Entertainment

Springtime in AspenASPEN, CO - Spring in the Roaring Fork Valley isn’t quite like spring everywhere else: snow blankets the mountaintops, the red clay gets soggy with snowmelt, contractors and landscapers go to work on multimillion dollar home improvement projects, and locals – ready for a little rest and relaxation after a busy ski season - flee the off-season doldrums for warm, sunny destinations like the California coast, South France, Florida, and Las Vegas. Even the seasonal employees participate in the mass Aspen exodus. This is the time of year when Aspen’s streets are empty, with a number of hotels and restaurants boarding-up until June, when the summer travel season officially begins.

Summer in Aspen is tantamount with a litany of high profile festivals and events, including the venerable Food and Wine Classic. This year’s festival on June 19, 20, and 21st will mark the event’s 27th annual gathering in Aspen. The Food & Wine Classic has been flambéed in the public’s imagination as a fairytale-like experience of beautiful people and fantastic flavors from around the globe. The storied event has become the crème de le crème of luxury lifestyle events in Aspen and has garnered status as one of the world’s premiere culinary festivals. After all, contestants on Top Chef, The Bravo Network’s fashionable food-porn reality show, compete for a trip and showcase at the June culinary convention in Aspen, amongst other goodies.

Recession has become a four-letter word. Soon, it’ll be bleeped out on the next super-violent but profanity-free TNT movie weekend; they can maim each other, fornicate and execute one another execution style, but please- no F-bombs, or the R-word.

A close cousin to the word, however, offers both an opportunity and a common word root: recess. And just like at the schoolyard, there seem to be more people running around, with a lot more free time on their hands. Free time, but no money, there’s the rub…unless, you head to Karaoke.

Some bears are born famous. Others achieve fame. And some have fame thrust upon them.

And when the history of Aspen bears is written many years from now, surely no bear will have as much world-wide attention thrust upon it, however briefly, as the 800-pound bronze bear created by Steven Bennett, purchased by Arnold Schwarzenegger, sold at Aspen’s Royal Street Fine Art gallery, and now sitting in front of the governor’s office in Sacramento.