Ear to the ground

“Can we light harmonica candles next year?”

– A Durango kid asking to take a new approach to the holidays in 2011

Maximum coverage

Carvers and Steamworks have gone skin deep and landed inside the pages of Maxim magazine. The two breweries earned a write-up in the current issue of the soft-core glossy, which is billed as “the leading men’s lifestyle magazine.”

In a surprise to both brewpubs, Durango popped up inMaxim’s “Mancation” section, where writers encouraged readers to take a tipsy spring trip to Colorado.

“Go on a brewery tour! There are more than 100 breweries in Colorado, and provided you and your buddies can work out a system for choosing a designated driver (‘The sober guy drives’ is a good bet), there’s no reason not to drink every one of them dry.”

Maxim’s uber-tour starts on the Front Range with such greats as Fort Collins’ New Belgium and a “tag-team” of Boulder and Denver’s many brewpubs. The mag then advises spring revelers to point their wagons south and drive the 6+ hours to Durango.

“Gradually head southwest to finish the trip in Durango, home to Steamworks, Carver (sic) and many more.”

Maxim advises participants to take in a little cheap skiing between all of the cheap swilling. “It’s the least crowded time of year, which means fewer cars on the road and shorter lines at the bars.”

All those discounted hotel rooms, lift tickets and flights of beer will allow Maximites to save up for the magazine’s three other Mancations – a summer safari in Tanzania; a 2,300-mile 4WD road trip beginning in Cairns, Australia; and a wintery week of viewing the aurora borealis in Greenland (“It’s like every single day of Steven Tyler’s life in the ’70s.”)

Maxim reaches a reported 2.5 million readers every month.

The ‘Last Resort’

It was really only a matter of time. Telluride has been cast as the backdrop in a new novel by R.J. Rubadeu. The book,Gatsby’s Last Resort, is peopled by such characters as Wit Thorpe, private eye and peeping tom; bar denizen Rasta Joey; one-eyed bartender Digger, and a fabulously successful real estate broker named Patsy Susie Blaze.

The plot somehow involves the Valley Floor, the open space parcel at the entrance to Telluride, and greed inspired by the magnificent landscape of the San Juans. There is, of course, a murder and a mystery surrounding it.

The Telluride Watch’s Seth Cagin gave the book a surprisingly kind review, praising the author’s representations of the real Telluride. He noted that Gatsby’s Last Resort has “a plot that pays off when fantasy and reality … collide and the satire reaches a dizzying level of laugh-out-loud nuttiness.”