Boulder Weekly has been serving Boulder County residents as the region’s independent voice for news, culture, food and entertainment for nearly a quarter of a century.
During that time, East County has undergone an amazing renaissance. The old downtowns of Louisville, Lafayette, Longmont and Lyons that once had empty storefronts tucked between pawnshops and old-time hardware stores have today given way to robust central business districts with amazing restaurants with gluten-free options, microbreweries, gluten-free menus, music venues, specialty retail stores and coffee shops.
It’s a new, amazing world out in East County and that’s why we decided a few years back to celebrate what is best about this growing and evolving area where many of our readers live, work and recreate.
We know that East County residents have always been justifiably proud of their communities. We know this because many of us who work at Boulder Weekly have chosen, like a couple of hundred thousand other folks, to live and raise our families in the “L” towns because of the amazing quality of life they offer. We also saw that pride exhibited in the enthusiastic response when we asked you to vote for your favorite things in East County.
So here are the results of your efforts. We hope you enjoy this year’s annual Best of Boulder East County.
The winners were chosen by our readers. And we have to say, from the looks of it, our readers have great taste. Congratu-lations to all of the winners. It says a lot about your businesses that your customers took their time to vote for you.
Here’s how we make the sausage, so to speak.
We take the top five vote getters in each category — the business with the most votes overall is named Best of East County. The business with the most votes from a particular community wins best of that town. If two or more of the top five vote getters were from the same town, then those with the second and third most votes in that town are listed as honorable mentions. So the top five businesses are listed, but not every town has a winner in every category. In instances wherein the business with the second most overall votes is from the same town as the overall winner, that business is given the title of Runner Up for East Boulder County.
We hope you enjoy our Best of Boulder East County edition, and we encourage you to use it to discover new places that just might become your favorites as well.
