A R C H I V E

Happy Valentine’s day to all.

As usual, Steve Smith does an excellent job of deep diving into a difficult subject like Love, so I want to ask everyone to read Steve’s introduction to get into the spirit of Valentine’s day. 

For years and years we promoted the importance of traditions to creating community, and no recorded tradition goes back further than a Sabbath or Shabbat dinner, so we were always proud of our Friday night Happy Hours, till they slowly became stale…

With the holiday season behind us, and many cold days and long nights still ahead, one has a tendency to feel blue. So here is our true and tested remedy: Think gardens; plan trips.

City Club is in the midst of planning a guided trip for ten to Spain, from April 18th to 25th. Mark your calendars now, and as we get closer, we will disclose more details like who is guiding and what this all inclusive trip will cost.

They say a man can live a month without food, a week without water, but not a day without hope.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream sermon is an American classic reminding us we are all in bondage, until and unless we can imagine, dream, or hope for an alternative reality.

Victor Frankel, himself a concentration camp survivor and the author of the classic Man’s Search for Meaning observed the people surviving the camps were not the big and powerful, but the ones who still had a dream they wanted to fulfill. Read the lovely article below on the dream that kept Simon Wiesenthal alive.

You don’t need to be a Bob Seger fan to notice we have been making some night moves at City Club.

From Thursday night music to Friday night happy hours, from Wednesday night classic movies to every night private social events, we are trying our best to bring fun into the long hard days we all put in. Our whimsical gardens are an ideal place to meet with friends…

We start off the new year with an exciting Member Monday discussion on the subject of Humanism, a philosophical and ethical stance focused on doing good and living well in the here and now, rather than following the dictates of a religious order or a supernatural force. The focus article features an interview with Gordon Gamm, Boulder’s noted philanthropist and Humanist raised in the Jewish tradition.

At City Club we do not see a conflict between the two views since Moses knew he could not take slaves to the Promised Land, hence the 40-years of wandering in the desert till they came up with Ten Commandments and 613 laws on how to become free humans, instead of slaves, before dealing with higher concepts like a single God. BTW, not a single slave who left Egypt entered the Promised land, including Moses himself, who lived long enough to peek, but not enter!

The end of a year, and a decade, is a good time to stop, rest, reflect and be thankful for all we have.

Personally I want to express gratitude for my good health, great kids, my good fortune to live in America at a time of relative peace and abundance, have hundreds of close good friends like you, the chance to give back more than I got, and to continue the virtuous cycle I am on.

In the past decade, with your trust, moral and financial help, we turned a crazy idea, to create a Securus Locus, into reality. In the next decade, we will strive to turn Highland City Club into Highland Institute, whatever that turns out to be.

Utopia is not real, but an ideal we strive toward. Utopia is "an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens.” Since City Club aspires to build an ideal community, a Securus Locus if you will, year-end is a good time to slow down and ask ourselves “How are we doing? Are we on track? Are we growing in the right direction? Are we willing to re-commit, or is it time to opt-out?

Personally, I am pleased with where we are headed. We already have so many wonderful offerings such as Steve Smith’s weekly Member Monday deep-dive discussions into so many diverse topics, and Kevin Townley's monthly sessions on topics such as Masonry and Alchemy. I get so much pleasure watching our many young entrepreneurs start and grow families and businesses, and, instead of getting a Christmas card in the mail, Mo Siegel personally handing me the most beautiful book, printed with over 100 color plates of Jesus that he has been working on for over ten years. Such an amazingly diverse community!

Like New York and San Francisco, a spare bedroom in Boulder is a rare commodity, and even if one has a large house with a guest room, do we really want to let the parents or the in-laws spend a week underfoot?!

With 300+ members and growing, we constantly get asked if we have a spare townhouse, condo or guesthouse to put up a visiting colleague, an adult child + spouse, parents, and/or in-laws. With 24/7 on-site management, access to food and co-working, this is an ideal place to house visitors at a lower cost than Boulderado and St. Julian hotels. 

After a tour of Highland, a potential member asked how can we justify our prices when our “competition,” meaning Galvanize and WeWork, just cut their prices in half?!

If you have not visited the new Rosetta Hall, you are in for a great surprise. Located at 1109 Walnut in the heart of Boulder, Rosetta Hall is "an iconic, jaw-droppingly gorgeous food hall featuring 10 restaurants  & 2 bars.” 

One of our goals for the new year is to have more social gatherings in the evening, including movie nights, music nights and Happy Hours. In order to mix it up a bit, we are encouraging our members to meet next Friday 12/6 at 5:30 at Rosetta Hall to eat, drink and mingle with other members and general public.

See you then and there,

Helen Keller, the deaf and blind activist was asked by a journalist what she thought would be worse than being born blind? Without missing a beat, she replied “to have sight and no vision.”

Nearly fifteen years after its inception, Highland City Club is finally a social and business success. Every lunch is so packed and the dining room’s energy level so high, the excitement is palpable. So is it time to rest on our laurels and call it good, or should we strive to go from good too great? Should we continue to eat, drink and make more money, or is there more to our original and idealistic vision of making a small dent in the universe?

They say the only constant is change, and that if we don’t initiate and embrace change, then change happens to us, making us feel like a victim.

Building a community is a journey, not a destination, hence the work is never done, and progress and change never stops.

"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use." -Emily Post, author and columnist (27 Oct 1872-1960)

It takes more than Rules & Regs, Policies & Procedures to have 300+ smart people on-the-go work, eat, drink, socialize and get along in a 128-year old historic landmark.

Until recently, a luxury office building was defined as a clean and safe work environment with running water and electricity. Today’s tenant’s needs are more complex, requiring crazy-fast fiber optic WiFi, sustainable food at affordable prices, and great-tasting free coffee, the lack of which forces a tenant to spend at least 20 minutes and nearly $5 to secure one, often more than once a day.

Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in politics and are affected by it, like fish swimming in water or humans breathing air; so while we always encourage our members to participate in our local and national politics, we seldom make recommendations.

I recently walked 165 miles through two countries in three weeks hoping for an epiphany, an insight or an Aha moment.

Though a great vacation and a physical verification that I am not dead yet, I could have just stayed home, watched The Wizard of Oz again, and repeated three times after Dorothy: