 Oh everybody, you know me, I love Boulder, I'm from Boulder, I've ridden my bike a million times around Boulder, but today I'm going to go on an extra special Boulder bike ride. I'm going to meet up with this guy named JD. He started this new e-bike company where he takes people on tours around Boulder showing off all the best murals. Uh, murals. Did you get that? I got a little bump right when I said that. Murals. There's a lot of new art in Boulder and I'm excited to check it out. I've lived in Boulder for the better part of 34-ish years. Just a couple of years ago, I got myself an e-bike on a total whim and it completely changed my life. I got rid of a car, I've ridden 6,000 miles almost, I've lost 30 pounds and the benefit that is brought to my life is really immeasurable and hard to describe with words. Bring out another facet to this town that I think has been kind of missing. It preserves the creativity, the sort of weirdness that Boulder is kind of known for, but that has maybe faded away in the last several years. I do these mural tours because I want to show you what a great experience these bikes can be and to show off this art and this beautiful city that we live in. And as you all know, it's more fun to ride bikes with friends, so today we're riding with one of my best friends in the whole world, Michelle Smith. Yeah, his name is not Michelle Smith, it's Waylon Lewis. Waylon Lewis and Michelle. Waylon and I, we've had a lot of fun in our lives and we're just going to have a lot of fun today. Let's do it. What do you say, guys? Let's do it. It's a beautiful day to be riding bikes in Boulder, as always. Pretty much every day in Boulder is a beautiful day to ride a bike, but today especially. It's December 22nd and I'm wearing shorts. This mural is from the this year's Streetwise Boulder Mural Festival and it's a collaboration between two artists, Cocoa No Filter on Instagram and she does the Hope Heart Paystups and we'll see a bunch of those throughout the day and you'll see those all over Boulder and Denver. Waylon, where are we? We are at my favorite view in Boulder. Look at that. Waylon's not having any fun at all. We are in front of one of my very favorite poems or mini poems by Walt Whitman, wonderful man, you, whoever is watching, are so much sunshine to the square inch and we are at Casey, my alma mater where I got bullied all the time. So when I went here, it was pretty ugly. They built on top of the historic school. Just then they've done a wonderful historic renovation, tons of solar panels, tons of bike racks, a climbing wall, they've done a lot of amazing work here. I love these old alleyways in Boulder. There's a lot of beautiful old homes and I've lived here all my life and I still see things that I've never seen before. I'm like, wow, that's a cool house. So Grace Gutierrez is the artist on this mural and she does a lot of work, a lot of Chicana themed art. When I saw her when she was putting this up, she told me that as she was researching it, she learned that turtles, if a drought is coming to an area, turtles will leave that area. So it's kind of an early warning sign and so this mural sort of represents sort of turtles showing us the way to, you know, get us thinking about the earth and our relationship to it. Oh, he did it. Oh, he dropped his new iPhone. Here's a great horned owl that on the south side of the village coffee shop, already a Boulder icon without this owl, but now, come on. This coffee shop has a special place in history for the Van Duzer family. My dad would take us here when I was a little kid and we loved the cinnamon rolls. They were huge. You know, I didn't even see what it was. I was so close getting detail shots that I stand away and it's a boy laying down reading a book with a mask on. Este mural de Florian López es un regalo de la Ciudad de Manté, Tamaulipas, México, a la gente de Boulder en agradecimiento por los intercambios médicos y culturales entre las dos ciudades. So this one's quite powerful, Fire and Water, the struggle of Tonazin, Colorado, by David Garcia Ocelotti. This mural depicts Mother Earth Tonazin and her struggle with humanity's unbalanced use of her natural resources and our growing carbon footprint resulting in the effects of global warming. Spray her name commemorates people of color who died at the hands of law enforcement, basically. And so there are murals of people like Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, et cetera, all over the country. I find this to be very moving because it's just an incredibly beautiful image just on its face and then just what it commemorates and to remember these, the names of these people whose names we really shouldn't have to know in the first place. Here it is in the early stages from my, I think my first tour actually. And then here's the drawing for the original mural, I don't know if you could pick that up, but she definitely did some improvisation along the way. This is a picture of her paint. That's about, that's about $700 worth of spray paint right there. Great fish on the walls here. This is one of my favorite murals. We're going by fast. Bye. Every time we stop somewhere, Wayland does about 15 circles on his bike at top speed. Here he comes again. There he goes. Meow. You're never too old to have a little fun. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. Greta Fumberi. Hella Sveria. Go Sweden. This one is my favorite. I love this one. It's by a guy named Detour. I follow him on Instagram. He does incredible murals all over, all over. And I'm pretty excited that we have one of our own in Boulder. That guy is super talented. It reminds me a lot of the art that I've seen all over Latin America and Mexico and the colors are just bam. They're just so bright. I love it. This is really cool. This mural is on the road here and it's in a housing complex called San Juan del Centro. And I've done a lot of work here throughout the years at the Family Learning Center. Back when I got home from the Peace Corps after working in Honduras I came and worked here with a lot of the kids. Most of the kids here are children of Mexican immigrants and I would come here and help them out with their homework. And of course we ride bikes and play and have lots of fun. Outside the building, formerly and still really known as Liquor Mart, a Boulder monument in its own right. And to just drive by and see this incredible color and this variety of expression on these walls is really very moving to me and really cool that they've turned this very kind of famous building in the middle of town into sort of an outdoor museum. Look what we have here. Look what we have here. So this little frog here, I just noticed it for the first time and it's just kind of emblematic of what I want people to get from this tour is just like there's so many things to notice if you just open your eyes. We're surrounded by beauty all of the time. This is great because growing up in Boulder we really didn't have a lot of beautiful murals like this. This is all popped up in the last couple years and I love the color that Boulder's getting. Makes me happy. Makes the streets happier. We've got Whelan coming in hot on the left side ladies and gentlemen, there he goes. This guy right here, Smile Boulder, this tag right here. He does all sorts of these really cool stencil paintings all over town and it's some of my favorite stuff. A lot of times he does cats and other iconic figures. We've got Snoop Dogg right here but Smile is one of my faves and we're in a back alley right now right behind the Boulder Theater and this is some of the, this is some really big, this is big stuff right here and I actually never noticed it until today. Powerful, it's community and a time without community, diversity in a town without a lot of diversity. Yeah. Come on Whelan, we're going to the top. Put it on turbo. There we pop out on top of Boulder and it's so beautiful up here. So I am new to Boulder and this has been super exciting because it got, it gave me the opportunity to very quickly get to see a bunch of the city. The city is so big and when you're biking it can take a little while right to go over but with an e-bike it was super, super quick. So if you have friends, family coming over to visit, this is something that you should do. Thank you so much for watching this video, please like and subscribe and if you come to Boulder, if you live in Boulder, check out JD's Joy Rides. He will take you on one of these rides. It was so much fun. Thank you my friend, thank you Whelan, thank you Michelle. Here's a really cool fun fact about the history of Ryan Van Duzer, that building right there is the Boulder Courthouse and when I was a senior in high school I had dinner, prom dinner with my date on the roof of that courthouse and then we went to the Boulder Theater for the actual prom. Good memories up there, I'm sure I ordered burritos or something very classy.