{"id":149,"date":"2004-03-23T23:38:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-23T23:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2004-03-23T23:38:00","modified_gmt":"2004-03-23T23:38:00","slug":"149","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The sameness of ski towns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because of the poor spring snow conditions, on the 22nd we put the skis in their rack on the Jeep and drove over Frémont Pass from Leadville into Summit County, the heart (or other metaphorical internal organ) of Colorado’s ski industry<\/a>. After walking around the business district of Frisco, driving to see if my uncle’s former cabin on Lake Dillon is still there (it’s not, apparently), and walking around the business district of Breckenridge, Mary had an observation: “These ski towns are all the same.”<\/p>\n

RIGHT: View down 7th Street in Leadville, Colorado, which has not yet succombed to being a ski town.<\/em><\/p>\n

In what way, for instance, does Main Street in Breckenridge differ from Elk Avenue in Crested Butte? Answer: Main Street in Breckenridge is longer and slightly wider.<\/p>\n

At the core, the old mining town, Historic Register plaques in place–bars, ski\/snowboard rentals, antiques shops, real-estate offices, interior decorators (for the million-dollar-plus trophy homes), boutiques for “adventure apparel,” real-estate offices, restaurants, souvenir stores, maybe a lone museum (“Our Mining Heritage”), real-estate offices.<\/p>\n

The next ring out: newer commercial buildings–the professional offices, the municipal offices, the fire station, the police department.<\/p>\n

Then the condominiums with names like Edelweiss.<\/p>\n

Then the upscale subdivisions for the “trophy homes”, so often named with the “The (blank) at (blank)” formula that is supposed to exude classiness to buyers in Denver or Dallas. Example: “The Turds at Elk Meadows.”<\/p>\n

The other formula applies to ski towns built from scratch, such as Vail, in which case there is no core, only Bogus Bavarian or whatever style was in favor at the time of construction, with an outer ring of tasteful strip malls.<\/p>\n

One visit to Summit County per decade is enough.<\/p>\n

On the plus side: Weber’s Books<\/a>, 100 S. Main in Breckenridge, tiny but well-stocked, had an autographed copy of Mary Sojourner’s<\/a> new collection of essays, Solace<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sameness of ski towns Because of the poor spring snow conditions, on the 22nd we put the skis in their rack on the Jeep and drove over Frémont Pass from Leadville into Summit County, the heart (or other metaphorical internal organ) of Colorado’s ski industry. After walking around the business district of Frisco, driving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-149","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":112,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=112","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":0},"title":"Skiing is Wrong, says Jack\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Skiing is Wrong, says Jack It's been a snowy winter here on Hardscrabble Creek: a good thing too, since we are still in a drought overall. By the end of January, according to a nearby ranch wife who had been keeping count, we had had 32 inches (81 cm) of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":148,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=148","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":1},"title":"From ‘Bavarian’ to ‘Buddhist’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 23, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a kid in the 1960s, the decor and nomenclature of Colorado ski towns relied heavily on the ersatz-Austrian, sort-of-Swiss, or bogus-Bavarian model. Everywhere you looked (and still look, in some cases), was \"Alpen-this\" or the \"Something Haus\" or \"Hof.\" For the full flower of the bogus-Bavarian 1960s,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3640,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3640","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":2},"title":"The Maskers and the Money","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Krampus parades, both from Austrian ski resort towns. To what extent they are underwritten by local tourism authorities I do not know. (Thanks to folk musician and writer Andy Letcher.) When I was 16-17 years old, I lived part of each year in Mandeville, Jamaica, up in the hills, during\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1299,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1299","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":3},"title":"Celebrating the Season, However You Do It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Anne Hill has her annual Brigid Poetry Festival going\u2014check the comments for linkage.Me, I just had to get Out. Cabin fever was setting in, and walking the dogs close to home or going up on the ridge to cut firewood just was not curing it.So we strapped the touring skis\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1096,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1096","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":4},"title":"A Foot of Fresh Powder","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Finally some snow, enough to ski on our road and the meadow.","rel":"","context":"In \"winter\"","block_context":{"text":"winter","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=winter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13567,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13567","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":5},"title":"Imbolc on Ice","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 1, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Look south from Bennett Avenue, the bi-level main street of Cripple Creek, Colorado, across Poverty Gulch (once lined by the saloons and brothels of Myers Avenue), and there it sits, like the citadel of the Ice King. At 9,494 feet (2,894 m.), the early February winds are still cutting and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/DSCN0495-300x139.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/DSCN0495-300x139.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/DSCN0495-300x139.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}