A rose to Annette and Fino Docimo, who gave locals free slices of homemade pizza to celebrate the last day of their Mountain Bake Shop on the Hyman Avenue pedestrian mall. The longtime locals had to close up shop because the building they were in is scheduled to be torn down. The loss of Annette\u2019s, coming on the heels of Taster\u2019s closing Aug. 31, is a blow to the affordable lunch scene in Aspen, and we\u2019re hoping the couple can find a space they can afford in the near future. But as the owners of Taster\u2019s can attest, there\u2019s a fat chance of that happening here in Fat City.<\/p>\n
A big, fat, pokey thorn to you out-of-town, rental-plated angry SUV drivers attempting to get to the airport in a huge hurry (lest it takes more than 6.2 minutes to get through security) who careen out of the roundabout into the far right lane to show all of us law-abiding locals whose boss and then you realize it\u2019s a bus lane, so you irritatedly have to cram back into line having gained one or two positions in a line that isn\u2019t going to go any faster no matter how much East Coast juju you put on it. Relax, it\u2019s Aspen.<\/p>\n
A shout out from all the couch potatoes who care about local democracy: A rose goes to Grassroots TV, one of the valley\u2019s oldest nonprofits, for continuing to provide public access to government and community meetings on a shoestring budget. Their presence allows hundreds, if not thousands of people, to watch what our elected officials are doing without having to physically be at the meetings.<\/p>\n
Only a mildly injurious thorn to the city officials who wanted to make improvements to the safe crossing for pedestrians on main street between the Aspen Police Department and Original Curve. There are now so many flashing crossing signs that drivers risk episodic epilepsy and lapses in sanity trying to figure out which set of flashing lights indicates a pedestrian in which crosswalk. We don\u2019t know how to properly thorn the people who think that the button for the crosswalks work for East\/West traffic the same as North\/South, so cars are stopped for six blocks on Main Street while pedestrians cross a completely different street.<\/p>\n
A rose goes to the gentleman outside of the Art Base in Basalt who helped our circulation director unload a surprisingly heavy newspaper rack from the back of his truck last week. Good looking out for us, and thanks for keeping Jake\u2019s back from getting jacked.<\/p>\n
Have a rose or a thorn? Send them to letters@aspentimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n