PARK RECORD: Mr. Niño, they say that you’re strengthening, with a greater than 90% chance of becoming “very strong” this fall and winter, and a 69% chance to become a historic event exceeding previous El Niños going back to 1950. Do you care to comment?

SUPER EL NIÑO: Very strong? Very strong? When I climb that turnbuckle and rip off my shirt, everyone will damn well know I’m not “Very Strong El Niño!!!”

By the way, regular El Niño is a disaster. Small. Very small. He makes three inches overnight and everybody loses their minds. No energy. Very little energy.

I am the greatest Niño. Nobody understands Niño better than me.

You think you know precipitation? You don’t know precipitation. Beautiful, magnificent precipitation. The whitest precipitation. Very deep. Very fluffy. The greatest of its kind anywhere that’s ever been precipitated and believe me, this is a Niño they’ve been trying to precipitate for over 75 years. And I will bring it in under budget and ahead of schedule.

In fact, nobody’s ever seen precipitation like this. Tremendous precipitation. Unprecedented. People are saying possibly the greatest precipitation in history. Very respected meteorologists. They come up to me with tears in their eyes.

Sixty-nine percent chance of historic. Sea-surface anomalies above 2 degrees Celsius. Nobody builds anomalies like me. By the way I’m changing that to Fahrenheit. Celsius is for punks.

La Niña? Weak, very weak, very unattractive. Nobody’s bigger or better at Niño than I am.

When I get in here, it will be Super El Niño versus the universe!

Jimmy Superfly Snuka? He’s a chump. Horrible.

Super Tuesday? That’s one day. I’m here all winter. They tried to get me out. But I stayed.

Super Bowl? You need a bowl? I am the entire American Ocean! We changed that, by the way. That was my idea.

Superman? Look at the muscles on this guy. Very hot, very handsome. Put some pants on.

Super moon? Lemme bend over, I got your super moon right here. Unbelievable moon. The biggest moon. It’s so big, it’s so enormous, it’s so amazing.

I’m the world’s greatest weather system. Nobody’s bigger or better at weather than me.

Tremendous weather. Huge.

PARK RECORD: But Mr. Niño, if I may, what about the atmospheric river?

SUPER EL NIÑO: You call that a river? It’s a creek. A sad, little creek. I’ve seen bigger rivers coming off a snowbank in April.

Bomb cyclone? Terrible name. Ridiculous.

Polar vortex? Spins around. Total loser.

And don’t come at me with lake effect snow. You need a lake to make snow? Pathetic. Everyone knows I have an ocean. A big, beautiful ocean.

PARK RECORD: What about the Farmer’s Almanac?

SUPER EL NIÑO: Fake weather. They’ve been very unfair to me. Very wrong.

PARK RECORD: OpenSnow?

SUPER EL NIÑO: Great people. Love OpenSnow. Very smart people. Unless they say I’m going south. In which case, they’re morons.

PARK RECORD: What do you say about the historic snowmaking expansion at Deer Valley?

SUPER EL NIÑO. Those little snow guns? Cute, very cute. I don’t even wait. I grab them by the nozzles. Tiny little nozzles. Very cute. I don’t make snow. I make history.

I am the most powerful climate phenom on the planet.

I will shift the jet stream.

I will alter global weather patterns.

I wi—

PARK RECORD (interrupting): But Mr. Niño, will you snow in Park City?

SUPER EL NIÑO: Quiet, powder piggy.

The post Betty Diaries: Super El Niño at the World Weather Federation Press Conference appeared first on Park Record.

For my birthday last February, I’d invited my ski crew to meet me at Silver Lode for a group photo at the “This Is Your Mountain” sign up top before we all did a lap together.

On the day, all but three friends canceled at the last minute. I was a kind of disappointed at the small turnout, but happy that at least Larry, Chris and Jake had shown up.

At the top of the lift, the guys pulled a bottle of Veuve Clicquot out of a backpack and started unfurling a white sheet onto which they’d spray-painted something. They draped the sheet over the sign so it now read “This Is KATE’S Mountain.”

As they snapped pics and toasted my birthday, a couple skied up. The woman said, “My name is Kate, too. Mind if we grab a pic?”

The other day, I saw that Park City Mountain had just unveiled its new tagline: “Larger Than Life.”

Hmm, OK.

I’ve spent my career working in advertising and branding, so naturally I have opinions — lots and lots of opinions.

I will concede that Park City Mountain is large. It is, after all, the biggest ski resort in the United States. But skiing isn’t some pissing match about who’s bigger. Or is it? Deer Valley has about tripled their ski terrain, so maybe it is one of those ours-is-bigger-than-yours moments.

But the best branding doesn’t just tell you what the brand is. It gives you a way to understand how you fit into it. “Just Do It” doesn’t say a word about shoes. Apple’s “Think Different” says nothing about revolutionary computers. Even Alta’s “Come For The Skiing, Stay For The Skiing” creates an immediate connection with the skier. It says: We know you and we understand exactly why you’re here.

“Larger Than Life,” by contrast, feels like Park City Mountain is a loud-talker standing on top of Jupiter Peak humble-bragging about itself to anyone who’ll listen. It just ends up feeling like some kind of abstract boast.

“This Is Your Mountain” took something enormous and made it intimate. “Larger Than Life” takes something enormous and makes it enormous-er. But why?

Here’s the thing. Brands don’t live inside a tagline. They’re brought to life by the people who experience them. That’s us, the passholders.

And this tagline is especially triggering given the past few seasons at Park City Mountain: the larger-than-life lift lines, prices, parking problems, patrol disputes — not to mention the smaller-than-life snowfall.

