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Pique N' yer interest

Stir it up

Inspiration, it is said, strikes you in the unlikeliest of places.

My latest brainstorm didn’t come to me while gazing at the mountains or strolling through the woods on a rainy day. It wasn’t written on the face of a newborn baby, and it didn’t come to me in a dream, the bath, or with the aid of foreign substances.

Inspiration struck while I was sitting on a couch on a rainy Sunday, eating nachos and watching a Pay Per View movie.

The movie in question was Out Cold, a "B" calibre comedy about a group of wacky Alaskan snowboarders and their battle to save their mountain and town from a ruthless Colorado developer.

Before a deal can be finalized, the protagonists invade a shareholder’s meeting, crashing into the tables and tents and starting a small riot. Basically they trash the place, realizing that the only way to save their mountain was to make the town as unappealing as possible to the developers.

A similar idea was actually put to test in Aspen back in 1969 by Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Disgusted by the money-hungry, pro-development candidates running in the mayoral election, Thompson and his like-minded friends sponsored a mayoral campaign by a 29-year-old hippy named Joe Edwards.

Thompson’s goal was to get out the freak vote, all the disenfranchised twenty-somethings that never bothered to vote in the past.

The Freak Party was established, and in three weeks of whirlwind campaigning they almost succeeded in getting Edwards elected. When all the votes were tallied, the freaks lost by a total of six mail-in ballots sent in by second-home owners.

Encouraged by this support, Thompson ran for Sheriff the following year. He lost by over 400 votes, but the amount of grassroots support the Freaks were receiving was enormous.

The Freak Party’s anti-development platform for Aspen was breathtaking in scope. First and foremost they wanted to change the name of the town to Fat City to discourage developers and buyers.

Rather than arresting drug dealers, Sheriff Thompson pledged to use his powers to keep the dealers honest. He also promised to use his powers to "savagely harass all those who engage in land-rape." Also on the platform was a plan to rip up the streets of downtown Aspen and replace them with sod to slow the developers down.

If either campaign had been successful, you have to wonder what Aspen, or Fat City, would look like now. Would it still be the second most expensive ski town in North America, behind Vail, or would it be the same mountain paradise it was before all the developers at last drove the hippies out?

By 2015, Aspen expects to have a population of 30,000, housed in condos, hotel rooms and second homes. The resort hopes to one day be able to house 60 per cent of resort staff within city limits even though that means creating thousands of rent-controlled and affordable housing units for staff.

They currently house just 25 per cent of their employees, while the other 75 per cent of employees commute from surrounding towns and spend up to an hour and a half on the highway.

By way of comparison, Whistler managed to house almost 80 per cent of its entire winter workforce, about 13,500 people, within the municipal boundaries in 2000.

That percentage has dropped as the workforce has increased, rent continues to climb, and the old homes where staff live are torn down to build multi-million dollar houses.

I currently rent in the Creekside area, where I’m surrounded by developments and resort staff. The face of the area is changing dramatically, and I seriously doubt that it will remain a local’s paradise.

The development of a full-service shopping area on Franz’s Trail – which was initially marketed as providing services for resort residents that live south of Blueberry – will only make the area more desirable for developers and wealthy buyers. The proposed train station and five-star hotel proposed for Nita Lake isn’t going to help.

Other pressures on the area include the proposed upgrade to the Sea to Sky Highway, Whistler-Blackcomb’s plans to one day increase lift service for the area, the bid for 2010 Olympics, and the inevitable increase in property values that will likely occur when Whistler reaches build-out.

The Whistler. It’s Our Future social sustainability program was created to find ways to make Whistler affordable for staff and residents in the future. Can they do it?

Hunter S. Thompson and the Freak Party came close in Aspen. The snowboarders in Out Cold succeeded, but Whistler shouldn’t bank on a Hollywood ending.

With an election just around the corner in the resort, I wonder if isn’t time to think about starting our own Freak Party.

We could change the name "Whistler" to "Sausage Fest," and replace all the asphalt in town with dirt roads. We could throw all the noise bylaws out the window, let people dry their laundry outside, and declare every house in Whistler that’s more than 10 years old a historic property.

We could allow squatting in local parks and houses that sit empty for longer than 30 days. We could make it illegal to put dogs on leashes or clean up their waste. Public parks and the pedestrian village could be designated as clothing optional drinking areas. Golf courses would be forced to let locals play free and blast Journey’s song Any Way You Want It all day long.

There are enough young, poor and disenfranchised people in town to get at least one Freak Party member elected to Whistler council to shake things up a bit.

If a change in politics doesn’t work, we could always trash the place and hope for the best. It’s better than doing nothing.