Can We Talk?

The latest from the Colorado Tourism Office leaves us speechless.

By Patricia Calhoun

published: May 08, 2008

Last month, the Colorado Tourism Office offered a taste of this state to New Yorkers in the form of "Colorado High Altitude Concrete," made by the distinctly un-Coloradan Danny Meyer ("Balls!," April 24). Anyone hungry for more was referred to a website that touts our fine cuisine of rattler cakes and Rocky Mountain oysters, and serves up enough spelling mistakes to make us look like a state already filled with illiterate peasants.

This month, the CTO placed a full-page "Let's Talk Colorado" promo in Food & Wine magazine, which sells those ads for $74,500 ($65,000 with a twelve-time contract). "Let's talk road trips," reads the copy. "Let's talk breathtaking. Let's talk Colorado." But in this magazine whose readers are rendered speechless by a perfect soufflé, let's not talk about food. At all.

Apparently no magazine is safe from this babble. The state also bought a two-page "Let's Talk Colorado" spread in the April 21 New Yorker, whose readers might appreciate the nice picture of Red Rocks under the words "Sometimes you want to hear yourself think. Sometimes you don't." But the CTO definitely doesn't want to hear what I think about the embarrassment on the opposite page — "Dude Interlude," a fake story/ad about an imaginary trip to the Cater-2U Dude Ranch in Colorado:

A long lean man with big-sky blue eyes, a leathery face, and a square jaw was comfortable under his worn Stetson, and extended a hand. I was sure his name had to be Tex.

"Howdy, friend," he drawled. "Ah'm Col."

"Oh...hi, Cal," I said.

"Col," he repeated softly. Like in Col-orado. Cal would be my brother. In Cal-ifornia."

Where we should send this entire campaign.