The Ballad of BC
....or other tales from Big Sky and back
On my many journeys, Montana was one of my stops. How I got there is a decent story that I will not bore you with. Instead, I’ve chosen a particular Montana story to bore you with. So gather ‘round the fire, fuckos…it’s story time. Names have definitely been changed to protect the guilty.
Big Sky
The place I lived in Montana is called Big Sky. Name of town not to be confused with Montana being called the Big Sky state. Fun fact: It’s called this because in the eastern half, the low country, the plains go on for fucking ever. You can watch storms roll in hours away. Drive the Hi-line, US Hwy 2, and you can witness it. But also, fuck the lowlands because you can’t snowboard without mountains. Eastern Montana is fake and ghey Montana. I’m sure low country folk would say the same about western Montanans in the high country, or “mountainheads” as we liked to call ourselves. Anywho. The population of Big Sky was 1000 or so when I moved there in 2010. It’s like any other mountain ski town. It’s actually two ski areas, Big Sky and Moonlight Basin, both on a single massive 11k peak called Lone Peak. Also included is Andesite mountain which is super shreddy but it’s whatever. Sidenote: Why the fuck can’t it be a '“snowboard area” vs “ski area”? So fucking racist.
Dirtbags
If you’ve never been a mountain town local, then you may not know what a dirtbag is. Dirtbags are somehow the lifeblood of these towns. True dirtbags all have some commonalities: unchecked alcoholism, always high as giraffe pussy, dirty and smelly, super talented skier/snowboarder, everyone knows them, and even if they could muster up the money, they’re never leaving. In most ski towns, they have a dirtbag festival and they will crown a dirtbag king and queen. You get unofficial points for doing dirtbag shit. Anything short of dying, gets you points. Sticking your dick in anything, or letting tourists pound your alcohol-soaked box all winter, is + points. You get points for fighting, showing off on the mountain, or being source of the gossip the next day. These martyrs of the mountains are all really fucking good shredders. Sometimes you don’t know it because they’re passed out in the mountain mall at the base area, half a bottle of Evan Williams deep by 9am when the mountain opens. You and your family just paid $10k for a ski trip and you gotta walk by what seems to be a grumbling, smelly, homeless looking guy that’s actually a badass snowboarder or skier, wondering how the fuck all that money landed you in what amounts to a bougie homeless encampment.
Note: There is a particular grade of mountain town douche, called a trustafarian. They mimic dirtbags, especially the “dirty and smelly” part. The difference is that they come from money and can leave at anytime. Regardless, you’re required to listen to dirt bags and trustafarians tell the same fucking stories over and over. They will tell you these stories, not out of bad memory, but because they’re blacked-out 365.
I was never committed to this dirtbag life. Shreddy? Yes. Dirtbag? No. My drinking was not crazy enough, I did stupid shit, I rode insane terrain, I rode off of buildings. But I generally kept booze in check, and definitely no weed. On the smashing front, ratio was like 20:1, men to women. Big Sky was a fucking snake ranch. It’s a total buyer’s market for women. If you move there, add +3 to +5 to your number. Most of the women wore Carhartt’s that smelled like diesel fuel and had ranch dressing stains. I did ok while I was there, but definitely not my best run. In 2 years, I hooked up with a hostesses and a cleaning girl from a really nice resort I worked at in Gallatin Canyon, called Rainbow Ranch Lodge. This one, NOT this actual gay man sleepover camp. I imported two old flings from AZ for a weekend of fun that were both horrible fucking decisions. This determination was not in retrospect either. I mean terrible decisions, in real time, as they were happening. I hooked up with the hot sister of my hot female GM at Rainbow. I was 2 for 2 having sexual relations with girls I met at a bar in Bozeman called the Cat’s Paw (big “meow” shout out for having Pendleton whiskey on a bar gun). We’d go to Target and Michael’s in Bozeman just to cast eyes on nice, normal women. Hell, the one strip club on the way to Big Sky from Bozeman, was called Buffalo Jump. Had zero to do with actual buffalo. This absolute desert of women, would eventually have me running back to Phoenix/Scottsdale, to find a good coke hookup and to get a job as a bouncer at my friend’s uncles’ strip club. “Why all this not-so-erotic fluff Laggy”?
