Beaton: Smacked around Aspen
The Aspen Beat
Private clubs are typically considered a bad thing in Aspen. They smack of exclusivity, to borrow a phrase from the class-warfare zone.
But some local business types want to take the exclusivity out of smack. In hipster language, they wanna make some smack by openin’ private joints for gettin’ smacked.
In English, this means they want to make money by opening private clubs where a person can get high on marijuana.
People are talkin’ smack about this, you see. They’re grievin’ that gettin’ smacked has been legalized in Colorado but there isn’t anywhere to do it. Talk it, yes. Do it, no.
Well, except the house where you live. But who wants to stink up their house like that?
Speakin’ of gettin’ smacked in the house, according to two recent news reports, another house where you can get smacked is the white one, and at least two people did.
But that doesn’t count, because the White House is not in Colorado, where gettin’ smacked has been legalized. So if you be gettin’ smacked in the White House, you be gettin’ busted.
Ha, just foolin’! He’s cool with it, dude.
(Just to be clear, the people gettin’ smacked in the White House were only pot smacked, not crack smacked. It’s true the Choom Ganger in Chief speculated that the White House chef was also puttin’ crack smack in the pie crusts, which I suppose would make the pie a “crack smack snack,” but he was just jivin’. He’s a hoot, this crazy Prezy is.)
Anyway, dudes and dudettes don’t wanna take a road trip to Washington, D.C., just to get smacked in the White House, and it’s pretty expensive since it comes with a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser dinner.
Here in Aspen, you can get smacked in private, but there ain’t no anywhere for gettin’ smacked in public. Capeesh? And when you needa do somethin’ it’s only natural that you needa do it in front of people.
Private clubs, the thinkin’ goes, would be digs for gettin’ smacked in public. So long as you be thinkin’ “private” means “public.” And after a few smack smokes, you will.
Later on, you can drive us all home, dude.
But would public smackin’ in private clubs tarnish the Aspen brand with, like, tourists? Nope, explained the smackers. Part of the Aspen brand is givin’ the tourists what they want.
Uh huh. Some of the tourists also want legalized prostitution, casino gambling, monster-truck races, dog fights, a Republican City Council and Hells Angels. Things might get interesting enough that Hunter Thompson will come back.
You personally might be thinkin’ that getting’ smacked on pot’s not so hot. Maybe you’re an unenlightened, unlighted and benighted so-called human who thinks that impairing a person’s cognition is detrimental to that person and to the people around him.
That’s bull, elucidated the smackers. They point out that since gettin’ smacked was legalized in Colorado, the homicide rate has declined. Dee-clined, dude.
Correlation equals causation, and so there you have it: Impairing the cognition of the populace impairs their ability to murder one another. Murderers can’t shoot, stab or bludgeon when they can’t find their guns, knives or hammers.
If we were to de-legalize gettin’ smacked, the reasoning goes, this beneficial decline would be reversed. Murderers would find their cognition, and they would next find their guns, knives and hammers, and — yikes — you can see where that’s headed. Gobsmacked. A total smackdown. Let’s, like, leave their cognition impaied.
And, moreover, let’s entice them to Aspen. If we build it, they will come. “It” being private clubs to get smacked and “they” being smacked-up, would-be murderers who are too cognitively impaired to murder. Who could object to that?
Well, the homeless shelters, for one. If you can still see through your haze, hear over your giggles and think past your cognitive impairment, listen up and focus for a moment. Because in the real world this isn’t funny.
The Denver Post reports that the homeless shelters are overwhelmed since marijuana was legalized.
The most dramatic increase this year at the homeless shelters has been among people 18 to 25 years old.
In this instance, correlation does equal causation. One shelter director said, “Of the new kids we’re seeing, the majority say they’re here because of the weed.”
Here’s a link to the story: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26216037/legal-pot-blamed-some-influx-homeless-this-summer.
In Colorado — this state I love, where I’ve lived, grown, studied, fathered, worked and played for a half century — smokin’ smack and talkin’ smack are now on equally wobbly footing.
Aspenites can probably manage it. But people on the margins, especially troubled young people whose footing is already a little wobbly, need all the cognition they can muster — and better examples from their parents.
We don’t need pot clubs in Aspen. And I’m not your dude.
Glenn can be reached at theaspenbeat@gmail.com. His columns are archived at http://theaspenbeat.com, and his collection of Aspen humor columns is available on Kindle, where it’s been judged a “hot new release.”
