A new sheriff in town — almost? Hunter S. Thompson’s longtime friend selling campaign poster
Courtesy Photo
After spending most of the 1970s in Aspen during the peak of the counterculture movement, Ross “Jagmo” Honhart found himself in Jimmy Buffet’s apartment in Key West, Florida, meeting someone he’d heard of for years: Hunter S. Thompson. It was 1977.
On Christmas Day in Aspen, 1993, Thompson signed and gifted a “Hunter Thompson for Sheriff” poster to Honhart, which he now looks to sell.
“Now that it’s over 30 years later, I guess it’s time for me just to take a picture of it as a memory,” he said. “And whoever else that is into Hunter and Hunter’s memorabilia, maybe it would be fine for their collection.”
The poster, part of Thompson’s campaign for Pitkin County sheriff, was made by political artist Thomas W. Benton and is in good condition, according to Honhart. He can be reached at dhonhart@hotmail.com for inquiries.
But the poster came to him after years alongside the Gonzo journalist.
“I moved to Aspen New Year’s Day, 1970, and was a Vietnam vet, hippie, and heard about Hunter Thompson,” Honhart said.
Though they hadn’t yet met, he voted for Thompson when he ran for Pitkin County sheriff that year.
He lived full-time in Aspen between 1970 and 1976, working as a lift operator in the winter and on a construction crew in the summer. He and Thompson were “nodding acquaintances” after they met in 1977, until a familiar watering hole opened its doors.
“It got a bit more friendlier when the Woody Creek Tavern opened,” Honhart said.
While splitting time between Key West, California, and Aspen as an independent contractor between 1976 and 1986, he would frequent the ranch owned by tavern founders George and Patti Stranahan, Thompson’s neighbors.
“We’d party up there and play pickleball, and the losers had to pay for the party,” Honhart said. “That’s the extent of any drug reference I would prefer.”
By 1986, he had moved to California to take up gold mining. He would travel to Aspen at the end of each year after the gold mining season to sell jewelry he’d made out of golden nuggets.
“Hunter just fell in love with all of it and, for years, bought many examples of the jewelry that was created,” he said. “And then he’d give them away for Christmas presents.”
In winter 1993, Honhart returned to Aspen after a particularly successful gold mining season. He sold nuggets to Thompson’s neighbors, landing a very good price on some of his sales and giving Thompson a 10% commission (upon Thompson’s request) for connecting him with the neighbors.
“Which is typical Hunter,” he said.
On Christmas Day of that year, Honhart was sitting at Thompson’s kitchen table, and, thinking about the fact that Thompson had also bought a substantial amount of his jewelry, decided to give Thompson a present.
“On impulse, I just reached in my pocket and threw out a three quarter ounce nugget that looked just like a comma, or an apostrophe, and I just tossed it to him, and I said, ‘Here, Merry Christmas, Hunter,” he said. “And back then, that was an $800 nugget.”
The nugget would sell today for $4,000, he said.
“And he was quite shocked and, a moment later, actually showed embarrassment,” Honhart said, as they hadn’t planned on exchanging gifts.
Honhart said he realized that he’d put Thompson in an awkward position, as the gold comma “wasn’t something that I bought at Walmart for him,” at which point Thompson insisted on giving him something in return.
“I just looked around and hanging on the wall right behind him was his poster from the election,” Honhart said. “And I said, ‘Hey, that’d be just fine’ because I didn’t want to make it anymore embarrassing for him or anything.”
Thompson took the poster off the wall, signed it to Honhart, and wished him a Merry Christmas. In the three decades following, he has kept the poster with him everywhere he’s been.
D.J. Watkins, who runs Aspen’s Fat City Gallery, which carries Thompson art relics, estimated the poster would have been worth $10,000 had it not been addressed to Honhart.
“Since it’s personalized much less,” Watkins wrote of the poster value.
But he said there is plenty of demand for art made by, or of, Thompson.
“He’s a literary legend,” Watkins said. “People love his work.”
Skyler Stark-Ragsdale can be reached at 970-429-9152 or email him at sstark-ragsdale@aspentimes.com.
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