AAA Loves Boulder & Banjo Billy
You know you’re a funky fun ride when even AAA says so! Check out our mention in EnCompass Magazine!
“Scratch below its cultural surface, and you’ll discover Boulder’s wacky roots. For the real (and historical) dirt, hop on Banjo Billy’s Bus Tour for a 90-minute, side-splitting ride in an old school bus turned hillbilly shack. Owner John Georgis (aka Banjo Billy) tells tales of history, ghosts or “gruesome crime” as guests bounce on old sofas or saddles under a psychedelic canopy. “On the left, a statue of Chief Niwot. On the right … well, there is no right in Boulder,” quips Georgis, referring to the town’s political leanings.”
Boulder’s Winter Bug - Boulder’s local color: fun and funky
An Interview With Banjo
John, aka Banjo Billy himself goes on air to talk shack bus with the folks at Front Range Boulder.
“Banjo Billy Guided Tours” - Frontrangeboulder.com Listen in Here!
RMN Gets Thier Pants Scared Off
Ghosts and ghouls and shack buses… oh my!
“Banjo Billy’s bus tour: ghosts, crime and history
• Stops include: Hotel Boulderado, the site of three suicides; The Arnett-Fullen House, the haunted former home of Historic Boulder; Mount Saint Gertrude Academy, supposedly haunted by the ghost of Sister Mary Theodore O’Connor; The Boulder Theater; Pi Beta Phi Sorority house; The University of Colorado’s Macky Auditorium and the Boulder History Museum, which reported strange occurrences after inheriting memorabilia belonging to an obsessive Boy Scout, who was forced out of the organization at the age of 46.
• Duration: 90 minutes
• The rundown: Warmer and easier on your feet than a walking tour, Banjo Billy’s offers a view of Boulder’s spookiest spots from the comforts of a kooky wood-covered school bus featuring a couch, five La-Z-Boy recliners and five saddles. Banjo Billy (aka John Georgis) draws his stories primarily from the books, Haunted Boulder: Ghostly Tales from the Foot of the Flatirons and Haunted Boulder 2: Ghostly Tales from Boulder and Beyond, but also provides plenty of fun history about the city. (Did you know that Boulder has had more than 80 couch fires and a dozen riots since 1997?)
• Guide style: Like the town he guides visitors around, Banjo Billy takes an easygoing, lighthearted approach to his job. He knows the right details, but also adds a dash of humor (”On the right-hand side of the street, you’ll see Tom’s Tavern,” he says. “Before it was Tom’s, it was the morgue. So, they’ve been serving dead slabs of meat for over 50 years.”) Though he’ll cater his tour to the audience (offering a racier version for college students), he says he’ll never include JonBenet Ramsey’s story. And yes, he does play banjo music on the bus.
• Scariest site: It isn’t difficult to imagine ghosts occupying the foreboding red brick Castle House. Located in Boulder’s University Hill neighborhood, the house has been the subject of ghost stories for decades. Former resident, artist Ruth Savig, says her daughter once awoke in the middle of the night to report a large man shaking her heavy bed. When she checked on her daughter’s story, she found the nearly-impossible-to-move bed a foot away from the wall. She later discovered that a large man had died in the room. On another occasion, while sketching alone in the house, she heard a woman telling her to “get out.” Not easily intimidated, Savig explained that it was now her house and she had no plans to leave. When she looked down at her sketch, she found that she had drawn the portrait of a previous owner.
• Most gruesome tale: It doesn’t get much more horrifying than the murder of Elaura Jaquette. In 1966, a janitor killed the zoology major in the west tower at Macky Auditorium, smearing her blood against the walls of a small rehearsal room for the music school. Legend has it that the young woman’s screams sometimes fill the building at night.
• Rating: Three and a half ghosts”
“Tour de Fright” - Rocky Mountain News
Boulder Weekly Rides the Bus
Mystery Machine it may be, but at least it’s not Mystery Meat!
