Video Interview: AspenOut Founders Jon Busch & Bruce Lee

Interviewees: John Busch and Bruce Lee

Interviewer: Grace Hancock, Aspen Historical Society

Date: July 10^th, 2015

Today is July 10, 2015. This is an interview with John Busch and Bruce Lee about Aspen Gay Ski Week. My name is Grace Hancock. This is done for the Aspen Out organization. So John can you tell a little bit about what brought you to Aspen in the first place?

John: Oh what brought me to Aspen I was a music student. I came in 1964 as a student when the music school was all of not even three hundred students, one orchestra and a student orchestra and I kept coming back every summer.

Bruce: And you played?

John: I played the bassoon.

Bruce: That’s right.

John: And one summer I didn’t leave so I always caution music students every year don’t come back too many times or you won’t leave.

Okay, and Bruce how did you come to Aspen?

Bruce: Well I was going to boarding school in the Midwest, in Indiana, where we had lots of snow but not a lot of hills.  I saw an ad in Ski magazine for this amazing place called Aspen. Four mountains! I couldn’t believe it. I got myself out here at seventeen. I got on a plane to Denver,  figured out how to get from Denver to Aspen, which took 12 hours on two lane roads,  and when I arrived, said to myself: you know what, I’m going to live here one day. That was 48 years ago.

Okay and what year was that?

Bruce: Well that was in 1967 but I didn’t actually get myself moved here until 1975, which was the first year that these guys invited me to go to a party that one of the SAGA clubs was having in a condo. That’s when I first saw this whole thing, in 1975. But they’d been doing it a few years, right John?

John: Well that’s leading into your question you didn’t ask yet.

That’s okay.

John: We didn’t actually start Gay Ski week. There were two ski clubs, one from L.A and one from San Diego. SAGA, I don’t know what it stands for.

Bruce: I don’t either. We should find out for you about the anagram SAGA. They were actually quite popular back then. They were all over the country, and they were ski clubs. Gay ski clubs.

John: Gay ski clubs and they were coming to Aspen and they would invite us to their parties. And then finally one year maybe it was ‘75 was the famous art museum party.

Bruce: Right that’s the…

John: Which we kind of us as the…

Bruce: Can we back up a little bit and tell you that what these groups would do? There were four of them that I knew. There was San Diego, there was San Francisco, there was L.A and there was something from Dallas.

John: There was a Dallas group but really,

Bruce: They were called something else, a fraternity of some sort.

John: But really San Diego and L.A were the catalysts.

Bruce: And they would invite us over to their condos, which were mainly at the Gant Condominiums. Right John, most of them were staying at the Gant?

John: I think so there might have been some others.

Bruce: And they would have a potluck dinner. Number one: in 1975 you didn’t tell people that you were gay. So these groups were here and they were gay groups, but the only way you knew was word of mouth and innuendos. Which handkerchief you carried in which of your pocket, or what you said to a friend and how you said it. The groups would get together for potluck dinners, and whoever was hosting the dinner that night would have a little skit. And all the boys in the club would go around the condo and pull down all the shower curtains and the pillow cases, whatever they could find, make costumes, and have these wonderful little skits. Our friend David, (who was supposed to be here) David Hoch, was a thespian, as he did Community Theater.  He said we needed to do that, we were going to do this. So back to your story…

John: Well we were really embarrassed into it. They kept inviting us to their condos for parties for it was a few years. And we just,

Bruce: Right. And nobody had a house that was big enough to host this.

John: Right,

Bruce: So we said what if we use, actually was it the art museum? They had just moved into the art museum.

John: It was the new art museum.

Bruce: Right. It was beautiful.

John: And it worked out and it was a stunning place to have a party. I don’t think they invited us back. (Both laughing)

Bruce: After that first year, well we were all so surprised by it because how many people came (this is what David should be able to tell us, he had the records). We said: what kind of party are we going to have? Maybe a hundred people will come? So we’ll get two cases of wine and two cases of beer and we’ll have plenty. And we lugged it into the museum, and they started showing up, and an hour into this we’re out of wine and we’re out of beer, and what are we going to do now? And that’s when we realized this was a big deal.

John: Yup it was a big deal and then it was I mean that was the first year and that was the start of it

Bruce: Right and it wasn’t a, we weren’t a group, we weren’t a nonprofit, we weren’t anything. We were just a bunch of friends, who wanted to pay back the friends that now were coming every year to go skiing. Um and we did two years there?

John: No just one.

Bruce: Just the first year and then they didn’t, that’s right, they didn’t invite us back. So then….

John: I was surprised they let us in there in the first place. You know a party with beer and wine and artworks hanging on the wall.

Bruce: And how did that work? At the Jerome they let us in the first year, but then they said we couldn’t come back? We were there a couple years and then didn’t and then we went back again?

John: I don’t know this the history of it at that point.

Bruce: Right, back to the skit.  The next year when we went to the Hotel Jerome we said now we can have our skit, pay back for the parties. So David got together with John Mundy, and they wrote a show called Peter Man, remember that?

John: No I’m, that’s why we’re here.

Bruce: And John Mundy was Peter Pan, hence Peter Man. There were lots of innuendos about gay boys and what they did at ski week. It was a horrible show, we were a total flop, but at that point we were in the ballroom in the Jerome and no one cared how bad it was, as long as we all partied together.

Bruce: And it was a beautiful venue and even more people came the next year, and we realized if we’re going to do this we would have to pay for it somehow. So then we started charging.  We charged, wasn’t it five dollars?

John: It was five, we argued over whether it should be five or ten.

Bruce: Right, but in order to justify the five dollars to cover the party, we decided we’d give them a little pin. Which is how these all started (points to buttons on table). Back then, what you would do in bars at that time, was use a prop to signal you were gay.  Gay bars at the time had no sign, nobody who wasn’t on the in knew it was there.  You just had to know it was. That is what the pin would signal to each other.

