Bisbee AZ

We visit the small, funky town of Bisbee Arizona every ten years or so, just to see how it is doing.  It is an old mining town on the Mexican border with a lot of big, brick, boomtown buildings so every time it burned or flooded, there was something regal remaining.  It was originally a big underground copper mine until after the Second World War when they said ‘screw it’ and dug some Kennecott sized open pits at the entrance to town and took down some of the local mountains.  Nonetheless it is a groovy little town now, tucked up in the hills at 5200 feet with lots of dive bars and haunted hotels, grandmas’ antiques, and tourist curio shops.  It has had its ups and downs since they stopped mining in 1975 but it is still viable and, on some level, it works.

The town is just like Park City was in 1970 with so much cute potential that it could just explode.  There is no skiing due to the dearth of snow, nor much hiking or biking, due to the dearth of local ambition.  Most of the residents are freaks and haries, old timers down on their luck or newbies looking for another way.  There is a strong art community and free form expressionism as well as the long beard and colored hair contingents.  There are not many jobs here, but no one seems to mind while living on their wits, a fixed income or the kindness of strangers. 

My wife and I got engaged there on New Year’s 1999/2000.  We were staying at the fancy old Coper Queen Hotel and having a fine New Year’s dinner when a parade of crazed hipsters passed in front of the dining room windows with kazoos and ukuleles, costumes, and props.  We dropped our silver spoons and pressed napkins and went out and joined the parade.  It serpentined all around the hilly town gaining momentum and participants.  We wound up in Brewery Gulch (the red light district) at this happening bar with a raucous grunge band cranking at midnight and I popped the question.  The rest, they say, is history.  

So my wife and I went back to Brewery Gulch in the old red light district and found the funky bar we got engaged in 22 years ago.  It is now called St Elmo’s and has been in service since 1902, without any new paint or soap employed the entire time.  I think the same old, grey-beard dude has been sitting at the corner of the bar, closest to the door, ever since 1902.  St. Elmo’s was ranked as one of the top dive bars in the USA, coming in at a respectable #7 and they are trying hard to improve on that ranking.  It didn’t seem that repulsive when we got engaged there but it just goes to show that memory is selective, transient, and inaccurate.  

St Elmo’s did remind us of the old Alamo bar (No Name now) with its vaulted-arch brick ceilings, the same guys sitting on the same stools all day long and the puddle of blood on the floor from last night’s altercations.  It reminded us of Park City before our huge success.  It reminded us what Bisbee could be with a little effort and imagination.  We started to brainstorm the immediate needs of the town for success:  water, schools, roads, hike and bike trails, art festivals, film festivals, sports fields, tournaments, theaters, traffic circles, free busses, park and ride lots, affordable housing, public art, a Banksy, gondolas, cabriolets, funiculars, Pickleball, a tunnel, a fly over, timed traffic lights, a mall, ice rinks, a terrain park, painted bike lanes, leadership, vision, ambition and energy ….  

Wait a minute, stop the music.  We had gone thru the same exercise last year with some locals in the fledgling ski town of Phillipsburg Montana, who had just gotten new sidewalks and curbs, streetlights and pavement, a brew pub and a coffee shop.  ‘We don’t want to become another Park City’ they told us in hushed, apologetic tones.  This reminded us how we used to say that we didn’t want to become another Aspen in the old days, before we became another Vail.

 Why not, we admitted, let Bisbee be Bisbee – Mayberry on Acid – as they proclaim.  Let it be small and funky, floundering for identity but comfortable with who they are.  Be careful what you wish for Bisbee, Philipsburg and Park City, when God wants to punish you, he makes your dreams come true.