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Colorado - Thu. 01/02/25 |
A Free Business Publication from Alpine Bank
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RED ROCKS RANKS HIGH IN VENUES WITH MOST ATTENDANCE AROUND THE WORLD
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Red Rocks Amphitheatre was the fourth-most attended venue in the world in 2024, according to data reported by Billboard magazine. The only venues topping Red Rocks were London’s O2 Arena; Madison Square Garden in New York; and Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional. Red Rocks was the second-most attended venue in the U.S., behind only Madison Square Garden. Billboard had a cutoff date of Oct. 1 and reported Red Rocks tallied 1.6 million attendees. Denver Arts and Venues said Red Rocks had nearly 1.7 million ticketed patrons through the end of the season in November. Red Rocks is owned by the City and County of Denver and operated by Denver Arts & Venues. The venue opened in 1941 and was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of the Works Project Administration of the 1930s.
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THREE COLORADO STATE PARKS WILL INCREASE ENTRY FEES FOR 2025
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Three Colorado state parks, including two of the busiest metro area parks, increased entry fees Jan. 1. Chatfield State Park, just south of Littleton, and Golden Gate Canyon State Park, in the foothills 15 miles northwest of Golden, will see $2 increases to $12. State Forest State Park, 75 miles west of Fort Collins, also will increase to $12. Other state parks will remain at $10. Visitors who hold Colorado Wild annual passes will not see fee increases. In 2023, Chatfield was No. 2 in attendance among all state parks, with 2.1 million visitors. Lake Pueblo was No. 1 with about 2.7 million. Golden Gate Canyon ranked fourth with 1.3 million. Annual Keep Colorado Wild Passes can be purchased for $29 when registering motor vehicles. Otherwise, annual park passes cost $80.
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FINALLY, THE BALD EAGLE IS OUR NATIONAL BIRD, HERE’S WHERE TO LOOK FOR THEM
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On Christmas Eve, the bald eagle officially became the national bird after President Joe Biden signed legislation to amend the United States Code designating the bald eagle the national bird. The official designation comes after the bald eagle has appeared on the Great Seal of the U.S., which is used in official documents, since 1782, when the design was finalized. The seal is made up of the eagle, an olive branch, arrows, a flag-like shield, the motto “E Pluribus Unum” and a constellation of stars. The bald eagle is indigenous to the U.S. and is found throughout Colorado, usually close to water. Often, the best time of the year for spotting the bird is February, March and April, when they nest. This past year was a great one for the species in Colorado, with an estimated 480 occupied nests, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials.
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THE HYPERLOOP, LEVITATION TRAVEL: DENVER TO PUEBLO IN 11 MINUTES?
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Officials of Swisspod Technologies say that by the end of 2025, they should be ready to conduct the first tests of their high-speed transportation which uses capsules to carry people or cargo by levitation through vacuum tubes. In November, Swisspod unveiled 25 steel tubes atop concrete pillars stretching across 218 yards of prairie. It is located at the PuebloPlex, which is a 43-acre plot that was formerly part of the Pueblo Depot Army facility.
The Colorado legislature created the Pueblo Depot Activity Development Authority (PDADA) in 1994 with a focus to redevelop the property, support job creation and enhance the tax base. PDADA, rebranded as PuebloPlex in 2013, is recruiting transportation, warehouse and distribution businesses and other businesses to locate there. Eventually, it will cover 23,000 acres. The test track is elevated atop concrete columns, but the track could also be underground. Either way, the system is immune to weather conditions for operations. When completed, the mile-long track will be the largest hyperloop test track in the world and the second-largest vacuum chamber in the U.S.
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NUMBERS CLEARLY SHOW THE DIFFICULTY OF FIRST TIME HOMEBUYERS IN EAGLE COUNTY
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The difficulty in finding entry-level homes for purchase in resort areas and especially Eagle County is very well known. The numbers for Eagle County are quite dramatic in documenting just how few entry-level homes are available. According to data from Land Title Guarantee Company, as recently as 2015, homes priced at $500,000 or less made up 43.5 percent of the real estate transactions in Eagle County, with 712 sales out of 1,634 homes sold. By 2020, that number had dropped to 451 sales out of 2,109 transactions, just 21 percent. Since 2020, the number of homes priced $500,000 or less:
- 2021: 369
- 2022: 98
- 2023: 40
- 2024 (through Nov. 30): 25
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SKIING AND MUSIC IN STEAMBOAT NEXT WEEK
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It’s the 39th annual MusicFest in Steamboat Springs next week, Jan. 6-11, when Dickson Productions, located in Buda, Texas, near Austin, will bring 50 bands and individual performers to town for some 200 hours of live music. All the festival packages for more than 60 live performances at various locations in Steamboat have been sold out, but there will be four afternoons of free musical performances for the public at the Steamboat Stage outdoors at the base area. Free concerts on the Steamboat Stage will feature the following:
- Tuesday, Jan. 7, noon-3:45 p.m.: Jack Ingram & The Beat-Up Ford Band; Cypress Valley Band; Hope MacGregor; Zach Top
- Wednesday, Jan. 8, noon-4 p.m.: Seth James; The Droptines; 49 Winchester
- Thursday, Jan. 9, noon-4 p.m.: Bri Bagwell; Tyler Halverson; Randall King
- Friday, Jan. 10, noon-4 p.m.: Dos Barrachos featuring Kevin Fowler and Roger Creager; Pat Green; Kyle Park
The annual MusicFest at Steamboat started as a group skiing trip including country musicians. It began in 1986 with 600 people. It now attracts some 6,000 people.
