Another lost weekend in the Construction Graveyard

It's the end of April, and Estes Park is going to suffer through another weekend of paltry tourists, snow-covered sidewalks, and the abandoned road construction nightmare. Half the town is without power, and while that is not necessarily the town's fault (underground lines, anyone?), it might have been smarter to spend our $5.4 million and counting on something other than a two-year project involving tearing up the entire downtown with the goal of restoring it slightly differently.

Luckily, the Safeway was still open at last check this morning, and while all of their day-old product will go to Crossroads, whose patrons eat way better than those working to earn a salary, at least your favorite off-brand tuna and chocolate-chip cookies from Mexico are on special ($3.79 rather than $3.99), if you are a Safeway Club member and have a digital coupon and go through self-checkout and donate $2 to Crossroads. Four months of 2024 are nearly past, and the sales tax numbers are going to be awful. Luckily, Kirby H. is going to get VEP to bring in some amazing festivals and events, maybe we could grab the UFO Alliance Hoe-Down and the Tin Foil Hatters Coalition Bake Sale and the Snot-Lovers Fest, convincing them to grace us with their presence for the bargain price of $1 million and holding it in Loveland. Other communities have Coachella and Comic-Con, we get Bigfoot and steal Frozen Dead Guy. Nothing like bringing in a bunch of poor saps and the fringe element to have their $2 fun and make out with their cousins in the Visitor Center Parking Lot. Why not put a permanent carnival in Bond Park with free Chinese finger traps and whoopie cushions? Kirby H. is no longer in business or associated with any organism circulating warm blood, which she will make abundantly clear when she votes against assisting those store owners on the brink of collapse. First, she will pull out a pocket notebook and twist her face into a mask of contorted fake sympathy and say how she really feels terruble for those suffering from her bad decisions and perverse voting record, but ultimately the conversation will return to her talking about herself and all the committees she serves on and how when you live here for 10 solid years you can't help but be biased against everyone except the Kirby For Colorado Governor Club, Frank L. finance chairman and treasurer. So it's not like the downtown business owners could hold a three-day protest and close their businesses over a long weekend to send a message to staff. The town wouldn't know any different, since our electricty goes off when someone sneezes and no one from Denver bothers to come up to an idiot village where it takes 20 minutes to get from the library to two blocks past the library, not because there are scads of cars on the streets but because it takes us a month and 30 old men in reflective vests to replace a traffic light at the same time we stick a temporary one a few feet distant cycling from red to green in around the same amount of time it takes to read the entire New Testament.