Time Stamp: 7:55

Were there any types of those bars in Aspen at the time?

John: Yes.

Bruce: There was, believe it or not.

John: Believe it or not. We, we actually organized before ski week and we decided that we were going to find a bar in Aspen that was doing such bad business that they would want us and we found a bar called Jerry’s’ Place, owned by Jerry Michael which was David’s brother.

Bruce: Which was,

Both: In the basement of….

John: What’s the?

Bruce: It was called Crossroads Drug Store at the time.  It is now the Polo Ralph Lauren store. Downstairs, where the ski department is, that was the bar that was called Jerry’s’ Place.

John: And it was until the winter of ’74 you know as gay bars had a reputation even among the straight communities as having the best music the best dance clubs and,

Bruce: So all the straight boys wanted to come.

John: So all the straight boys wanted to and they did. It was a huge success and then we had the winter that they didn’t even open the lifts on Aspen Mountain till January because there was no snow.

Bruce: ’75 – ’76.

John: That was ’75-’76. And unfortunately I don’t know if I wanna. Well I don’t know if we’ll get into trouble here but Jerry Michael blamed the gay community he’s said oh you’re ruining all my business. And he turned it into a country western bar.

Bruce: Right.

John: Thinking it would keep the gay boys away and of course gay boys love country and western.

Bruce: All dressed up in cowboy drag; keep kicking.

John: Anyway then he shut the bar down and that was the extent of Aspen’s gay bar.

Okay was the extent of Aspen’s gay community or?

Bruce: Well back in those days what you would do is wear a bandanna. Do you remember what cotton bandannas were?

Yeah.

Bruce: They were actually a square piece of cotton that cowboys would tie around their necks.  When they were working they could take it off and wipe the sweat off. The company that made these bandannas, made them in a whole bunch of colors. There was gold and yellow and blue and green. Within the gay male population these colors would be symbols for different sexual preferences. So if you had a red bandanna in your left pocket, it would mean?  I never knew what any of that meant.

John: I never knew what it means.

Bruce: But so at first when the gay guys would come they would tie the bandannas around their necks. Then the first year that we went to the Jerome and charged the five dollars, I said next year we’ve got to give something to these guys.  So instead of the bandannas, I said what if we buy ski pins. I would buy ski pins every year for the store, as I was a buyer for a ski shop called Sabbatini Sport.  I said I can get us, you know I can order, a hundred, two hundred pins.  At first we didn’t actually make specific pins, like the buttons now used. We I would go to the ski show every year, after arguing over which pins were the most butch, the coolest, and then I’d go to the manufacturer at the show. They’d inevitably tell me they didn’t actually make a hundred of the ones we wanted, so we ended up with some pretty lame pins (hopefully Tom Mooney has some of those pins left). We felt this justified the five dollars charge to the party: you got drinks and you had the party, and then you wore your pin, so that for the rest of the week everybody would know: oh he’s gay, go say hello and let’s go skiing together.

Okay.

John: I will say that as is always the case when people are in Aspen on vacation they do things they wouldn’t necessarily do at home.

Bruce: Right:

John: And so during Gay Ski Week, even from the beginning people were pretty open and the town knew it was Gay Ski Week.

Bruce: At first there was sort of a mixed reaction in town.

Time Stamp: 12: 08

Okay so there was kind of both reactions to it?

Bruce: Yes,  I mean some people would grumble and say it’s bad for business and nobody’s going to come,  and what about the families? But then everybody realized two things: number one these are polite friendly boys and they’re nice to have, and number two they’re bringing money to town. Actually one thing that John forgot to mention, is the reason clubs like SAGA  happened to come together at the same time at first,  was that it  was just the last week of…

John: January.

Bruce: Of low season, so they could get a better deal.

Okay so that’s why they came to Aspen.

Bruce: (Nodding head yes) and that’s why they came that week.  You got a better deal on rooms and on lift tickets.  At first they came for the deal, and it grew and then they found out that each other were coming, and it became more of a tradition.

John: In fact we were instrumental in putting those groups together so we were really involved in a way all most from the beginning. Because as Bruce said they were not aware that each other were there.

Bruce: But having been hit on by one from each group, you know so and so here too don’t yah?

Okay and then you kind of merged to make it bigger is that how it worked?

Bruce: And the clubs I am told are still in existence.

John: Oh yeah.

Bruce: But the reason for the club is not as important anymore, just like the reason to have to have a specific event is not as important anymore. I mean, we’re all married, so we’re just another tourist. How long ago was it that the chamber of commerce  figured out that we shouldn’t be giving these guys a deal? They figured out this is a good business week and they pumped all the rates back up again.

John: Well the thing that really happened which was somewhat unfortunate is the X Games took over the last week of January.

Bruce: That definitely changed things.

John: And we had to move forward and so we were like right after Winterskol.

Bruce: Right

John: Middle of January, which is very close to Christmas and there has been discussion on moving ski week, and we were the original ski week.

Bruce: Right, and to your question earlier, originally there was only one ski week and it was Aspen Gay Ski Week.  Actually, to move forward, for the next couple of years we held the event as friends. When we realized there was money left at the end of the week, and we couldn’t ethically or morally, or legally, be keeping this money, we had to do something to make it legal.  That’s when we became the nonprofit.

Okay that’s when you started the organization.

Bruce: Right.

And what year was that approximately?

John: I don’t know what year it was,

Bruce: I don’t know. It must have been the early eighties; again I bet you Tom, or I bet you David, has that information.  We started electing officers, remember? And deciding do we have money and where should this money go and what nonprofit should this money go to? At that point there was a problem with the leadership, some of us got a little burnt out. We had real jobs and real lives and didn’t want to take all the responsibility.  We decided to have a “managing director”, whose name I don’t know if I should mention, as he ended up absconding with all the money.