You can call it Park City bitching and complaining, but the gap between the intention and the actual experience is real. And that’s why the jokes practically write themselves.

I can imagine the creative rationale. I can see what they’re trying to do. Along with the mountain, they’re trying to supersize the experience itself.

The funny thing is, the moments that have made skiing feel grand to me have almost always been intimate.

Skiing brings me back into my body. It makes larger-than-life problems — climate change, war, data centers — fall away. It’s been one of the few constants in my life since I was 6, outlasting my father’s own passion for the sport, my marriage, injuries, all the younger versions of myself.

And suddenly there I am, standing on my skis, all alone in a grove of pine trees, the stillness surrounding me like an embrace. In the moment, I become small enough to notice everything. The light through the trees, the untouched snow before me, my breath, silence.

When the farmer-poet Wendell Berry passed away the other day, I began to see his poems everywhere. “The Peace of Wild Things” took me back to those moments of skiing, those trees and the power of words themselves:

I feel above me the day blind stars, waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I don’t need to become larger than life to meet a vast landscape. I find my own proportion within it. The natural world is amplified enough. I don’t need it to make me feel bigger. I only need to find my place within it, to feel like I belong.

In that moment, the mountain is all mine.

The post Betty Diaries: Larger than life appeared first on Park Record.

“Dolly Parton’s death may be the last monocultural event of our era,” wrote one of my Substack friends. Yes, Dolly brought us together, “the last great unifier in a divided nation,” as one news outlet put it. Adored by fans across gender, race, class, politics and religion. Name a boundary. Dolly vaulted over it in 6-inch rhinestone heels, leaving in her wake a trail of Grammy-winning songs, hilarious quips and unbridled generosity.

In many ways, Dolly gave us the ultimate selfie. Big boobs, big wigs, fake eyelashes. A giant presence in a 5-foot-nothing body. The artifice was all part of the reality.

“I’ve created this and played it up — the makeup, the whole persona,” she told The New York Times in 2002. She was the author of her own image, one that was unequivocally singular and unabashedly Dolly.

The same day the internet mourned and celebrated Dolly, a bizarre side drama was unfolding. An online ad for Calloway golf depicted a woman being shoved to the ground as the mechanism for a joke about golf clubs.

This got me thinking: So much happens to the female body from the outside. It’s viewed, judged, sexualized, photographed, marketed to, legislated, commented upon—and sometimes physically acted upon.

“So much of womanhood is spent learning to observe ourselves from the outside, as though we are both the person living in our body and the audience watching it,” the actor Kristin Stewart mused recently.

We constantly doubt ourselves: Am I too fat? Too skinny? Is this outfit flattering? Should I wear more makeup or less, work out more or not get too muscular, dye my hair or let it go gray, get Botox or embrace my wrinkles? And on and on and on. And we’re not the only judges. Everyone else seems to have an opinion about what we should or shouldn’t do with our bodies, too. And somehow, through all of this, we’re supposed to emerge completely secure in our own.

It’s like, yes, ladies, by all means, embrace your body and all that it’s capable of. But whatever you do, please don’t talk about all the normal things that happen to it: menstrual cycles, wanting kids, not wanting kids, miscarriages, infertility, perimenopause, menopause, aging, painful sex. La la la, I can’t hear you.

On a bike ride the other day, one of my friends suggested lengthening the route so we could “earn our dinner” at Blind Dog afterward. To be fair, I’ve echoed the same sentiment many times. But would it be so wrong to think of a California roll as fuel for physical activity rather than a reward?

I don’t know if you follow the Olympic rugby medalist Ilona Maher on Instagram, but 5.6 million people do. And it’s not just because of her talents on the pitch. It’s because, like Dolly Parton, she’s someone who seems to be completely at home in her body.

The other day, she posted a reel of herself and two other female rugby players dancing on a beach in tiny bikinis. All three of them were absolutely ripped — huge biceps, thunder thighs, big ol’ buns of steel that jiggled like Jell-O. It wasn’t so much that they were proud of their bodies. It was just that they didn’t seem the least bit concerned with how they were viewed. It was the Insta-equivalent of dance like no one’s watching.

Which begs the question: Do we actually need to wake up every day and think about how good/bad/ugly our bodies are? What if we didn’t feel like we had to be on a lifelong self-improvement quest? I mean, imagine if we didn’t think so much about what our bodies looked like.

Maybe that’s the ultimate freedom. Not trying so hard to love the view from the outside, but getting back inside our bodies.

Suddenly all the things we do here in Park City could take on a whole new meaning. Like, my thighs aren’t something to compare to the woman riding in front of me. They’re the things pushing me up the hill. My arms don’t have to look like this or that. They’re helping me press a set of heavy dumbbells over my head. Food doesn’t have to be a guilty pleasure to be earned only when I’ve worked my butt off. It’s simply the fuel that allows my body to do the things I love.

In a 1977 interview, Barbara Walters told Dolly she was beautiful and she didn’t need the wig and eyelashes and all the rest.

“I don’t like to be like everybody else,” Dolly replied. “I would never stoop so low to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

Dolly and Ilona couldn’t look more different. One all platinum wigs and eyelashes, the other biceps and buns of steel. Neither is a template for what the rest of us should look like, either. And maybe that’s the point.

I’m back on my mountain bike, riding behind one of my friends. I notice her thighs and stop the thought before it even forms. There’s a hill in front of me, and it won’t climb itself.

The post Betty Diaries: Working 9 to 5 from the outside in appeared first on Park Record.

