What is Happening in Leadville?

A Colorado Hippie Supreme and the Psychological Shopping Hack of the Ages.

This is something I have never encountered. I was in Vail a few weeks ago with my family. They were skiing and I was fishing in the snow and doing other things. I tend to have a hard time sleeping the first few nights in Colorado due to the altitude. So I am up in the middle of the night, and I start thinking about this clothing brand, Melanzana, that I had heard about. Why I am thinking about this is beyond me, but there I am looking at the company website at 3 in the morning. Melanzana doesn’t sell online. If you want to buy in person, you have to make an appointment for the one store in Leadville. The problem is that there are typically no appointments available. It’s pure insanity. When I woke up in the middle of the night, for some reason, I went to the website and somehow got a same-day appointment. I won the Melanzana lottery and needed to find out exactly is going on in Leadville.

Leadville is an old mining town that sits at over 10,000 feet of elevation. It’s not particularly close to any of the other hyper-developed Colorado mountain towns with their Park Hyatt hotels and $25 mezcal negronis. It’s an interesting small town with a wild-west-meets-hippie thing going on. I don’t think I spent enough time there to really understand it. Although, in some ways, it does feel a bit like a place I would never understand.

There was a little snow falling when I arrived. I parked at the end of Leadville’s main drag and figured I would walk around to kill the time before my appointment. There weren’t many people around on the street. I stopped in a coffee shop, which was strangely also a bar. It had couches that reminded me of Athens, Ohio, but not in a good way. Coffee shops with old couches are one of the easiest ways to scare me. They are like jeans with cargo pockets or fabric seats on public transport. We all know those things shouldn’t go together, yet there they are. In the bar portion of this establishment, there was a woman telling a very personal story at an unsuitably loud volume. I was within the blast radius of this conversation, and the only thing I could do was attempt to hold back my visible repulsion and get out of there. The coffee was lukewarm, but not bad considering the decor. I needed to keep moving down the road with 15 minutes to go before I tried to figure out what the hell was going on with Melanzana.

Next, I stopped into a vintage store. I was excited. This seemed like a cool place to buy some old outdoor gems. Bring on the Rocky Mountain Featherbed and the vintage Kelty bags. Upon entering and seeing circular racks of CHAPS, I realized this was more thrift than vintage. Before I could escape the woman working the counter started talking to me, the only customer in the shop. I tried to ask her about Melanzana still trying to understand it. Instead, I got her life story starting in Valencia, Calif., and moving slowly down I-5 to 20 years in LA before she got to Leadville. She was friendly and nice. I left the shop with a nice working knowledge of her life, but sadly, no further clarity on the Melanzana business model.

Now was my time, though. I had scored an appointment out of pure luck, and it was my turn to shop this exclusive collection. LOL. The Melanzana product line is simple: just a few fleece hoodies of varying lengths and fabrics. Everything was made in Leadville right there in the back of the shop. Even though it was Sunday, there were a few people at sewing machines making clothes. I was filled with questions. Why don’t they sell this stuff online? Why can’t people go in and buy things without having to win the appointment lottery? It didn’t make sense. What happened next was interesting.