It’s a Pearl of a Street

I’m currently visiting family in Colorado. One of my brothers, Brian (who is living with my brother Chris and his wife and family since coming home after several years in Taiwan), and I went to Pearl Street in Boulder this afternoon. Pearl Street is a restored area of older brick buildings that now houses a variety of businesses–from art galleries to restaurants to head shops. It has a bit of a hippy 60’s vibe with yuppy over-tones.

On this section of Pearl, the center part of the street where the cars used to drive is now a pedestrian walkway, as well as a space used by all manner of street performers. Unfortunately I failed to take my camera and thus have no pictures of the contortionist (who also juggled while being twisted up like a pretzel). Or the gentleman playing a small harp and singing who had a very fine voice. Fortunately, my brother Brian had some pictures on his computer from one of his earlier trips to Pearl, so I will insert some of those so that you can get a little flavor of the place.

Juggler

Drummer

Pearl Street

We stopped and had lunch at one of the many restaurants along the way and it was fabulous.  This particular establishment had a rooftop dining area and we chose to eat up there.   I had a green salad with chicken strips that were perfectly spiced and extremely flavorful. The salad also had fresh tomatoes, cubed apples and candied walnuts with a great raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Yum.

Rooftop Restaurant (in background)

After lunch we cruised the shops, stopping in several along the way, including a cute little art gallery where I purchased a small enameled work of an Eastern bluebird on a branch of apple blossoms for my bathroom wall.

We also stopped in one of the headshops that, for some reason, are all below street level in basement stores. It’s one of those things where, while we didn’t have any real reason to be there, we just had to look. Call it a trip down memory lane…. Of course, since marijuana is now legal in Colorado and will be for sale to the general public starting in 2014, I suppose the stores will be of more use at that time. But with two universities close-by, they seem to be pretty heavily trafficked already.

We also went into an ice cream shop, thinking about a little dessert, but changed our minds when we saw the prices. At $4.50 for a single-scoop cone it seemed a little pricey to the both of us. Heck, I can buy a pint of the good stuff for that price (or less!) in any grocery store. Sheesh.

After that we walked by the courthouse, which is on the same street, and is an impressive stone building with lovely landscaping. There is a monument on the grounds dedicated to the casualties of “the world war”. It was erected in 1935, so the people who put it there had no idea that an even worse war was about to come. There was a large sign at the entrance to the grounds that, among other rules, stated “no camping”. I guess those soft, green lawns were just too tempting to street people and hikers passing through.

Courthouse grounds

Courthouse

Near the center of the pedestrian area, there’s a play area for the kiddies that is painted to look as if a stream is running down the center and is strewn with large rocks for them to climb on. It was obviously popular with the kids, as every rock had at least one kidlet climbing on it.

Kiddy play area

The street was very busy while we were there. I have a feeling that the snow we had yesterday, while very short-lived, served to remind everyone that winter is just around the corner. Thus many people decided to take advantage to the day’s lovely weather and get out while the getting was good. Tomorrow promises to be even nicer with highs in the low 70’s. I have yet to decide if that will become a travel day or if I will wait until Monday to tackle crossing the Rockies.

Sanyi, it Wood Be Wrong to Omit You

Since I’m home right now, I thought it might be a good time to catch up on some things that I should have written about before.   Like the trip to Sanyi, Taiwan last fall.

Before we headed into the town itself we visited a temple whose name I have no idea of.  But the place was impressive, as they almost always are.  They were undergoing some renovations, so the front gate had building supplies piled all around it, but that’s the price of progress, right?  I wish I had gotten the name of the place, but language difficulties prevented a whole lot of detailed talking.    The place seemed fairly new, as temples in Taiwan go, but it’s really hard to tell.  I heard someone estimate that there are over 30,000 temples in this small island nation.  Plus, they’re building new ones all the time.   And the new ones seem to look just like the old ones in many cases.

Entrance gate

There was this adorable sculpture just inside the main gate of a giant gold teapot, continuously pouring tea and a bunch of kids lighting firecrackers.   So cute!  Also quite large.  The kids were more than life-sized.  We then walked up a lovely marble staircase with large metal lotus blossoms on the top of each post.   As we turned the corner at the top of the stairs, the main temple came into view.   The courtyard had large, marble lotus blossoms in the pavement.  The stairways and front were surrounded by flower gardens.  There were many worshipers inside, I have no idea which deity  the place was dedicated to.   But there were a whole lot of people volunteering to keep this place going.  (Hmmmm, kind of sounds like the church I go to, in that last regard.)

