Park
City
is not well named. It is not like
New York City
. It is not even like
Sioux City
. With about 6,600 residents,
Park
City
is barely a town. But it’s a cosmo little place, attracting half a million visitors a year for its ski resorts and highly hyped film festivals (Sundance and Slamdance). The one-time mining burg, nestled 7,000 feet up in the jagged
Wasatch
Mountains
, has mutated mightily to accommodate the influx of celebrities and “$6 million starter castles,” as one area realtor put it. Still,
Park
City
is an almost eerily friendly place.
Check the shopping district, which is pretty much all of
Main Street
: Handpainted clothing, pre-Columbian jewelry, original oil paintings—spending cash is dangerously easy around here. Aside from the actual wares in the shops,
Main Street
looks pretty much like it did when the town was rebuilt in 1898 after a gruesome fire. And everything includes everything, from the two-cell turn-of-the-century jailhouse to a plethora of upscale restaurants, microbreweries and clubs.
Despite
Utah
’s antiquated liquor laws—which led one local magazine to describe the state’s upcoming Winter Olympics festivities with the headline, “Party Like It’s 1899”—
Park
City
has an active nightlife. All social levels are represented: You can commune with goateed snowboarders over local ale at
Park
City
Brewing & Smokehouse or blend with the bourgeoisie over a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothchild at Troll Hallen Lounge in the absurdly opulent Stein Erikson Lodge.
From there, hit rave joint Club Creation and when they boot you out at
7 a.m.
head right upstairs to the Morning Ray Cafe. Check the sourdough French toast and ask the Park City-native waitress about the Aspen-ization of her town. She’ll tell you, very politely, that it “sucks.”