OCR Text |
Show 4 A-14 17m Park Record Saturday, April 15, 2000 WAS PUB More Dogs on Main Street By Tom Clyde Ski season wrap-up PARK CITY, UTA !5c! 1 1H raLJrV. Utah's Original Brew Pub & MlCRO- BREWEFV 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 humidor and Selection of fine Cigars from Crawford & Bennett Pool Tables Located at the top of Historic Main Street 649-0900 "We Drink Our Share and Sell the Rest" 9 HOUR NO TAX SALE Saturday, April 15th 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. 5 P!EC DINETTE SET QUEEN SLEEPER ALSO AVAILABLE SOFA, LOVESEAT. CHAIR $699 AND CHAIR SLEEPER $899 LAMPS, PICTURES AND MIRRORS AREA RUGS r nubs $299 20-50 OFF (AS SHOW in WOOL) $799 Congratulations. Your income taxes are now paid for another whole year. And with any luck, you'll be getting a refund. Meanwhile, at least let us pay your sales tax. Not to mention give you some welcome savings on great furniture at San Francisco Design. Furniture. For Life. 0H SALT LAKE 2970 Highland Dr. M-F 10-7 Sat 10-6 467-2701 PARK CITY 1890 Bonanza Dr. M-Sat 10-6 645-7072 DRAPER 11538 So. State M-Sat 10-6 495-2300 Visit us on-line - www.sanfrandesign.citysearch.com SEE STORE r0R DETAILS. This is traditionally the week that I go ballistic over the income tax code. But the 15th is a Saturday, meaning mean-ing that I can ski all weekend and delay doing my taxes until sometime late in the day on Monday. The only change we really need to make in the tax code is this: Election day ought to be April 16th. If we made that one change, meaningful tax and political reform would follow in short order. Instead of doing my taxes, I've been skiing a lot. It's been great. As the season melts away, it time for the annual Best and Worst of the ski season awards. I got in big trouble for the Worst side of things last year, so, like the Special Olympics, everybody is best at something some-thing this year Best Result from a Stupid Mistake: I cleaned out my car the other day, and ended up leaving the skis in the garage when 1 went skiing. So I rented a pair of leftover left-over demos from White Pine that ! really, really liked. Maybe there's something to this shaped ski business after all. Best On-Mountain Improvement Without question, the yurt at Park City is the best new item this year. It was cheap to build, looks cool and alpine, and has a gTeat deck at a central location. It feels like you are in the great outdoors instead of a real estate development. develop-ment. It kind of flies in the face of the recent arms race to build bigger, gaudier and grander lodges. So a retro-grouch like me really likes it. It could use a little duct tape trim, though. Best Place to Build an On-Mountam Outhouse: The only thing really lacking at the Yurt is a little out-yurt behind it. Next Best Place to Build an Outhouse: it absolutely absolute-ly inexplicable how Park Gty operates without a bathroom in the First Tune area. For a four-year-old beginner, the nearest bathroom at the plaza might as well be in Michigan. I dont know how many kids' first ski experience includes wetting their pants, but I'll bet its plenty. Best Use of Estrogen Therapy in Cloud Seeding: So what was up with the weather this year? Mother Nature was moody and having hot flashes all winter. Rain in January, green grass for World Cup, ice and unskiable crud for a good portion of the year, hurricane hurri-cane winds. I still got a lot of skiing in, but there were some favorite places on the mountain that I never even tried because of the stumps, ice and just general weirdness. I dont know what we do to appease Mother Nature, but you people with Lincoln Navigators probably have some culpability in this whole global warming thing. Best Misuse of a Floor Polisher Deer Valley managed man-aged to keep the snow on Birdseye "firm" all season, even in the rain. I checked late one night, and they had a janitor out there with a floor polisher working it over. It was harder than diamonds almost all year. The rest of their snow was great, but that one exposure really pushed the limits of physics. The patrol was hauling the wounded off there in wholesale lots. Best Rayon Purse Made Out of a Sow's Ear The new base facilities out at The West Wolf Canyons are a quantum leap from anything we've seen there before. From last years mud wallow to this year attractive plaza appealing shops, and interesting architecture is an amazing transition. There was a vitality about the place that was sadly missing from the rest of town, even if it still feels a little synthetic It's getting harder and harder