Journey through city life for a few blocks and you may hear the whimpers of somebody’s yearning to get away from it all. They’ll want to escape the concrete jungle and return to nature and a more simple way of life. Looking at the options you could permanently relocate to the Amazon and subsist off the land by eating high-protein caterpillar shit sandwiches, or you could take the route of many Americans: live in “small-town America”. For the rich, their version of this is buying property in Aspen, CO and either vacationing or retiring.

But is this really “escaping”? The answer is “no”. I spent some time in Aspen for the Labor Day Weekend and I can report there is no need for surveillance cameras in the City of Aspen when every one of the 5,914 residents is constantly watching your every move. Aspen is like Melrose Place. No, it’s more like high school. Actually, it’s worse. I’ll prove it.

Every year it happens to my buddy who took me to Aspen. He’ll be approached by someone and they’ll recognize him as the brother of one of the big wigs in town. They will then proceed to giving a detailed itinerary of how he spent his time in Aspen when he was there last, and this happens regardless of whether they’ve ever met my friend.

Now this buddy of mine is a guy who can’t remember what he did last Saturday let alone what he did on vacation years ago, but these Aspen locals are worse than stalkers. The entire town steams a stalkers-in-the-mist vibe. Aspen is a locale small enough where everyone knows everybody’s name. Because the town is virtually in the middle of nowhere, there’s not much to do when it’s not ski season, so everybody’s all up in everybody’s business. And what makes Aspen worse than high school is that you could go ten years without showing your face in town and the majority of its inhabitants would still be able to recite your itinerary from a decade ago. I doubt stalkers from high school would be so adept at reciting your daily adolescent routine at the 10-year reunion.

Just try driving through town and you can see everybody on the street looking at you and waiting to find something to complain about. For instance, I jaunted through the road leading to my friend’s brother’s home when I was stopped by his next-door neighbor’s caretaker. He was all up in my grill complaining I was going too fast. He straight up said, “I don’t want you running over and killing my dog.” I wasn’t even going that fast, but you can feel it when you see people on the street – you just know they’re thinking, “On whom can I call the cops today?” or, “Whose life can I control as they stroll through?” It’s every Aspen resident’s aspiration to control the world; they already do some of that in their professional life. This spirit of oppressive control is reflected in the official city speed limit of 25 mph, even on streets where 40 mph would be safe.

It’s the case of über-rich culture meeting small-town America culture. Melrose Place meets Mayberry. Aunt Bee meets washed-up trophy wife. The combination is deadly. In L.A. you could have a conga line of hookers and transvestites stampeding nightly through your bedroom and nobody would give a rat’s ass. Party that hard in Aspen and your face would be chiseled on the front page of a special stone tablet edition of The Aspen Times. And my dear heavens, what would Aunt Bee think?

This isn’t to say I didn’t have a fun time in Aspen. Personally, I think I’d like it more in the summer than I would in the winter. But in the winter the town’s so flooded with tourists that the local rich yokels can’t keep track of all the people in town, so it’s safe enough to rip it up big-city style and not worry about becoming a local infamous celebrity.

Winter’s not too far away so stay tuned for an Aspen winter social analysis. Perhaps I’ll share an L.A. style party story.