Cardinal Rule of Big Sky: “You don’t lose your girlfriend in Big Sky, you just lose your place in line”. Which brings me to BC.
BC
BC moved to Big Sky from Alta, UT. Still to this day, they don’t allow snowboarders because everyone there, man or woman, likes penis. BC was Ivy League educated. One of the smartest people I knew. He also was a Phish and String Cheese Incident enjoyer, which comes in later. You’re going to need to imagine his tone and speech and what a bro like this might sound like. Anyway, he brought a girl with him to Big Sky. They both worked at Rainbow Ranch with me. Eventually, BC became a roommate of mine. He was a fucking savage skier, he drank a lot, he had the makings of a dirtbag, but he just needed some nudging in the right direction. This came in the form of the aforementioned Cardinal Rule of Big Sky being enacted by the mountain gods. The fallout would make him do shit like bust out headlights of her car and her new, truly dirtbag boyfriend, KS. He’d play drunk songs on guitar outside local bar, on a grassy knoll of the golf course near our house, and he’d eventually smash said guitar. Dude was miserable. Plus it was summer, when it’s very hard for shredders to live a complete life. Daily life cuts deep when there’s no snow.
The Day
This brings us to that fateful day. In summer, there were all sorts of music and family festivals in Gallatin Canyon of the Gallatin River. Cinnamon Ranch threw a yearly shin-dig where a daytime family oriented food and music festival turned into a fake and ghey rave at night, populated by, you guessed it, dirtbags. Spoiler alert: we never made it to the night party. Imagine a scenic mountain lodge, with some food and trinket booths and big open grassy area and a stage for music. BC was already white sorority girl wasted by noon. Early afternoon, the band left the stage and a magician comes on. He did some tricks. He then asked for 20 volunteers to be hypnotized. I volunteered upon the jeering of my drunk compatriots. I knew I wasn’t hypnotizable, but the magician surely knew that out of 20 people, he would be able to find one. As he was doing his hypnotizing wizardry, he was narrowing us down, tapping us on shoulder to step back as he does so.
BC starts:
Think salt-and-pepper hair, wire rimmed glasses and a tone of someone that has been to many Grateful Dead and Phish concerts. A “Like the man is trying to hold you down, man.” type if you will.
“Bro, this isn’t even real”
“Man, this is so fake”
People were starting to look at him. There were some very Montana looking dads, open-carry strapped and all, starting to look at him. They started to make their way to him. I was pretty helpless to stop him because I was in front of the stage, some yards away. I couldn’t tell him “Shut the fuck up”, because there’s kids and I wasn’t trying to cause more of a scene.
Magician got down to one woman.
She was clearly hypnotized.
He snapped his fingers, she went limp, and he lowered her gently to the ground.
BC:
“Raaaaaaaaape! That’s fucking rape bro! This guy a rapist man! He’s fake. Raaaaaaaaape!”
Two big dudes came in and just lifted him the fuck up like an absolute rag doll.
BC:
“You’re not cops. This is violating my rights, man. There’s a guy raping women in there! You got the wrong guy.”
They brought his noodle of a body outside the rope gates to the dirt parking lot. After the magic act was done, I went out there. I apologized to the dads. They were super cool to me. I just let BC cook out in the sun for another hour. If you know anything about the rocky mountain west in summer, you’ll know that the summer sun at 7k altitude is brutal. Dude was so drunk, he just sat there cooking like a sad, shamed hot dog, when he could have walked 100 yards to trees and shade along the cool Gallatin River.
Don’t think any of this fully qualified BC as a dirtbag, but he sure gave it his all that day. Honorary dirtbag for sure. There’s at least 10 people I could message “Raaaaaaaape!” to, and they’d laugh and we’d catch up. Some say BC is still playing solemn guitar to this day, lamenting his losses.
Lol Damn this almost mirrors my experience with the hodads and posers at Sebastian Inlet.
Locals were the dirtbags and we had trustifarians too, the unwashed rich kids who sold big sacks of ditch weed to tourists, Great story bro, Just replace snowboards with surfboards and yeah there was raaaaaaape here and there too, Imagine Spicoli playing a guitar badly at a campfire schmoozing some 15 yr old wannabe😂that was it!
Tacomas for life!!!!