He had sunglasses on in his profile pic (red flag), but he was holding an adorable mini dachshund in his lap (green flag). I called it a draw and agreed to meet him for a drink.

When I arrived for the date, he stood up to greet me wearing short shorts. I mean, not exactly 1980s Tom Selleck short, but close (yellow flag). Then I spotted not one, but two man necklaces (red flag).

I decided to set all flags aside for the evening and from there, the conversation flowed. I left the date feeling cautiously optimistic. He was smart, funny, interesting, attractive. In fact, it was one of the best dates I’d had in months. He asked if I wanted to get together again in a few days and I was all for it, even suggested maybe I’d cook for him.

Perhaps this is against the rules, but I texted him on the app right away when I got home to say what a great time I had. I gave him my phone number so we could continue our conversation off the app. And then … crickets. Nothing that night and nothing the following morning. Around noon, he finally texted back on the app to say he enjoyed the date, was going to California after all — after what? — and would let me know when he was back.

My internal red-flag detector lit up like the torchlight parade at Park City Mountain. How had I misread this? There were signs, of course. The necklaces, the short shorts, the crickets. By 12:03, I’d collected enough evidence to convict.

But something stopped me. Was I being fair or had modern dating turned me into Marg Helgenberger on “CSI: Park City”?

I texted a group of girlfriends to ask about their own red flags. Sure, I’d expected I’d get some funny replies, some collective wisdom even. But it was way more than that. The first response came in seconds: “You’re gonna have enough flags to make a blanket.”

The rest came in a gush as if I’d opened a particularly juicy vein, and then dribbled in over the course of one day and into the next.

Holding a fish, animal carcass or rifle.

Being Mormon.

Being ex-Mormon.

Being from Utah.

Ethical non-monogamy.

Being married; never been married.

Unsolicited dick pics.

Throwing trash on the ground because you’re “keeping someone employed”

Aliens, furries, Harry Potter, conservatives.

Patchwork quilted vests and bad hats.

No friend group; the wrong friend group.

Too needy; too independent; too complimentary; not complimentary enough; comes on too fast; holds back too much.

One friend even sent a photo of a pair of “red flag blinders,” she’d received as a gift designed to “ignore all the relationship red flags” and continue entertaining your friends with all your bad life decisions.

And my personal favorite: a profile pic of a guy holding an AK-47 with the barrel pointed directly to camera in response to the dating app prompt, “A special talent of mine,” which preceded a suggestion to get together for a “casual coffee to see if the vibe matches.”

Apparently, I hadn’t just tapped into red flags. I’d triggered layers of unresolved grievances that ran so deep they were on the verge of collapsing under their own weight. The sedimentary rock of accumulated dating experience, bad relationships, worse marriages and too many men left to their own questionable fashion choices. It was as if my friends had been waiting years for someone to ask.

But were all of these replies really red flags? One man cheats on his wife. Another talks over women. Yet another is jealous or spiteful. And one happens to wear an unfortunate vest. Yet all are filed under the same heading: RED FLAG. Even my own closing argument about man necklaces isn’t exactly evidence that said man isn’t emotionally available. No shade on Harry Styles. I just really don’t like man necklaces.

Maybe we’ve become too good at finding reasons not to like someone. I equate 21^st century dating with tire-kicking. If one dude doesn’t meet all the qualifications, another one who might is just a swipe away. I fantasize about a time when dating was simpler or maybe non-existent. Imagine living in the 1800s when there was a total of seven eligible men, all within a half-day buggy drive. Four are cousins. Two have tuberculosis. That leaves Jedediah, who has a beard the size of an adult groundhog. But hey, he owns 14 acres.

Ladies, grab your bonnet and LFG.

Back then, nobody worried about whether there was spark. A few head of cattle and a literal pot to piss in was chemistry enough. Now we stop at nothing short of “The Notebook.” Amid all the tire-kicking we’re losing something that really matters: our ability to be curious. Instead of rolling our eyes at the absurdity of the ick, we could be trying to discover what really makes someone tick.

I once asked a friend about the secret to her long-term marriage. Whenever her husband does something truly annoying, she muses to herself, Isn’t that adorable. But not all red flags can be magically transformed into something charming. As one friend said, “Given what I was married to and the man he became, I should’ve paid more attention to the red flags.” Other friends echoed the sentiment. They weren’t just being overly picky. They’ve learned things — jealousy, control, dismissiveness. Someone who consumes all your time. Someone who diminishes you. Their red flags were acquired at a cost.

After years of marriage and subsequent years of dating, I can relate. I’ve been rejected. I know what it’s like to hurt someone and to be hurt myself, to lose parts of myself.

Given those experiences, a red flag can signal genuine danger. Or at least a kind of protection from our own vulnerability. Like, if I find something wrong with you first, I don’t have to find out if you’ll eventually find something wrong with me. Or if I’ll fall for you. Or if being with you will require giving up something I’ve fought hard to reclaim. I’ll be the first to admit: part is wisdom, part is armor. We’ve earned both.

Maybe men like Necklace Guy aren’t competing against every other dude we’ll meet on Hinge or Bumble or even IRL on the pickleball court at City Park. Maybe they’re competing against the lives we’ve built for ourselves in the meantime. For me, that’s a high bar, and I’m OK with it. If Mr. Necklace does reach back, maybe I’ll see him again. But not because I’ve decided red flags don’t matter. Just because I’m curious enough to find out who he is.

The necklaces, however, remain under review.

The post Betty Diaries: Let’s run it up the red-flag pole appeared first on Park Record.

The following pages were discovered beneath a pile of Patagonia puffers and Carhartt beanies in a utility closet somewhere on Main Street.