John: We shouldn’t mention.

Bruce: No.

John: Anyway….

Bruce: So again, then it had to change again, and here we are…

John: Well I mean we’d been very stable for a number of years we had some changes in leadership, usually politics, local politics but I think the organization is pretty stable and were going to be here for the long haul.

Bruce: Who was it before Brian Gonzales, remember? The kid who moved to Florida ? He ran it for three or four years, cute little short kid, David something? I’ll bet you Brian Gonzales can tell you the logistics of the organization. After John and I and the original group, after about ten years, drifted away. At that time it became more of a production company, a money proposition. The board actually paid somebody to run it. They paid somebody to manage the event, although there was a nonprofit board. There was a paid production company for the event and the paid event would donate the profits to the nonprofit organization, which had a separate board.

John: That only happened a couple of years and it was a company out of Florida.

Bruce: Right and that was when the lesbians who ran the production company decided that they wanted the women to be included.

Time Stamp: 18:00

Okay yeah, so can you talk about how they got involved?

John: You’re going to have to talk about how they got involved, we I mean not to denigrate lesbian activities but they were notorious for not turning up. I mean we would do lesbian movies at the Wheeler and the lesbians wouldn’t come they, they were so private.

Bruce: And I think they felt….. I mean if you look at the history of lesbian involvement in gay history and gay activism, they were always very supportive of gay men and very they were there to help, but for many men they weren’t glamorous, they weren’t gorgeous, and they didn’t fit into a lot of these boys image of who we should be. It was a shame. A lot of the time I think they felt they were excluded, and that’s the reason they wouldn’t show up. And they would have their own little party their own little…..

So it was kind of separate?

Bruce: Yeah.

John: They would have, they would….

Bruce: Their own cocktail party, their own dinner, their own….

John: And we encouraged that.

Bruce: You might talk to Judy Norman, she would remember.

Okay

Bruce: Judy was one of the original local women in town, and every year she would say:  Bruce what about us? We would try and do something, and then we would go:  well where are you? What the hell did you just (starts laughing)

John: And uh Judy has over the years has expressed frustration with other lesbians not supporting her efforts.

Bruce: Oh yeah, so she would be an interesting person to talk to.  Also, I think that Brian Gonzales could definitely give you a lot of information about that whole middle period. And David (what was his name), the director, who was before Brian? The period when Brian moved the offices over to the Yellow Brick. They had become a legitimate organization and therefore were eligible to move into the Yellow Brick. And that was David, I think his name was David, who moved to that space. I helped move him in, but then he left for a boyfriend in Florida, I think. Brian took over and I dropped out at that point.

John: I think in a way to just there are things that facilitating gay ski week over the year, one of course was Aspen’s Gay Rights Ordinates.

Bruce: Do you know what that is?

We don’t know a lot about that organization.

John: That wasn’t an organization really but it was the gay community.

Bruce: Right,

John: And it was Ralph Brendis an attorney, a gay attorney in town and basically me. I’m from Portland Oregon and the Portland town council passed one of the first gay rights ordinates in the nation and I got a copy of that and I go well why not us?

Bruce: Why don’t we do this?… and is this 1980’s

John: 1978 it was passed,

Bruce: That’s it. So we were actually the first city…..

John: In Colorado,

Bruce: ….in the state of Colorado to have a gay rights ordinance.

John: Which we did that then Telluride did one.

Bruce: Which at the time was very empowering,

John: And we had the full support of city council.

Okay so that was well received by the community?

John: Very well received.

Bruce: I was actually able to purchase my first employee unit because of the ordinance.  You had certain points you met to qualify.  Because I had a partner, because the city would recognize the two of us as a couple, we able to qualify for the unit.  Otherwise, Mark and I never would have found a place.

So did that help the community in Aspen grow or how did that kind of change things?

Bruce: Not really.

John: It didn’t change things very much.

Bruce: Basically the, the sports in Aspen which tend to be extreme climbing, hiking, backpacking, skiing, mountain biking, that kind of thing,  are not sports that are necessarily where gay boys excel. So they might enjoy coming for a week, but they weren’t going to move here.

John: Some of those gay boys if they see you say that they’re gonna be upset.

Bruce: Oh well, we can move forward?  That’s totally changed.  Actually, now that’s changed, but at the time many people were more into cocktailing and dancing than they were into skiing. So people would come here to visit, but not necessarily move here. It was more as if you brought your boyfriend or you went and found him and you brought him back.  But it was pretty hard to find that guy.

John: There were a few early incidents in those days in the beginning of the gay rights ordinates um one was the evening that the, I was dancing with a guy at,

Bruce: At Ted’s? At….

John: Well that was another one.  This was at the Copper Kettle.

Bruce: Oh! That’s right!

John: That’s right yes and the owner of the Copper Kettle, who is a friend now, but will remain nameless um he called he said he wanted you to

(Bruce’s phone rings)

The owner of the Copper Kettle, I was dancing with a guy on the dance floor and he comes up and he says no ‘men dancing on the dance floor’! And I said, ‘well we’re not doing anything’. He says ‘if you don’t leave I will close the bar.’ And he called the police and he told them that on a Friday night crowded dance floor and he said ‘if you don’t kick John Busch out of this bar I will close the bar’ and the police just said ‘he’s not doing anything wrong go ahead and close the bar’ and he did at 12:00 on a Friday night. Oh it was a funny time.

Bruce (off camera): And Ted Kuchaba did the same thing at,

John: Ted, I was dancing with Dave Wodjyard, who was the minister.

Bruce (off camera): At Chrystal Palace? Not the Chrystal Palace, at…..

