Rube Felicelli
In Rube Felicelli’s office, there’s a sign that reads, “Gone Dancing.” Today, it’s turned inward, meaning he hasn’t, in fact, gone dancing. At least not yet. And if the sign alone isn’t indication of Felicelli’s enthusiasm for dance, just know that he’s the guy who will always boogie, even when no one else is, and he doesn’t care who is watching. “Maybe it’s a form of expression, but the music gets into me, and I just can’t help myself,” he says.
Aside from being a dancing fanatic, he’s a mellow man. In his ubiquitous floral shirt, he always looks like he’s on vacation. As a fixture in local politics, recreation, music and art, he’s been low key but always involved. He was, until recently, on Mountain Village Town Council since 1999, serving as mayor at the end of his eight-year term. He’s a volunteer at nearly every festival and gets really excited about Mountainfilm, in particular. “It’s a great organization—the people who come, the ideas, the interaction with people from around the world is just inspiring, stimulating,” he says. As the president of the Telluride Council for the Arts, he’s discovered additional inspiration. “Civilization is based in the arts,” he explains. We learn through art “starting with cave drawings…writings, history, plays. The humanities part of it is helping people.”
To further illustrate his community involvement, he emcees the Summer Sunset Concert in Mountain Village, sits on the board of the San Juan Fen Partnership, and last summer he “did” his first wedding—meaning he was the official—before hiking the Wasatch that afternoon.
Felicelli’s been in Telluride 16 years, and what brought him here—considering that the man loves to dance—is no surprise: music. But he’s not someone who blew in on the Bluegrass Festival alone. He met Telluride local Buzz Fedorka at a Tim and Mollie O’Brien performance in a nowhere bar in Wheeling, Virginia, where he went to college. “Gradually, through the years, we developed a friendship,” he said. Fedorka asked him to move West a few years later. “I said, ‘Yep, I’ve gotta move here,’” he says.
College was a pivotal time for Felicelli. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he attended a Jesuit high school and spent his summers in Oyster Bay on Long Island. Following secondary school, his years at a Jesuit college in Wheeling “turned my life around” because he discovered road biking, backpacking and other outdoor pursuits.
Once in Telluride, he drew upon these passions and went to work for what was then Olympic Sports. At the time, Mountain Village was nothing but a dirt parking lot, a ticket office in the front of a trailer and a ski shop in the back—hardly the current version of itself.
Currently, the Village gets criticized a lot; people say its buildings are too big, there’s too much money here. Felicelli doesn’t see it that way. “This [Mountain Village] was always designed to have the big buildings, the hotels….The nice thing is it takes the pressure off of Telluride,” he explains. “If we didn’t have Mountain Village, think of what would have happened to Telluride. [Development pressure] would have crushed Telluride long ago,” he says confidently.
For employment, he later bounced over to the Peaks and worked for Telluride Sports, where he became the ski and bike buyer. He also helped manage the main street location of the shop. He pushed products, but not just to sell them. “You’re selling a lifestyle and something you really believe in,” he says. And that hasn’t changed with his relatively new career as a Realtor, which he started in 2000. He’s still selling what he believes in—this place—and he still listens to what people want. His Jesuit education instilled an “ability to listen and make your own mind up” and “a strong sense of ethics. It all played into how I approach life, which is, in general, positive,” explains Felicelli.
And that brings us to today. He’s been out of the political arena for a few months, but he still has a punch list and will continue to attend some political forums and meetings. He wants to form a trails council, and he desires more affordable housing and green standards, wanting the region to set an example for building with a conscience. And at the top of his list is that he’d like to see the Alta Lakes area remain as it is, with no further development, which is an impending possibility. “For a lot of people, the Valley Floor was sacred. For me, the whole Alta region is sacred. It’s my sanctuary. I don’t want to see it developed…I don’t want to see hundreds and hundreds of people running around that place.”
The recent transition away from politics doesn’t seem to affect Felicelli. “We have this problem, and it’s not just elected officials…. We feel that we’re so important, and we can’t conceive of our life without doing these things…that we’re too important to leave. It’s OK when it’s over to walk away and enjoy life.” Walking away for Felicelli will involve more bike riding, reading and time to himself will fill his schedule, but he doesn’t aspire to walk too far. “When I moved here 16 years ago, I found it. I still don’t know of anywhere else I’d rather be. I don’t know of anyone else who’d have me. The one thing about Telluride is that it’s a free-thinking collection of misfits…a refuge from the real world.”
