Today (Monday) Aspen Times had a fluff lead article on Snowmass lifties---yea lifties
This hard hitting news blog has a different story to tell
This picture:
While the Aspen Times was writing a fluff article about Snowmass lifties chairs are detaching and falling to the ground.
Let me say that again-----while our local newspaper has a sweet article about Andy Elliott lift operations manager of -----Snowmass mountain-----chairs are plummeting to the ground from lifts at ------Snowmass Mountain.
Ohhh yea BTW rumor has it that a chair fell off the Exhibition lift at Aspen Highlands earlier this winter.
Also in today's Aspen Times----Record real estate sales for 2020---about $3.1 billion beating the previous record of $2.6 billion in 2006 and crushing the last 3 years average of about $2 billion per year. Does the article look into the bifurcation of the local economy with local businesses getting crushed by COVID while real estate explodes? NO. Does the article look at lines and food banks or unemployment in the richest county in Colorado. NO. Does it address middle class locals selling their homes for mucho dinero and being replaced by second and third home owners and contemplate what that might mean Aspen? NOPE.
Let me take a little look at this----remember Derek Johnson the senior Aspen ski Co employee (supposedly one of the higher paid ski Co employees making $116k in 2017) who was found guilty of stealing skis to re-sell online. Check out this piece of shit house asking $5m for 3k square feet ($1,600 a square foot).
crap cemetery lane house (its obviously a scrapper)
If you were a hard hitting investigative journalist maybe you would ask "Can people afford to live here without stealing?" I don't mean to excuse Derek's actions---not in the least BUT how do you employee people when the cost of real estate is totally unrelated to local incomes. Do you expect doctors, teachers, restaurant and hotel managers to commute 25-40 miles to work every day and live in a eh school district?
Why not move to Steamboat----$400 a square foot buys you a pretty nice place steamboat or telluride telluride. Why aren't our local papers asking questions about what this means for the future of Aspen?
How about the article two days ago about a local food truck? Yea we kinda sorta have one now. We learned the owner had burned his hand in a fryer and serves burgers and french fries. Where are the questions about why the city won't allow food trucks (answer restaurants don't want the competition). How about really drilling into that thinking----the Cordts-Pearce's don't seem to have a problem owning The Steakhouse, the Monarch and CP burger. Maybe there is room in this town for high end restaurants and affordable options too? If not, how does a town survive when the only people who can afford to live here don't work here? What does that town look like? Why aren't either of the local papers digging into that?
And no post would be complete without COVID. Today's number of new cases was .......85 (Cause I am a math guy I will let you know that is 0.5% of Pitkin County got a positive test in ONE DAY). I will admit that numbers over the holidays have been lumpy (two days ago our number of new cases was -2 (yes MINUS 2) but overall how Pitkin has handled COVID has been a fail. We have been 4-8 times the incident rate to put us into red for weeks now but instead we just invent new colors (orange plus plus currently and no I am not kidding). Where are the hard hitting questions from our local journalists about enforcement (or lack there of) or really about our approach to COVID and the economy?
I guess it really is true--"you get what you pay for". Both local papers are free.
Anyone want to meet me for a quick run? Riding the lifts could be 'entertaining'.
PS nothing new in the papers on the gas pipeline damage.
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