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Do you know what Aspen’s first profession was? Wrong. Librarian. Which was second? Realtor. He sold a house to the librarian and made her with child (not at the same time). They named that baby Hyman in commemoration of the avenue on which he was conceived, which is how we know it by that today. In honor of whomever that visionary was, this week Ben and Sean are in the right place at the right time trying to earn commission by pitching attractive properties in Aspen.
Club Commons
SB: Looking to live and work in Aspen — well technically Snowmass — this winter? Here at Aspen Skiing Co. we follow the ethos of “Inclusion, commit, togetherness, honor your corporate overlord.” If you want to rekindle your hatred for dormitory housing, lack of privacy and life, come spend a season living with three strangers while working for slightly more than minimum wage.
While we can’t help you live here permanently, we can give you a taste of America before sending you back to whatever South American country you came from. It’s not that we don’t like a foreign workforce, we just don’t want to hire you year-round because then we’ll have to give you a raise on top of our generous starting pay. We don’t even let our most tenured employees live at Club Commons permanently.
Only a 15-minute walk to public transportation, getting to and from the grocery store, liquor store, dispensary, nightlife, anywhere with a pulse past 5 p.m. offers the opportunity to build up your tolerance to winter weather and improve your patience.
To apply for Skico’s temporary workforce and suboptimal housing, email exploytees@skico.com today.
Off-Downtown Condominium
BW: Half Airstream, half fake Colorado mountain lodge, this pseudo-lavish, 2,200-square-feet condo includes built-in shelves and a fireplace (don’t forget to open the flue). That figure is estimated; I just multiplied imaginary basketball hoops around the perimeter of the apartment. I sort of know how long that is because I used to be able to almost touch the rim.
Pretty sure no ghosts live here but sometimes you’ll find insects wandering around. I don’t mind giving a spider a warm, enclosed home in a jar until it dies of natural causes (way longer than you’d expect), but when it pisses and shits all over the floor, I find that really inconsiderate to its host.
The decor is exactly what you thought you wanted when you graduated college and found your first apartment, except by the time you could afford such luxuries as a leather pull-out couch and laser-engraved Maroon Bells panoramic, it’s no longer fashionable.
The place is furnished, so you gotta store the old couch in your downvalley girlfriend’s garage until it becomes infested with mice and you break up so her roommates have to drag it off to the ReStore (or whatever they did with it).
Also you’re free to keep my … I mean, uh … the mattress. Lots of people have said it’s the comfiest thing they’ve ever slept on. Yeah, well, try being on it for 15 years. Just order one of those beds you hear about on podcast advertisements and figure it out. #NotMyProblemAnymore
Sorry I’m so sweaty. How does $3,000 a month sound?
Taj Ma-Aspen
SB: In this extraordinary 17-bedroom, 19-bathroom Aspen home you will be able to buy solitude amid the madness of the Roaring Fork Valley. Sick of those annoying songbirds and that infuriating brook that refuses to stop babbling? Among the 10 outdoor sitting areas big enough to host three weddings simultaneously is the ability to stop/divert the water — and don’t worry about your water rights as the excess runoff will be used to waterboard your staff to make sure all NDAs are honored and all leftovers are being thrown out and not eaten.
The grounds also are fitted with radar sensors designed to keep out hungry bears and nosy vagrants. And instead of alerting authorities, the new Bruin Ruin system vaporizers the culprit leaving no mess and no cleanup. This quaint home comes furnished with all-animal fixtures such as zebra-skin shower curtains, bear-bone bidets, rhino-horn railings among other endangerously decadent pieces.
For the cost of an Infinity Stone, this home can be yours. Contact Thanos Realty to set up your walkthrough today.
Burlingame Ranch Home
BW: Welcome to the original suburbs of Aspen! We’re only 15 years away from having our own city council. Chancellor Bates’ plan for fortification will surely qualify this outpost as a “gated community.”
His house is decorated for most of the year; it’s kind of weird (I’m so good at semicolons as well as … and ellipses — blame a weird childhood with a lot of grammatical exercises involving “Little House on the Prairie” and “Clockwork Orange,” for some reason).
Did you see ol’ Norm’s Halloween exhibit last year? Really took “Midnight Cowboy” literally. I have a feeling he’s never actually watched that movie.
Like a Juul pod, these homes’ colors come in every condiment flavor: mustard and ketchup, chipotle and mayo, ranch and areola.
Every third weekend we have a block party where you can wonder, “Oh my God, when did all these kids move in?”
Dread running into your neighbors at the honeycomb-shaped mailbox during a random Wednesday off when you’ve started drinking at 10 a.m. and get caught wearing swimming trunks and a ripped T-shirt that says “Outcasts of Sobriety” (OOS represent).
Anyway, sometimes it’s like the Hong Kong protests out there, so maybe board up your windows. $950,000
Restaurant space
SB: Beautiful 600-seat restaurant space featuring dry-aging room, sausage production area, sacrificial altar and seven deep-fat fryers available for rent. At $125,000 per month, this gorgeous, second-floor space is perfect for a high-end Italian bistro, high-end seafood, high-end alpine fare or a high-end French bistro.
Serve vats of piping hot fondue for $625, use the sausage production room as a brothel, worship Satan in hopes that he frees you from this lease — we don’t care. We ruined a promising local’s retail career to build this dining hall thinking it would be filled by a celebrity chef before he got caught up in a #MeToo scandal and have been desperately seeking tenants ever since.
We even tried selling bacon on a clothespin for $75 a slice. Nothing is working. These rich assholes keep going to Matsuhisa. Please, save us from our ill-advised development. (Just make sure you can pay rent.)