On Sept. 30, the Dolores Bike Hostel turned 1 year old.
And to celebrate, it’s throwing a party on Saturday, Oct. 26, complete with two five-piece bands and a DJ that’ll play a dance party set.
A Montezuma County band called Goat Head will play at 5 p.m., when the party starts. Mojo Birds out of Durango comes next, followed by DJ Bad Goat.
“It’s bracketed by goat-themed things,” said the hostel’s owner, Jake Carloni.
That night, the hostel will be open, inside and out.
Everyone of all ages is welcome. They’ll have a choice of four cocktails – and four cocktails only – and beer on tap from Cortez’s WildEdge Brewing Collective.
Yia Yia’s food truck will be there too, and so will The Italian, selling subs and pizza.
“We’re just hoping it’s going to be a big party,” said Jake. “It’s a real big hoorah that we want to throw for the community.”
“Jacob spent way too much money on lighting,” said Jake’s sister, Hannah Carloni, who helps him run the hostel.
“We’ve got so many sick lights,” said Jake. “Laser lights, fog lights everywhere.”
“Jake bought a fog machine,” Hannah added.
“I bought two fog machines. If you think we’re making money on this party, we are not,” Jake said as they laughed.
“It’s just going to be a lot of fun, and we’re stoked,” he said.
But like any business, getting the place up and running wasn’t all fun and games.
Almost three years ago, 507 Central Ave. first came into Jake’s orbit.
“I was kind of at a time in my life when I had just enough money and just enough skill to be thinking, all right, what can I blow all of my money and take a huge chance on?’”
Jake said he had been thinking of buying 35 acres and divvying it up, building small homes on it. But then he saw the 4,000-square-foot, 50-year-old building that’s now the Dolores Bike Hostel on Zillow.
It had been on the market for 100 days, and was a textbook vacant building: Trees and weeds grew unchecked, overtaking the yard, and if you looked closely, you could see the shadow of the old Dolores Medical Center’s sign on the faded forest green awning.
Considering its downtown location, Jake wondered why it hadn’t been bought yet.
“I figured the reason why … is because it’s kind of a big, awkward building and was going to have to be completely redone,” he remembered.
“It was just sitting around, waiting for somebody to come up with a good enough idea to do something with it, I guess,” he said.
After contemplating and brainstorming in a hot tub with his friend Brendan Page, Jake said he was driving home afterward when Brendan texted “Dolores Bike Hostel.”
“And I was like, I’ve never been to a hostel in my life, I don’t know anything about hostels, but that’s a really cool name,” he said.
The name alone “spawned this journey of asking questions and expecting the door to be shut in my face at every turn, but instead doors opening,” Jake said.
Renovations took 14 months, and for the first five, Jake lived in the construction zone.
He deemed the experience of living with no heat or hot water under a tarp in “pseudo clean corners” during a historic winter “horrendous.”
“Boots (their cat) slept on him for warmth – it was a symbiotic relationship,” Hannah said.
During the period of “living like squatter in this place,” Jake said how kind the community was to him. He’d shower at Kokopelli’s, Marie from The Italian fed him four days a week, and ladies from the Food Market would bring him free coffee in the mornings. At night, he’d frequent the pub or Kelly’s Kitchen to use the internet.
“Yeah, dark days,” he laughed. “It was a lot of hard work, but it was a lot of getting lucky and being supported by my friends, my family and my community.”
In that entire 14 months, Jake said he maybe took off seven days. And a few months before the grand opening, Hannah came out to offer a helping hand.
“When she called me, she was like yeah, I’m thinking about coming out there for like three weeks to two months,” said Jake. “She’s been here for a year-and-a-half.”
She did a lot of physical labor, but also helped set up the website and figure out how to accept bookings, Jake said.
She’s also been responsible for a lot of the “thoughtful things” around the hostel, like four pillows on the beds instead of two, Jake said.
“And being really funny on social media,” Hannah added.
After finishing up her 10th year of teaching in Washington, D.C., Hannah said she needed a break, so she visited Dolores for a long weekend in May last year and realized how much help Jake still needed.