Temple courtyard

fire cracker kids

As we were standing in front of the temple, a bunch of people came out of the temple wearing purple vests.  One of them had a bullhorn, the rest were carrying what appeared to be fake purple lotus blossoms.  They all lined up in front of the temple for some kind of ceremony, while we continued on around behind the temple to view the rest of the grounds.  The temple serves a free meal to all who visit and there were lots and lots of volunteers sitting around preparing the fruits and veggies that go into the feeding of the masses.  I have no idea what most of the plant-life was, it was not stuff I was at all familiar with.  Well, except for bamboo.  Bamboo is cooked into a lot of things in Asia.  There were many, many tarps laid out in the courtyard with bamboo slices on them, drying.

procession

Preparing to feed the masses

There was a lot of lovely landscaping around the temple grounds, huge pots of water lilies and a  hillside covered with greenery and fake cranes cavorting about.  We then came to the place where all that food we had seen being prepared was being served.  It was pretty amazing to see how-oiled the machinery was that managed to feed hundreds of the visiting faithful (and just plain tourists!) each day (no, we didn’t eat there.  We had just finished lunch shortly before arriving at the temple.)    At the back of the hall there was an enormous block of jade, maybe 4 by 8 feet.  It was carved with dozens of horses on each side, galloping across its face…both faces.  Truly inspiring.  Fabulous work!

jade panel

After that it was a stroll back to the parking lot and a second viewing of some of the great statuary at the front of the grounds (they’re really into realistic anatomical detail on their horned lions!  Uh, the horns were on their heads, but they were most decidedly male lions…).  Then it was back to the parking lot and on to Sanyi itself.

Horned lion

Sanyi is known for wood carving.  They host an international wood-carving festival and it truly is international, entered by carvers from a lot of different countries.  I know this because we visited the wood carving museum there and saw some of the past year’s entries.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This was another trip where friends of my brother’s drove us up to a special place we wanted to see.    As I recall, the drive up was quite nice, but I was impressed with the town the moment we got to the edge of it.  There was a great piece of sculpture as soon as we got off the freeway.   Good start!

Sculpture at the edge of Sanyi

Then it was on to main street, store after store of (primarily)  carved wood.  (Surprise!)  However, we didn’t start our visit to Sanyi there.  Instead we went  to a street that led to the wood-carving museum.  This street was full of all kinds of stores selling artistic-type stuff, including some pretty incredible sculpture, in wood and stone.  Pieces that were several thousand US dollars….and worth every penny.  I was blown away by some of the things  I saw in those stores.   These were not your average something-for-a-tourist-to-take-home stores.

After visiting a few of these stores we went up to the museum.  Outside were two sculptures of elephants. made of something that looked like giant pieces of driftwood, although it probably wasn’t.   Unless it drifted in off some really giant trees!   The museum was great, unfortunately they didn’t allow cameras.  Which was totally not cool, because the stuff was awesome.  But what can you do?

Museum elephant

After some time in the museum, we cruised the high-end tchotchkes on the avenue again for a little while, then we went to an art gallery that the woman who was with us apparently frequents fairly often.  They seemed to know her quite well.  Which means she has really, really excellent taste in art because the stuff in the gallery absolutely blew me away.  There was one piece in particular that I seriously considered tapping out my IRA to own.   It just made me feel that free and alive.  I think we ended up spending more time at the gallery than we did at the museum.   And it was worth every minute.

I know I should have written about Sanyi closer to the event, when things were still fresh and the details were…there.  Still with me.  But I didn’t.  The big things though, the highlights, they’re still there.  The flavors of the place.  Standing before one of the infinity pools at the gallery, looking at the mountains in the distance, soaring on the feeling of airiness and space.  Or looking in the other direction and watching the people having lunch in the courtyard, with striped bamboo all around them; the sing-song of their voices and the ring of their laughter.  I almost hated to leave, but we had yet to walk through any  of the stores we passed on the way into town.

That, unfortunately,  was a bit of a disappointment.  The prices of goods in these stores had become what I have come to call “Americanized”.   The prices are no longer what the average Taiwanese would pay, but are based on what the average American tourist would be willing to pay.  Which I wasn’t.  I left disappointed with no memento of Sanyi in my bag.  Just my photos and memories, which are far more important than “stuff” anyway.

On the way out of town there was a fence alongside the road.  Someone had planted a flowering vine across the top of it, then trained it to undulate along the fence top.  As we reached the end of the fence, I saw that they had carved the end of the vine into the head of a serpent.  A half-mile long snake.  Unfortunately, that picture didn’t come out.  Too bad.  But still, a lovely day in Sanyi.