here to host a talk by a favorite essayist and novelist, Rachel Kushner...

And over the years, the Trident's garden space has also provided a venue for man's best friends to get the attention they deserve. One of these was Watson, the world's best dog, who visited the Trident in just about every one of the 66 seasons I spent with him.  That's another reason I still like to spend time in the Trident's garden.

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.

Boulder's Sunday Morning Dog Show with Cars (Part 3)

The new season of Boulder Coffee and Classics kicked off at 8 AM on Sunday, April 26 in cloudy, cold weather that promised rain after an ominously warm, dry winter.  Some hardy souls braved 38 degrees in the open Austin Healeys and Fiat Spider above.  But the Pininfarina-styled Ferrari 575 Maranello showed up with its heater working, and the King Charles Spaniel that posed in front wore a stylish sweater.  The canines seemed more comfortable than most of the humans, and there were so many of the former that the event seemed like a dog show with cars...

The new, expanded version of Coffee and Classics shuts down Pearl St. east and west of the original show's display along 8th St. betwixt Pearl and Walnut.  It includes European and some domestic cars from the post-WWII period, but there have also been some intriguing Japanese imports over the years, as well as some classics from the Golden Era, such as a Bugatti Type 40A from 1930.  Below is Triumph GT6 Series 3 from the 70s, a Morgan, and a pontoon Mercedes from the 50s.  As for these pooches, they are all classics...

This Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith was the first post-WWII Rolls, built in chassis form only for custom coachbuilders to clothe from 1946-58, and powered by an F-head inline 6 of 4.3 to 4.9 liters.  Innovations (for R-R anyway) included independent front suspension, a synchromesh manual gearbox, and centralized chassis lubrication.  The owner was lucky that no dog like my old cocker pal Hezekiah showed up. He always peed on the biggest cars; in his neighborhood, it was usually a Cadillac.

There were Porsches galore, with an active and informative 928 crew to show up across Pearl from the 911s, but it was so chilly, and there were so many pooches in the way to photograph, that we didn't get many shots of those cars. 

The lineup along 8th Street included the blue Citroen D Super 5 from 1973-75, with 2.1 liter hemi four from the DS21 as well as a 5-speed manual gearbox.  Then there's a Mercedes 450SL from the regrettable Big Bumper period, the author's gray 1970 Lancia Flavia 2000 PF coupe that's for sale, a tasty red '72 Alfa Romeo 2000GTV, and an immaculate AMG Mercedes 3.6 liter belonging to Coffee and Classics founder Mike Burroughs. 

Denizens on Pearl east of 8th included a bright green original Mini Cooper hot rod with non-original Honda 16-valve 4, a BMW from long before the current Bucky Beaver grille theme, and a Morgan Plus 8 with alloy wheels the only giveaway that it's not from the early post-WWII period.

Dogs and their humans braved the low temps to hang out at Spruce Confections, where on warmer Sunday mornings musicians often play in this courtyard.  Who needs the distraction of a bunch of Porsches and a bright red McLaren when you can have sweet rolls and caffeine, and hang out with cheery pups?

These folks, for example, were more involved with doggie social interactions than with that tidy silver BMW Z8 buttoned up against the weather...

They didn't even walk across Pearl to check out this Ferrari lineup; mid-engined Testarossa flat-12 in yellow, then a couple of V8 355s from the mid to late 90s. 

Oh well, just to avoid letters of protest, here is that McLaren. It's an MP4-12c, a mid-engined twin-turbocharged V8 built from 2011-14. Stylist Frank Stephenson went for flowing, aerodynamic forms, what he called a "soft science" approach, and they've stood the test of time pretty well.  We're not sure how we'll feel about the latest Toyota Supra parked beyond it in another dozen years, but it got lots of attention, and at least it's not in the now unaccountably popular bland gray...

This Toyota Bandeirante might be an even rarer sight at your average cars and coffee (and certainly at your average dog show) than that McLaren.  A version of the Land Cruiser built in Brazil from 1958 to 2001, the Bandeirante name means pioneer in Portuguese and refers to the original European colonists, but today also refers to Brazil's Girl Scouts.  So you can pick the interpretation you like, and either think about the European colonials who took over Brazil from its natives and started messing with the Amazon rain forest, or the trusty, resourceful middle-schoolers who camp out in its surviving wild greenery.  The author's vote goes with the Girl Scouts...