John: At Community Church he was the minister of the Aspen Community Church and we were dancing at the Paragon and Ted asked us to stop and Dave did he left. But by god I wasn’t going to do that, but the funny thing is he came over and lifted me up carrying me horizontally like in the movies off of the dance floor, he didn’t throw me out.

Okay and what years was that approximately?

John: It was around, all in the seventies sometime.

Bruce (off camera): And the thing that was so funny about that incident was (walks back on camera) his brother, Ted the guy who owned this bar.

John: Ted owned it.

Bruce: Right, Ted’s brother was a business partner with my lover. Everybody knew we were gay, that we were together, and they were in business together, but you didn’t talk about it. They could accept us on the one level, but no, it’s not proper here. That was the way things were then.

John: You’re talking about Louie?

Bruce: Yeah, Louie and Mark were partners. We used to go up to….

John: I didn’t even know that. I’m not sure how much of this stuff is going to be appropriate and in the final edit.

Bruce: Well I mean, she’s just trying to get information right? Nobody’s going to watch this? You’re going to watch this?

John: Oh, okay.

Well yeah, Aspen Out might use it but it’s mostly for information.

John: It has some elements, so more questions?

Time Stamp: 26:38

Okay did you guys face any obstacles with setting up the event? Like locally from the community or can you talk about how that worked every year, getting it started?

John: You know I don’t recall we ever had much trouble from the business community.

Bruce: Actually back to how we raised money to finance the event. One of the things we started doing was the brochure, the catalog.

And what was the catalog?

John: It’s a program.

Bruce: Right. Now it looks like this totally slick commercial magazine, with multiple advertisements. At first it was about two pages. It gave information where everything was going to be, so everyone would know where to meet, and what days to be where. There were two or three of us, who would go around to businesses and ask for advertisements. Asking businesses if they would be interested in an advertisement.  At first you were lucky to get four or five positive responses.  Now they are lining up to get in.

Oh I’m sure, it’s such a huge event now.

Bruce: With restaurants, we do something called friendship dinners. Restaurants vie for that now, but back then it was about fifty/fifty.  People would say: oh we are happy to have you here, but we’re not ready, we don’t want to advertise.  We don’t want to show our name.  It took five or six years for most businesses to open up to the idea.

Was that in the eighties mostly?

Bruce: Yeah, early eighties.

John: I’m going to shift back to the very beginnings, when I moved here, in ’69 there was a group of discreet but known older gay men in town. Ed Demming, Morris Taylor, only two names come to mind, we the young bucks in town tried to interest them, and tried to bring them into the activities and they wouldn’t have anything to do with us.

And why was that?

Bruce: Well this is back to why there were ski clubs. The group that we were talking about in Dallas was actually a fraternity.  Anywhere from the 20’s through the early 70’s, there were gay organizations where you could meet like-minded people, but they were very, very private. That whole generation of men were private about their lives. I mean, you would have met one or two people today, but they didn’t show up, who when their parents died still didn’t know that they were gay. Didn’t know that their children were gay. Back then you didn’t talk about it.

John: Yeah that was true.

Bruce: So this story that John is talking about. These guys would sooner be dead than be seen at a cocktail party at the Hotel Jerome. Than be seen with a bunch of, excuse me, faggots.

John: That’s I’m sure, yeah, yeah,

Bruce: Whereas today I ride and ski with guys in their twenties, all of whom could care less. The gay and straight boys don’t even know the difference between each other, and couldn’t care less. It’s a whole different world. And it’s amazing what fifty years…..

John: Fifty years.

Bruce: How much has changed in only fifty years. And when you talk to these guys about the way it was, they……. I mean, its history to them; they don’t really get it. And they go: no Bruce, it wasn’t really like that. You’re telling me that that’s the way it was?

Like the younger ones now?

Bruce: Yeah,

John: I wonder about the younger ones now I mean there’s us and we’re out and we’re active but is, I’m sure there is still a young group of gays in Aspen that is young that is active like when we were young but,

Bruce: They tell us that they basically go party with their straight friends, and their straight friend’s girlfriends, and they see nothing wrong with that. They all date each other and have a good time, so therefore there’s not so much need for gay venues.  “Gay” isn’t a thing anymore. That’s why this whole event is changing. You were asking about other clubs, who tried this commercially besides Aspen? When it became commercial, when it became commercially viable, not just viable but successful, people were making money, big money.  Everyone else wanted in on the game, so they popped up in Whistler, they popped up at Telluride, and they popped up in Park City. Park City of all places, Mormon country. But, you know, they saw a way to make money.

John: You know it should be said for sure we are the only nonprofit Gay Ski Week.

Bruce: Good point. And also because maybe because of that, or maybe in spite of that, we are really the only one to succeed, everyone else is dropping out. They’re ready to say they aren’t going to do it anymore. Gay rights done.

John: I’m surprised Whistler is…..

Bruce: Hanging kind of in there.

John: Yeah but remember there was that guy who absconded with the money? And it was right before the Whistler Ski Week and he split town and took all the money with him and they were scrambling like crazy.

Bruce: Right.

John: To salvage their ski week.

So maybe going off of that, do you want to talk about how, or maybe the reasons why, it was able to be so successful in Aspen and not so much other places?

John: Uh well Whistler was huge.

Bruce: Yes, and they were very successful. I think the younger generation has grown up skiing. Back when we first instituted something called the ambassador program, it was tough to find many experienced skiers…What we would do, besides doing parties at night, during the day we would lead groups of skiers around. When David and I started leading the double diamond group, theoretically the expert group, there really weren’t any experts. Most of the men who signed up would drop. I mean I’d start with maybe twenty or thirty guys at ten o’clock in the morning, by ten thirty, there would be maybe ten of them. Then at noon there were maybe three of them. But today I get many more experts. The kids today in their twenties are kicking butt. They grew up skiing, they grew up being athletes, and they just happen to be gay.  And they I’m here to ski, whereas for many years it was I’m here to be gay and I might try to ski.