“I was in an OK financial spot where I could not have a job for a year or so, so I quit my job in D.C. and one-way-ticketed my way out here,” Hannah said.
Until that point, they hadn’t really hung out since they were teenagers, Hannah said. And even then, they weren’t exactly close.
“It was a crapshoot. I was like, I only know the 16-year-old version of Jacob,” Hannah said. “So it’s been really great.”
“Hannah’s my best friend,” Jake intervened.
“Getting to know the adult version of Jacob has been really fun,” Hannah laughed.
She said it’s been refreshing, too, to get out of the city and move to a small town.
“In D.C., you find your little tiny community just like in Dolores you find your tiny community, it’s just that in Dolores your tiny community is the whole community,” she said.
They both emphasized how thankful they are for the tiny community, and how it’s been great to give back and help stimulate the economy in Dolores.
“I love when the Food Market or Kelly’s Kitchen or the brewery … see me and say, ‘Hey, we had some of your guests yesterday, they were really nice’,” said Jake. “That’s my favorite.”
When it first opened, the hostel was busy, but it slowed down from November to April. So in that time, they decided to host events.
“I remember looking at Jake and being like, we can plan any community event that we want because we can and this is ours. We can do whatever we want here,” Hannah said.
And so they did.
They started with their first annual Hostelween Party, which is geared toward families with kids. It’s a free event with an obstacle course, crafts, mask making and face painting, and they just had the second annual event on Sunday, Oct. 20.
Next came Friendsgiving, an Avalanche Awareness Course with Friends of the San Juans and ski tuning with Scott Darling from Kokopelli Bike & Board.
The Dolores High School Student Council had a pop-up in the hostel’s lobby in January. They borrowed clothing racks from Kokopelli to create a makeshift store of free, used prom dresses.
In February, they had a speed puzzling competition, and the $600 it made went to Habitat for Humanity. Twelve teams were given the same puzzle, and they raced to finish it.
“Nobody paid attention to anything but the puzzle; everyone was so concentrated for two hours,” Jake said.
They were so concentrated on finishing the puzzle, in fact, that the beer and food they bought went untouched, Jake said.
They also organized a Beer Mile, which Jake called “the best thing we’ve ever done.” They set a course, beginning at the Dolores River Brewery, and runners – personally or in relay style – had to drink four beers over the course of a mile. He said there were 47 runners and a good deal of spectators, too.
“It was a real good party,” he said.
Every first Thursday at 6 p.m., they host a book club where people talk about what book they’re reading. And every Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., the run and walk club meets at the hostel and goes from there.
In addition to being part of the colorful community, meeting all the eccentric travelers that the word “hostel” attracts is a huge perk of the business. Jake said.
He said he had actually thought of naming it the Dolores Bike Lodge instead, but thought the word “lodge” had an “uppity connotation,” so he opted for hostel.
“I really wanted people to come in with low expectations and hopefully try to exceed them,” he said.
And often, people’s expectations are exceeded.
Sometimes guests will book for one night and extend the stay for a few extra nights, something Hannah and Jake attribute to the hostel being nice – as many visitors have called it the nicest hostel they’ve stayed in – and all the things to do in the area.
“Whenever people are like, ‘I think this is the nicest hostel I’ve ever been in,’ I’m like, ‘I think I know why,’” said Hannah. “I think it’s because my brother’s never been to a hostel before so when he was making it, he didn’t know it was supposed to be kind of sketchy, a little dirty … I think it worked to our advantage, though.”
Visitors came from 25 different countries the first year; Jake said at the start of summer, it felt like there were more international than American visitors.
He’s loved being able to sit down with people from faraway places, comparing the differences in their daily lives. He remembers one visitor from the Middle East being most stunned about America having bears.
Overall, in reflecting on their first year in business, the pair feels awfully glad to be part of Dolores.
“I think we’re turning into a town that’s going to be less of a pass through and more of a destination,” said Jake. “We’re well-situated and I feel lucky we got in at the time we did.”