ACT ONE: SOMETHING IS COMING

EXT: MAIN STREET — DAY

INT. NO NAME SALOON — DAY

TWO weathered LOCALS sit on stools at the bar. The BARTENDER sets a shot and a beer in front of them.

LOCAL #1

Jesus, Max, can you believe we’re still sitting here after all these years.

LOCAL #2

Seems like only yesterday I was slinging burgers when this joint was The Alamo.

LOCAL #1

And you had hair.

LOCAL #2

Too bad this town is going down the toilet — amirite or amirite, Max?

BARTENDER

Yeah and I heard they’re opening another yoga shop in the old Main Street Pizza & Noodle.

LOCAL #2

Just what this town needs — more black leggings.

He downs his shot and slams the glass onto the bar. The lights overhead FLICKER and the bar goes dark.

FADE TO BLACK.

Ominous music.

EXT. NO NAME SALOON — PRE-DAWN

A large black sign has appeared overnight. Crudely hand-lettered in white:

COMING SOON.

FADE TO BLACK.

ACT III: THE INVASION

EXT. MAIN STREET — PRE-DAWN

Camera pans slowly up the block, pausing at various storefronts. Each storefront fades up and fades out.

Ominous music with a disturbing industrial hum.

ALO.

WARBY PARKER.

SEPHORA.

ANTHROPOLOGIE.

FADE TO BLACK.

EXT. CITY HALL — MORNING

INT. CITY HALL — MEETING ROOM — MORNING

A group of MEN AND WOMEN has assembled. CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS sit at the dais looking tired and concerned.

MAN #1

All we want to know is what the hell is going on!

WOMAN #1

We had dinner at Chimayo last night and then this morning when I was walking up Main, it was a Cheesecake Factory!

WOMAN #2

(Quietly, as if in a daze)

I asked my husband to pick me up a coffee at Atticus and he came back with a $22 Erewhon latte.

ELDERLY MAN

I haven’t seen anything like it since Mall of America opened in 1992.

The doors BURST OPEN. A 12-YEAR-OLD BOY with curly hair and a baseball cap rushes into the room, waving a large piece of paper.

WOMAN #3

Dustin! What are you doing here?

DUSTIN

Do you have to be told everything? You guys, listen. We don’t have much time — this is a CODE RED.

The group crowds around Dustin and the paper, which we now see is an ancient map of Main Street. He uncaps a Sharpie.

DUSTIN

OK, everybody, listen up. Here’s Alo. Sephora. Chick-Fil-A.

He begins connecting dots.

CLOSE ON: THE MAP

The Sharpie moves erratically across the paper as the lines begin to form a pattern.

MAN #1

Son of a biscuit eater —

WOMAN #3

Oh my god. It can’t be.

DUSTIN

I’m afraid it can.

The completed shape comes into view: one large circle with two smaller circles on top. DUSTIN slowly colors the three circles black. Distorted MERRY-GO-ROUND MUSIC begins to play. An eerie CHILDREN’S CHORUS joins in, singing “It’s a Small World.” The lights FLICKER.

FADE TO BLACK.

ACT THREE: THE UPSIDE DOWN

INT. ELEVATOR — UNKNOWN

The group from City Hall is crammed into an elevator descending into darkness. The only illumination comes from a glowing red NO EXIT sign.

WOMAN #1

Where are we going Dustin?

DUSTIN

You’ll see.

EXT. MAIN STREET — THE UPSIDE DOWN

The group emerges onto Main Street. But something is terribly wrong. Every building has been beautifully restored. There isn’t a single Java Cow napkin, Union Cafe paper cup or Collie’s dental pick on the ground. Soft instrumental music floats through the air. The group makes its way up Main Street.

ALO.

LULULEMON.

VUORI.

APPLE.

POTTERY BARN.

They stop at the Egyptian Theatre. It is now:

THE DISNEY STORE.

They continue.

Town Lift Plaza is now:

THE AMAZON PRIME LIFT, PRESENTED BY VISA.

Miner’s Park:

MINER’S PARK BY VICTORIA’S SECRET.

MAN #1

(panicked)

Wait. What about Dolly’s?

DUSTIN

(pointing)

There.

They look.

SPIRIT HALLOWEEN.

On the sidewalks, packs of 20-something blonde women move silently past, dressed in pastel leggings and matching crop tops. Nobody speaks. Everyone carries the identical pink Stanley cup.

DUSTIN

What I need you to understand is we’re under Main Street. This is an exact replica. Every time another national retailer opens up there, it gets stronger down here.

WOMAN #1

But … what happens when the last local business disappears?

Dustin looks at her.

DUSTIN

The two Main Streets become one.

The group freezes.

THUMP

A beat.

THUMP

They turn.

THUMP

At the far end of Main Street, a 30-foot CREATURE lumbers toward them. It is made of shopping bags, Starbucks cups, yoga mats, puffer jackets, Amazon boxes; its enormous body dripping in thousands and thousands of leggings.

CLOSE ON: DUSTIN. His face contorts in disbelief.

DUSTIN

Oh my god. It’s the MALL FLAYER.

FADE TO BLACK

ACT FOUR: THE BATTLE OF MAIN STREET

EXT. MAIN STREET—THE UPSIDE DOWN

The MALL FLAYER towers in the middle of the street surrounded by a flock of YOGA HANDMAIDENS. The women snap selfies, completely oblivious of the terrified group.

DUSTIN

Guys, listen. There’s only one way to stop them. The Mall Flayer feeds on predictability.

We gotta throw down with all the weirdness we got.

