We currently find ourselves fully in the throes of après season. Some may say “do you mean ski season?” and I must merely laugh at you. No, darling, the crowds that find their way to our beautiful little valley are here for one thing, and one thing only—the après party. Sure, in order to officially brag to your friends about your weekend up in the mountains one must touch the mountain for a lift or two, but in reality, it is the “after” that so many people are in search of. The rewards for strapping something to your feet and heading down a mountain in the fresh, chilly air. The après is where the magic happens. Whether that magic be the need to forget and forgive your friends for leaving you in a ditch to die while they continued their search for powder or tricking you into following those same friends into a mine-field well above your actual skill level, or for the lucky ones, you are in need to continue to release the pent up adrenaline you spent the last hours culminating and just need to party.
Inspired by my time as a terrace bartender at the beautiful Bachelor Gulch Ritz, where the après are legendary-- maybe even myths at this point. At the base of this ‘cowboy chateau’ is where I was able to observe the real après experts excel in the wild. Who are these experts? How can you find them? Well, honestly there are many different styles of expertise when it comes to an après. There are the local après experts, they manage to swindle their fun at a discounted (more appropriate) price. There are the “Stay-at-home” experts that know they can party just as hard in the safe confines of their own home and then there are the triple black diamond experts that come ready to lose it all—inhibitions, money and sometimes even morality. These are the experts that I wished to immortalize in my “après expert” watercolor painting, this is the style of après-er I will describe to you.
Typically, to be type of expert you have some hint of fur on your persons at any given point. You also will find yourself armed with bottles of white wine sitting beside multiple buckets and glasses of ice, available to add to your glass at your leisure. Your leisure, however, will typically desire someone else to scoop new ice into your glass as the arctic temperatures are never enough to keep ice fresh and frozen. Your ski boots transform from awkward stiff jailcells into your free-flowing dancing shoes and somehow you manage to groove your best moves out on the slippery outdoor cobblestone without breaking your bones. You know how to handle yourself in front of a DJ, shaking and grooving, and you most definitely know that an expensive bottle of Champagne should only be purchased as a weapon to spray into the crowd or peers and peasants alike that surround you. You laugh in the face of the après novices who unwittingly come unprepared to spend their entire lifesavings on a Coors Light. You are primped and ready to put a modern mortgage payment down to sit on one of the elite plush couches while you slurp up $50 martinis like they came from the penny slots. You mean to live today to cry tomorrow, and I have never respected your lifestyle more.
Such beautiful savagery is something that I truly respected to see in a person every time the après hour rolled around. The expert knowledge and enjoyment of an afternoon throwing your money away on booze and hectic vibes, knowing the real stories will come not from your twists and turns through powder or slush but through the bad and idiotic decisions made while lost to the haze of the après. Only the true après experts have triple diamonds drip from their auras and hearts made of discos. May you party on my experts, may you rage on.
I hope you enjoyed reading todays offbeat anecdote about the inspiration behind my Après Expert painting. I hope that you yourself can at least once find out if you have the après expert in you. I hope you will tune in next Sunday for another fun offbeat anecdote.
As Always,
Keep it offbeat!
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