Thoughts on this week’s paper:
- Remember in 1960s Europe when a bed & breakfast meant a bed, bathroom access and breakfast with the family when they ate, not when you got up?
In 2021 Eureka Springs, it’s $200 a night for an official Trip Advisored Victorian suite with a Jacuzzi, flowers, fruit, and no place to park. B&Bs are so lucrative that council had to put its 12 feet down and say you can’t put people to sleep just anywhere in this town while insisting that a neighborhood-hostile business is all you can come up with to make your egg money. Or investment back. Good job, aldermen.
- Narrow streets where people live almost in the line of traffic will be flipped to one-way because when there’s nowhere to park, people dare to drive. Because our streets are steep and narrow, and because many travelers drive an SUV or a $60,000 2-seater they don’t want to see scratched, we will accommodate them by making some old wagon trails one-way. Good decision by the city.
- The marketing firm in Florida that was paid $950,000, let’s just call it a million, by the CAPC refers to Eureka Springs as “quirky” in its advertising. The commission is being sued by current and former employees, and quirky doesn’t quite capture that, but we support the enthusiasm and wattage of the two transplanted women who have offered their cables to jumpstart our hesitant battery. And then drive. It’s good to be new and young because that way one of us is bound to remember where we’re going.
- We haven’t heard a peep out of our masked school kids, but we know they’re pumped about mountain biking because that extracurricular activity has a waiting list. Good going, school people.
- Access to Lake Leatherwood City Park is by county road but the county won’t repair it, and someone remembers that Parks said they would do it but dagnabbit, nobody can find when or where that was said. Potholes are hard on Pirellis but getting to that park is worth slowing down until they’re fixed. Go Parks!
- Monarch butterfly numbers are diminishing because the world’s weather is changing so quickly and unpredictably, in part because no one will stop driving, that their food source is disappearing. Butterflies are relying on dedicated enthusiasts to keep their species alive. In our paper you will learn that massaging a caterpillar’s behind with a Q-Tip will allow you to hang it back on its thread so it can become a chrysalis and eventually get wings so it can fly to Mexico if it doesn’t get frozen or hungry on the way. Wait. That’s in next week’s paper. Still, quirky.
- Our front page picture adheres to the wisdom of longtime newspaper guy Vernon Tucker who said, “Always put kids or dogs on the front page so people pick you up.” We snapped our distinctive office toddler having big fun in the bounce house on Saturday at Holiday Island and he’s every bit as cute as the 11-month-old cougar who moved here two weeks ago from the Bronx Zoo.
If this is a town that’s crazy, fine. If this is a tired assessment the way we look at it, fine. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in Arkansas or the world.
But quirky? Nah. Absolutely nah.
Curious indeed works.