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YOU KNOW “DAY OF THE DEAD,” DO YOU KNOW “NIGHT OF THE RADISH?”
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Many travelers consider Oaxaca as the prime place to find the traditional and ethnic roots of the country, with its rich Zapotec and Mixtec cultures and food, the ruins at Monte Alban and its beautiful Dia de los Muertos celebrations. Oaxaca’s colonial center and Monte Albán archaeological zone are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites. There are more speakers of indigenous languages in the state of Oaxaca than in any other state in Mexico.
Locals, however, and now tourists as well, flock to Oaxaca before Christmas for a festival that features radishes. Yes, the Noche de Rábanos competition, held since 1897 on Dec. 23. It began when local vendors began decorating their fish and vegetable stands at a Christmas market in the city center and has evolved into an event protected by state decree. It is a contest of carving radishes into works of art.
The city provides the radishes, 12 tons this year, free to participants, including one variety that grows up to seven pounds. Any resident of Oaxaca state is allowed to compete and for free. The city spent roughly $65,000 on this year’s event, including buying the radish seeds and hosting children’s workshops. There are several categories, with a top prize in each category worth about USD$1,500. The works of radish-art cover traditional, cultural and indigenous designs, Nativity scenes, Día de los Muertos displays, or even current events. Some Oaxacan families have been competing for decades, passing down the craft and carving tips from one generation to the next.
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SOME THINGS NEVER GET OLD
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“Sazae-san” is the world’s longest-running animated television series. It began airing in Japan on Sunday evenings at 6:30 p.m. in 1969 and is still showing weekly on Fuji TV in that time slot. The story is centered on the head of a family, Sazae, a bossy, but kind mom, who is a bit absent-minded and has stories about her mishaps. The family includes her husband and 3-year-old son, along with her parents, her mischievous elementary-age brother and sweet younger sister. The three generations live in a suburban house in Tokyo, mostly frozen in the staunchly traditional time period of the earliest episodes.
Naturally, much has changed over 55 years, but astoundingly, not Sazae-san, or at least the voice of Sazae. Since the beginning, Midori Kato has been Sazae-san. She is now 85 but still plays the 24-year-old stay-at-home mother. She is the only remaining member of the original cast and was recently honored with a Guinness World Record for the longest career as a voice actor for the same character in an animated TV series. Everything has remained the same: the characters make calls on rotary phones or in phone booths; the family is in the traditional patriarchal pattern; neither Sazae nor her mother works outside the home, while her father and husband commute to distant offices, returning late and frequently drunk. The women do all the housework, childcare and cooking, while the men largely wait to be served.
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WHAT A YEAR FOR NORTHERN LIGHTS, AND IT SHOULD CONTINUE INTO 2025
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Aurora borealis, a display of swirling, colorful lights in the night sky, are the result of activity on the sun’s surface.
- An uptick in activity on the sun’s surface in 2024 produced the strongest displays of aurora borealis in the last 500 years, according to NASA, but not to worry if you missed the chance to see the Northern Lights last year, forecasters believe that peak will persist through 2025 and into early 2026.
- NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in October that the sun’s 11-year cycle had reached a “solar maximum,” increasing the rate of space weather events like electromagnetic radiation, or solar flares, and bubbles of plasma that burst along with those flares, or coronal mass ejections.
- In May, NASA said it tracked the strongest geomagnetic storm to reach Earth in two decades, caused by multiple solar flares and at least seven coronal mass ejections, resulting in possibly the strongest northern lights displays “in the past 500 years.”
- A “severe” geomagnetic storm was forecast on Oct. 11, when aurora borealis displays became visible as far south as northern Florida.
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FINDING “NEW” WORDS FROM OLD OR REMOTE SOURCES IN 2024
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The BBC reports stories from around the world and during its reporting this year, reporters came across many intriguing expressions or words. Here is a selection:
- Ausgeapert (Alpine German): An old word used in several German-speaking areas of the Alps that refers to bodies or ancient artefacts exposed by melting ice.
- Cůme či'k t'ê? (Sarkese): Meaning, "how are you?", this phrase comes from a language on the island of Sark, a British Crown Dependency located close to the French coast.
- Ealát (North Sami): A near-untranslatable word used by North Sami reindeer herders in the Arctic, referring to favorable conditions that allow reindeer to dig for nutritious lichen under the snow.
- Firkle (Antarctic Research Base English): A word used by Antarctic researchers, meaning, to sort through something or mess around.
- Gluschdich (Pennsylvania Dutch): A word meaning, "I am not hungry but I feel like eating!"
- Gwaan (Jamaican Patwa): An expression of jubilation.
- Kalo theke aalo (Bengali): A phrase coined to refer to a just transition toward renewable energy – it literally means, "from darkness to hope."
- Lóng juǎn fēng (Mandarin): Meaning, tornado – literally “swirling-dragon wind."
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MARKET UPDATE - 12/31/2024 Close
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(Courtesy of Alpine Bank Wealth Management*)
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Canadian dollar (per U.S. dollar)
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Mexican peso (per U.S. dollar)
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30-year fixed mortgage rate (Freddie Mac 12/26/2024)
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*Not FDIC insured. May lose value. Not guaranteed by the bank.
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Alpine Bank is an independent, employee-owned organization with headquarters in Glenwood Springs and banking offices across Colorado's Western Slope, mountains and Front Range. Alpine Bank serves customers with retail, business, wealth management*, mortgage and electronic banking services. Learn more at alpinebank.com.
*Alpine Bank Wealth Management services are not FDIC insured, may lose value and are not guaranteed by the bank.
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