John: Well uh people talk about you, and Bruce is you know oh I took a bunch of expert skiers out well if any of them are black diamond or double diamond, Bruce is triple diamond. I mean he intimidates on the slopes. He’s uh,

Bruce: It was David Hock who instituted that tradition. As far as he was concerned, we were the double diamond skiers, this is what we did, if you’re not able to keep up you should move to single diamond, where you can have more fun. And David would tell me they’ve got two runs to keep up or drop out.  David was the A Dog on that one. Sorry, what was your question? We kind of got lost here.

Oh yeah just about how the event

Bruce: Oh and now,

Yeah like how it grew to be so big.

Bruce: Over the years why people came and what they have perceived as the event has done this (makes wiggly line with hand). For a while it became part of what was called “circuit parties”. Circuit parties were money making events.  The first one I remember was an event my brother helped pull off in Fire Island Pines, back in New York in 1980. From New York City, gay men would go out to a summer resort on Fire Island. And the gay town for men on Fire Island was the Pines. Some friends of my brothers had a party called the White Party.  They said everyone was invited, like we did. Back then it wasn’t a money making event. It was we are all gay, we are all here, and we all need to be included. As long as you wore white, you were invited to the party. And they had this huge amazing party. Well it is legend, it has become a gay legend, and everybody has turned it into money making events. There are now white parties all over the country. At some point somebody decided to turn Aspen into a circuit event. So most of the people who were coming at that point weren’t even skiers. They were here to party, and that’s when many of us decided we didn’t want a circuit party, we didn’t want an all-night drugs and bad behavior, we wanted people to come here to ski.  That’s when it changed hands the first time. The first generation putting on the event, a lot of those people, dropped out. Many of people I knew as regulars felt they didn’t come here for that either, they told me they originally came here because they wanted to ski. We’re going to go to Whistler, we’re going to go to Telluride.  Then there was Proposition two, we’re not going to comment on.

John: No, yeah we need to talk about proposition two. Proposition two created, justifiably a movement to not do Aspen.

Bruce: Not to come to Colorado.

John: Not to come to Colorado.

Bruce: You want to explain what proposition two was?

John: Amendment two,

Bruce: Amendment two, right….

John: It was proven unconstitutional by the U.S Supreme Court fortunately because it prohibited any community in the state from passing gay rights ordinates’ and the Supreme Court said wait a minute, you are abridging people’s rights, you are saying that…..

Bruce: But that took two or three years….

John: Oh that took two or three years, in the meantime, that’s when Whistler started.

Bruce: Right,

John: And all these alternative ski weeks and,

Bruce: And a lot of tourists told us they couldn’t in good conscience come to Colorado and ski, until Colorado changed the law.

John: And there were some tourists in general but the gay tourists, it really hurt, it took us years to recover, we never did completely recover cause it was a rocking big event.

Bruce: Well right, that was the end of a generation. It was the end gay liberation. And it moved into more of a commercial thing after that.

Is that when it turned into the nonprofit?

Bruce: No, we were a nonprofit already, I believe. That’s when it got taken over by the production company.  What I saw was a money making venture, instead of a bunch of volunteers who want to do this because we want to give back, to share.

John: To be clear that’s not what we wanted.

Bruce: Right. It got over voted, we got outvoted. And that was Dave, I can’t remember his name.

John: Well that, I never saw uh I mean,

Bruce: The vote? Don’t you remember it was, who had the house on, was it David Wright’s house on Park Circle that we used to go for the meetings?

John: David Wright was out on Snow Bunny,

Bruce: Well yeah, he was over here for a while too, but before that, when he still owned the house on Park Circle.

John: Oh yeah he was.

Bruce: That was before Cemetary Lane. That was when I left the board, because they decided they were going to pay (what’s his name?)

John: True but I mean we were always a nonprofit.

Bruce: Right. And, and you all kept the status. There were a number of years that if you looked at the books it was a nonprofit, but there was no actual profit at the end of the event, and nothing actually went to any charities. That infuriated me and I said I am not going to do this.

Time Stamp: 40:00

John: Well, wait a minute the problem was a tax problem.

Bruce: There was that problem too, yeah.

John: To maintain your nonprofit status with tax code

Bruce: a 501c3

John: You had to donate a certain percentage of your profit to the charities, to charity. And for some years we struggled hard to keep,

Bruce: Because whomever was producing the shows wanted bigger and bigger venues. Sort of an ego thing. The money was going to DJ’s and outrageous costumes, etc. It wasn’t going to the nonprofit.

John: Yeah, the event was costing too much.

Bruce: Right, and it was, I think maybe it was Brian Gonzales, who changed that and turned it around.

John: Well I don’t remember who did but it did, it got turned around.

Yeah because isn’t it, AspenOut is a nonprofit now.

Bruce: Right and it’s doing very well, and there, and I’m very proud of them now.  I think because of that reversal people feel better about giving money and about being here, you know for the money, the money part of the event. I think there’s a whole new group of people coming in at this point, the next generation, which is hopefully going to keep it going. And I believe it’s a good event again,

John: Still,

Bruce: Well I think it’s back again and I see people jazzed about coming… And it is, there are a bunch more skiers doing the event too.

Yeah, okay, when you guys put up the flags on the street, the rainbow flags, how was that received by the community when that first started happening?

Bruce: Well at first there was supposed to be only one flag, remember that John? And who was it who put them all up?

John: The city had to approve it.

Bruce: And it got approved, but then when they saw it they had a fit. That first year they went ‘what are you doing?’ And who was it who snuck them up? I thought it was the greatest idea, “Look at this”. (Maybe David Hoch will remember the guy. Before Brian, there was the lesbian from Florida, before her it was, his first name is David. I just got a Facebook message from him, but I can’t remember his name. Maybe I can find it for you.)

