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The secret is in the sauce By Bob Yates
Jun 1st
The Boulder Bulletin/June 2026 My father was a raconteur, a storyteller. After he’d finish serving a particularly delicious
tale, he’d give you a knowing Irish wink and offer an epilogue for dessert: “It’s mostly true. And
the parts that aren’t make it more interesting.”
That’s how it is with Jay Elowsky, who everyone calls Pasta Jay after the name of the
Italian restaurant he’s operated on Pearl Street for nearly 40 years. He tells story after story, and
that every good story—like every good sauce—needs a little seasoning
you’re not entirely sure which parts are true. But it doesn’t matter. As a chef, Pasta Jay knows
that every good story—like every good sauce—needs a little seasoning.
How does a Polish kid from Bay City, Michigan, end up running the most successful
Italian restaurant in Boulder, with a second operation in Utah and jars of rich, red sauce sold in
supermarkets across the country?
After a brief and incomplete stint as a student at CU-Boulder in the early 1980s, Jay
headed to California to work in his Uncle Sonny’s pizzeria. There Jay learned Italian recipes
handed down from Sonny’s great, great grandmother, “Mama Genovese,” who was the cook for
King Victor Emmanuel of Italy in the 19th century.
Absorbing everything Sonny could teach him, Jay convinced his parents to loan him
$50,000 so he could return to Boulder and open his own Italian restaurant, which he called Pasta
Jay’s. The Mall on Pearl Street had recently opened, but Jay chose a spot for his restaurant a
couple of blocks west of the Mall, in an old house at 925 Pearl.
“Everyone told me not to open on the West End,” Pasta Jay recounts now about his 1988
decision. “They said it was off the bricks, and no one would come there. Well, it was an instant
success. From the first day, there was a line out the door. We could barely keep up.”
The first day for the new restaurant was September 16, 1988. That afternoon, before
opening the new place, Jay and his parents hurriedly painted bright red some old chairs they had
procured from CU to use in the restaurant. When they opened that evening, the second customer
through the door was George Karakehian, the proprietor of Art Source on the Pearl Street Mall.
“After George finished his meal in the newly opened restaurant,” Pasta Jay recollects, “he got up
to leave. But the chair stuck to him. The red paint hadn’t dried yet. George and I have been
friends ever since.”
In 1989, the year after opening Pasta Jay’s Restaurant, the Boulder City Clerk observed to
Jay that the CU football team was looking for a meal sponsor, someone who could feed them
before games. Jay volunteered but was told that university rules required that the school pay
something for the food. So, Pasta Jay charged the team $1 per player for dinners.
Feeding the football team lasted more than 30 years. Along the way, Pasta Jay started the
Buffalo Stampede, a Pearl Street tradition on the night before every home game, which continues
to this day. There is Buffs paraphernalia throughout his restaurant. Jay estimates that he serves
5,000 meals every CU graduation weekend.
Jay estimates that about ten percent of his diners are CU students. Another 20 percent are
tourists, and the rest are locals. “We are very family-oriented,” Jay explains. “I judge our success
by how many highchairs we’re using. I want families to be able to afford to feed their kids.” A
long-time leader in Downtown Boulder, Pasta Jay understands that Boulder residents are the key
to continued success. “We have to get families downtown. We need to keep the locals coming
in.”
Now at the corner of Pearl and 10th Street, a few yards east of the original Pasta Jay’s
location, Jay figures he has served between 200,000 and 250,000 meals each year since 1988.
That’s nearly 10 million pizzas and plates of pasta over the course of four decades.
“Through the years, we’ve added more sauces,” Pasta Jay explains. “We now have
something for everyone.” Jay says his favorite item on the menu is stuffed shells. That and the
chicken parm are the two most popular items in the restaurant. If you look closely at the menu,
you’ll notice that some dishes are named after regular diners and local luminaries. “Even my dad
has a dish on the menu, and there’s a drink named after my mom. It’s kind of cute.”
The same age as me and approaching retirement, Pasta Jay has been gradually handing
over the reins of his Boulder and Moab restaurants to his daughter Josie and his son Jay Wyatt.
“Jay Wyatt started bussing tables in the restaurant when he was 11. The other day, Josie was in
here at 2 am, learning recipes.”
