April 2014

As Carbondale voters prepare to cast ballots in the Carbondale and Rural Fire Protection District board election later this month, one issue that has remained of concern for some voters since late in 2013 is the lack of a current fire district master plan for operations and expenditures.
The election is being conducted by mail, with ballots to be sent out between April 14 and 21, and to be counted on Election Day, May 6.

For R.J. Paddywacks owner Eric Berry, a recent purchase was a telltale indication the local economy is finally headed in the right direction.
“A man bought a dog-cooling jacket,” Berry told The Sopris Sun on Tuesday. “Usually, that’s something people buy in July … but people now have the money to look ahead. That wasn’t happening a few years ago.”
R.J. Paddywacks Pet Outfitter has sold pet supplies in Orchard Plaza in El Jebel since 1996 and a year before that in the Mid-Valley Design Center. Berry enjoyed a few years of ups (financially and emotionally), followed by downs that started during the nationwide recession of 2008-2009. Just keeping his doors open proved difficult until the last year or so. Berry said if he put his sales on a graph, 2008-2012 was “a perfectly flat line.”

With three antique stores now clustered in a one-block section of Main Street, shoppers can amble between the Old West and ancient Orient, ogling treasures at Strange Imports and Out West Antiques, then stop for coffee at Bonfire and later on hop across the street to peruse period French and English furniture and other items at European Antiques.
And then there’s the venerable Miser’s Mercantile (“The best second hand store in the West”) at the east end of Main Street, and Back Door Consignment just north of Main Street behind The Pour House. Both stores see a steady flow of antiques, collectibles and vintage items come and go through their busy doors.

Just when voters in the Carbondale area thought they could relax for a while following the recent municipal election, the ongoing contest for seats on the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District board of directors has been heating up in anticipation of another Election Day, May 6.
Two challenging candidates are charging that the current members of the fire district board have lost touch with the 15,000 or so residents they serve, as shown by the voters’ rejection last year of a proposed property-tax hike, and that new blood is needed to face the district’s fiscal challenges.

Little did 5Point Film Festival director Sarah Wood know that one of last year’s films would change her father’s life.
Robert Wood was visiting his daughter last spring and attended the festival. “When he came to 5Point, we were bugging him to retire,” said Sarah, meaning she and her mother and sister. Sarah describes her father as a hard-working man. “He was always a curious person but did not take risks. It was pretty much work and family.”
Robert Wood has been a tool-and-die maker for most of his life. He and his father, who was also a machinist, are Sarah’s inspirations. “They both rode motorcycles,” she said one afternoon at her motorcycle studio behind SAW. That’s right: a motorcycle studio called Woody’s Motor Cyclery.