Do you know what year that was?

Bruce: I don’t
John: Once again we forget.

Bruce: I just, I just remember, I mean I remember for a while there was the big thing about what it was going to be. Because we only had one, just one. You know the banner across Main Street.

Yeah.

Bruce: It was like you could put an event and it had to be, it had to be a certain way we had to say it.

You had to word it a certain way.

Bruce: Yeah, correctly so that it was proper and we did that one banner for one or two years. And then all of a sudden I walked out and they were all, it was the whole street and I go ‘wait a minute how you would get them away with this?’ And they guy who was running the show said ‘yeah, yeah I went and talked them into this’. It was the coolest thing and now it’s become a tradition.

John: See that first year I do remember there was some upset on city council, that we were doing something that wasn’t being done.

Bruce: Right. There wasn’t any ordinates or that doesn’t read right or, somehow they found a way around that. You know I bet if you went back in the times archives you’d find. I’m sure there was an article about that. It’s funny you bring that up, I had forgotten about that, now it’s just ubiquitous it’s kind of like world cup you know they do them all.

Yeah it’s like the same thing, they do the flags with world cup. Okay can you guys talk about some of the events that you held during Gay Ski Week and how that kind of evolved?

John: The one that didn’t evolve was the Gay and Lesbian film festival.  We did that what three or four years and we always lost money. And the board,

Bruce: Yeah, that’s how John was trying to expand what the event meant.

John: Ski Week was you know my vision had always been a couple may come for Ski Week and one of them may not ski, so what is there for people who don’t ski to do during ski week? And you know, a film festival was one option. People still mention it to me.

Bruce: Well yeah they are still doing one film,

John: Yeah,

Bruce: I mean they are doing one film but not the festival, you can’t go to a film that many nights or that much time.  We don’t do anything that much anymore.

John: At its peak we were doing two or three movies a day for like five days.

Bruce: Right, I think originally there was one party, which then became the opening party and there was like one or two, well it was the closing party was the next thing. There was an opening and there was a closing. And the closing, oh and then a third one was the costume.

John: Right,

Bruce: And what’s now the biggest event and the one they will not drop because it’s, it sort of definitive. At first it was a race. We were going to have races, because it was a ski event. So I said to David: we‘ve got to do a ski race. For a while, we ran a standard NASTAR race. The first few were on the Little Nell race course. Then we decided to add the costume bump off. Freestyle was in vogue then.  At the time, Ruthie’s ski run was all bumps, they never groomed it. It was beautiful, bumps up to here.

John: If you like Bumps

Bruce: Haha. And there was a restaurant at the bottom of Ruthie’s run (before Robin Daniele ran the restaurant. I can’t remember what it was called, but it had a big beautiful sundeck). So the costume party, the costume event actually started on top of the mountain. It was held right after lunch.  Lunch was at that restaurant. Everybody would get seats out on the deck, and everybody dressed up for the event. The hardest thing wasn’t about dressing in a costume, it was about getting down the run, and not falling and hurting yourself. And because it was up there it was a lot more risqué, there was a lot more innuendos and a lot more gay humor. It was decided the event was too big (well they closed the restaurant too), and the ski company decided they didn’t want us up there. And then was it Bernie who moved it down?

John: I don’t know, l mean it’s good that it moved down because it’s a huge event. Lots and lots of people turned out for it. There was another thing that used to happen, which actually we stopped. The various ski clubs, like SAGA, and the uh Denver ski club would have their own parties and their own fundraising parties,

Bruce: Right,

John: And there was one of them they used to rent, supposedly rent, they used to put on a spaghetti feed in the community church and we go no, this is our fundraising event.

Bruce: That’s when we decided that it was fundraising and we needed to control it.

John: Right.

Instead of just being separate groups.

John: Sort of tagging on.

Bruce: And we were not too happy about it.

John: We weren’t very happy about it.

Okay. What were some of the other events you had?

Bruce: Well I’m trying to remember, when it went from simply the opening party, you know it kept growing.  At first it was one party, and then there were two and then it was three. At one point it we had parties every night. And I can’t quite remember when that whole thing came about.

John: I don’t remember either, but it was, it did, it defiantly has been a few years.

Bruce: Yeah and that’s when it sort of got out of the idea of we’re a bunch of local guys and we want to you know party, to okay we are an organization and we are running that. And guys, you old farts move out of the way and let us run this right. Haha.

John: And some of their ideas of running it right, remember the Rio Grande tent?

Bruce: No,

John: The Rio Grande Park.

Bruce: Yeah, there was a tent?

John: We had a huge tent out there and it was, and we used to go out there in the freezing January,

Bruce: Ahhhhhhhhhhhh I do remember that.

John: And do all that stuff.

All right so you would have a party there?

John: Oh it was a horrible mess, you couldn’t keep warm I mean I was there. You couldn’t dance fast enough to keep warm.

Bruce: Yeah I think at one point what dancing was changed. You know, remember I said when it became a circuit party, dancing became a profession and not a social, not a way to meet somebody. Oh! Tea Dances! That was the huge thing, totally the biggest thing of all. It became the event after what mountain was it at that point? Were there specific mountains at that point? I think not. It took a while before they had designated mountains to ski each day. Everybody would just ski where they wanted to ski, and then everyone would meet back at the Tipple Inn. Which was, okay think back again, the Little Nell fractional ownerships that are now there, they are where a restaurant used to be, the Tipple Inn. The only reason that restaurant and that deck are there now is when Ski Co decided they were going to put in fractural, everybody had a fit about losing what was an institution. Everyone said the Ski Co had got rid of the original restaurant, Little Nell, at the bottom of the mountain, to build a hotel. When they built the hotel, après ski moved over to the Tipple Inn which was….

