Sundance Tales – The (Snowed In) Evening Before
It’s the night before Sundance 2010. Well… MY night before Sundance 2010. The festival itself actually started yesterday, but I made the gigantic mistake of driving a 2004 convertible Saab up Big Bear Mountain during one of the most phenomenal five-day snowstorms of the century.
That’s right. Convertible Saab + 8,000 feet + five day snowstorm.
I’m not going anywhere.
And while I’m busy not going anywhere (missing agency meetings, auditions, and investment calls), I’m perpetually finding myself trekking down the road to the local snowboard shop and swiping my Visa… over and over… on brand new, awesome, tough-chick snowboard gear.
Not only is my ex — er… several… of my Oscar winning ex’s — going to Sundance, but a Big Industry Individual I had a falling out with recently will also be there with his Big Industry Obnoxious Client.
Why am I going to Sundance, again?
Right — it’s freakin’ Sundance, and it doesn’t really matter if I might run into people that attempted to kidnap me at one point or another — or threatened to either destroy of propel my career on the trade of no-love-invovled sexual interaction — it’s the greatest freakin’ festival in the world. Except for Cannes. Nope… nope nope…. Sundance is still just a little bit more American indie awesome.
Exactly 18 days ago I escaped my Venice Beach loft in an effort to outrun two crazy 65 year old lesbians who looked up my 9 year old Myspace page and found out I like “bubblebaths and strawberries”. When it turned out that renting from them did not result in a similar scenario occurring — they went somewhat nuts, showed up in my living room without notice, and sufficiently freaked me out enough that I took off the morning my lease was up.
Why am I telling you my insane California lesbian landlord encounter stories? Because it’s due to my non-rent scenario at the moment that I’m going to Sundance in the first place.
In my opinion (having gone in 2006 and staying in 5 different places) — there are two ways you can “do” Sundance. You can get the luxury five-bedroom penthouse cabin on top of a mountain somewhere — or you can hole up with twenty three of your favorite Craiglist friends and sleep on the floor.
The first option generally costs anywhere from 5-20K. The second? As low as $50 bucks a night.
My first Sundance attempt resulted in my stay at an adorable B&B downtown, a gigantic house full of industry professionals (read: I slept on the couch/floor/someone elses’ bed, etc), and finally a vacated room in a small cabin in Deer Valley. Not fun dragging three gigantic overweight suitcases down Main Street.
Since ’06, not only have I gotten older, wiser, and more cynical — but I now refuse to travel with anything more than a carry-on. That’s something to say for a chick who used to grudgingly trot down runways, reciting Moliere in hear head while glaring at U.S. Weekly.
Thus — post the 29th and Speedway oceanside loft (ah, how I miss it…) I spent a week at the Marina International in Marina Del Ray (two star murder hotel) — and got so fed up with expensive shitty LA short-terms that I Craigslisted ski vacations for the hell of it. Why not get the heck out of LA if I didn’t have a place there?
At 7:56pm, day of checkout at Marina Int’l, I discovered Big Bear Mountain at a Coffee Bean in Santa Monica. Vacation Rentals! Snowboarding! [Kind of] cheap!
One week turned into two weeks (gigantic catastrophic blizzard + my LA car) — and it’s finally the evening before the big “weather break”. I’m sitting in front of a happy little fire in my cabin on (funny enough) Main Street. Eating chocolate for dinner, considering every restaurant in the area is blocked in by mountains of snow.
Tomorrow morning brings a 6 a.m. wakeup call, an attempt to get down the [literally] frozen mountain in my ridiculous front-wheel car, and a 10 hour drive to Park City, Utah.
And I’m doing it all with a concussion. Awesome.
A note to the wise: Don’t try to jump off a tree during a blizzard on a snowboard. Or if you do, at least wear a helmet.
Park City… bring it on.
– Ashley Avis
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