Jackson Hole Underground

For two weeks I had been driving around with bags of bottles and cans in my car, left behind by friends I had dropped at the airport.

Having grown weary of the smell of stale beer, I finally pulled into the recycling center last Wednesday to unload these and other recyclables. Beyond the south end of the building I spotted a small crowd with tripods.

Must be a mountain lion, I figured, or a wolf.

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I’ve pretty much stopped drinking my coffee from paper cups by hauling into Hard Drive and Pearl Street Bagels one of those stainless steel freebie belogo’d to-go mugs that roll around the floor of my car.

Were you shocked to learn that Americans trash 2.5 million plastic water bottles per hour?

Here’s a similar shocker: Starbucks alone goes through 1.9 billion paper cups per year. That’s 78,000 trees.

But I’m not here to bully. I’ll settle for a compromise. Every to-go coffee purchase also comes with what I call the “mittsfib” or MTSFIB — the McDonald’s Tort Sissy-Finger Insulator Belt. No doubt corporate lawyers came up with this ever since some poor old lady famously sued McDonald’s because her to-go coffee was apparently quite hot.

Go ahead. Use’n'toss the paper cup. But at least be tough enough to say “hold the mittsfib.”

Baby Man Syndrome: (noun) Characterized by young, single men, specifically between the ages of 29 and 37, who have made the conscious decision to live in Jackson Hole, ski, have successfully eluded all stereotypical adult male behavior such as marriage, children, six-figure incomes, mortgages, fancy cars and golf.

There is an epidemic of Baby Man Syndrome in Jackson, and it has many a furrowed-brow professional in deep thought. (hmmmm.)

Baby Men are darling, they are hot, and they are everywhere.

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