John: Which was also the Copper Kettle.
Bruce: It had been the Copper Kettle. My roommate at the time, Maureen McQuiston, was dating a guy, Ebbie who owned it. Another roommate, John Perrault, told Ebbie ‘you’re not making any money as a restaurant, let’s turn it into a disco.’ And it became the Tipple Inn.

John: And it was successful.

Bruce: Oh it was huge. I mean it was the biggest venue in town, the locals all liked it. All the straight boys would come on Tuesdays because Tuesday was 70’s night. And all the young kids would come in to dance to the old music. During Ski Week it would become après ski. At that time there were the opening party, the closing party and the costume event, plus every afternoon everyone would come back to town, to après ski at the bar. It was outrageous and fun.

John: Fun.

Bruce: Fun, fun, fun, and that all closed down when they decided to close The Tipple. I’m thinking we had it until they tore down the building.

John: I think you’re right.

Bruce: And as a matter of fact I had a few of gay friends, who came from all over the world, who would rent condos in The Tipple Inn specifically to there for the après ski.

John: It’s interesting, an aside, and the local politics. That was a historic building, it was the Tipple, whatever that was it had something to do with a mine.

Bruce: Yeah it was the Tippler, the Tipple Mine. And it was the mine shaft that somebody converted…

John: Inside were all of these historic pillars and,

Bruce: Yeah, it had all of the timber from the original mine shaft. They built walls around it and turned it into condominiums on one side.  The bottom, the basement, was the restaurant. I think it was the original Golden Horn? That building became a nightclub. Back to the story? When the Ski Co finally tore The Tipple Inn down to build the fractionals, the compromise was to build a restaurant with the deck outside. They said that everybody was going to come to après ski, it will be just like it always was. Unfortunately, the real estate is worth how much a square foot? What’s the restaurant that’s going to be in there? How are they going to afford to have a big old party for people your age (21) to go and drink beers and get two dollar pitchers? So that never happened, so the whole ambiance of the bottom of the mountain changed.

Time Stamp: 53: 52

And when was that? What year did it get torn down?

Bruce: Mid 90’s?

John: Yeah.

Bruce: Late 90’s.

John: Late 90’s.

Okay so that lasted a while.

Bruce: Oh yeah, it lasted about twenty years, twenty five years. There was a point when it called Retro 70’s Tuesday, or Retro Tuesday. Everybody in town, every kid who worked in town, had to work their schedule so they’d be free Tuesday night. The poor neighbors. Everyone driving in and out of the back side of that building, to drop people off Tuesday night to dance. It was so noisy. The poor people who lived in that neighborhood. When the two million dollar houses next door became twenty million dollar houses, they decided they didn’t want the bar there.

John: That may have had something to do with why they allowed it to be torn down actually.

Bruce: Yeah, and why the Nell….

John: Today,

Bruce: It’s a different world.

John: Yeah, different world.

Bruce: Come on where are you guys dancing now?

Uh now, Belly Up mostly, I don’t know, as I haven’t really been here for the past three years so, I’ve been away but yeah Belly Up.

Bruce: Still kind of the one.

Yeah.

Bruce: Kind of all over the place huh,

Yeah kind of all over the place, there’s not a lot of um. Do you guys have a favorite event that you kind of started during Gay Ski Week?

Bruce: It really was a shame when opening party became a fizzle. You asked about how the events evolved. It got to the point where all the other events overtook it. Especially the pool party, and then the dance party that was at the…

John: The Sky.

Bruce: The Sky, right. The opening party became less and less important, until nobody came. I mean at the beginning it was like old home week, going to the opening party. We had four or five tables of volunteers taking money and letting people in. You would see all your old friends coming back, or all the new freshmen were going to be new friends.  It was really a wonderful, wonderful thing and it was a shame that it ended.

John: And some of that also had to do with the venue. I mean the Jerome ballroom for the opening was party too big, too classy. The Sky Bar, there was the pool, you could swim in the pool and the bar was right at the edge of the pool it was a party venue, and people would show up.

Bruce: That’s a valid point. But there had been a point when we were still totally unorganized, still totally just whatever volunteer you could get. When you walked into the Jerome hallway back to the ballroom, we had put tables along it, and it had to be a hundred feet long with twenty volunteers, and they couldn’t keep up to get all the people coming in. I mean there were just hundreds of people who were massed in. I guess I’m just being nostalgic. Hundreds became one hundred. Now you go and nobody is there, it’s a shame. Well it also, the opening party for a while had got more and more glitzy, until it was too expensive to put on. Remember when Chris, Christophe Johnson, produced the “Nite in Tora Bora” party?  It was really a very elaborate Persian-theme party with beautiful Feather masks and harem girls serving drinks. It was way over budget, a big huge fiasco. It was very tasteless name, but it did have all these beautiful masks and feathers and he spent a fortune. It was way too much money, it was way over the top. And that was kind of the end of, and then it kind of fizzled.

And they did the opening party in the Jerome?

Bruce: It is in the Jerome still, I believe. After the first year when the the skit was a bust, we never did that, we did that once and then we just said forget that. But the idea was that we need to have a theme. It was almost like each year had a theme for a while there.

They were themed every year.

Bruce: Yeah, but you know it was a lot of work and it was a lot of money, so it never took odd.

Yeah so what were some of the themes you guys had?

Bruce: I bet if you go to the office they’ll have the programs and if you go to the old ones you’ll find them. But yeah I think they were written in at first, you know they gave it a theme. And I think the cover had the theme, only for a couple of years, five or six years.

It didn’t last very long.

Bruce: No, as I said it was work and people didn’t really have the time. Were kind of fizzled out here.

John: Yeah we’re fizzling out, I think a lot of the electricity, the energy that we used to have at the opening party people now come in during the week.