Like Nicole Hurdle at Hurdle’s Jewelry, Zoe Polk at Pedestrian Shops, and Chase
Kraegel at Peppercorn, Jay’s kids have had to earn their place as next generation inheritors of a
long-time downtown family business. “I am harder on them than I am on my own employees,”
he says of Josie and Jay Wyatt. “They can stay here in the restaurant, or they can start their own
businesses. It’s up to them. But I am always asking them, ‘What are you doing to build your own
empire?’ They have worked for where they’re at. They’re doing a good job.”
The millions of plates of pasta and pizzas that Pasta Jay has served over the decades have
included meals for visiting luminaries to Boulder, including the Grateful Dead and the Dali
L
Lama. And Jay says he’s proud that the Sundance Film Festival is coming to Boulder next year.
“While Sundance will give us a big boost in January, what it really does is puts us on the map.
Overall, it gives Boulder more of a national presence.”
As proud as he is of his kids and the restaurant he has built up over the decades, Pasta Jay
says he reminds himself to be humble, to help those who are less fortunate. “We have served
homeless people meals out of the back door of the restaurant,” he says. “We have to be actively
involved in the community. I keep learning. I try to give others a helping hand. I keep reminding
myself: It’s about how you treat other people.”
What to do with $1 billion in buildings by Bob Yates
Jun 1st
FROM The Boulder Bulletin/June 2026
This would seem like a good problem to have. Over the course of several decades, the
City of Boulder has amassed a portfolio of 80 buildings around town, worth a total of about one
billion dollars. Many of them are falling apart.
The dozens of structures owned by the city include necessary municipal facilities, like
fire stations and police headquarters. But there are also some unusual holdings that came into the
city’s hands through accidents of history, such as a large Victorian house on University Hill
which the city bought in 1979 to host Parks & Rec programs, but which the city now leases to
the nonprofit Women’s Wilderness.
The city owns seven public parking garages, and a handful of buildings used to provide
water utilities. Five of the structures owned by the city are library buildings, which the city leases
to the Boulder Library District, now a separate government entity.
The condition of the city’s properties varies widely. With more than half of the structures
built before 1970, city staff estimates that the deferred maintenance on their buildings totals more
than $500 million. Staff has identified funding for only about $100 million of this, leaving a
$400 million gap.
Having $1 billion in real estate with $400 million in unfunded deferred maintenance is
like owning a $1 million house with $400,000 in needed repairs but no income to cover the costs.
Where would you even begin?
The failing city building which has attracted the most attention recently is the South
Boulder Recreation Center. One of three recreation centers operated by Boulder, city staff
estimates that the cost to replace it will be between $30 and $65 million, depending on what
amenities are included in the new building. The two other city rec centers are not far behind,
each needing $60 and $80 million in renovations over the next few years.
Boulder’s public safety facilities are likewise in poor shape. Half of Boulder’s eight fire
stations need an additional $10 million each to maintain them. But city staff says that the
building that’s in the worst condition is the 50-year-old Public Safety Center on 33rd Street,
which houses the emergency dispatch operations and the police department, and which will need
$100 million for renovation or replacement.
Of course, many of the city’s 80 buildings simply need to be disposed of. Some have
surpassed their economic useful lives, and it makes no sense to renovate them. At least three of
the city buildings are slated to be demolished after the municipal employees who work in them
relocate next year to the new city office building at the site of the former BCH hospital complex
at Broadway and Alpine (how much that is costing to build is a topic for a separate discussion).
©2026, Bob Yates. All rights reserved.
Other municipal buildings will be sold or otherwise disposed of, including the Atrium
Building at 13th and Canyon, which the Farmers Market aspires to convert into a year-round
market hall.
The city will also need to decide what to do with a dozen buildings that it owns but leases
to others at below-market rates, including the library buildings, the Pottery Lab, Chautauqua
Dining Hall, and the BMoCA building. The city manager has declared that the city no longer
wishes to be a landlord. Some of the leased buildings could probably follow the path of the Dairy
Arts Center building, which the city had been leasing to the nonprofit for $1 per year for more
than 25 years, before selling the facility to the arts organization last year.
You might ask how the city got into this hole, facing $400 million in unfunded
infrastructure deficiencies. It’s like how someone goes bankrupt: Slowly, then all at once.
Indeed, the decline in the condition of city infrastructure has been growing for many
years. In 2008, a city blue-ribbon commission forecasted that the city’s expenses over the
following two decades would outstrip its revenues. They were right.
