RegularOccurrences

4 La Vida Local

4 Thumbin’ It

6 Soap Box

7 Top Story

9 Local News

10 Murder Ink

11 Stuff to Do

12-13 Snowdown 2023

Ear to the ground:

“I just pretend like I’m skating over to Chair 3.”

– Local alpine skier discussing his slightly rusty skate ski technique

Dive right in

As some may recall, Casa Bonita, the Mexican restaurant outside Denver known for its kitschy décor, cliff jumping and one-star food, recently filed for bankruptcy. That’s when “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone bought the restaurant, vowing to, among other things, improve the food. Parker and Stone grew up in Colorado and have always had a fascination with Casa Bonita, even featuring it in a 2003 “South Park” episode.

Now, with Casa Bonita set to reopen in May, the restaurant is hiring more than 500 positions. And our curious minds couldn’t help but wonder what the job posting for a cliff diver looks like. So here we go.

First, the position is not listed as “cliff diver.” Rather, under the “Entertainment” section there are two options: Entertainer (Dry) and Entertainer (Wet). We clicked wet.

13 Ask Rachel

14 Free Will Astrology

15 Classifieds

12

Where art thou fun?

A one-stop guide to the wheres and whens of Snowdown rabble-rousing

EDITORIALISTA: Missy Votel missy@durangotelegraph.com

ADVERTISING SALES: telegraph@durangotelegraph.com

STAFF REPORTER:

Jonathan Romeo jonathan@durangotelegraph.com

STAR-STUDDED CAST: Zach Hively, Julie Hastings-Black, Lainie Maxson, Jesse Anderson & Clint Reid

MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Box 332, Durango, CO 81302

VIRTUAL ADDRESS: www.durangotelegraph.com

15 Movie Review Haiku

On the cover

To start, all “wet entertainers” must submit an audition video displaying basic dive moves: a front (half, twist, pike, flip); a back (half, twist, flip); and inward dive (tuck, pike, straight). Easy.

Then, they must have at least two years’ experience diving at a school, club or competitive level (OK, we’re already out). Gymnasts and extreme athletes will be considered (if “quaffing” at Snowdown counts, we’re back in).

Additionally, applicants need a “passion for safety and following diving rules,” a “never-break-character attitude” and “the ability to know your limits.” Also, they must be “comfortable with portraying staged romance and staged combat.” Damn, we never had a chance.

REAL WORLD ADDRESS: 679 E. 2nd Ave., Ste E2 Durango, CO 81301

PHONE: 970-259-0133

E-MAIL: telegraph@durangotelegraph.com

MAIL DELIVERY AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3.50/issue, $150/year

But wait, we’re just getting started. They also must have “the ability to laugh at the absurdities of life.” Ok...? Be able to change in and out of wet swimsuits quickly. Alright…? And, “must be comfortable with heights.” That seems like a given.

And that’s just getting the job. Once “landed,” duties include “creating a magical experience” with 1,500 guests a day, ages between 2 and 100 (who is the 100-year-old going to Casa Bonita?) and being in character for up to six consecutive hours.

Damn, that’s a lot of time in a soggy suit. But compensation, oddly enough, is pretty good, starting at about $52k a year, with benefits including health, dental and vision.

T he Durango Telegraph publishes every Thursday, come hell, high water, tacky singletrack or mon- ster powder days. We are wholly independently owned and operated by the Durango Telegraph LLC and dis- tributed in the finest and most discerning locations throughout the greater Durango area.

Plus, we imagine divers get all-you-caneat dinner plates and sopapillas, though we doubt that’ll maintain their divers’ physiques.

Su casa no es mi casa

Look, I realize that vacation rentals – let’s just call them “Airbnbs” because that’s what they all are – are responsible for a great many of the world’s woes. These include housing shortages and jacked-up costs of living, gentrification, several Kardashians, the lion’s share of the endangered species list and methamphetamines, probably.

But they are still my preferred way to stay in a stranger’s home on vacation, when I actually go on vacation. In adulthood so far, this averages once each decade. Plus, they have kitchens. This is preferable to hotels, where I cannot even pretend that I will cook my own breakfast.

Not using the included kitchen that I COULD use is just one Airbnb perk. I’d like, for your vicarious vacationing pleasure, to declare several other benefits – unlike the apples and the baggie of ham that we did not declare at customs on our way home. We brought them along for the flight after not eating them for breakfast for a week. Then I did not take them out of my backpack before customs because I was hungry, and also because I forgot.

Speaking of hunger, let’s make you hungry for travel with these Many Benefits of Staying in an Airbnb.