to maintain my skepti cism about that place. It going to take a while longer to blot out the memories of Park West in the '70s, but I can see how people who didn't know it then can be true believers now. Best Saved Our Collective Bacon: Speaking of pork, the snow-making crews really saved our collective bacon this year. Christmas was less than ideal, but there would have been sheep grazing on the mountain without the efforts of the snow-making employees, who spent their nights freezing their behinds off when Mother Nature is in a snit like she was this year. We could have been a ghost town all ever again without their work. Best Ironic Employment Decision: American Skiing Company hired some guy from Disney to manage their operations. It not just about skiing anymore. Are we ready for lifties with mouse ears? Maybe they can get Mickey and those magic mops from "The Sorcerer Apprentice' to solve their water problems. Best Employees: Deer Valley must be putting something some-thing in the drinking water. Their employees were outstanding again this season. From the cashiers in the cafeteria to the lift crews and patrol even the parking lot guys everybody was pleasant, helpful and knew what was going on in a global sense. More than that, they were personable. I ended the season feeling like I knew and cared about several of them. It not like I'm going to show up and crash on their couches in Australia during the Olympics, but it nice to be recognized. Maybe it the duct tape and the "South Park" baseball hat, but they knew me as a regular. reg-ular. The employees elsewhere did their jobs, but there was no effort at engagement with the customers. It matters. Best Food Sot Involving Long-Term Financing: Once again, the Snow Park card at Deer Valley managed man-aged to add an inch to my waist at a 20 percent discount. dis-count. Great food at retail; extraordinary with the discount dis-count card. I've still got the brownie-withdrawal shakes. Best Puzzling Food Concept The sit down service at the old Summit House seemed popular at Park City, but I never was clear on the concept Of course I remember the place as a kid when I used to squirt ketchup on the flags on the ceiling during ski school lunch. But taking an hour or so out of the middle of the ski day to sit down to a full-service meal seems strange. Somebody explained that the typical destination destina-tion customer is ready for a long break at the lunch hour, and really needs the rest I thought that what the Motherlode or Pioneer chairs were for. Best Source of Grammatical Confusion: The Canyons isare still the worst name imaginable for a resort For locals, the canyons are Big and Little Cottonwood, and always will be. For tourists, The Canyons is West Wolf Canyons. So conversations on the lift that include the question, "Have you skied the canyons," always end in terrible confusion. Anyway you slice it, it sounds like you are speaking in our native tongue " Wewuzics" and cant match yoir singular verbs with your plural-looking nouns. But it fun to hear people on the radio struggle with it. Worst Thing about a Warm, Dry April: A told, wet May. I wouldn't be putting the snow shovel away just yet Tom Clyde is a former city attorney and author of "More Dogs on Main Street He has been a columnist for The Park Record for more than a decade Don't get me started By Gary Weiss Tolerance for real-life diversity 3 On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated on Bedloe Island in New York Harbor. Joseph Pulitzer New York World raised $100,000 for a pedestal that Congress had refused to fund. The pedestal was inscribed in 1903, with words written by an American poet; Emma Lazarus. . "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Those magnificent words were brought to mind after reading a powerful and impassioned editorial in Wednesday paper. My newspaper was writing about the inauguration of the People Health Clinic, and its Mobile Health Van. A service dedicated to the medical assistance of the already sizeable, and growing, grow-ing, under class in Summit and Wasatch counties. In tins case, I use "underclass" as a code word for "immigrant," or simply hispanic. This editorial said: "In many ways, now is a time when Park City is truly in need of an institution dedicated to serving those whose basic human needs...have been in danger of being forgotten. .. Because Park City, despite its polished pol-ished sheen of mountain lifestyles and upper-class living, liv-ing, is not a homogenous place With seasonal workers and senior citizens, it has