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Roger Marolt: The Six-Pack may now become the Red-Eye Express

Roger Marolt
Cluster Phobic
Roger Marolt

A friend told me that he couldn’t wait to read what I think about the opening of Snowmass Village’s first pot shop.

The suggestion has me on the spot because I hadn’t considered writing about it at all. Now, I have to come up with something. I suppose this is another reason to be thankful for offseason. I think I can fit this in.

The Stew Pot restaurant; now there’s something “pot” related to get excited about. It was voted Snowmass Village’s best eatery this year. It’s dang good but I think there is room for debate here. I bet it is harder to get a table at il Pogio during the busy times of year, so to heck with the readers’ poll conducted by The Aspen Times, I’ll trust the eaters’ poll announced nightly by the host or hostess that usually doesn’t even leave a margin of error for taking on a plate of pasta sitting at the bar.



As for the other kind of pot — formerly known as “hippie cabbage” and perhaps now known here as “tourist arugula” — it is not a subject of interest to me.

I suppose if you want some dope and don’t feel like driving to Aspen to get it, this may be a positive development in shaving a minuscule fraction of a micro-millisecond off the eventual moment the planet is written off as totaled from the effects of greenhouse gasses. Other than that, all I can muster is noting that this is another historical event that nobody will remember two years from now, as was the case with Snowmass Ski Area’s first snowboarder back in 1981 … approximately.




The biggest thing for me is the message this sends to kids. If I am blander than “blasé” about legal pot, you can be sure it is not news to our kids either. If it is not news to them then it is commonplace. If it is commonplace, it is harmless. If it is harmless, then why the heck not do it? When you were 16, did you believe anything could have stunted your brain’s development? Maybe, but did you care?

And I’m not even going near the argument that grass is no worse than booze. All I will say in this regard is that I have doubts that the world needs another legal substance that allows us to numb our minds to reality. Our collective consciousness appears plenty numb already. If we start paying even less attention, I can picture a scenario where we look back 20 years from now and say things like, “Old Trump was a pretty neat fellow after all.”

It’s not like this opinion is coming from a teetotaler, either. I wouldn’t say that I drink like a fish, but I do sip just about every evening so I’m probably more amphibian (a salamander perhaps). Being an oscillating health nut, I find balance by keeping it to one glass of wine or beer per night.

There are studies that show a glass of wine a day might actually be good for me, like an apple (justification). I don’t think there are any studies showing the same effects from a beer, but I like beer (capitulation).

I look back on my life and can say, after much contemplation and cringing, that it has not been better because of alcohol. I cannot recall a moment that was enhanced by booze. Many moments under the influence remained distractedly neutral, perhaps, but none were enriched. I am not a better person because of drinking. Lives around me have been ruined by alcohol dependence. So, why do I keep drinking? I don’t have a good response. It’s a habit. I suppose anyone who drinks is addicted in some way. I’m not a pot smoker, but my guess is that similar things could be said about that drug.

Clearly, then, I do have some regrets about pot coming to the village after all. I will not be celebrating the opening of our first legal weed shop. We will lose a little more of our small town innocence but probably less than we did with the development of Base Village. In both cases, there is nothing to do about it now.

One thing that might have made this advent of legal marijuana really special would have been if our first dope retail outlet rented space from the town of Snowmass Village in our semi-new commercial real estate community asset in Base Village. Maybe the town could have given them a break on the rent in exchange for a perpetual local’s discount. Then we would have had something to talk about.

It still could happen somewhere down the road. When you whiff upon a spark, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you. Fairy dust coming soon.

Roger Marolt also looks forward to next summer’s Thursday night concerts on Fantasia Hill. Email him at roger@maroltllp.com.