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The alerts are up. Salida is in imminent danger of getting discovered by yupscale swine who could drive up prices and thereby drive out all the interesting people who live here because it's cheap and pretty -- sculptors, musicians, programmers, carpenters, scrounge artists, etc.
No less an authority than Outside magazine just listed
Salida among its 10 predicted next wave of dream
towns.
But there are other things people should know before taking Outside's prediction seriously.
Last weekend was FIBArk, the major community festival. It started in 1949 with kayak races down the Arkansas; it has grown into all manner of competitions, including an air-band contest.
At that contest Saturday night, an 11-year-old girl showed moves that Michael Jackson would envy. The biggest crowd I've ever seen in Riverside Park was enthralled by her talent.
The woman running the contest apparently thought there was something obscene about the performance; she dragged the little girl off the stage in mid-step. If her dance was obscene, then so is MTV, which is what the air-band contestants were supposed to be imitating.
It must be humiliating to be pulled from a stage for doing what everybody else did -- and doing it better by an order of magnitude. I hope it causes an international incident; the girl is here for a year for a year from Australia because her family is part of a teacher exchange.
Also consider the local adventures of a Denver man who would prefer to remain anonymous.
He and three friends came to ski last winter, and got a
motel room. That Saturday night, they ordered from Pizza
Hut. The delivery boy noticed something amiss in their
room; 20 minutes later, the police were at the door,
stating that a reliable informant with police
training
had seen paraphernalia and a suspected
controlled substance.
By claiming they could get a search warrant on such evidence, the police talked their way in. This ended up costing the Denver man and his friends more than $500.
I could go for pages about our city government, which closed our street for two months to do a three-day job, which managed to lose the plans for a skateboard park, which steadfastly refused to implement handicapped access when they improved our downtown.
But I hope it's clear that it is easy to run afoul of a self-appointed guardian of public morality here, whether you're on stage or in a motel room. Granted, in many respects Salida is rather tolerant place -- but a great deal of that tolerance is extended to ineptitude.
I want the word to get out, so that those folks with with $200 shorts, $800 sleeping bags and $3,000 bicycles stay away. We've got enough problems without an invasion of Outsiders.
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