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Glamourous Aspen shakes its booty, keeps eye on Basalt

Brent Gardner-Smith
Aspen Times Staff Writer

When it comes to shaping Aspen’s image, the media giveth and the media taketh away.

A recent scan of a media database finds plenty of mentions of Aspen, some even accurate.

We normally don’t include The Denver Post in our database scan, figuring that at least some people in the valley read it. But we did appreciate the line by Mark Harden, the Post’s assistant arts editor in his review of last Friday’s Jazz Aspen Snowmass concert.



Harden noted that during Government Mule’s set, “Even the Aspen scenesters in the fenced-off, reserved-seating area got into the act, shaking what their mamas or their plastic surgeons gave them.”

Or both.




@ATD Sub heds:Somebody still loves us

@ATD body copy: The Good Skiing and Snowboarding Guide 2003 has named Aspen the “resort of the year” outside of Europe. The guide, co-authored by ski writer Peter Hardy, also named the Ski Schools of Aspen/Snowmass as the best ski school in the United States and Stefan Kaelin as “ski shop of the year.”

And if you like to bask in that kind of praise, consider this little gem of a perception maker from the Sept. 1 edition of the London Independent, which noted in its travel section that “Skiing is the cornerstone of Colorado’s tourist industry, and Aspen is the largest and most glamorous of its 28 resorts.”

But wait, there’s a flip side to all that glamour.

The British tabloid, The News of the World, was also covering Colorado skiing on Sept. 1 with an emphasis on Winter Park: “To sum up, it’s not as pretty as Breckenridge, as posh as Vail or as glamorous as Aspen. But it has a better snow record, you won’t feel like a poor relation in last year’s ski-suit, and the restaurant owners tour the tables after dinner to make sure you enjoyed your meal.”

Still want to bask in the glamour glow?

@ATD Sub heds:Basalt’s limelight

@ATD body copy: But before Aspen gets too cocky (too late?) it might want to keep on eye on Basalt, which has been getting its fair share of positive coverage of late.

Eric Palmer of the Kansas City Star wrote a piece on Sunday, Sept. 1, telling of the glories of fishing on the Fryingpan and told his readers that “Basalt is in Aspen Valley, an area that is loaded with almost as much money as aspen leaves. One fishing guide told us the only satisfaction locals got after the millionaires pushed them out of the valley by making housing obscenely expensive was when they watched the billionaires push the millionaires out.”

And then the millionaires moved to Basalt and …

@ATD Sub heds:Shooting for business

@ATD body copy: Former Aspen Realtor Perry Harvey said he was moving to Bray’s Island, S.C., to get the old plantation, and its homesites, some visibility. And he has.

The Sept. 16 edition of Forbes FYI magazine includes a long and glowing profile of Bray’s Island by writer P. J. O’Rourke, who is friends with Perry and Sally Harvey.

O’Rourke wrote that “This doesn’t look like a place to shoot birds. This looks like a place to marry off the O’Hara girl except without the sociological baggage or liberal guilt.”

While O’Rourke and his wife Tina learned to shoot birds, he noticed that his wife was picking up the skill better than he was.

“‘I’ve noticed this before,’ I said to Perry. ‘Women are good at learning to use a shotgun. Even if they’ve never shot before, it only takes a little bit of instruction. Why is that?’

“‘Women listen,’ said Perry.”

[Brent Gardner-Smith’s e-mail address is bgs@aspentimes.com]