The problem, from Christian Jagodzinski’s perspective, is that you can’t get the service of a 5-star hotel when you rent a house. It’s that simple, and he has a simple solution: build a network of vacation rental properties that come stuffed to the gills with superior hotel service that is anything but star-crossed.
So far his company, Villazzo, has 14 properties, including rentals in Aspen. The idea is to have ten villas each in luxurious locations like St. Tropez and Aspen. Jagodzinski hopes to never again face a situation where he had to go out and buy his own espresso machine, rather than have one up and running in a rental when he got there.
At a time when the Aspen Writers’ Foundation was holding forth up at the Gant, the future of books was facing a different fate down the street at the Aspen Public Library.
Spread in front of the building, blocking every possible entrance to the building, were piles and piles of books, stacks and stacks of them—on tables, in boxes, and on the ground. The rows and stacks of books were all fiction: I was figuring on a dollar or two per title—maybe three bucks tops.
“They’re free,” said a woman who works at the library.
“The Big Melt,” intones Martin Bashir, the television announcer on ABC’s “Nightline.” “The winter ski paradise worried as the snow disappears faster and sooner every year. Aspen’s plan to rescue the winter.”
Truth be told, by the end of the segment Friday night, it was not clear that Aspen had a plan “to rescue the winter.” And ABC’s attempt to make relevant a piece shot weeks ago did not by unnoticed.
Theatre Aspen artistic director David McClendon, the P.T. Barnum of Aspen, has the same challenge as the original circus entrepreneur when it came to getting people under the big top: if they don’t walk in the door, there’s no way they are going to be able to tell their friends about the elephant.
Can one song make you want to see a group? You bet—it’s in the very best American tradition—and that’s the case for us with the Blind Boys of Alabama, appearing absolutely free at 7 PM this Saturday, July 1, 2006, on Fanny Hill at Snowmass.
Even with her demise into legendary status, Janis Joplin does not have quite the purchase on pop culture enjoyed by Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, the two other pied pipers of their times ultimately mummified by drugs. One consolation is “Love, Janis,” based on a book of the singer’s letters put together by her sister, Laura Joplin—and another is the musical drama of the same name that marries the authenticity of a Joplin performance with the words she sent back home to Port Arthur, Texas. Interviews by journalists incorporated into the musical help to complete a picture by turns tragic and dramatic.
The times have changed, but has Bob Braudis? The celebrated Sheriff of Pitkin County closely associated with the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Jr. faces an election challenge this November from Aspen Public Safety Officer and performance artist Rick Magnuson, and most of the local political cognoscenti simply assume he will win, as always, in a walk. The charismatic officer of the law, often likened to a latter-day Wyatt Earp in the Old West, remains a figure of immense power and admiration in the Roaring Fork Valley. But now he is “out of town.” The lingering question is why would the chief law enforcement official in the county, a sworn officer of the law, leave in high season so as to miss the Fourth of July weekend, when thousands pour into town? Other questions arise about the uninterrupted reign of the “citizen policeman” in charge of an entire county, and many of those queries center around Sheriff Braudis’s attitude toward drug law enforcement.
My initial impression of Mark Cuban came solely from a few short clips I'd seen on television during the NBA finals. Mr. Cuban, I thought, was a loud mouth billionaire who had been lucky enough to sell his internet company, Broadcast.com, in 1999 before the market came crashing down. He'd then used a portion of this windfall to buy an NBA franchise, the Dallas Mavericks, as any diehard billionaire basketball fan might do, for no other reason than to satisfy a childhood dream. And that, more or less, was my impression.
When Mark Cuban took the stage for the Aspen Institute’s discussion titled, “The Digital Future,” my impression was not altered. He looked as if he was dressed to hit the nightclubs, wearing jeans and a stylish, intentionally untucked, oxford. His face was surprisingly young, which confirmed my belief that he was nothing more than a “lucky kid” with little substance. How could someone like this know anything about the digital future?
I went to see Brandi Carlile at the Belly Up on Friday night, part of the JAS After Dark Series. I deserve a slap on the wrist
for underestimating Brandi and almost not going to the show. She was top notch. I had filled in for the Morning Show that day, done a ton of biking around so I was tired and almost didn’t check it out. After one song, I turned to my friend Jamie Lynn and said “I am already so glad that I came. It is already worth it.”
I'm currently sitting on my porch at the Bald Bobby secret lair at the Aspen Highlands on this beautiful Tuesday afternoon getting a can of whoop ass handed to me by my new Photoshop program. Since I'm getting nowhere with that, I've decided to have a sit and hammer out another episode of the Big Bald Blog. Although I have many, one of my favorite hobbies here in the Roaring Fork Valley is road biking.
