Editor's Note - Summer 2012
Remember your first “only in Boulder” moment? I was 20, biking down Broadway from campus and delicately navigating through a sea of Promise Keepers donning suits on their way to Pearl Street. They were in town that summer for former CU football coach Bill McCartney’s Christian men’s ministry convention.
But I braked hard in front of Alfalfa’s grocery store on the corner of Arapahoe and Broadway. Marching toward The Hill were scholars, real Buddhist monks in flowing orange and red robes and hippies. Leading them in their peaceful protest of the convention was the eccentric American poet Allen Ginsburg.
I stood there in awe because the scene completely blew off the lid of humanity, exposing in striking clarity the complex ways in which we seek love, knowledge, affirmation and spirituality.
Peace protests, male-only Christian rallies and Buddhist monks? Only in Boulder.
And all against the backdrop of Alfalfa’s, a pioneering natural foods grocery store reopened by Barney Feinblum(MBA’75) last year. Ginsburg once asked, “Where is the difference between your soul and the soul of the nation?” Feinblum spent his career reducing that difference by taking what’s “only in Boulder” and elevating it to the national stage, creating such successes as Horizon Organic [pages 6-11]. Glad to see Alfalfa’s back on the corner.