Salida Shout-Out

I'll have you know that I wasn't in town forty-eight hours before Salida was thrust into worldwide headlines by dint of Eric Cartman and his mother driving to it:



This is one of the more enjoyable aspects of South Park, other than the images of six-month-olds cussing out fourth-graders; its creators are native Coloradoans, and unashamedly draw upon  their childhoods.  Many episodes  include Rocky Mountain Easter eggs for those of us who aren't truly happy unless we're struggling for a lungful of  pine needles at ten thousand feet.

It's nice, you know?  One of my most hated tendencies of American television--besides its insistence on not featuring me at all-- is its apparent belief that the world drops off at some point before the Hudson River and  after the Brooklyn Bridge.  Producers and writers have heard rumors of such places as Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Portland, but they're fairly sure that such places are inhabited strictly by the members of militia compounds and wandering herds of buffalo.  You're allowed to acknowledge the existence of LA every now and then, but only to shop and attend the occasional Oliver Stone-related premiere.  Then, it's right back to the normal people peeing on their MetroCards at rush hour.

South Park will have none of this.  The context of the Salida scene is within an episode about medicinal marijuana, which, judging by the fact that this afternoon I passed a shop window advertising blunt wraps, is a topic forever green in Colorado.    (For the record, the last word on animated pot-related commentary still stands as the "Weekend at Burnsies" episode of The Simpsons, featuring a group of potheads who organize a legalization rally...  for the day after a marijuana referendum.) Cartman has discovered that the the South Park Kentucky Fried Chicken has closed, and demands transportation to the next nearest location:  Salida.

And--buckle in for some grade-A awesome here, folks--although fast food isn't readily available here past the Front Range, somebody did some right quick research in the South Park offices.  There are precisely seven fast food outlets in Salida:  McDonald's.  Booger Fling.  Toxic Smell.  Scamway. Pizza Hut.  A particularly rugged Sonic.  And KFC.

The local branch is one of those duplex jobbies which houses both a KFC and a Toxic Smell (there aren't enough Catholics here to rate a triplex with a Long John Silver's), and so it isn't as depicted in all its construction paper glory in this episode, but still.  Well played, gentlemen.  Blessed are the Double Downs.

and yes, there really is a South Park in Colorado, only with slightly fewer alien abductions and transvestites, at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Comments

[| Morning Works Media]

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[Sara]

I work for a large company which has a large main office right outside of Minneapolis. Our "small" office is in Western Wisconsin. Our "small" office wins national awards for sales dollars yet the people at corporate seem to think we are on another planet. We are approximately 25 minutes from corporate. At a meeting one time, another agent asked one of our agents is she stayed at a hotel the night before since we were so far away. That agent was farther away than we are. We always like to tell the "big wigs" that we have running water and electricity over here, too!

[red pill junkie]

I'm curious: Is there also a town named Entrada in Colorado —or is that closer to El Paso :-P