Woman #1 digs through her purse and pulls out a 1997 SUNDANCE CREDENTIAL.

WOMAN #1

Take that, you hideous pile of polyester!

She hurls it. The Mall Flayer SHRIEKS.

DUSTIN:

That’s it, Tanya! Come on! The rest of you! It’s now or never!

The group springs into action.

An ANCIENT SKI BOOT flies through the air.

A SHOT SKI.

A half-eaten BREAKFAST BURRITO FROM THE MARKET.

Someone produces a large double cheese, half-sausage, half-pepperoni pie from RED BANJO and sends it sailing. The Mall Flayer recoils in horror.

SOMEONE

LOCAL CHARACTER!

The yoga handmaidens SCREAM and flee down Main Street. The Mind Flayer begins to melt, collapsing into a bubbling pile of black, plastic goo. Within seconds, the goo vaporizes into a thin plume of lavender incense. It hangs in the air for a moment, then disappears.

EXT. MAIN STREET — DAWN

The group emerges onto the actual Main Street. Dawn breaks over the mountains. The hideous creature is gone. The town has been saved. The group embraces. Dustin smiles. Then something catches his eye. His smile disappears.

Across the street, a CONSTRUCTION WORKER is hanging a sign outside No Name Saloon. Dustin stares.

CLOSE ON: SIGN

COMING SOON: COSTCO.

CUT TO BLACK.

The post Betty Diaries: Stranger Things and the mall-ification of Main Street appeared first on Park Record.

They travel in packs, these young women in $500 hats from Kemo Sabe, fringed crop tops, cowboy boots that have never kicked dirt and sassy polyester sashes. Every 25 feet or so, another entourage appears, halting midday traffic as they snap selfies in the middle of the street.

Since when did our mountain town become Nashville of the West for Bridal Barbie?

Day and night, they’re everywhere. Blocking the sidewalk outside No Name while one of them yells in a panic, “You guys! I forgot my ID!”

Shooting TikTok reels as they try on every fringe jacket on the racks at Blueprints Vintage. Downing pitchers of Aperol spritz and espresso martinis at The Cabin. They’re on the hiking trails, a bevy of Lululemon ambassadors. They’re at the spa, a royal court seated on pedicure thrones.

The modern bachelorette party isn’t really a party any more at all. It’s a production, an experience, a way of life. Dammit, I’ll say it. It’s an era worthy of Taylor Swift herself. Call it curated brand activation or immersive performance art. It comes complete with themed dinners, professional photographers and three-day itineraries.

How did this even happen in the first place? Obviously, it took a bunch of horny dudes to get the ball rolling. Bachelor parties have been around since at least the Spartans, who toasted departing grooms before marriage. The French call it enterrement de vie de garçon, which I believe roughly translates to Rest in peace, sucker.

For centuries, bachelors got their last debaucherous hurrah while bachelorettes were expected to sip tea, exchange recipes and politely prepare for domestic bliss. But somewhere between feminism, Instagram and Airbnb, women caught up — with the bachelorette-party economy now roughly the size of a small country’s GDP.

My own late-1900s bachelorette party was thrown together at the last minute by three of my closest friends and consisted of shots, more shots, dancing at (and on) a local bar and a midnight viewing of a porno they’d purchased from the backroom at Blockbuster entitled “From Russia with Lust.” One thing that stands out in my memory amid tears of laughter is their repeated exclamations of “We own it!” as if we’d be watching it over and over again like some kind of X-rated “Napoleon Dynamite.”

Thankfully, to my knowledge, there exists not one shred of photographic evidence of any of it.

I’m not saying it was better than today’s bachelorette parties. But I’m not not saying it. Though, if I’m being honest, if we’d had unlimited Delta miles and an iPhone with FaceTune, who’s to say we wouldn’t have shown up in Park City like a rhinestone cowgirl, too?

As a kind of reality check, I asked some of my friends about their own bachelorette party memories. I wanted to know what stood out the most.

I started with my best friend, Mary Ann. I know I was there for it but could only vaguely recall barhopping in Buffalo. That was basically it, she told me. But what cemented the memory for her was something more.

“I remember I felt very loved,” she replied.

Another friend Michele said what stood out for her was that it was the last time she got blackout drunk.

“We danced, got sweaty and random guys bought us way too many shots. I puked in the club’s bathroom,” she said. “The next morning I woke up wearing my pajamas in my brother’s spare room with absolutely no memory of how I got there.”

Judi celebrated her bachelorette at a famous New York City restaurant where friends honored her with a parade of phallic desserts. Her fondest memory of the night was “sleeping in a sea of blow-up mattresses in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment and giggling until dawn.”

Diane remembered a bar-crawl scavenger hunt. She wore an oversized T-shirt to which her friends safety-pinned the scavenged items: a shoelace, a man’s size XXL underpants, a sign from a local bar, a library card. Ironically, at the end of the night, she found herself sitting next to the owners of the bar from which she’d stolen the sign, which was pinned prominently to her shirt. They wished her good luck, but made her return the sign.

Not one of them mentioned the decorations. Or the matching outfits. Or where they stayed. What they remembered were the people who were there.

Maybe the bachelorette was just an excuse to get together one last time before destiny took over and scattered us all. Marriages, babies, divorces, job changes, cross-country moves. Life has a way of unfolding in ways you can’t conceive when you’re marching around in cowboy boots in your 20s and 30s. Eventually, you realize the costumes, the songs, the absolute absurdity of it all were never really the point.

