{"id":2448984,"date":"2019-09-20T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=313208"},"modified":"2019-09-20T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-21T03:00:00","slug":"tony-vagneur-guido-and-bert-are-important-piece-of-aspen-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/tony-vagneur-guido-and-bert-are-important-piece-of-aspen-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Vagneur: Guido and Bert are important piece of Aspen history"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was a nice fall day in the 1970s as we sauntered into a bar on Honky-Tonk Row (Broadway) in Nashville. My buddy Buck Deane and a lady friend were giving me a tour of the place and after hitting a friendly stop or two, the next one was perplexing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t serve people like you in here,\u201d said the bartender. \u201cIs there a reason?\u201d we asked. \u201cLike I said,\u201d replied the bartender, \u201cwe don\u2019t serve your kind in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this day, we don\u2019t know the reason and can only conjecture.<\/p>\n

Unlike Guido\u2019s Swiss Inn in Aspen, where it was abundantly clear why you might not get served, bar or restaurant. \u201cNo Beatniks Allowed,\u201d in the beginning, and then as the town changed, \u201cNo Hippies Allowed.\u201d The sign painter was Sepp Uhl, Gretl\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n

Late-comers to Aspen (late \u201960s, early \u201970s), unaware of the history, couldn\u2019t figure out why the sign said beatniks. In the early \u201960s, there was an influx of a group of ski bums generically called at the time \u201cbeatniks,\u201d after the Beat Generation, undesirables in the estimation of some, particularly downtown businessmen. General lack of money seemed to affect those folks and most didn\u2019t like them coming into their establishments.<\/p>\n

Naturally, in the evolution of Aspen, beatniks faded away like early-morning dew on the grass, replaced by an even more curious group rapidly taking their place. \u201cHippies\u201d was the generic term for this group at the time, men with long hair, beards and mustaches, women without bras, clothes painted with peace signs, the sometimes potent smell of patchouli oil, and a general attitude of \u201cf\u2014 the establishment.\u201d It never seemed to occur to some of them that many townspeople were saying, \u201cF\u2014 the hippies.\u201d<\/p>\n

To many late- or new-comers who arrived, Aspen seemed to be a nirvana, just waiting for their own personal arrival. It was time to \u201cdrop out\u201d and live a new philosophy, which is fine, but as mentioned, they seemed to be unaware of the effect of their presence on the small town. Whether intentionally or not, they brought their brand of mental baggage with them, putting a sometimes-unwelcome brush on the canvas.<\/p>\n

Men like Guido Meyer and Bert Bidwell had spent years building profitable and well-founded businesses, were supporters of Aspen\u2019s locals and its tourism trade, and feared this new group of young people might be giving Aspen a bad name.<\/p>\n

Bidwell, a 10th Mountain vet, had seen good and bad in Aspen; Guido came here in 1950. They did their level best to protect what they had built up over the years. Either one of them would help you, if you asked. Bidwell donated the 10th Mountain Division statue in Gondola Plaza.<\/p>\n

Guido had his sign changed to \u201cNo Hippies Allowed\u201d (why waste a good sign) and Bidwell used a powerful hose to clear malingerers off the wall out front of his establishment, across the street from Guido. Both acts fit the senses of humor of both men, and if their right to protect their property, by legal means, offended you, that might be your own personal problem.<\/p>\n

What else you may not know is that Guido and his wife, Trudi, got out of the restaurant business in 1971, leasing the operation to Hermann and Lulu Gasser, who kept the name and the sign. They stayed until 1988.<\/p>\n

So, if you arrived after 1971, you really have no complaint about Guido, nor do you have a complaint about the sign, for Hermann and Lulu never turned anyone away, regardless of the length of their hair. Some people, to this day, think Hermann and Lulu were Guido and Trudi, a tragic case of mistaken identity.<\/p>\n

Yes, Guido was the justice of the peace for a time, and his sometimes seemingly heavy sentences dumbfounded some of the newcomers\u2019 sense of what nirvana should be about, but he had a large constituency, larger than the group of ever-growing newcomers.<\/p>\n

Guido was a member of the Aspen Volunteer Fire Department, since probably before fire was discovered, selflessly protecting the citizens of the town, no matter the length of their hair, and retired firemen such as Romeo Pelletier remember Guido always fed the volunteers after every meeting, at Guido\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2014 a lot of good people moved here in the \u201960s, \u201970s and \u201980s. I even married a couple of them. Many are still here, keeping Aspen great.<\/p>\n

But think about it: It\u2019s been 50 years or more since the \u201cNo Hippies Allowed\u201d sign went up. When it came down, no one knows for sure, but Geezus, the time has come to quit bashing Guido and Bert at every opportunity. Our sensitivities will survive.<\/p>\n

And besides, we all should be more creative than that.<\/p>\n

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a nice fall day in the 1970s as we sauntered into a bar on Honky-Tonk Row (Broadway) in Nashville. My buddy Buck Deane and a lady friend were giving me a tour of the place and after hitting a friendly stop or two, the next one was perplexing. \u201cWe don\u2019t serve people like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 01:57:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}