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Show A-14 77ie Park Record Saturday, March 25,2000 (Si II II i I 111 I As pan of its final expansion, Stein Eriksen Lodge is adding 1 1 new condominiums. These will be the last the Lodges ever builds, so they have been designed to be the "best of the best. Choose from three- or four-bedroom floor plans. In addition to unprecedented luxury and a matchless ski-in, ski-out location in Deer Valley, these condominiums offer something you wont find anywhere else: Stein Eriksen Lodges service, dining and amenities. For information on new or resale SEL condominiums, please contact: Clare Jackson, Broker Stein Eriksen Lodge Real Estate "Property Specialist for Park City tnd Deer Valley" (435) 645-6457 ,fi n. 'in WAS TO FFtK CITY, UTAH Utah's Original Brew Pub & Micro-Brewery Micro-Brewery Since 1986 Offering Lunch and Dinner from 11:00 7 Days a week! Slick Rock Sports Bar 2 Satellite Dishes Big Screen TV & 5 27" TV's Expanded Menu Available New audio System by Sound Tube ft . ' v Humidor and Selection of fine Cigars from Crawford & Bennett Pool Tables on. Located at the top of Historic Main Street 649-0900 "We Drink Our Share and Sell the Rest" Xgffi-' II II II More Dogs on Main Street fFj By Tom Clyde fir was n a cranky mood. There was an article in The Robb Report that ranked Park City as the eighth best place on its list of ideal spots for rich people to live. Eighth! Can you imagine?" -Tom Clyde We need more crime Several years, a woman 1 know who is in the property prop-erty management business put it this way: "We have reached the point in the season w here we just quit returning calls to the 212 area code." You know the feeling; feel-ing; even after a winter when things have been as lean as this one, it's time to go. The snow shovels are 25 percent per-cent off at the grocery store, and they arent moving. Nobody wants one. There are still some vacationers in town enjoying what we all know the skiing this time of year is some of the best there is. But after a whole season of being hospitable, it's beginning to wear thin. Fish and house guests, after three days... I had a little end-of-season moment the other day at Deer Valley. The car in front of me driving into Deer Valley was a huge Ford Excursion that had rental company bar code stuff on the tailgate. tail-gate. The driver was cruising along at about 40, then got to the little one-way exit out of the parking lot, hmmimmhmm and slammed on the brakes like there was a 1,000-foot cliff in front of him. He pondered the turn for a long w hile, slowly realized it was one-way and gunned it, only to slam on the brakes again at the split between the normal street and where people stop to unload their skis. After considerable consider-able study, he gunned it again, then slammed on the brakes again at the driveway to the loading dock. Gun-brake-pause, gun-brake-pause, all the way down the parking lot. It was obvious that the parking lot was full all the way back to the end. But at each entrance, he stopped in the middle of the road, then paused to think it over. Each time,' 1 got a little less hospitable. It was supposed to be a tiny little beep of the horn. Just one of those "Hey, there are other people on the street today, too" honks. But my car is getting kind of old, and the horn sort of stuck. So instead of a tiny little beep, it was a real New York "Get your fat a out of the road, you stupid jerk" honks before I could get it unstuck. Of course we ended up parking next to each other and managed man-aged to put our boots on without making eye contact Sorry about that, but sometimes it just happens. I was in a cranky mood. There was an article in The Robb Report that ranked Park City as the eighth best place on its list of ideal spots for rich people to live. Eighth! Can you imagine? The Robb Report is a magazine maga-zine that helps the rich know w hat is cool and what to stay away from. It's sort of like Rolling Stone for the parvenu set, I'm sure you wondered how they all know what color ski suit to show up in each season. Well, they get the official memo in The Robb Report It may look ugly to you, but that's because you didnt get the memo. The guy in the Excursion looked like a Robb Report reader who was planning on putting down roots. I had missed the article. My subscription copy didnt arrive. I think the propane delivery guy steals it out of my mail box. I'd tried to get a copy on the newsstand. The Robb Report is usually right there between Guns & Ammo, and Old Truck Trader at the Texaco in Kamas. But they were sold out. So 1 had to read about Park City's disappointing ranking in The Salt Lake Tribune. Rancho Santa Fe, a tony San Diego suburb was number num-ber one. I know a couple of folks who have left Park City to move to "Rancho" as they call it. I've threatened 1 ' ' I- to visit, but they told me than the gatekeeper had orders to shoot to kill anybody approaching in a 10-year-old VW bus. Rancho Santa Fe has security that rivals the Pope's visit to Jerusalem. Aspen was fourth. Manhattan was fifth, and we were in a three-way tie with a couple of Dallas suburbs. Beverly Hills didnt make the cut. Not since all that nasty business with OJ. a few years back. The rankings were based on "location, beauty, prestige, pres-tige, educational facilities, family-friendliness, cultural attractions, recreation, shopping, municipal services, and safety and general well-being." I think the absence of bowling alleys and muffler shops is a factor, too. So on their twisted reality scale, we were eighth. I told you to vote against that school bond, but you didnt listen. Now iook where it's got us. Four notches below Aspen. Those who live here already know that Park Citv and its envi- HHHMHHHH rons are a great place to live. But advertising it to a bunch of Internet millionaires in The Robb Report doesnt sound like a formula for keeping it that way. We're supposed to be keeping it a secret, invite people to visit, have a nice time, then go back where they came from. Our ranking should be a call to action. It's a list we dont need to be on, and we can surely get knocked off with a modest effort. First of all, we need more crime. The most heinous crime committed in town in recent memory is westbound west-bound traffic making a left turn from Kearns Boulevard into the Prospector area between 7 and 9 a.m. That seems to command an inordinate amount of our police resources. It's pretty tame stuff compared to the upper west side of Manhattan. Will somebody please rob a , bank? It for the good of your community. It's hard to argue with the