• Ease of Access

After a long day of international plane travel, all one wants is to lay one’s head on another person’s used pillow and fall asleep so fast that one cannot wonder for long about how foreign head lice differ from domestic ones. Such was our wish.

We were in good spirits after traveling by car, plane, moving walkway, plane, bus, customs line, and bus to the one coastal town in Mexico that spring break hasn’t heard about. I was able to use our Airbnb hosts’ directions – and the knowledge that “a la izquierda” means either “to the right” or “to the left” – to guide our taxi straight to the front gate. The taxi drove off, and I pulled up the host’s instructions for easily and safely accessing our new home away from home.

“The purple gate will appear to be locked,” the instructions read. “It is unlocked.”

“It’s locked,” said my travel partner – let’s call her “Maggie” because that is her name.

I, being a man, tried the lock myself. It was locked. I managed to message our Airbnb hosts. I’m not sure what I wanted them to do, seeing as they were at that moment in California or some other place that was not Mexico, but I hoped it would be something useful. They, however, did not reply in a timely fashion.

So I did what any former middle school math student would do: I skipped to

Thumbin’It

The return of La Plata County Search & Rescue Pancake Breakfast (canceled last year) on Sunday, a great fundraiser for our local search and rescue team.

A new report estimating President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act could result in nearly 92,000 clean energy jobs, with Colorado having the largest share at around 25,000.

What appears to be the nail in the coffin for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, which would have had a huge impact on one of the world’s largest salmon breeding grounds.

the next word problem – the keys to the house, reportedly left, securely, under a cloth on a table by the front door. Unfortunately, the front door and this purported table were inside the gate, which had not yet been unlocked.

The irony of a gringo jumping a wall to get into someplace in Mexico gave me the boost I needed to do so very quickly and discreetly. Maggie guarded the luggage because she is scarier than I am, while I fetched the key. This was challenging, considering there was no key.

“There is no key,” I muttered through the gate.

“No key?” Maggie said back.

“No key,” I said. “Unless you can find it,” which, her being a woman, seemed likely. My whole life, women are finding things that don’t exist until I ask them to look.

Maggie passed our backpacks over the gate and then jumped it herself to prove me wrong about the keys. But the keys did not materialize. I wrote our hosts again, as timestamped proof that we were not breaking and entering in case the authorities ever got involved.

We made ourselves right at home on the rocking chairs on the patio and watched the sun set on the locked doors and welded-shut windows of this beautiful one-bedroom casa with well-tended garden and fully equipped kitchen. We laughed a little, we cried a little, and we got hungrier and hungrier, until I decided to jump the fence again and fetch us some food and possible camping supplies from the mercado on the corner.

While I was away, the hosts responded that this situation was very unusual and they would try to get ahold of Juan, the property manager. In the meantime, they suggested we dig for the possibility of a spare key buried in the corner of a flower bed opposite a radiant pink bougainvillea. We did not find the key, but we had corn chips, real Mexican corn chips, made with actual tortillas and not whatever comprises Tostitos. And we had a bottle of tequila from the highest shelf in this little mercado, which I ordered using my best Spanish pronunciation of the label over and over until the clerk understood my accent from sheer repetition.

We were prepared to hunker down for the night, mosquitos be damned, when Juan arrived with a hefty set of keys and a heftier set of apologies. “I thought today was yesterday!” he said many times.

Now we move on to the next Airbnb benefit: You get to leave public reviews. Beautiful outdoor space. Through the window, the kitchen appears useful. Clear directions and very communicative hosts! I already can’t wait to go back. – Zach Hively

SignoftheDownfall:

Mercy Hospital attracting statewide media attention for its ban on women getting their tubes tied, raising questions about reproductive rights.

Wyoming lawmakers proposing a bill that would ban electric vehicle sales by 2035. Freedoms?

A report that 25 people were charged with selling nearly 8,000 fake nursing degrees. That’s health care in America: fake nurses are better than no nurses.

Polarscare

Fox News imploded recently when M&M’s feminine “spokescandies” started wearing tennis shoes instead of go-go boots; none of Fox’s pundits could handle the trans/woke undertones. So, A&W tried to have some fun with it by making a gag announcement that their mascot would start wearing pants to avoid becoming a “polarizing” bear, but Fox didn’t get it and accused A&W of “bowing to woke culture.” A&W clarified that it was a joke, and Fox edited their headlines to cover it up, but the mistake probably happened because Fox News doesn’t know the difference between the right to bear arms, and the right to bare legs.