Next time I see a bachelorette party strutting down Main, I’ll still wonder how our town became ground zero for the Cowgirl Bride Industrial Complex. But I’ll also know there’s a decent chance none of them will remember the balloon arch or the matching pajamas. They’ll remember someone laughing so hard beer came out her nose. Someone making sure they got back to the Airbnb. Someone dancing on a tabletop in her bra.

They’ll remember how deeply treasured they were by the friends who knew them before they became someone’s wife. The ones who remembered every version of you — including the blackout drunkie — and loved you anyway. The ones who were willing to put on an embarrassing sash or a T-shirt pinned with a pair of tighty whities. And they did it all simply because you asked.

The post Betty Diaries: The unexpected value of bachelorette party industrial complex appeared first on Park Record.

I sat by myself at the bar at Pine Cone Ridge waiting for some friends and also for the barman to notice me. As far as I could tell, I was the barfly equivalent of The Invisible Woman.

I knew better than to gesticulate wildly or yell out, so I just sat there waiting for him to look up from the other end of the bar where he was preparing a cluster of Aperol spritzes with all the focus of a cardiac surgeon.

Something about being alone and feeling awkward reminded me of the days when instead of fiddling on an iPhone, people smoked. There was a confidence — however faux it may have been — in holding a Marlboro Light and casually blowing rings that wafted into a cloud of blue smoke over the bar. An air of nonchalance that made a woman feel less like she was looking for Mr. Goodbar and more like she was waiting for Mr. Bogart.

Now before you go all self-righteous on me, please know that I quit smoking over 20 years ago and I still consider it one of the best things I ever did for myself. Still, there was just something about a cigarette that made the experience of sitting alone at a bar not feel desperate but somehow communal instead.

Suddenly, from behind me, a man’s booming voice jolted me out of my reverie. “No, I’m not talking about my second wife,” he intoned at a volume I estimated to be about 87 decibels. “I mean my third wife.” Clearly, his dinner guests stood corrected on this and many other topics.

Not to be outdone, a woman holding court at another four-top behind me could be heard giving a Ted Talk on the pros and cons of solar farms and something about circling back to put a pin in some low hanging fruit.

I furtively glanced over my shoulder to suss it out. By the looks on her companions’ faces, this was a work dinner and there was no question who was the boss. Still, it was hard to tell if they were raptly listening or just sleeping like lizards.

Next to me at the bar sat a couple, maybe on a Bumble date. The man read the menu aloud for his lady friend — and anyone else within a 75-foot radius.

The whole bar felt like a fever dream of a “Seinfeld” episode or maybe a version of hell where the Loud Talker, The Movie-Ending Teller, The One-Upper and The Person Explaining Something Nobody Asked About all came together at once. None of them appeared to have come to dinner. They had come to present.

With all of these people dominating conversations, it was impossible not to wonder whether anyone actually listens anymore. Maybe we’re all just waiting for our turn to expound. Not just mere mortals — apparently, we all have a version of the new loud talker on our iPhones. And whether their name is Chat or Claude or Siri, they’re just as omnipresent.

Ever since AI entered the chat, it’s like we invited one more person to every dinner table, the ultimate mansplainer. One minute you’re discussing vacation plans. The next, someone says, “Let’s ask Chat.” And suddenly six perfectly intelligent human beings turn off their brains while everyone waits intently for the glowing oracle to hold forth.

The funny thing is, a version of this really happened after my friends finally arrived at Pine Cone and we were seated at our own four-top in the bar. My friend Matt was talking about how he asked AI how it actually, actually works. He was very specific about the “actually, actually” phrasing.

I have to admit, I read Chat’s answer with genuine curiosity. And it was indeed compelling enough that the rest of us decided to enter the same question to our own version of Chat. Each answer was different, yet equally compelling. Suddenly, The Most Interesting Man in the World wasn’t a man at all.

But don’t you wonder what makes someone interesting in the first place? Somewhere along the line, we’ve become obsessed with having the smartest thing to say. But maybe the most interesting person in the room is simply the one who makes everyone else want to keep talking.

The next morning, I sat alone on my balcony drinking coffee, my thoughts suddenly interrupted by a cacophony of birds in some lilac bushes next to me. They were chirping in chorus, each with something so important to say, it couldn’t wait for a pause.

I couldn’t help but listen — at least until the noise dwindled down to just a few tentative tweets before all fell silent. And for the moment, it was just me and my thoughts.

The post Betty Diaries: Conversation peace appeared first on Park Record.

Park City Sunrise Rotary Club and High West Distillery hope to reclaim the longest U.S. shot ski title set by Breckenridge in December 2024. This year’s sold-out event promises to serve up a new milestone of 1,410 shots. — Park City, October 2025

Breckenridge again broke the record for the world’s longest shot ski, snatching the crown from Park City in what has become a back-and-forth competition between the two mountain towns. In total, 1,420 people participated in the Breckenridge event. — December 2025

Facebook Community Forum, Posted July 2026

Howdy all, I’m a member of the Park City Sunrise Rotary. In case you don’t know us, we’re the coolest club in the valley, the one that puts on the annual shot ski event on Main Street. We’re looking for skis that no one wants anymore to use in the event. But not just any ski! If you have some that meet the following criteria, please DM me and I will arrange to pick them up. Thanks!

Length: greater than 175 cm.

Width: the fatter the better. No cross country or narrow skis.

Skis must be “flat” with minimal uneven surfaces.

No twin-tip or skis with long rocker tips.

Skis must be clean, good condition and without rust.

I shouldn’t have to say anything more but knowing you like I do, and I’ve lived in Park City long enough to know you better than you probably know yourself, I’m going to put an even finer point on our search criteria.

