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Escort service opens in Durango

Allen Best

DURANGO – This southwestern Colorado city now has an escort service. Police say they have no reason to believe it is offering anything other than what it purports to offer, companionship for social functions. Houses of prostitution did thrive in Durango until the 1950s, local historian Duane Smith tells the Durango Herald. In a newspaper advertisement pitched “college ladies,’ the escort services promises “great income potential.”Locals get parts in Brad Pitt movieCANMORE, Alberta Brad Pitt has been turning heads in Canmore. He’s been in Alberta since late summer to shot a movie being called “The Assassination of Jesse James,” the most recent of a long list of movies shot in the area between Calgary and Banff.Alberta seems to be a stand-in for many other places in the West. A movie now arriving in theaters, “Brokeback Mountain,” was also filmed near Canmore, in an area described as the Kananaskis Country. That story, about two bi-sexual cowboys, is based on a short story by Annie Proulx. She set the story in northern Wyoming.In the story about Jesse James, some of the action is supposed to take place in Creede, a Colorado town that boomed with the discovery of gold in 1890. It is located near the Wolf Creek ski area, in the southern part of the state. Bob Ford, the former gang member who killed Jesse James to collect a reward (and dodge his own sentence for a murder), ended up in Creede, where he ran a saloon and gambling den.A new makeshift town has been constructed near Canmore that is supposed to resemble the Colorado town, and a casting call was made for 100 extras. The production company had no problem finding takers, possibly because of all the buzz surrounding Pitt. But, in order to lend some authenticity to the scenes, there was a decided imbalance – four men for every one woman. That’s what the gold-mining camps were like – or worse. Of course, some seem to think it’s that bad in ski towns.Vail, Colorado


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