The original Yellow Scene Magazine started out as a flyer. Yes, a flyer.
The owner, having worked in publishing since the early 80’s, left her role at a Boulder paper in July of 2000. Having lived in East County since 1990, and watching the enormous changes taking place, she encouraged her former employer to expand. Back in those days, life in Boulder often stopped at 55th, so leaving her job she started YS on a chance. Bartending at night, recently separated and living in a 500 sq. ft. apartment in Erie, the first three were printed on copy paper. But we needed to stand out.
Colorado is 300 days of sunshine a year (so they say) and yellow is a happy color. Our goal was to serve all of BOCO, so it became Yellow Scene.
Turns out she was in the right place at the right time with the right voice-and YS grew, and grew, and grew. We are very proud of our humble roots, we borrowed no money the first decade and have never had an outside investor because we absolutely refuse to compromise our Journalism Standards.
We take very seriously the Role and Responsibility of Media and know that Content is King. Outside investors want us to cut budgets, so we remain Independent because honestly, we would rather quit the business than sell out the journalism.
Back in 1990, 65,000 people lived between 104th and Hwy 66 and I25 to the edges of Boulder, while Boulder had a population of 95,000. Today East County is 255,000 (and growing) and Boulder is 100,000 due to its .005 percent growth rate. Thats a whole lot of new houses. Guess what? A whole bunch more are coming. Approximately 1000 people a day are moving to Colorado and the North Metro/East County market is the next boom town.
We are blessed to live in this abundant area with amazing chefs who use the finest ingredients straight from the local farms. We are also blessed with some of the best schools in the state (and possibly nation) who house some of the most interesting teachers and curriculums available. We live one of the best lifestyles in the country and are given the fortune to be able to choose what we put into our bodies and minds.
We believe YS’s job in the marketplace is to be a relevant, engaging, compelling resource that reflects the lives of the community it serves. We’ve interviewed people like Governor Hickenlooper, Amy Schumer, Margaret Cho, Michael Pollan, Brad Feld, Moody Blues, Mick Fleetwood, Alice Cooper, Soja, local activist Anthony Grimes and just about every elected official, plus top chefs, teachers, non-profit leaders, authors, artists, and activists. We are immensely grateful for more than 18 years of being able to allow some of the most creative artists and writers make our pages something interesting to locals. We are more than grateful for the over 150 regular advertisers who have stayed with us for over a decade and truly been our investors.
From our editor:
WORLD CHANGING-BoCo is our World-
“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.” — Tom Stoppard
We don’t think of what we do at Yellow Scene as working with weapons, but with tools. And yes, we do want to change the world, one story at a time, one glass of local bourbon at a time, one community voice at a time.
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing the way we think.” — Albert Einstein
BoCo has created a vision of the world, and of the potential that life has to offer, that people the world over envy. Yellow Scene Magazine is turning 20 in 2020 and we will conintue to do what we do best: stick to the principles that gather audiences through our esteemed and gifted writers and artists.
But what is writing? It’s objective participation: narrating the great story of who, what, why, and where we are. It’s reveling in the beauty of our community, telling truths no matter how hard to hear, showing love to the seemingly innocuous or unimportant.
Johnathen D. De La Vaca, Managing Editor YS has always been an underdog, scrapping its way along, beating the street, pounding on the doors of the powerful, listening to the soft spoken, staring in awe at BoCo’s best and brightest, marveling at the creativity of the entrepreneurs that makes this place so lovely to call home.
YS is a success story every day we’re out there, every time we publish. We are authentic journalism, fixated on an ethical responsibility few maintain. We stand, pens in hand, cameras fixed, at the base of the great peaks that rise around us, facing the future with the goal to make our world a better, more involved, more knowledgeable, more engaged place. We really do want to change the world and, in the light of truth that we walk and write, we are doing it.
We invite you along: join the women and men, the writers and photographers, the designers and salespeople, who make our magazine magical.
Arthur Miller said a newspaper is a nation talking to itself. We, and I especially, carry the responsibility of being that voice everyday.