To wit, is it built on the principles of the Four-Way Test that we in the Sunrise Rotary apply to all we say or do?

First, is it true? Here is where you have to consider motivation and intent. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to part with the Volkls you’ve been stepping over in your garage since the Clinton administration, this is it.

Second, is it fair to all concerned? Only if it beats the pants off the people of Breckenridge. They, for reasons known only to them and their questionable municipal priorities, believe they deserve this record more than we do.

Third, will it build good will and better friendships? I ask, have you ever watched 1,400 strangers of varying heights simultaneously attempt not to spill bourbon into their neighbor’s cleavage? If that’s not goodwill, I don’t know what is.

And fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? To my mind, there’s nothing more beneficial than a heavy pour of High West Yippee-Ki-Yay in a shot glass superglued to a Salomon X Scream someone found in a gully at Park City Mountain in 1995. Nor is there any higher calling for a ski that’s spent the last 20 years wedged between a rusty snowblower and three Rubbermaid bins of Christmas lights. If that ski could talk, it wouldn’t ask for another powder day. Nay, it would simply say, “Send me.”

That ski deserves one last shot. Literally and figuratively.

Above all, understand that a vintage ski reimagined into a party plank for synchronized drinking is not an end. It is a fulfillment of purpose. Please do not donate skis that have been merely “resting” in your basement. We’re looking for those that are prepared to serve. Skis that know service requires sacrifice. And that a sacrifice that costs nothing is worth everything.

Friends, we were outshot by 10. Ten. A margin so small, it can no longer be blamed on Breckenridge. At this point, it’s on us. And trust me when I tell you, that margin should haunt every Park City resident who has ever uttered the words, I know a guy with an extra pair of skis. We did not spend generations hoarding retired Rossignols only to be outdone by a town that can’t even spell its own namesake.

Some communities ask that you donate blood. All we’re asking for is that pair of Atomic Powder Magics your wife has been threatening to take to the recycling center since she met you. So what are you waiting for?

One profits most who serves best and you know damn well those skis served your purpose. Now it’s time to think beyond yourself.

Think of your children and your children’s children. Years from now, when they ask what you did in the summer of ’26, when our mountain town found itself trailing Breckenridge by 10 measly shots, will you tell them you kept those Dynastars in the garage — or will you tell them you answered the call?

The post Betty Diaries: One last shot appeared first on Park Record.

I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted.

I’m tired of living in a world where every week — or every day — I’m asked to defend one more thing I thought we’d already agreed was worth protecting.

Where do you turn when something makes no sense at all? I’m talking about when the headlines leave you feeling monumentally hopeless. Like, literally.

I turned to poetry and read Wendell Berry’s “Questionnaire.” It asks in part: What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines and works of art you would most willingly destroy.

I turned to nature. On an early morning walk, I pondered a smoky sky rimmed in pink clouds so beautiful they stopped me in my tracks. Later, I pedaled my mountain bike high into the Wasatch, my heart exploding in my chest as I climbed through a cathedral of trees. Places know nothing of headlines.

But the simple awareness of the world’s beauty isn’t enough, is it?

I made some phone calls to Utah’s U.S. senators, Mike Lee and John Curtis. To my surprise, someone answered.

“Hi, I’m a constituent from Park City,” I began, reading from the script provided by 5calls.org. “I’m calling to urge the senator to push back against Trump’s order to shrink Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. He doesn’t have the legal authority to modify these monuments—”

I stopped. I wanted to make sure she was still there.

“Did you get all that?” I asked.

“You’re urging the senator to push back,” she replied as if she were reciting a grocery list.

I decided to take another tack.

“This is not what people want,” I continued off-script. “Are you aware that 70% of Utahns support protecting these monuments?”

There was a pause.

“I have heard that,” she said quietly.

This is not the first time we’ve had to step up to protect our national monuments, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. In 1997, photographer Clyde Butcher’s stunning Ansel Adams-like pictures of Grand Staircase-Escalante helped convince politicians that it was worth preserving. Advocates made their case. Laws followed. Boundaries were drawn. Presidents came and went.  

But none of our actions could reconcile us with the land itself. Long before it was an American monument, it was home to the Hopi, Paiute, Zuni, Ute and Navajo peoples. And long before that, it was, well, it just was.

I’ve spent enough time outdoors to know that standing in a place like Escalante isn’t about possession. It’s about belonging. The gratitude you feel looking out over a landscape so ancient and mysterious, you can’t help but wonder how it got here in the first place.

Those cliffs have seen Puebloan people, Navajo shepherds, Mormon settlers, uranium prospectors, tourists, presidents, lawsuits, floods, droughts. It makes me wonder: What’s the highest use of such a landscape? It could be minerals, adventure, memory. It could be home. I suppose every generation arrives convinced they know the answer.

But the canyon knows better.

It has outlasted the certainty of every era that believed it would have the final word.

Most of us tend to ask what the land can do for us — can it give us oil, copper, tax revenue? Even those of us who love the outdoors talk about what it gives: peace, beauty, recreation.

But one thing the land cannot give you is permanence. How can you own something that never really belonged to you in the first place?

I was once the owner of an 1876 Victorian home. Sometimes, walking through it, I’d think about all of the other families who’d occupied that space. Someone planted the maple in the yard. Someone celebrated birthdays in the dining room. Someone grieved a lost love in the front room. Then I came along. I didn’t really own it. For a little while, I just inherited responsibility for it. And now, it’s someone else’s responsibility.

Maybe that’s how it is with land.

You can think my home, my country, my monument. But every deed is really just a receipt for temporary custody.

