Meet the Insider

After a day of flailing down the mountain, I sat down at the bar and asked the bartender what was happening tonight. She mentioned several bars that might have live music but wasn’t quite sure of how to find the answer to my question.

I started thinking not only about past trips but in general, I rarely got a good answer to the simple question, “What is going on tonight ?” Here we go again. I realized that there has got to be a better way to do this, so we took matters into our own hands, and we have done something about it- Park City Insider.

Like a lot of people here I’m not originally from Park City. If you ever sat next to me at the bar, you probably heard the incredibly moving, and slightly embellished (slightly mind you), tale of being abandoned as a baby and raised by a pack of she-wolves in Montana. I went on to eventually make it big in the dental floss business with help from Frank Zappa. It’s a tantalizing tale, which I’ll save for another time.

I migrated to Park City in the winter of ‘80-’81, back then it wasn’t much more than a dying mining town with a struggling ski area. At the time, Main Street consisted of restaurants, boarded-up, buildings, empty lots, and a few bars. If you remember the Black Pearl (now 350 Main), that should bring a smile to your face.

I used to stay with my girlfriend in a two-room apartment- I use the term apartment loosely- above a bar with a dirt parking lot on Heber Ave, across from Utah Coal & Lumber, long gone now. The town was teetering, and Deer Valley was still a year away from opening. Since then, a lot has changed obviously.

As I recognize the drastic changes to this town I find myself still not getting a very good answer to the simple question of “What is going on tonight?”. We’re finally answering that question in a comprehensive, accurate and real-time setting.

Additionally, this is not just about locating events- whether it’s a yoga class or a concert, it’s ultimately about connecting the community-regardless if you live here full time or only visit occasionally.

Park City Insider is not only about the party and good times, but we are also about giving back to a community that has given so much to all of us. We have committed to recognizing and supporting local nonprofits and volunteers who contribute their time and efforts to make Park City a better place.

The Insider

Locals run Park City Insider, and it is important to us to give back to the community that fills our life with joy. Every month we donate our time and a portion of our profits to local non-profit.

It’s taken me most of my life to realize what is really important to me. I used to believe that I needed to collect things to be happy- I depended upon addition to finding what I thought was the key to happiness. In a way I never imagined, I have learned that subtraction is the pathway to my sincere sense of well being- when I removed the things that I thought I so desperately needed, it was there behind everything, now in plain view, and it had always been there; just obscured by trivialities. It was giving back and thinking about someone other than myself for a change.

VA Nursing Home

Last Thanksgiving, for various reasons, I was a man without a country. With really nowhere to turn to I found myself volunteering at the VA nursing home on the VA campus in Salt Lake. My experience there has drastically changed my perspective on a lot of things. Since then I go back there for a few hours every week, in actuality, I now look for reasons to go more often.

I have some very good friends there now. I have one, in particular, he’s 92, smart, articulate and a true gentleman. When he was just 19, in 1944 he was blown off a hill in Okinawa and still to this day carries shrapnel in his back. He came back after the war and became a school teacher, got married, raised kids and teaches me about humility and integrity every time I see him.

He doesn’t think of himself as a hero he thinks of himself as a scared boy at a horrific moment in time. For a few hours a week he helps me think about someone besides myself--and in a very moving way, by giving to him- straightens my head out and the little things that bother me don’t really matter so much anymore.

Giving back is very important to us here not only at the Insider but in Park City as well. Events are all good and well but we sincerely want to hear about your volunteer efforts so that we can highlight them. We also want to hear about your suggestions for local non-profits that we together can support.

The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.
- William Shakespeare