Photo: Mike Berard
The Woody Creek Tavern is a small diner located on the back roads of the Roaring Fork Canyon near Aspen, Colorado. Outside, it is decorated in the style that some may call kitsch; Christmas lights, a neon Corona sign and, balanced precariously on the peak of the entrance, a wooden sculpture of a pig watching over all who enter. On any other backroad of America the tavern would be easily overlooked, as this one probably is. But the Woody Creek tavern has a history that keeps those aware of its storied past from passing by its multi-colored exterior without stopping in at least once to see what it’s all about. For the final three decades of the abrasively brilliant raconteur Hunter S Thompson’s life, this was a haven for him.
I ate dinner there (chimichangas with a copious amount of guacamole) and sipped on a few beers (one beer on tap; Flying Dog Ale) while I took in the many photos and memorabilia of Hunter S. Thompson. The stories, I figured, must run deep in this place, where Hunter had spent so many days. I envisioned where he would have sat. I imagined scenes of him running rampant through the bar terrorizing anyone who looked as though they could be unnerved. Even now he seemed to be able to do the same—I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was an alien trespassing in an intimate place. It was as if Hunter was laying in wait to sneak upon me and smack me across the face, calling me out as an imposter and an opportunistic tourist—I felt dirty. When two uber-rich Aspen glitteratti came in with full-length fur coats and a powerful thirst for apple Martinis, I paid the bill and made my way outside.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was an alien trespassing in an intimate place. It was as if Hunter was laying in wait to sneak upon me and smack me across the face, calling me out as an imposter and an opportunistic tourist—I felt dirty.
I drove the back roads of Woody Creek looking for Owl Farm, Hunter’s former residence and home of his widow. As the sun dipped behind Buttermilk mountain I realized that my search was futile. What was I looking for anyway? I didn’t know. I’m not sure I wanted to know anything in particular and that fact made me aware that my search may be a shallow chase. I turned the fragile rental Taurus around when the road turned to gravel and I drove back into Aspen, the sun blinding me through a bug-decorated windshield. At a four-way stop before a four-lane highway, the same fur-coated couple from earlier cut me off in a gleaming Cadillac Escalade and suddenly I understood what it was Hunter had been fighting for all those years. In the reflection of the Escalade’s wheels I swore I could make out his face, grimaced and bitter, a manic grin stretched across the CNC-machined aluminum. But then, in the rotating flash of obnoxious acceleration, it was gone again—just as he’s gone now, dead with his ashes scattered amongst the Aspen trees that are the namesake of this hollow town, a town as dead and lifeless as Hunter himself but with a legacy diminishing more and more with every day. – Mike Berard
“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run…but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” – Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, 1972
