The jagged peaks of the Elk Mountains still punch the Colorado sky with the same violent, indifferent beauty they have for millennia. The air is thin and sharp, a clean blade that cuts through the lungs. But something else hangs in the air of Aspen now, something far more toxic than the exhaust from the private jets idling on the tarmac. It is the faint, sweet smell of money so old and vast it has begun to rot. To stand on the mall today is to witness the final, gaudy mausoleum of the American Dream, and it fills a man—a man who remembers when this place was a ramshackle fortress of the soul—with a strange, pulsating mixture of fear and loathing.
If you need the primary source text (the actual article Thompson wrote): fear and loathing in aspen
Edwards narrowly lost the election by just six votes. Despite the defeat, the race proved that the counterculture was a legitimate political force. Thompson realized that with a slightly larger turnout, the freaks could actually win. The 1970 Sheriff Campaign: Hunter for Sheriff The jagged peaks of the Elk Mountains still
Now? The freaks have been evicted. The sheriff is a real estate developer. The grassy bike paths are now cobblestone malls lined with Prada and Gucci, high-end temples to a god that Thompson knew was a fraud: the god of Status. The loathing deepens because the victory of the "pig" class he railed against is so absolute. They didn’t just win; they bought the battlefield, then paved it, then built a condominium on it that no journalist, no artist, no ski bum could ever afford. It is the faint, sweet smell of money
The Aspen installment of Fear and Loathing offers valuable insights into Thompson's creative process and the cultural context of the late 1970s and early 1980s:
By 1969, Aspen was undergoing a rapid transformation. The quiet mining town turned ski resort was attracting massive corporate investments. Wealthy developers were buying up land, raising property values, and threatening the local ecosystem.