In a resort town, it's a season between seasons, and it's called slack for a reason.
"Now this is slack," proclaimed Gallery Oscar owner Don DeVore on Monday afternoon as he lounged on the front porch at his Ketchum gallery. The week before, DeVore opened each day, but not a person walked in. He begrudgingly enjoyed similar customer scarcity on Monday.
"Not a soul," he said.
Even so, slack in Ketchum and Sun Valley is less conspicuous than it used to be. If you ask 20-year Ketchum real estate agent Dick Fenton, he'll tell you that increasing numbers of second-home owners are sticking around during shoulder seasons. More people are living here for larger blocks of time.
"Slack is really noticeable, but it's not as pronounced as it used to be," Fenton said.
Historically, slack was a time when a hushed silence fell over the area as skiers quietly waxed their boards or cyclists tuned up their bikes. Typically, the majority of the businesses closed, a trend that has been slowly reversing over the last several decades.
"It used to be that dogs were lying in the street in front of the Pioneer," Fenton said. "And that was one of the only businesses that stayed open."
The other part of it is that local residents have used slack as an opportunity to go on vacations to far-away locations—at least to the desert. Many local residents are employed in tourism or tourism-dependent industries. When the tourists stop coming to town, local residents become tourists.
But perhaps the most outwardly obvious symptom of slack is that relative calm settles over the Wood River Valley. No people, no business, no stress.
"You've got to like it because you get your town back for a few months," Fenton said.
The quiet shoulder seasons, typically in spring and fall, might be a welcome change of pace for some local residents, but the downside is that business owners watch their bottom lines slip near, or into, the red. Many business owners choose to close for a few weeks, or even months, when slack settles over Sun Valley.
This week, the sign in the front door of Expressions in Gold on Main Street in Ketchum proclaims: "Gone Fishin' Opening June 10th, Cya." Similar signs are in the windows of Venus Fine Furs, Surefoot boot specialists and Crazy Susan's T-shirt shop.
For businesses that don't choose to close up and lock their doors, special slack hours are often instituted. The Coffee Grinder and Gallery in Ketchum, as one example, is on reduced hours until the summer season picks up.
Another important distinction is that slack is more of a north-valley phenomenon.
"Hailey isn't affected as much because we're not exactly a tourist destination," said Jim Spinelli, executive director of the Hailey Chamber of Commerce. "The majority of the population in the Wood River Valley lives in Hailey. So our little cottage industry here is to support the home residences in the south valley."
Nonetheless, Spinelli said the effects of slack are apparent in Hailey, too. The ripple effect of tourism throughout the entire valley is unmistakable, he said.
Just last week, he noticed that Jane's Paper Place had posted that it would not be open on Sundays for the duration of spring slack.
"Common sensically, I know that if we're not skiing, we're going to have less traffic in here," he said.
For those uninitiated to resort-town living, the gist of slack is that the times of highest retail sales coincide with the times when the most people are visiting the area.
A look at 2003-2004 local option tax receipts from Ketchum and Sun Valley is revealing. Retail sales are strong in December, February and March. They are also strong in June, July and August. The weakest two months of the year are April and May, followed only by October and November.
There is a difference between spring and fall, acknowledged Carol Waller, Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber and Visitors Bureau executive director. "Fall has a few advantages. The weather is good. It is good for meetings and conferences, and it is enhanced by special events. The Trailing of the Sheep and the Sun Valley jazz festivals have economically and culturally revitalized our fall slack season."
In the spring, there is relatively little to do, Waller said. The Sun Valley Wellness Festival is "very successful," but the chamber generally resorts to marketing shopping and a weekend getaway.
That said, local slack is not as real as it could be.
"Yes, we do have a cyclical economy, and spring is the worst," Waller said. "But we're also fortunate. A lot of ski areas, when they hit the close of ski season, they have a nine-month slack. We're one of the lucky ones."
The late Guy Coles, former Ketchum mayor and a longtime Wood River Valley resident, once said that slack is indeed slacking off with time. He remembered that a person could go bowling on Ketchum's Main Street during the shoulder seasons.
Sun Valley Co. Marketing and Public Relations Director Jack Sibbach remembered that the summer season used to be the Fourth of July through Labor Day, "and that was it."
He, too, said the fall-season events have been successful.
"The Jazz Festival has extended our summer season," he said. "September and October, we do as many room nights now in each of those months as we used to do in August."
Trailing of the Sheep has garnered increasing national and international exposure during a season when events are difficult to come by. The event, which celebrates the Wood River Valley's history as one of the leading sheep-producing regions in the world, has received awards for presentation and preservation of history, folk life and arts. It was recipient of the Governor's Award for Cultural Heritage Tourism in 2001.
"Twenty years ago, we made a commitment to extend our seasons," Sibbach said, referring to both Sun Valley Co. and the community. "We've been reasonably successful."
Photo by Willy Cook