never been, at least since Us rebirth as a resort town. Now, with a growing Latino and service industry population, it is even less so." That powerful statement made me proud to work for The Park Record. It highlights one of those pbe-nomenons pbe-nomenons that America, traditionally, has been very adept at avoiding. This "ability" has reached near-art-form status here in Park City, where we've sue ceeded in rendering hundreds of immigrant service workers virtually invisible. Notwithstanding the fact that, these days, this town could hardly run efficiently efficient-ly without them. , , Nearly 20 yean ago; in another place and Efetrae, I used to run crews for the non-union arm of a tas construction company. Though dearly leas ski"! and motivated than many of those I supervised, I was a foreman because I was white and spoke EtJl Most of those I worked wfcji had come, cTsn desperately, des-perately, from El Salvador. I guess it just fcrin nature that makes it easy for es, in the majory, to view the different ones as a kind of undiffereatistei mass. Even that very fact is something about which we rarely think. But, especk?y becasse we were nonunion non-union and, thus, were worked Lie exhausted plow hones, I spent aa enormous aaount of time wi2i tiese people. It was an education I kavent txXzx I remember one crew that incla&d an Aser&a-trained Aser&a-trained former Colonel in the Sdvadoran gj-tary. He had commanded thousands of men before he became politically incooveckcL lie escted wi his LTa; and not much else. In tLis grorp wis a can wio kad been a icuveny pn&ar of Lliratiae. lie, apparently. Lad lacked ihe prudence to sutere La strident left-wing politics. Politics that had now forced him to spend much more of his time and energy ener-gy keeping his family safe and fed, than in contemplation contem-plation of the literary importance of Latin American magical realism. Despite the fact that these men were highly educated edu-cated and articulate (in their own language, unfortunately, unfortu-nately, not in ours), and couldnt have been more different dif-ferent in their former lives, they were thought of, and treated, the same as any illiterate field worker when they were thought of as individuals at all I remember being ashamed at the way my moronic, moron-ic, Caucasian colleagues joked about these people. The fact that they couldnt yet speak English had wiped away all the intelligence and achievement of their individuated, former lives. At least in the eyes of the idiots I worked with. Not likely they had any : kind of awareness of the meaning of the words ; appearing on every American dollar "E Pluribus Unum." (Out of many, one.) Back in 1914, Walter Lippman, one of America : great journalists noted: "The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of 50 different peoples. " This is an adventure upon which we "real" Americans havent done terribly welL Here in Utah, Native Americans didnt get the right to vote until 1957! So, for all these reasons, I applaud those responsible for the creation- of the People Health Center, as well as those like the Mountainlands Community Housing group, which has recently engineered the purchase of the Holiday Village apartments a prime source of affordable housing for new arrivals. I accept it simply a fact that prejudice (pre-judg-ing) comes more easily to ALL humans than tolerance. toler-ance. So too, the assumptions that those who live here but dont yet speak our lan-uaje, cant possibly be as intelligent or highly evolved as us. Of course, we tend not to make those Assumptions so quickly about Swedes, Danes or the French. Skin tone is absolutely a part of this. I dont know why, but I know it true. And not just true for Americans, and certainly not just for Partates. But steps like those mentioned above, as well as those lite that of the city which, a couple of years a-o, refused to have our oops deputized depu-tized as INS agents, say a lot about our desire to do the ritt thing. As does the Park Record editorial wixi started me thinking about all this. Small steps but tLe relit steps. . A bundled years ao, a sociologist Qaries Cooky said: "There is nottrj km to our creiU Son our neject of the foreigner anJ kit children, unkss it be the arrogance most ofusbetrty when we set out to 'Amerkmize ' kirn. " True enor' but now that we've bepa tlis tfjeussion here ka Spit County, there a gd ctsace at we caa tile LTs, at least, a tte easier for these newest Utiin. Gy Weiss kirn foroymerof Dogy Bookstore and hm served on the SumczJt Co. Fkinning Commissijn, Poor CodvB |