Junkyard Quote 4, Week 2

“I don’t really like Aspen that much. It’s too commercial. It’s kinda cool ‘cause you can see a lot of celebrities and don’t have to wait long on the ski lifts, but it’s just really fake.”

-Deli Manager at Piggly Wiggly

TENTATIVE PLATFORM
6 OF THE 13 POINTS
THOMPSON FOR SHERIFF…ASPEN, COLORADO, 1970

1) Sod the streets at once. Rip up all city streets with jackhammers and use the junk-asphalt (after melting) to create a huge parking and auto-storage lot on the outskirts of town—preferably somewhere out of sight, like between the new sewage plant and McBride’s new shopping center. All refuse and other garbage could be centralized into this area—in memory of Mrs. Walter Paepke, who sold the land for development. The only automobiles allowed into town would be limited to a network of “delivery alleys,” as shown in the very detailed plan drawn by architect/planner Fritz Benedict in 1969. All public movement would be by foot and a fleet of bicycles, maintained by the city police force.
2) Change the name “Aspen,” by public referendum, to “Fat City.” This would prevent greedheads, land-rapers and other human jackals from capitalizing on the name “Aspen.” Thus, Snowmass-at-Aspen—recently sold to Kiaser/Aetna of Oakland, California—would become “Snowmass-at-Fat City.” The Aspen Wildcats—whose main backers include the First National City Bank of New York and the First Boston Capital Corp.—would have to be called the “Fat City Wildcats.” All road signs and maps would have to be changed from Aspen to Fat City. The local post office and chamber of commerce would be forced to use the new name. “Aspen,” Colorado, would no longer exist—and the psychic alterations of this change would be massive in the world of commerce: Fat City Ski Fashions, the Fat City Slalom Club, Fat City Music Festival, Fat City Institute for Humanistic Studies…etc. The main advantage here is that changing the name of the town would have no major effect on the town itself, or on those people who came here because it’s a good place to live. What effect the name change might have on those who came here to buy low, sell high and then move on is fairly obvious…and eminently desirable. These swine should be fucked, broken and driven across the land like the rotten maggots they are.
[. . .]
6) It will be the policy of the sheriff’s office to savagely harass those engaged in any form of landrape. This will be done by acting, with utmost dispatch, on any and all righteous complaints. My first act in office—after setting up the machinery for punishing dope dealers—will be to establish a research bureau to provide facts on which any citizen can file a writ of seizure, a writ of stoppage, a writ of fear, of horror…yes…even a writ of assumption…against any greedhead who has managed to get around our antiquated zoning laws and set up a tar vat, scum drain or gravel pit. These writs will be pursued with overweening zeal…and always within the letter of the law.

-Hunter S. Thompson
Better than Sex p. 21-22