the rich people are in town!

So December 26th marks the first day of serious tourist occupancy in Park City.

The parking lot at the base of the gondola to take you up to the Canyons resort went from scarce to packed overnight.

Drew's midnight trip to the Albertson supermarket (a step above a nice Stop and Shop) last night brought stories of nightmarish visions of empty shelves and spilled beer and broken bottles in the aisles. While telling me this story, I envisioned flickering lights swinging above his head in the cereal aisle as soft focus shadows darted just beyond his peripheral vision. "They were out of 2% milk! And there was no Gouda cheese, just a few packages of $13 Jarlsberg and Baby Bell! It was like something out of a horror movie. It was like the shadiest supermarket in Saratoga Springs right before a blizzard. It was so strange."

A horror movie indeed.

Park City is ransacked with desperate vacationers.

Correction: desperate RICH-beyond-my-wildest-fancy vacationers.

The economically elevated tourist finds themself in interesting relationship with "locals". (No body is actually from Park City, so therefore, very few true locals actually exist. Most "locals" fluctuate in and out of town right before and after the busy season.) While the town depends on them as consumers of luxury (as the tourists are paying top dollar to be able to shut their minds off and just vacation), Park City folks find their reliance on the tourist married to a simultaneous blossoming disdain for their parasitic invasion of the town. The density of people in Park City has quadrupled (at least) and can not only witnessed by the horror movie supermarket situation, but also at the crowded lift lines and slopes at the mountains, the packed restaurants, and the bumper-to-bumper traffic coming in and out of town proper. Park Citizens find themselves now breathing in an entirely different air compared to the pre-holiday, stress-free, no-traffic, mountain fresh, granola atmosphere. The breaths are shallower, more intense - frankly it now feels more like NYC more than ever - all in response to these rich fogies.

A part of the fogie equation that is often neglected until too late - rich fogies have a tendency to make offspring in order to eventually pass on their wealth and family name. Oh, we cannot neglect the rich brats. What about having money either makes your child skip childhood altogether and become a 30 year old aristocrat trapped in a 8 year old's body or transforms your child into the spoiled spawn of Satan? These kids are either blindly inserted into the daily itinerary or more often they dictate it. Brats fuel Park City's economy just as much as the fogies do. I'm convinced.

Yesterday, while working J.Crew, these two siblings were roughhousing by the women's silk shirt display out of their parents sight. To get them to calm down a fellow employee jested, "You shouldn't be roughhousing around this part of the store; this is our expensive stuff." All the employees acknowledged his sarcasm with a slight giggle. Now, it is important to note that at this point most kids would be embarrassed that someone other than their parents just scolded them. Not these brats.

The big brown eyes on the older of the two widened as he pouted his lips and placed one hand on his hip and pointed at the silk shirts, "My dad can buy ALL this stuff." He proceeds to make a 360 pointing motion, implying that not only could his dad buy ALL of the silk shirts, but also the silk lined wool skirts, our entire stock of chinos (in black, brown, and standard khaki), the display of graphic tees that layed neatly folded in stacks on the table to his right, and the blazers hanging behind him. I would also go so far as to say he was implying that his father could buy our entire inventory, which frankly could be the honest truth. He then manufactured the most rancid face I've ever seen on what could have barely been an 8 year old and sternly walked away.

Who did this kid think he was? "My dad can buy ALL this stuff?" What a little jerk. I dont care if his father was Sean effing Penn. As flabbergasted employees of a factory outlet, where our stuff really isnt that expensive, we couldn't help but laugh, but seriously, though, how did that come out of this kid's mouth? Unbelievable. It gives you just insight as to the kind of people and the certain level of tongue in cheek disrespect that Park Citizens in the service industry are having to deal with.

Not all tourists are super rich, but frankly most of them are toting some sort of wealth around with them. Not all who tote the dough are painful company, but there is definitely a difference in the way people around Park City are treated by these folks compared to teh few visitors a few weeks ago. The conundrum: I want rich fogies around when I am sitting in the gallery or standing in J.Crew. I want to sell them beautiful (and expensive) art; I want them to buy over $500 worth of clothing. I want to keep them around to make money off of their investments. Conversely, I want them to vanish before my eyes when I am throwing myself down the mountain or when I am driving home from work. I want Drew to be able to go to Albertsons and buy 2% Milk without having to step through a surreal nightmare. I want to exile some of the rich brats to Moldovia to let them realize that theres more to life than daddy buying "ALL this stuff"; their actions come with more repercussions than a dollar sign or two.

Oh how living in a ski town is like no other.