Heating up

The beginning of September brings a sense of regret for all the Boulder-centric things you didn’t do over the summer (along with spray-tanned, Orange County-sourced freshmen). Despite your best intentions and the vision board you made with your therapist in the spring, you spent yet another summer scrolling Instagram only to come to your senses in the fall with a raging case of FOMO.

This year, what if you didn’t waste your wild and precious summer and instead sucked the marrow out of its bones as ravenously as you suck the last drops of a WONDER Press smoothie? 

Repeat after me: This summer, I will not cave to the Instagram algorithm and buy another Outdoor Voices athletic dress. (Let’s get real: That shit is only getting worn to Rayback.) Babes, it is officially time to do all the things, kiss all the hot people, smell all the flowers and drink all the Illegal Pete’s margs. 

Here are some tips on how to have your hottest hot-girl Boulder summer.

GET FREAKY IN THE CREEKY

Like an artery of fun and E. coli, Boulder Creek supplies the life force of horniness and human connection for our town in the summer. To go to Eben G. Fine Park on a hot, sunny afternoon is an automatic entry into a ruthless game of posturing. From the Naropa hot girl in an impressive but totally unnecessary side crow pose on the grass, to the thirsty dad in the throes of a midlife crisis using his progeny to pick up women, everyone is flexing. 

The only way to win is to reject the game entirely by embracing your inner creek freak and becoming the most uncool, unhinged, feral creature in the riparian ecosystem. Leave the sexualized semi-nudity for the normies; be a real freak by experimenting with nonsexual full-nudity in Dream Canyon. And, instead of pretending to read Osho by the creek, read milk and honey by Rupi Kaur and loudly tell anyone who will listen that you’re only looking at the illustrations. (Or, better yet, read the latest issue of Boulder Weekly and loudly tell everyone to support local journalism.) 

SMOOCHIN’ AND KOMBUCHIN’

Let’s not pretend we’re not looking forward to some sweet summer lovin’. If you haven’t noticed, Boulderites are super hot. So, how does one kiss as many people as possible this summer? First, apply some Burt’s Bees peppermint chapstick to your lips and eyelids. Burt from Burt’s Bees is a certified daddy sex symbol and you will become more kissable by association; the chapstick on your eyelids won’t make you more attractive, but it does feel weird. 

Next, try a date idea that isn’t drinks at Avanti or Rosetta Hall. That’s not a knock on Avanti or Rosetta Hall, it’s just that they’re much more enjoyable as sites for anthropological studies of other people’s Hinge dates (or, in Rosetta Hall’s case, for the unreal amount of sexual tension between you and the person washing their hands next to you in the co-ed bathroom). 

Unpopular opinion: Scrambling the second Flatiron on a first date is not a terrible idea. Somewhere between rope climbing and an unpleasantly steep hike exists scrambling, a word that suggests desperation, which makes it an ideal experience for a first date (most ideally with a stranger you have yet to meet in real life). I find that increasing the “danger factor” of a date is a quick way to make you and your partner remember that life is nasty, brutish and short, and there’s no time like the present to celebrate surviving another day by making sweet, dusty love off-trail (but please, don’t disturb nesting raptors). Plus, if you do end up breaking your body in the process, Emergency Medical Technicians (or E-M-cuTies) in Boulder are somehow all ridiculously good looking. 

EAT INTUITIVELY

“hAvINg YOuR beST sUmMeR iS aLL AbOuT EatINg CLeaN aNd hEaLThY…” um, with all due respect, screw that, and an extra screw that to the word “healthy,” which happens to be the most useless word ever used to describe food. To have a hot-girl Boulder summer is to eat  as  much  as  possible. I promise, you’ll always regret that extra spoonful of grassfed butter you didn’t add to your coffee, or the combination of steak juice and grease you didn’t lick off your plate (and your date’s). 

Maybe some woo-woo nutritionists will call this “intuitive eating.” I don’t know what that is, but my intuition tells me a hot ’n fresh Lucky’s rotisserie chicken sensually torn apart in communion with your closest friends plus enough cherries as it takes to induce a bowel movement is a summer night well spent. 

An important exception to the anti-diet culture rule: Ordering a skinny marg at T/aco is permissible due to the fact that it contains more alcohol than the normal one. 

And there you have it. Here’s to spending this summer in the People’s Republic of Boulder living like John Denver, getting lost in the Colorado sauce and only emerging when you are fully covered in dirt, sweat, blood and someone else’s essential oils.

WHOLE FOODS DADDY ANSWERS YOUR BURNING BOULDER QUESTIONS

Best dating app? Not Hinge or Tinder or Bumble, please; I’m so tired.

Listen, of course you’re tired. Not only do the interfaces of these apps fry your dopamine receptors, but you can only go on so many Bitter Bar dates that lead to situationships with men in their 20s and 30s before you want to throw in the towel. I hate to be the one to tell you, but that 37-year-old bartender isn’t interested in someone your age because you’re “so special”; it’s because he’s special.

That’s why I say step over coded transactions and download Seeking Arrangements. Gen X-ers are the ideal relationship material; they’re just cool enough to have an Instagram with climbing pictures, but they still need your help with editing the post caption.

Best place to free the nipple in Boulder?

While I’m a strong proponent of the nips-bare-everywhere-legally-allowed philosophy, the farmers market is hands down the best place and time to pop ’em out. Even more than a place to find 12 stands devoted to hot sauce, the Boulder Farmers Market is the town’s unofficial fashion show. Completing your cute ’n crunchy ’fit with your two cutest accessories might even get you a few extra zucchinis (Disclaimer: The fine people at the BCFM would likely appreciate it if you kept your shirt on). 

WHAT’S ‘IN’ AND WHAT’S ‘OUT’ FOR SUMMER?

In

• Setting boundaries with your parents, who only want to hang out with you now to smoke weed 

• Making the Thursday Night Bike Ride vibe even weirder by aggressively shaming anyone not wearing a helmet

• When a server asks if your request for the gluten-free option was because of a sensitivity or Celiac disease, looking them dead in the eyes and saying it’s a preference

OUT

• The word “healthy” being used to describe anything but boundaries

• Wearing underwear (aka the chains of the oppressor) with sundresses 

• Talking shit about John Mayer every time Dead and Company comes to town (sorry, but the sensitive bro has talent, and Jerry was the OG sensitive bro anyway)