Time Stamp: 59: 44

Bruce: It’s actually almost broken into two events now. They sell either the first weekend or the last weekend. Most people don’t buy the whole event. It’s like two groups and they each have their favorite event, and their favorite time to come.  So there really isn’t an opening, a middle and an end anymore. And it’s all most two different kinds of events going on simultaneously. The skiers and the partiers. Back to my thought about not being as big a deal, because being gay is not as big a deal. Maybe people are not coming because it’s “Gay”? Maybe they’re coming because their friends are here, as much as the “gay” party”?

Yeah but it’s still a big event there’s still a lot of people here.

Bruce: It’s for the event not for the gayness or the gay part.

John: The après ski parties at the Limelight are still,

Bruce: Fun….

John: Very big, and fun.

Bruce: Yeah, and actually the après-ski event at the Limelight is probably the “gayest” event of the week. Everyone talks about The Boy Soup, all the socializing in the hot tub. What you want to do is go get the hot boys in the hot tub.

John: And you can order your drinks from the hot tub.

Bruce: So there’s still a little bit of that feeling, left over from the Tipple when everybody used to dance shirtless on top of the bar.

Okay do you guys maybe want to talk more about the ski races that there were during the week?

Bruce: We did have races. For many years we had NASTAR sanctioned races. First on Aspen Mountain, then moving to Highlands, and the last were held on the course at Snowmass. Because I ran the races for a long time, I got accused of running it so I could win. I kept going: guys I spend all year getting this thing ready I gotta at least go join you and race with you. I’m not just going to lose. Haha. But it ended being the same thing as the bump contest, a little too hard on the average tourist, and we couldn’t get enough participation to justify. It was a NASTAR race and it was NASTAR sanctioned.  At one point we had prizes and announced the winners of the races at the Drag event.  It was tough to get people to sign up.  I would go around all week, trying to jazz people up to do it.

It’s hard to get them involved.

Bruce: They were intimidated by the competitive part of it. Again our, those gay men are not competitive that way and don’t feel comfortable in that situation. The kids now, however, are totally competitive. They’re riding big mountain, they’re riding bump stuff, they’re out there doing it with all the straight boys and they feel no qualms about that anymore. Maybe it would be worthwhile to try again? During my time that wasn’t the way it was. I could barely get six guys to come out and do the race, until we kind of just said what the heck. Oh! We also did a scavenger hunt and bowl hike out at Highlands. It is now called “The Bowl’s a Drag”, or something to that effect. Highlands Day was also a tough sell, as many participants were intimidated by the terrain. When they started doing a Highlands Day, we hosted a, what’s it called, what’s the term? Where you get clues and you go around and one clue would give you the next clue,

Scavenger hunt?

Bruce: Yeah! Right, but again the same problem, we had to put the clues in places where enough people felt comfortable skiing to, and were good enough skiers, you know that wasn’t too hard to get to. So there wasn’t a whole lot of challenges. There were a couple of guys who loved it, and they won every year for three or four years. It was always the same three guys. I said that David and I didn’t want to go around and do it anymore, and that was the end. I think I still have some of the eggs we hid the clue in at home. When they opened up the bowl up to the public, I said what if we don’t do the scavenger hunt, I’ll lead them all up the bowl instead? And once again, the first three or four years, no one wanted to go ski the bowl. Now you get forty or fifty guys doing it, I mean its good fun now. Although I think actually my friend Paul Maybe is one of the few people who actually does do it in drag. Every year he goes up in his bunny costume. I guess it’s kind of cold to be doing the hike in a dress.

John: You may have noticed I’m a little silent, I did stop skiing now.

Bruce: It’s been how many years now?

John: Ten Years, so uh.

Bruce: Well come on, you’ve had a good run, no?

John: Basically skiing was not such a big deal for me, when they stopped giving out community service passes.

Bruce: Right, Right.

John: That’s pretty much when I stopped skiing.

Bruce: The question you were asking, kind of jogging our minds that was sort of the schism between, I kept saying let’s do ski events, and everybody else said let’s do nighttime events, but the mix has sort of come back again. I think it’s more; we are putting the ski back in the Gay Ski Week. Because after all, it is called Ski Week, we’re in Aspen.

Okay we’ll just start wrapping it up now. Is there anything you would like to see the event in the future?

John: I’d like more movies since that’s my business.

Bruce: It’s time to freshen it up again. A lot of the older participants felt that the new events were too expensive, to over the top. A lot of the newer people felt that there weren’t enough of them. Somehow there’s got to be a correct mix. Rather than: we’ve done the pool party ten times or we’ve done the theme party at the Sky too much, we don’t want to do it again. If I was running an event I would want some new ideas.  It’s just like anything, it’s’ like Winterskol, begins to get stale.  I mean there’s an example of a parallel event that started out as a party for locals. We had Winterskol because there was nobody here and we decided let’s get drunk and have a good time. It became more and more commercial, and then it wasn’t as much fun. And that’s kind of what happened to Ski Week.  I do think that much of the original spirit has come back. People are coming, they’re having a good time and want to be here. Hopefully, they can come up with some new ideas now. Talk to those guys and see what they have in mind. Yeah there’s actually no, they don’t have an office here anymore, do they? Didn’t the event run from?

It’s done by Aspen Out I think.

John: Which event are you talking about?

Bruce: Ski Week.

John: AspenOut is the organization.

Bruce: But do they still have the office at the yellow brick?

Yeah.

Bruce: So go over there and see

John: You know I think they really did a great thing to hire somebody to run it.

Bruce: As I was saying it was too much work and volunteers didn’t want to give their time, it got to where, it had to be a paid professional.

John: Yeah, I completely agree.

Okay is there anything else you’d like to add?

Bruce: I’m good.

John: I’ve run out.

Okay.

Bruce: Thank you for having us.

Yeah, thank you for coming and,

Bruce: Jogged some good memories.