In 2011, four years before I was first elected to city council, I co-chaired a 16-member
residents’ committee appointed by the city manager to somehow allocate $49 million in expected
city bond revenues across $700 million in municipal capital needs. We did the best we could with
what we had.
Fifteen years later, the current city council finds itself in the same pickle: Too many needs
and not enough money. So, they’ll do what city councils in every city must do: Prioritize. They’ll
apply their understanding of community values to fund some things and abandon others. Do we
need eight fire stations, or will six or seven do? Is three the right number of recreation centers?
How about two? Why not four?
And invariably, rather than simply slicing the pie thinner, city council will consider
increasing the size of the pie by growing the city’s revenue and therefore its capacity to pay for
more things. Council did just that in mid-May, instructing city staff to investigate several
potential tax increases for this fall’s ballot, including:
• A permanent property tax increase that would add an annual $86 per $1 million in
home value ($338 per year for each $1 million in commercial property value).
• Municipal debt limit increases, including a temporary property tax increase to pay for
it.
• A special property tax for homes that are not lived in by owners—or rented out to
tenants—at least half of the year.
City council authorized city staff to survey the community’s feelings on each tax
increase, with the poll results to be published at the end of this month, in preparation for
council’s decision which measures to put on the fall ballot.
©2026, Bob Yates. All rights reserved.
Having read tens of thousands of constituent emails during my eight years on city
council, I can predict what many people will say: (a) Give me the municipal service I want; and
(b) tax someone other than me to pay for it.
That might sound cynical. But it’s human nature to satisfy our needs while sacrificing as
little as possible. In that respect, the relationship between residents and their city government is
inherently adversarial. Residents want things the city can’t provide. And not everyone wants the
same things.
City council members get to be professional disappointers, making zero-sum tradeoffs:
Every dollar spent on Thing One is a dollar that can’t be spent on Thing Two. So, we’re going to
have to get along with fewer things. And maybe a rec center or a fire station gets closed, with the
resulting impacts on services. In the Happiest City in America, people might have to accept
being a little less happy.
Boulder County AA Central Office: Radical Feminist Takeover Betrays AA’s Genderless Traditions, Bans Popular Newcomers Meeting in Secret Purge
May 18th
Boulder, CO May 18 2026 — Boulder County AA Central Office: Radical Feminist Takeover Betrays AA’s Genderless Traditions, Bans Popular Newcomers Meeting in Secret Purge In the shadow of the Flatirons, Boulder County Alcoholics Anonymous Intergroup and Central Office (BCCO) has devolved into a petty fiefdom of ideological enforcers.
What was once a humble service office supporting sober alcoholics has been captured by radical feminist activists wielding gender-based attacks and baseless disruptions to silence dissent and traditional recovery work. The most egregious casualty is the wildly popular Newcomers/Slippers Step Workshop on Zoom — a daily 4 PM meeting dedicated to helping desperate newcomers and returning “slippers” navigate the 12 Steps.
This workshop offers practical sponsorship, literature packets, detox guidance, and real step work in a straightforward, non-political format.
It drew alcoholics from across the country seeking genuine recovery, not lectures. According to local reports and insiders, one day a few drunk or agenda-driven women repeatedly invaded the meeting, launching vicious gender attacks instead of focusing on sobriety. Rather than protecting the group’s autonomy and unity — as AA Tradition 1 and 4 demand — BCCO bureaucrats banned the entire meeting without due process, evidence, or a proper group conscience vote. No show of cause. No appeal. Just cancellation by fiat. BCCO is not a governing body.
It’s a hostile takeover. AA’s founding literature and Traditions are explicitly genderless and non governing: “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.” Yet in Boulder, a clique appears more interested in enforcing contemporary identity politics than saving lives from the deadly disease of alcoholism. Women-only meetings exist for those who prefer them.
Open meetings are supposed to remain open to anyone suffering — especially shaky newcomers.The hypocrisy stinks. While AA claims to avoid outside controversies, BCCO has imported culture-war tactics that punish a successful step workshop serving the very people AA was founded to help. Contributions meant for expenses and literature now fund bureaucratic power plays. Enough.
It’s time to clean house at Boulder County Central Office. Fire the entire entrenched crew. Restore the Newcomers/Slippers Workshop immediately. Alcoholics don’t need more Karens playing AA police — they need a program that works, free of political hijacking. Sobriety is hard enough without ideological gatekeepers turning the lifeboat into a battleground. Boulder’s alcoholics deserve better.