We fight over ownership on a timeline the landscape barely notices. What would happen if we knew we were only borrowing this place from the past and from the future. Would we treat it differently?

Not that long ago, I stood alone on the Wedge Overlook of the San Rafael Swell. I looked out over a canyon so vast, so improbable. Over the sandstone goblins and gnomes and ridges and buttes that looked like they’d been sent from the moon or Mars. The canyon wasn’t waiting for me or anyone else to finish it. It was becoming all by itself. At the whim of weather and time. Just as it always had. To own it would be like trying to own a cloud.

The wind came back to me like a laugh.

The post Betty Diaries: Monumental questions appeared first on Park Record.

My friends and I went to the Oakley rodeo to see Xtreme Bulls, a competition where 40 of the sport’s top riders try to stay on a bucking bull for eight seconds, holding on with only one hand.

The champion was Stetson Wright, a hometown favorite from Beaver, Utah. And with a name like that, how could he not be? In fact, that night, as the announcer called out each rider, I couldn’t help but notice everyone had the perfect rodeo cowboy name. There was Cobie, Jeter, Dustin and Dakota.

What about Bob? I thought. What chance did he ever have?

It was the opposite of Willie Nelson’s “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” Out here, little boys named Stetson weren’t going to practice medicine or law if their mamas could help it.

Every time the announcer came on the loudspeaker, he seemed to be narrating two scenes at once: the one we saw in front of us and the one he saw in his own head. He was translating every seemingly ordinary moment into some kind of American mythology — not his America per se, but the America.  

A shiny pickup truck began circling the arena. The announcer introduced the rodeo official riding inside the flatbed along with his “beautiful, beautiful blonde wife.”

He later made a point of complimenting all of the Utah women with their “beautiful, beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes.” My friends and I looked at each other and laughed. While we weren’t all blonde-haired and blue-eyed, we couldn’t help but feel slightly flattered.

During the halftime show, yet another beautiful blonde appeared. Dressed in Wonder-Woman red, white and blue, her long hair flowing behind her, she stood atop two galloping steeds that she rode like surfboards.

The announcer marveled at the bond between the woman and her horses, as though she were Mother Earth herself.

“Folks, there’s only one bond stronger than the one between a lady and her horse,” the announcer said. “There’s only one love that’s truer.”

And I just knew what was coming next. I mean, what else could it be in this announcer’s version of America, the beautiful, beautiful?

Sure enough, it was Wonder Woman’s mini me who strode into the spotlight with her pony like Little Miss America.

“Folks, what American girl doesn’t want to have a pony and ride a pony?!” the announcer cried out. The crowd went wild and I have to admit it was the cutest thing ever as the little girl got the miniature horse to stand on its hind legs.

In one of the cringiest moments of the night, the announcer said, “Folks, we’ve got visitors all the way from England.” I braced myself. “We love your muffins and your tea,” he dad joked. “Sorry not sorry about that revolution.”

Then it was back to the competition. A rider burst out of the gate atop a furious bull. The bull bucked the rider and that’s when we saw the bull himself collapse. The rodeo clowns managed to distract him away from the cowboy. But as the bull got back on his feet, it was obvious that he was injured.

All of the excitement and intensity of the competition melted away. My friends and I looked at each other as one of them quietly said, “Oh my god, they’re probably going to have to put him down.”

“Folks! Don’t worry,” the announcer broke in, ever optimistic. “We’ve got some of the best bovine vets in the business back here,” he said as the bull was led out of the arena. “He’ll be just fine.”

The announcer seemed to be smoothing out all of the rough edges. Everything was great. This was America, after all.

Once I realized every story seemed to have another side, I started to see it everywhere. The line for corn dogs and BBQ were so long I decided to try something called a Navajo taco, which wasn’t a taco at all. Curious, I googled it. Turns out they were named for fry-bread rations the U.S. government provided to the Navajo people — the ones they forced out of their homeland in the 1860s to walk 300 miles to a new location in New Mexico.

That’s when I realized the sick feeling I had wasn’t just from the “taco.”

It felt like a moment I’d stumbled into a couple of days before at a party. “Well, what am I supposed to call them,” I overheard a beautiful blonde woman ask her friend.

“I think you’re supposed to say Native Americans or indigenous people,” the friend responded helpfully.

“OMG, who can keep track of all of this,” she sighed and wandered off to refill her chardonnay.

Back at the rodeo, I wondered how I was supposed to reconcile the announcer’s version of America on the backs of all the other versions we stepped over in our high-heeled cowboy boots.

“Folks, be sure to stick around for the grand finale,” the announcer said. And I knew there would be fireworks. Despite the bans, despite the wildfires, there would be no cautious drone show. The Oakley rodeo had its own idea of what the holiday deserved.

At the first rocket’s red glare, the crowd burst into a rousing rendition of “God Bless the USA,” and everyone seemed to know every single word. I turned to see a man in a cowboy hat standing above me on the bleachers. Silhouetted by a spectacular firework fountain, he was holding a little girl in his arms.

I immediately felt myself tearing up as I saw in my mind’s eye, my own father on a Fourth of July so many years ago. The booms terrified me, but my pop was there to protect me.

Standing there in that arena with its cringey announcer and Stetsons and injured bulls and beautiful, beautiful blondes and fry bread and fireworks and Xtreme Americana — not one of those cancels the others out.

Maybe that’s the real eight-second ride. Not hanging on to the bull, but hanging on to all those stories at once. The ones you’re told, and the ones that become your own to tell.

The post Betty Diaries: My second rodeo appeared first on Park Record.