A Day in the Life of a Park City Native During Sundance

By Contributor

January 31, 2012

bringonthePAYNEd12 brings us an exclusive Sparkler report from Sundance's Andy Samberg search committee. –Sparkitors

The Sundance Film Festival just ended, and with it the insane crowds of celebrities and tourists that flock every year to my hometown of Park City, Utah. Yes, I live in the home city of one of the country's best film festivals, and, to quote a certain superhero, with a great amount of tourists comes a great amount of tolerance on the part of us non-tourists. Here's what it's like to be a Park City resident during this crazy time:

5:30 a.m. Wake up early in order to put an insane amount of time into looking good, just in case I see Andy Samberg on the way to school.

6:45 a.m. I jump in the car, ready to scan the streets for an early morning Andy.

7:15 a.m. No Andy *sob*, so I continue to school, ready to learn.

11 a.m. My awesome debate teacher ushers my class down to the lecture hall, where we watch a Sundance film, complete with hipster directors and a ridiculous title.

11:30 a.m. What?! It was a short film? Well, that's a half hour I'll never get back.

11:31 a.m. Q&A with the Hipster directors, where we all put on a nice "Quaint Mountain Town" attitude and pretend to care about the movie they just force fed us. Breakfast burritos are mentioned.

2:15 p.m. Out of school ten minutes early just for Sundance! Yay! I head to the grocery store, Andy-scanning once again...

2:25 p.m. Browsing the aisles, I'm asked which tampons, soda, notebook paper, and magazines are best suited to the Mountain Adventure Lifestyle by some random tourist. Trying very hard to be kind and not laugh, I help the poor lady out.

2:40 p.m. A few people ask me for autographs, since I happen to be wearing sunglasses and a coat with a faux-fur hood. What they hey? I'll give the people what they want!

3 p.m. Three o'clock is the perfect time for ice cream, so I head over to Coldstone, where another tourist asks which flavors of ice cream best represent my unique mountain surroundings. Coffee mixed with chocolate, obviously: brown seems mountain-y, and that's the best flavor, anyway.

3:10 p.m. A few friends join me for ice cream. We sit, eat, and later get yelled at by, yes, some random tourists. We can't figure out exactly what the problem was. We were talking about geometry and figure skating—is that so offensive? This random yelling phenomenon seems to take place a lot during the month of January. I wonder if it has anything to do with the crowds of people who travel across the country just to act all uppity and take over our grocery stores, ice cream shops, and streets.

3:30 p.m. I don't want to get yelled at again, so I go back home and dream of simpler times—like last week, when no one walked around in ridiculous knee-length fur coats, yelling at teens for talking about math and ice sports. Sigh.

Would you brave the tourist crush to live in Park City during Sundance?