I saw the headline Sunday and scoffed. Then I got ready to pounce.

This was the headline: "Twenty-five square miles surrounded by reality."

Those words were above a New York Times Style Magazine feature on Boulder, Colo., which means that around here, those were fighting words.

Madison has long prided itself on being "surrounded by reality." I used the phrase as the title for a collection of my newspaper columns. Many city residents appreciate the progressive mind-set and colorful characters that can lead rubes in northern Wisconsin to say Madison is "surrounded by reality."

That's the thing about the phrase. To some people, it's a put-down. To others, it's a badge of honor.

But one thing that has rarely been in dispute is that when it comes to American cities, Madison is the most surrounded by reality of all.

Even the New York Times, which now appears ready to anoint Boulder, handed us the crown only two years ago. In a Sunday magazine piece titled "The New New List: Fall '06," the Times declared: "Madison, Wis. is the new Berkeley, Calif."

The Times noted of Madison: "The picturesque university town on an isthmus between two lakes has a progressive vibe, great restaurants featuring local produce (check out Harvest) and the new Cesar Pelli-designed Madison Museum of Contemporary Art."

As I wrote at the time, some of us already knew that Madison had usurped Berkeley when it comes to local color and, perhaps less happily, political correctness that occasionally teeters into absurdity.

For example, when Berkeley announced it would no longer have "manhole covers" on city streets, but rather "sewer openings" to avoid a perception of sexism, Madison was there first. For more than a decade, Madison, to appear gender neutral, had been calling them "sewer access covers."

But for every sewer access cover there is a scene like 1,000 pink flamingos on Bascom Hill, and most of us continue to appreciate this city in all its unreality.

It was an interloper, the late Lee Dreyfus, who first gave us the label. He said it during his run for governor. His friend Bill Kraus recalled the moment for me some time ago: "I don't remember the precise context," Kraus said. "But somebody brought up Madison and Dreyfus said it was 30 square miles surrounded by reality." (Dreyfus was way off on the number -- today it's around 77.)

But now here is this "Style" magazine supplement of the New York Times telling us Boulder, Colo., is the real "surrounded by reality" American city.

As I said, I read that headline and prepared to mount an attack. But then I read the story, and I'm afraid the Times might be right. Boulder would appear to have out-Madisoned Madison.

"This town practically perspires virtue," the author, Florence Williams, writes early in her piece. If people aren't biking they are driving eco-friendly cars ("pizza delivery boys drive Priuses," Williams notes), eating organic food and calling pet owners, by official city designation, "guardians."

It was the lead of the piece that really got me. Williams begins: "My brother-in-law Peter lives in Boulder, Colorado. Whenever I use the bathroom in his house, I heave a bucket of used bath water down the toilet to flush it. This provides a welcome opportunity to enhance my deltoids, and it can save approximately 7,300 gallons of fresh water per year."

I have to admit I read that several times without comprehending it. Finally on Monday I asked my friend George Hesselberg, who is much more worldly than I am, to read it, and he understood it immediately. Hesselberg said that it is possible to "flush" your toilet by throwing a bucket of water in it.

"You're kidding."

"It's true," George said.

I don't want to live in a city where they don't want me to flush my toilet.

But it's more than that. In the entire article about Boulder, there is no joy, unless you consider paying eight bucks for an organic shake and fries joyful. There's no Leon Varjian or Eddie Ben Elson, no 5th Quarter or Halloween on State Street.

Maybe Boulder's designation needs an asterisk. Somebody needs to tell them that if you're surrounded by reality, it's supposed to be fun.