Five years ago, I flew from Colorado to California for a quick getaway. As I walked past a TV screen in Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, I did a double-take. Sure enough, my neighborhood in Boulder was being filmed by a helicopter crew on CNN. A SWAT team had just climbed to the roof of King Soopers, the grocery store just four blocks from my house, in pursuit of an active shooter.

I immediately called my brother, with whom I lived at the time. Both of us went to that store every day, sometimes more than once.

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Thank God, he was safe at home. But 10 others weren’t so lucky. The murderer, a 21-year-old Syrian-born man diagnosed with schizophrenia, had driven to the store with an AR-15 and rampaged through the parking lot and down the aisles. His motive is still largely a mystery.

Everyone I knew was traumatized by the scene, but no one was surprised. Boulder fell into a dark space in the preceding years.

A mental illness epidemic swept through the community, particularly among the city’s young people and the ballooning homeless population. Drug and alcohol abuse spiked to unforeseen levels, which was no small feat for the famously hard-partying college town. A precipitous rise in housing costs demoralized and squeezed out the working class, due largely to poorly devised progressive policies and an influx of high-income tech workers and engineers. And an increasingly radicalized and homogenous political culture fomented paranoia and aggression, turning neighbors into strangers wary of one another’s motives and eager for confrontation.

Drug use, mental illness, and unaffordable housing

The 2012 passage of Colorado’s Amendment 64, which made it among the first states in the nation to legalize recreational marijuana, was eagerly embraced by Boulder residents. To be sure, Boulder’s embrace of drug culture predated the marijuana law. Long a bastion of counterculture and a destination for hippies, artists, and activists, marijuana use in Boulder was plentiful before it became legal. Annual 4/20 celebrations on Colorado University’s lawn famously drew thousands. But the new marijuana law brought drug use in Boulder to new heights.

By 2015, the city boasted over 20 recreational marijuana shops, including many located on Boulder’s iconic Pearl Street Mall, a five-block, red-bricked walking mall nestled beneath the Flatirons’s breathtaking vistas. Often marketed as “wellness” hubs, these stores embedded marijuana use into Boulder’s social fabric. Colorado’s youth marijuana use soared to 39% above the national average. Marijuana related road fatalities skyrocketed. Methamphetamine and fentanyl also poured into the city and across the state. Colorado shot up the national ranking for states with the worst drug problems based on factors such as overdose rates and drug arrests.

As Colorado’s drug use rapidly increased, especially in the permissive culture of Boulder, mental health plummeted. In 2024, Colorado’s overall mental health ranking dropped to 46th in the United States and 47th for adults with suicidal ideation. Youth mental health fell to 44th, and youth suicide spiked, with rates nearly doubling from 2010 to 2021. 

It is difficult to say how much these statistics were affected by Boulder’s transient homeless population, which spiked sharply late last decade. The city’s lenient and permissive policies acted as a magnet for the homeless, to say nothing of Boulder’s 300 days of annual sunshine and robust social services. Between 2017 and 2021, 53% of Boulder’s homeless population indicated they were not from Boulder County or had only been in the area briefly. And over 50% of the homeless population suffered from mental illness, with a full 88% having disabling conditions.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye to locals, the city’s pristine bike paths became strewn with drifters. The public library, once a popular destination for local school trips, transformed into a quasi-shelter. It was temporarily shut down in 2022 due to methamphetamine contamination in the bathrooms and seating areas.

Meanwhile, a swelling housing crisis choked out the working class, further straining social cohesion. From 2005 to 2024, Boulder’s median home price surged from $400,000 to $935,000, outpacing the rise even in coastal cities. Slow-growth policies intended to limit sprawl enacted in the 1950s — 55-foot height limits to preserve stunning views, 1% annual growth caps, and open-space preservation — restricted supply. These “conservationist” measures inadvertently created an enclave for the wealthy and indigent.

From 2010 to 2023, population growth exploded by nearly 10,000, which is more than it sounds like in a 27-square-mile city. Boulder, an emerging tech hub and an outdoor sports paradise, attracted high-income transplants that further drove up costs. Modest homes were ripped down and replaced with mansions. High-end restaurants and hotels quickly replaced the city’s beloved dives and greasy spoon diners. Tech workers, aerospace engineers, and venture capitalists enjoyed an abundance of fine dining options while dishwashers and servers kept getting pushed further away from their place of employment by skyrocketing rent.

Despite its progressive ethos emphasizing inclusivity and sustainability, Boulder became unaffordable for middle- and lower-income residents. In 2016, a proposed 50-unit middle-income housing development was rejected by the planning board for being “too dense,” despite aligning with goals for walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods.

Progressive uniformity

The wealthy transplants had more than a love for outdoor sports in common. They were nearly all Democrats and white. Over 90% of the city, which has a black population that has hovered around 1% for decades, voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020, making it among the most Democratic cities in the U.S.

Boulder’s blue drift was gradual and then sudden. In 2000, 51.6% of Boulder residents voted for former Vice President Al Gore, and in 2008, 72.3% voted for former President Barack Obama. Known affectionately by locals as “The People’s Republic of Boulder,” the city has always had a left-leaning tilt. But its free-spirited vibe was replaced by a hyper conformity during the first quarter of the 21st century. The city that was once a hub for beatnik poetry and cultural rebellion — home of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics — became an epicenter of progressive groupthink.

“In This House We Believe” yard signs became so ubiquitous that houses without them drew suspicion. By 2018, Boulder High School’s social studies classes included units on “systemic racism” and “climate justice,” with teachers assigning projects such as designing protest posters or writing letters to elected officials. Youth activist clubs such as New Era Colorado and the Boulder Sunrise Movement trained scores of young people to become progressive activists.

By 2020, nearly every shop on the iconic pedestrian mall displayed progressive political signage. The Boulder Chamber of Commerce openly promoted “equity” and encouraged businesses to express commitment to progressive causes. In 2021, a BLM mural went up in the downtown area, and a pride flag was draped over the courthouse entrance.

Meanwhile, the city’s churches were regularly vandalized. My own parish, St. Thomas Aquinas on University Hill, was graffitied with swastikas, anarchist symbols, and other hate-filled screeds on multiple occasions. In 2022, another Boulder church, Sacred Heart of Mary in South Boulder, had the phrase “Jesus loves abortion” spray-painted on its doors.

“I hate to say it, but I wasn’t necessarily surprised to hear it had happened,” Archdiocese of Denver spokesman Mark Haas told local media at the time.

One perceptive high school student on a school paper staff succinctly captured the political climate in Boulder, writing in 2021, “Boulder is stuffed with far-left Democrats, and I love it — mostly. I live in a place where approximately 107,000 individuals agree with almost everything I think, say or post. However, I find myself longing for controversy. I want different opinions, especially the ones that completely disagree with and disarm mine.”

BOULDER ATTACK SUSPECT APPEARS IN COURT, 118 CHARGES FILED

The terrorist attack last Sunday on a group of peaceful, pro-Israel demonstrators on the Pearl Street Mall caused a similar reaction to the King Soopers shooting five years earlier. Boulder residents were horrified — but no one was surprised. That’s not to say Boulder’s toxic brew of drug culture, mental disease, soaring income inequality, and dogmatic progressive political climate directly caused the firebombing — in truth, we know little about why the terrorist chose that location — only that the festering problems born of the failure to transform Boulder into a secular techno-utopia seem to invite chaos and misery.

It’s shocking, yes. But it’s also inevitable for a city with a social fabric that has unravelled so completely.