Embrace the weird

Don’t be afraid of the weird — embrace it. As the summer season winds down, there is time to appreciate the weird. The last week popped a few examples.

Perhaps the weirdest thing was the moving of the old Forest Queen building.  Workers have been toiling for weeks to gut and stabilize the building so it could be moved over in order to dig out a basement where, rumor has it, a new kitchen will be placed for what is anticipated to be an Italian restaurant owned by the Mark Walter group. That’s not all that weird, but I imagine in order to cover the investment through food sales (yeah right), spaghetti and meatballs might cost $940 an entrée (salad would be extra). 

It’s not the future food that’s weird, it’s an old resident. Chatting to some of the laborers on site, the legend of a female ghost living on the second floor of the old hotel continues to resonate. The weird feelings felt by some workers resulted in several apparently refusing to work in the looker’s left on the second floor. Ghost vibes. 

The building took longer to move than initially thought, but she’s shifted to a new spot while renovation of a cool old building gets done. By the way, the building weighed 46 tons! No word on how much of that weight can be attributed to the ghost.

After hanging out to watch the lifting last week, I went to ride Snodgrass where I happily breathed in some fresh sage to move away the ghost energy. I embraced the weird ghost energy for a bit but was happy to sage it away.

Speaking of ghosts and gutting. How ‘bout the inside of Clark’s Market this week? I went in after that band at Monday’s Alpenglow was done playing Easy Jim covers, and the grocery felt like a ghost of its former self. It made me giggle, but I admit I was able to spend 30 bucks. A quick tip for Matty Brown and anyone else sporting sweet facial hair— there were several packages of Brisk Beard Oil (citrus) on the shelves. You can stock up cheap on the product that promises to soften and tame your beard hair! The box features an urbane bespectacled bear in a red tie and brown smoking jacket. Nothing weird there.

As old Clark’s winds down, there were still plenty of things you could buy that use fake food coloring as primary ingredients. The 50% sales cleared the shelves and the last two days of Clark’s being open will have all items left being sold at 75% off. What will be the final thing to go through the self-checkout? What weird item will be the absolute last thing sold? Looking at the few things left on Tuesday, contenders include: green sugar sprinkles; peeled lychees in heavy syrup (yum?); boxes of assorted red, yellow and blue food colors and egg dye; Little Debbie Zebra Cake Rolls; Hamburger Helper with real cheese!; tons of fruit fly traps; and plenty of egg timers. Given the volume left, I’ll bet the green sugar sprinkles will be on the curb Friday. Oh, and the lychees in heavy syrup. I’m not sure what that is but it sounds like some weird stuff. 

And the weird reality check will hit after the Clark’s doors close Thursday night as the town goes into ski season without a major grocery store. Thanks to all the other local businesses making an effort to pick up some of the slack…

Wait a minute — The Crested Butte Post Office is rolling out free post office boxes! After decades and decades of paying to get mail that most people in the country get delivered to their doorstep for free, the local PO is beginning to give people the opportunity to get a free box! That is a good accomplishment but sure sounds weird. It might not be the PO box you have at the moment—unless you have one of the small ones—but the opportunity is there for you to sign up for a free box. Don’t rush down there all at once. The staff is staggering the opportunity and you’ll get a notice in your current box to set up an appointment to get the chance at a free box. Free mail in CB? Now that just sounds plain weird!

There are always a bunch of little weird things lingering out there. It’s weird that three people running for the local school board, a public office, made no effort to communicate with the public through the local paper when asked for some easy background and initial thoughts of why they want the job. I sort of smell this election getting weirder and weirder.

To me it is weird that the town of CB is sort of talking about considering not allowing day parking at the Four-Way Stop parking lot because locals use it as a park-n-ride for the ski area — well yeah, and that’s a bad thing because…? You know what’d be weird? The town of Crested Butte if there wasn’t a ski area three miles up the hill. Think Pitkin!

I still think it is really weird that the Mt. Crested Butte town council won’t let its council members participate in meetings over Zoom. Hmmmm, wonder if that influences people wanting to run for elected office up there?

Is it weird that major CB property owner Mark Walter hasn’t accepted my invitations to chat and share his future vision with our small community. Ok, it’s not that weird. But if he changes his mind, I’m still taking calls at 349-0500 ext. 109. Actually, it would be weird if he calls.

It’s weird that there are still patches of good flowers up high and the local reservoirs came back to life after several summers of being depleted — but believe it or not, we can all feel the first signs of an approaching fall season and there’s less than 100 days until the lifts start spinning. Embrace it all!

—Mark Reaman