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Traveling around ski country, it's hard to shake a lingering sense of déjà vu. The bar names change, but the issues sound the same, whether you're in Snowmass or Sun Valley.
I was in Ketchum, Idaho, the other week chasing the ghost of Ernest Hemingway when I stopped into the Casino bar. Back in Hemingway's day, it really was a casino. These days, video games have replaced slot machines, but it's still the town's honest-to-goodness workingman's bar.
“We're dying here,” says the guy on the barstool beside me, nursing his beer. “We're 70 percent construction here. When construction goes, we're …”
Screwed.
“True story,” he says. “We're one of the richest counties in America. But the valley's mainstay is the construction workers.”
True story, indeed.
Ketchum and neighboring Sun Valley are part-time homes for glitterati like Tom Hanks. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore may not be together anymore, but they still come to Ketchum. So do unknown Wall Street tycoons who make more money than most famous celebrities will ever dream of making.
So when the economy tanked, so did Ketchum. My bar mate lost his electrician gig in the recession. “The construction industry is dead,” he says to me. He owes his beer money to Steve Wynn. The Las Vegas casino magnate is going against the tide. He bought a snazzy new house in the valley and he's spending plenty of bucks to bring it up to his standards.
This former electrician finds new work as a construction worker.
“Our country's changed,” he says. “I'm not sure we're going to be like we were ever again.”
Even before the recession, Ketchum was struggling in much the way Roaring Fork Valley towns were. Rents were rising, and revenues weren't keeping up. High housing prices were driving locals out of town. The gazillionaires who moved in after them weren't shopping downtown or tossing back Buds at the Casino. Sales weren't seeing the same meteoric rise that real estate was.
“Slack,” as the town's off-season is known here, didn't seem so slack from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. But then, Slack got slacker.
“There's a lot of dark houses this time of year,” one local told me a few Slacks ago.
In so many ways, Ketchum, like resort towns across the West, is symbolic of the real estate boom gone bust.
In other ways, though, the town stands out. Ketchum hasn't sold its soul to Gucci, or even Eddie Bauer. Sheep drives still send herds through town every spring and fall. When the Pioneer Saloon slashes its menu back to 1970s prices each November for Pio Days, “a three-night salute to the good old days,” the Main Street bar fills with young people, and it's easy to feel, for a moment, like those days never ended.
“We need the Realtors to have a Pio Days,” one local once grumbled to me at Grumpy's, a 29-year-old burger joint that serves up giant mugs of beer and a laid back locals' spirit while snowboarders and surfers show off on TV.
Created in 1935, Sun Valley was the nation's first major ski resort, and black-and-white photos of bygone celebrity visitors like Lucille Ball and Louis Armstrong hang in the halls of the historic resort lodge. A sense of history permeates the place. My friend at the bar says that's what he likes about Ketchum.
“People do remember historical things,” he says. Over his shoulder, the old owner of the bar still watches over the place, only now he does it from a black-and-white photo framed on the wall.
As for his buddy Hemingway? What would he say if he came back?
“Where is my sleepy little town?” suggests the bartender, tending to a lineup of locals at the bar.
“Here, at least, he had mountains and a good river below his house,” Hunter S. Thompson once wrote about Hemingway in Ketchum. “He could live among rugged, non-political people and visit, when he chose to, with a few of his famous friends who came up to Sun Valley. He could sit in The Tram or The Alpine or The Sawtooth Club and talk with men who felt the same way he did about life, even if they were not so articulate. In this congenial atmosphere he felt he could get away from the pressures of a world gone mad …”
Would Hemingway still like Ketchum? Well, different locals have different perspectives, but the bartender says he's pretty sure he would.
“It's a great little town,” he says. “Times change. Places change. It's still a great little spot.”
Contact David Frey on his Web site, www.davidfrey.me.
I was in Ketchum, Idaho, the other week chasing the ghost of Ernest Hemingway when I stopped into the Casino bar. Back in Hemingway's day, it really was a casino. These days, video games have replaced slot machines, but it's still the town's honest-to-goodness workingman's bar.
“We're dying here,” says the guy on the barstool beside me, nursing his beer. “We're 70 percent construction here. When construction goes, we're …”
Screwed.
“True story,” he says. “We're one of the richest counties in America. But the valley's mainstay is the construction workers.”
True story, indeed.
Ketchum and neighboring Sun Valley are part-time homes for glitterati like Tom Hanks. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore may not be together anymore, but they still come to Ketchum. So do unknown Wall Street tycoons who make more money than most famous celebrities will ever dream of making.
So when the economy tanked, so did Ketchum. My bar mate lost his electrician gig in the recession. “The construction industry is dead,” he says to me. He owes his beer money to Steve Wynn. The Las Vegas casino magnate is going against the tide. He bought a snazzy new house in the valley and he's spending plenty of bucks to bring it up to his standards.
This former electrician finds new work as a construction worker.
“Our country's changed,” he says. “I'm not sure we're going to be like we were ever again.”
Even before the recession, Ketchum was struggling in much the way Roaring Fork Valley towns were. Rents were rising, and revenues weren't keeping up. High housing prices were driving locals out of town. The gazillionaires who moved in after them weren't shopping downtown or tossing back Buds at the Casino. Sales weren't seeing the same meteoric rise that real estate was.
“Slack,” as the town's off-season is known here, didn't seem so slack from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. But then, Slack got slacker.
“There's a lot of dark houses this time of year,” one local told me a few Slacks ago.
In so many ways, Ketchum, like resort towns across the West, is symbolic of the real estate boom gone bust.
In other ways, though, the town stands out. Ketchum hasn't sold its soul to Gucci, or even Eddie Bauer. Sheep drives still send herds through town every spring and fall. When the Pioneer Saloon slashes its menu back to 1970s prices each November for Pio Days, “a three-night salute to the good old days,” the Main Street bar fills with young people, and it's easy to feel, for a moment, like those days never ended.
“We need the Realtors to have a Pio Days,” one local once grumbled to me at Grumpy's, a 29-year-old burger joint that serves up giant mugs of beer and a laid back locals' spirit while snowboarders and surfers show off on TV.
Created in 1935, Sun Valley was the nation's first major ski resort, and black-and-white photos of bygone celebrity visitors like Lucille Ball and Louis Armstrong hang in the halls of the historic resort lodge. A sense of history permeates the place. My friend at the bar says that's what he likes about Ketchum.
“People do remember historical things,” he says. Over his shoulder, the old owner of the bar still watches over the place, only now he does it from a black-and-white photo framed on the wall.
As for his buddy Hemingway? What would he say if he came back?
“Where is my sleepy little town?” suggests the bartender, tending to a lineup of locals at the bar.
“Here, at least, he had mountains and a good river below his house,” Hunter S. Thompson once wrote about Hemingway in Ketchum. “He could live among rugged, non-political people and visit, when he chose to, with a few of his famous friends who came up to Sun Valley. He could sit in The Tram or The Alpine or The Sawtooth Club and talk with men who felt the same way he did about life, even if they were not so articulate. In this congenial atmosphere he felt he could get away from the pressures of a world gone mad …”
Would Hemingway still like Ketchum? Well, different locals have different perspectives, but the bartender says he's pretty sure he would.
“It's a great little town,” he says. “Times change. Places change. It's still a great little spot.”
Contact David Frey on his Web site, www.davidfrey.me.
