KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS CULTURE FRIENDLY FACES EVERYWHERE IT’S SHOWTIME: 25 COLORADO CLOSE- UPS OVER 25 YEARS OF SOUTH PARK. BY EMILY FERGUSON Last August, Trey Parker and Matt Stone joined Governor Jared Polis for a live discus- sion that was supposed to celebrate the start of South Park’s 24th season. But the Colorado natives had bigger things to celebrate: a $900 million deal with ViacomCBS to create six more seasons of South Park and fourteen mov- ies drawing from the show for Paramount+ — one of the biggest talent deals in television history — as well as an actual agreement to purchase Casa Bonita, the pink eatertainment palace on West Colfax Avenue. Now that South Park is marking a more impressive anniversary, Comedy Central is hosting a big birthday bash: the South Park 25th Anniversary Concert at Red Rocks Amphi- theatre on August 9 and 10, when Parker and Stone will take the stage along with Primus and Ween. Primus frontman/bassist Les Claypool and Ween’s Dean Ween (Mickey Melchiondo) and Gene Ween (Aaron Freeman) have collabo- rated with Parker and Stone since the late ’90s; Claypool created the South Park theme song and included Parker and Stone in his mock- umentary Electric Apricot, while Ween was included in season two’s “Chef Aid,” in which the band played the song “The Rainbow” for a benefi t concert. Parker and Stone’s own band, DVDA, was an opener for Ween in 1999 and 2000, and the comedic duo also directed the band’s music video for “Even If You Don’t.” An immersive South Park exhibit in a shipping container — fi lled with all sorts of memorabilia, props, artwork, never-before- seen scripts, storyboards and South Park landscape backdrops for selfi es — will be on hand for the Red Rocks shows before heading to McGregor Square (Denver’s SoDoSoPa) on August 11 and 12, then travels to L.A. But these hometown heroes will leave plenty to remember them by in Colorado. Stone grew up in Littleton and Parker in Conifer, raised by his mother, Sharon, and geologist father, Randy (the same names as Stan Marsh’s parents). “South Park, to us, was always the place where you’d talk about UFO sightings. It was just this weird place at the time where not many people lived,” Parker told Polis. “It was the place we’d always talk about weird things happening, and we would go drive around and look for the government base…which we never found.” Stone and Parker met in a fi lm class at the University of Colorado Boulder in the early ’90s; by ’95, they’d moved to L.A. and made “The Spirit of Christmas,” their fi rst creation to showcase foul-mouthed fourth-graders Stan Marsh, Kyle Brofl ovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick. The video went viral in the infancy of the Internet. At the time, the two were living in a studio apartment and sleeping on futons. After they pitched a half-hour cartoon series with the char- acters, South Park was fi nally picked up by Comedy Central, and the fi rst episode aired on August 13, 1997. It was a major ratings success, particularly in the cable-only days, and within a year, advertisers were paying Comedy Central about four times more than they had for ads the previous year. The inappropriate humor remained a constant; the show has been castigated by conservatives, leftists and everyone in be- tween. They don’t mean to offend, Parker and Stone said in the 2011 documentary 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park: “We just are sort of offensive people.” Their ef- forts have been rewarded with numerous lawsuits, and you can no longer stream sev- eral episodes of South Park, including “200” and “201,” which both lambasted multiple celebrities who have taken offense at the show and illustrated the prophet Muham- mad, causing an uproar among fundamental- ist Muslims and religious activists. After their Tony Award-winning musical, The Book of Mormon, debuted in 2011, the two started work on South Park’s fi fteenth season. The fi rst episode was “HUMAN- CENTiPAD,” in which Kyle is forced into the middle of a “human centipede” after signing iTunes terms and conditions, which dictate: “By clicking Agree, you’re also acknowledg- ing that Apple may sew your mouth to the butthole of another iTunes user.” Broadway clearly didn’t go to their heads or get them to behave any better, thankfully. Although they didn’t reveal themselves as the creators at fi rst, Parker and Stone were behind the viral deep-fake video “Sassy Justice,” which used deep fakes of politi- cians such as Al Gore and Donald Trump to not only showcase the dangers of deep fake, but to make fun of politicians, as well. And in their conversation with Polis, Stone said that if Colorado were to have a South Park mascot, it would be Towelie, the drug- addicted sentient towel who can’t function without getting high. South Park has showcased Colorado landmarks throughout its 25 seasons. Parker and Stone frequently return to Colorado to visit friends and family, and they told Polis that they would still live here if they could. In 2016, a New York Times analysis unsurprisingly found that most of South Park’s fans are from the duo’s home state. And why not? You can’t watch the show without catching references to Colorado. In honor of South Park’s 25th season, here are 25 places in the state that have been highlighted. Fair warning: We can’t promise you’ll see “friendly faces everywhere” or “humble folks without temptation.” Fairplay While Parker and Stone haven’t said it themselves, the general consensus is that Park County’s Fairplay is the town in which South Park takes place. If you created the setting and architecture of Fairplay out of construc- tion paper, it would look almost identical to the hometown of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. And you can certainly fi nd plenty of South Park merch, including models of those characters, at shops around town. Stark’s Pond “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” S1, E1; “Jakovasaurs,” S3, E4; “Here Comes the Neighborhood,” S5, E12; “Butters’ Very Own Episode,” S5, E14; “Toilet Paper,” S7, E3; “Grey Dawn,” S7, E10; “Casa Bonita,” S7, E11; “The Jeffersons,” S8, E6; “Something Wall-Mart Casa Bonita “Casa Bonita,” S7, E11; “201,” S14, E6; “South ParQ Vaccination Special,” S24, E2 The “Disneyland of Mexican restau- rants,” as Kyle calls it, fi rst appears in season seven, when Kyle has his birthday party at the pink palace and Cartman is enraged he wasn’t invited. Cartman then traps Butters in a bomb shelter so that he can join the party in his stead. In the now-pulled episode “201,” the restaurant is destroyed by a giant robot of Barbra Streisand. Casa Bonita’s last appearance came in the “Vaccination Special,” when the restaurant reopened its doors after the pandemic shutdown. The real Casa Bonita has yet to make that comeback — but it continued on page 12 This Way Comes,” S8, E9; “You’re Getting Old,” S15, E7; “A Boy and a Priest,” S22, E2 Another reason that people believe Fairplay is the town’s muse is that it’s home to Stark’s Pond, and the South Park characters often visit a spot with the same name, starting with the premiere episode. It’s where they discover the annoying Jakovasaurs in season three, where Butters’s mother tries to drown him in season fi ve, where a fi ctional Walmart is built in season eight, and where Butters goes fi shing with Father Maxi in season 22. While the real Stark’s Pond may not hold the dead victim of an old person’s driving mishap in “Grey Dawn,” it defi nitely looks similar to the fi ctional site. 11 westword.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | WESTWORD AUGUST 4-10, 2022 SOUTHPARK.CC.COM/WESTWORD PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