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.

Film Review: "Michael Clayton", Tony Gilroy's Masterpiece

  

We're in New York City, and Michael Clayton, a legal fixer for a powerful law firm, is leaving a poker game to handle a fatal hit-and-run by one of the firm's big clients. This client's problem soon turns out to be the least of Clayton's troubles, which include gambling debts and the bankruptcy of a restaurant owned with Michael's brother Tim. 

Minor troubles include a flickering GPS display on the dash of Clayton's Mercedes.  When you first watch this scene this may not register, but it will, later on, when the scene is framed in a different context.

 

After a frought meeting with the hit-and-run client, Clayton stops when he sees 3 horses in the dim light on a distant hill. It reminds him of a storybook illustration his young son Henry has shown him... 

Clayton approaches the horses slowly and is careful not to startle them. Intriguingly, there are not any fences or barriers in evidence during this scene.  If you are the kind of filmgoer whose enjoyment of mystery and suspense is undone by plot revelations, it might be a good idea to stop reading now.

This is because Clayton's car blows up during his contemplation of these horses.  

At this point writer and director Tony Gilroy takes us back to four days earlier, when star attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) has gone off his medication for manic depression and stripped naked during a court hearing of a suit against the firm's client, a pesticide maker named U / North. Arthur has become convinced that U / North is guilty of concealing the danger posed by their product, which has been implicated in hundreds of deaths.  We find out that he has also marked passages in the same storybook Henry mentioned, a fable about fighting for truth and justice called "Realm & Conquest".

We're also introduced to U / North's chief counsel, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton in an Oscar-winning performance), who berates Clayton for Arthur's odd behavior, while concealing the fact that she has picked up the chief attorney's abandoned briefcase.  Surveying its contents has led her to make some arrangements...

Those arrangements later turn out to be having a pair of assassins kill Arthur with what appears as a drug overdose. When it becomes apparent that Clayton, aided by his policeman brother Gene, has searched Arthur's apartment and found the key to a memo implicating U / North hidden in a copy of "Realm & Conquest", Karen makes some more arrangements. Gilroy shows us the scene of Clayton leaving the card game again, but this time leads up to this sequence with the killers placing a bomb in the Mercedes.  Then they take after him in their Buick.  Much of the story takes place in dark streets and dim light, a metaphor for the dark heart of the tale.

The bomb placement explains why the GPS screen in the Mercedes works intermittently. Clayton pounds on the dash to revive it, and the two killers lose their signal at several points on the drive...

We see the scene with the horses again, but this time we see Clayton throw his watch, wallet and phone into the flaming car.  At this moment, when he has decided to abandon the amoral corporate system, he is, in a way, as free as those unfenced horses...

He retrieves copies of the implicating memo and confronts Karen in the lobby outside U / North's board meeting. The dialog is sharply written and unforgettable."I'm not the guy you kill.  I'm the guy you buy."  He demands 10 million dollars to hide the evidence.  When Karen says this meeting will need more time, and should take place somewhere else, Clayton asks, "Where?  My car?" 

After Karen agrees that U / North will deposit the ten million in Clayton's bank account, he reveals he's been wearing a wire all along, and takes a confirming photo. The CEO emerges from the meeting and demands to know who Clayton is. He answers, "I'm Shiva, the god of death."

Then a team of police enter the hall and walk right past Clayton when the CEO demands they arrest him. Instead, they take the CEO and Karen, who has collapsed onto the floor, into custody.  Clayton's policeman brother Gene (Sean Cullen) asks if he's OK and then tells him to stay close...

In the final scene, Clayton boards a yellow cab (remember those?) and when the driver asks him where he's going, he just hands the driver some cash and says, "Give me fifty dollars worth."  You guess that in New York City traffic, a fifty-dollar ride could fall under the category of "staying close."

Photo Credits:  All images are from "Michael Clayton", released in 2007, with rights held by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and affiliated production companies.

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.