Profile: Alex (Shellen Keller) Shelley

By Dawne Belloise 

You’ve probably never known that Shelley’s real name is Alex and even if you don’t know him, you’d recognize this big, burly, bearded biker type dude cruising around town on his pink Vespa with a unicorn head gracing the handlebars and the pinwheel spinning on the aft seat. Oftentimes, he’ll don a matching pink tutu. He has been the benevolent protector doorman bouncer of Kochevar’s for years and now helps manage CB’s oldest saloon. 

The origin of his moniker, “Shellen Keller,” evolves from a drunken nickname given to him by one of his West Virginia college professors. “He was a drinking buddy of mine at the local watering hole,” Shelley reminiscences. “It was the day before a big exam and he asked if I was ready. I had no idea there was an exam and he caught me by surprise. I stuttered for a while,” to which his professor joked that he was deaf, dumb and blind, “so he called me Shellen Keller and it kinda stuck.” 

Originally hailing from Medford, New Jersey, about a half-hour southwest of Philly, Shelley grew up the fifth of six siblings in an area he says is dubbed, “The Swamps of New Jersey, where the Mafia dumped the bodies.” As a child on the edge of suburbia, his playground was the vast woods out his backdoor. “Nothing but woods as far as the eye can see,” he says. “Growing up there, organized sports weren’t my thing. Getting lost in the woods was,” with dirt bikes, BB guns and paint ball. Going into high school, Shelley already had a lot of friends since his siblings had cut the path for him, and he hung out with them as well. His summer interests turned to surfing on the Jersey Shore but winters still found him in the woods. “The winters weren’t too bad out there,” he says. Shelley graduated in 2007 with no idea of what he wanted to do. 

“I still don’t know what I want,” he laughs. “I hadn’t really considered a life path.” But he enrolled at West Virginia University, initially as a history major. “There were thoughts of maybe teaching or possibly law school with a history undergrad degree,” he tells. However, he decided to switch to geology. “History was fine and dandy but just memorizing things became boring and science always came really easy for me. I love to know how and why things work and if you know that you can always figure out the what.” Exams were easy for Shelley, “I was awful at doing homework. I didn’t like just busy work and besides, I just wanted to play. I partied too much, hence the nickname,” he laughs.  

He was leaning toward taking that geology degree more in the direction of environmental geology, hoping to work with ground water mitigation and do EPA-oriented work. Instead, he went into petroleum geology and attended computer classes for doing well log analysis. “It’s all about reading data coming in from drill heads, then taking all that data to determine where you are in the sedimentary layers.” However, this career path never materialized for him but if he were to change horses in mid-stream, so to speak, and change his major again, it would have added another two years to his college time. He graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science in Geology.

After careful thought, Shelley determined that the only logical thing to do after graduation was to hit the beaches on the Jersey Shore, taking about a year and a half hiatus from the working world. He worked various restaurant jobs until one of his friends, who had a friend who went to Western State College (now Western Colorado University) decided to move to Gunnison. Shelley flipped a coin: heads, he spends the winter in Crested Butte, or tails, he pursues surfing in St. Augustine, Florida, where his sister lived. Heads it was, so he loaded up his Toyota Corolla and headed out west the next day. He arrived September 22, while the town was deeply into the chanting of “Burn the Grump” on Vinotok night. He also noted that it was a couple of weeks after Budweiser’s Whatever USA campaign had painted the town blue. “I had no idea what I was gonna do,” he says of his sudden arrival. His buddy lived in CB South and as he was driving up-valley to a place he’d never been before, he came around that bend at Round Mountain. “I remember the awe. I took a shower, had dinner and walked into the Vinotok Grump trial. I thought I was on a different planet. It was so foreign to me and I was full of wonder of everything going on around me, the masks, the costumes, the concepts and when they lit the fire, I felt just sheer happiness. It was a hell of an introduction.”

The very next day, Shelley was introduced to Jason Vernon, who was running Kochevar’s at the time, and had a job opening. “I remember Jason saying, you’re an asshole, you want a job?” Shelley took over as doorman and bouncer, later working the kitchen at Karolina’s and then as a bartender at Kochevar’s. A decade later, he’s still there, now as the manager. “I’ve met some of the most amazing people. There are so many locals and return tourists I’ve befriended,” he says, and adds that oftentimes the return tourists and second homeowners will check in on him to see how he’s doing and catch up.

He speaks of his beloved Vespa, “ Best $200 I’ve ever spent in my life,” he grins. His little motorino also sports a giant speaker and he loves to ride through town blasting Celine Dion, the 2 water pistol holsters strapped one on each side. “The scooter was happenchance. Somebody in Gunnison was leaving and had a fire sale.All of the accouterments just started showing up. I came out one morning and there were stickers that people were putting on it.” He says he’ll see people taking photos with their kids on it. Someone noticed that his seat was scrappy and torn up, “One day there was a cow hide someone left for me on the seat. It’s become an icon around town. The Vespa has been so much continuous fun.”

Shelley fits right in with CB culture, and Crested Butte of course embraces a big guy in a tutu riding a unicorn Vespa, “I can’t see another place where I can exist as me and CB not only allows me to be the goofy me that I am, it promotes it. I’m in and out of the toy store, Pooh’s Corner, more than most kids are,” he confesses proudly. “Between water guns and pinwheels and unicorn heads, Crested Butte allows me to thrive as a fully grown child and I’ve always said this town is just a giant playground for adults.”