prestige factor, what with the Olympics and all. but I notice that Provo, another Olympic venue, isnt on the list. Nobody is saying that Provo is the eighth best place in the U.S. to liv e if you're rich. - In fact, Provo would be a terrible place to be rich because you could afford a really good bottle of wine with dinner, but the best dining option is the Wendy on University Avenue. But we can work on prestige a bttle bit. We should try to be a little more like our Olympic sister city, Provo. That would knock us off the list. If we just brought the junk cars back into town, and had a couple of old Fords en the front lawns of most houses. I think The Robb Report people might think twice You can bet they dont have junkers on the lawns in Greenwich, Conn. A couple of old engine b.ocks out front ought to move us off the list, ft s worked for Moab all these years. No good can come from being rated as anybody eighth best place for the rich to live. It smacks of gated communities and whiny rich people complaining about the color of their neighbor shingles. WeVefot to take , ,. action and get ourselves off that kind otisli Its tome thing of a civil emergency, but frankly; the corn snow is good enough that I'm going to ski first, and worry about the invasion of the rich people later. Tom Clyde is a former city attorney and author of "More Dogs on Main Street. " He has teen a columnist for The Park Record for more than a decade. Don't get me started By Gary Weiss Goodbye, and Amen Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. Done with indoor complaints.., com-plaints.., querulous criticisms (and guests?). Strong and content I travel the open road." From the poet Walt Whitman, those same thoughts are beginning to resonate throughout Park City. This most bizarre of Winters is winding down, and the snow starting to fade like it had a good job offer in San Diego. Spring is in the wind, and so are Park City service winters. Before they scatter to points from Alaska to Patagonia, I want to take the opportunity to say "Thanks." They come here from the cities, colleges and small towns; from east, west and south. Male, female, single, in groups, in vans, in trucks and cars. They come every vear. Some stav. some found myself wondering what ... dri ves someone to endure all the bad landlords, horrible roommates, insensitive bosses and cranky guests, and actually wind up sticking around and becoming part of the community. " Gary Waits dont. They come with dogs. And gear They come with master degrees and GEDs. They come to ski, board, drink, bike and climb, and wind up working their asses off. For us. They clean houses, swing hammers, sell T- shirts, serve food, teach skiing, plow snow and, for the 10,000th time, smile and explain Utah liquor laws. Mostly, they do it all with better attitudes than they get from those they serve. They're ihe primary interface for the transfer of tens of millions of dollars from guests to local business each year: They put up with a lot. I know I bitch and moan a tot about Park City. Yes, it changed, and yes, there plenty to bitch and moan about But one of the things that always made this place special for me, has been all these people these "kids." So many resort towns have such an insufferably hipper than thou attitude, that it barely tolerable. Jackson, cne of my favorite places on earth, has always seemed that way to me. Crested Butte, Telluride they really let you know your place on the Cool Chain. But Park City, for whatever reason, hs always araacted such a nice das of locals. Guests notice it We should notice it. We should do a little better fcy them. We should give as good as we get. Over the years, as an employer and landlord. I've known tots of these kids. Also, as a friend. Some have been around long enough to have gotten married. c ouues, aaauaottneir own. ret j c. i s:-i i ve neara oout Ke r; bbh nousing just make me cr-i. k. .-J to actually find a place to live with less than eight room mates, to have to pay nearly four bucks a pop for drinks, to have to hold down the two or three jobs it takes to do all this, and then to find time to ski, which was supposed to be the point of the exercise. If you've been around here long enough, and you think about it, we've all seen bunches of these people move from post-college post-adolescence to being full-on full-on adults. I found myself wondering what goes into the internal selection process that drives someone to endure all the bad landlords, horrible roommates, insensitive bosses and cranky guests, and actually wind up sticking around and becoming part of the community. I've been thinking about what makes a ski town, and 1 to my slight embar rassment, realized ("duh") that these guys are a very big part of it. I also know that this precept pre-cept is still true: It important to have locals live locally. Not to our credit, we dont make it BiBnanMHH easy. . Still, while becom ing fitfully resigned to our advancing suburbanization, I know that another part of a true ski town is the very transience that compels these people to come and go. That great American writer and traveler. John Steinbeck, once wrote: "When 1 was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured bv mature people that maturity would cure this itch., but' Nothing has worked... In other words. I dont improve, in further words, once a bum always a bun I fear the disease is incurable. But even if they stay but a brief season, I believe strongly that whatever good about Park City can only stay that way if we dont treat local service workers Kke part of the scenery. That even if it costs a short buck we get it back in the long haul. That, even as we continue Building out. it in all our interests to make sure that our teal service workers can actually be local, and actually feel Kke it worth it to be here. Huwijr For them, and for ourselves, we should still try to make sure that Park City, Utah, approaches that sense put down by the English poet Alice Mvn . en married, near!) a century ago: "Spirit of place! It a for this wttntv -rsrry urpriia smdwhmtiisisi4 hMiMI wrif w M vrrn 1 1 II Hi! IJ 1- if. f , . " . name. tfcey stifl come. Or maybe it isn't If vou're 24 and have juat been released from Michiwri or Ohio or California. tfcii place can look pretty damned food. those who party just as hard I forget that from time to time. I forget, now that I'm next year. Maybe. ft tl r ' "f-3d, bow hard i3 1 1 r ' ' " - - n, V - .... . ' So again, to aB these very hard workers - ant to om who oartv lust as hard T.pi. - u ., . , 4 I. -1 w-a uro tag expensive u L-.jp, I Commat Poor Copj |