Banjo Billy’s Mystery Machine
- - - - - - - - - - - -
by Vince Darcangelo (buzz@boulderweekly.com)
In the course of 80 minutes we encounter three suicides, one lynching, one especially brutal murder-rape and one pathological Boy Scout who is creepier than your average troop leader on a camping trip. Toss in a ride to the cemetery and a cruise past the old morgue and it would seem a busy night on the mean streets of the People’s Republic. But for Banjo Billy it’s just another October Thursday in Boulder.
But Banjo Billy’s not a cop, a coroner or even one of those hip forensic investigators that are all the rage on primetime television.
“I’m just a guy who likes to tell stories,” he says.
Since June, Banjo Billy has been shuttling locals and visitors alike on Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours, a guided, interactive sightseeing trek of Boulder’s historic downtown, University Hill and Chautauqua Park areas.
“A lot of my stories are a little morose,” says Billy, who is better known as John Georgis away from the bus. “Ninety percent of my tours start out with three suicides. You’re not going to get that on a Gray Line tour. Maybe that’s our Generation X thing coming out.”
The regular Banjo Billy tour includes colorful stories and interesting facts about some of Boulder’s most infamous residents and locales, but since autumn, armed with two volumes of Haunted Boulder and the realization that his passengers love a good spook tale, Georgis has complemented his daylight excursion with Banjo Billy’s Boulder Ghost Stories, a full-moon descent into Boulder’s Twilight Zone.
Boulder Ghost Stories begins at the Hotel Boulderado, where Georgis tells of the reputed ghosts that still linger on the third floor. We cruise past Tom’s Tavern, the one-time morgue now one of Boulder’s most famous hamburger joints.
“Either way, they’ve been serving up slabs of dead meat for a long time,” quips Georgis.
From there we travel to Boulder Creek, where nocturnal joggers and bicyclists have reported seeing a transparent man in a black duster; the park where a mysterious woman in white is said to prowl rows of ancient cottages; and, of course, Macky Auditorium, where a gruesome sexual assault occurred in the organ room of the west tower. We also swing by upscale downtown venues like the Boulder Theater and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art—places known more for their hip events than for their haunts.
But for all the local color explored on the tour, nothing can match the uniqueness of the Banjo Billy bus. As funky and outrageous as Boulder itself, this hillbillied-out school bus (which Georgis purchased off of eBay) is easily recognizable around town with its funky wood siding, pitched roof and the unmistakable twang of banjo music blasting from its speakers. What appears to be a shack on wheels from the outside is more like a rave on the inside. Tapestries adorn the high, peaked ceiling, showcasing a spinning disco ball. The interior lining is denim; the floor of the 11-year-old school bus is covered with Astroturf. The original seats have been fancily reupholstered and seem more like comfortable love seats than the hard-backed, cheap vinyl benches I sat on when riding to school. Where the original seats have been removed, they have been replaced with thrift-store easy chairs, saddles mounted on sawhorses and a full-sized couch in the back, which Georgis acquired for the tour about a year before he became Banjo Billy.
“My then-girlfriend said, ‘What the hell are you doing with this couch?’” he says. “I said, ‘It’s for the bus.’ She said, ‘What bus?’ I said, ‘It’s coming later.’”
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Banjo Billy bus has nothing to do with the adornment but rather the newfound tradition surrounding the tour. Along the route, locals have taken to hollering out “Banjo Billy” as the bus passes. In response, Georgis instructs us to holler “Yee-haw” with our best hillbilly twang when this occurs. We don’t have to wait long to try out our redneck greeting. Approaching a stop sign on the east end of University Hill, a longhaired young man smoking a cigarette on his front porch jumps to his feet. He opens the front door and hollers to his buddies, who race to the porch hollering, “Banjo Billy.” We respond appropriately.
Georgis says that this household is particularly enthusiastic about the tour and once dropped their drawers to offer tourists a view of the Harvest Moon. Georgis responded by giving them free tickets.
“You’ve got to encourage that type of behavior,” he laughs.
As the tour concludes, we return to the Hotel Boulderado and park alongside the curb with Catacombs to our right and traffic passing by on our left. It’s a warm October night, so we chat outside the bus for a while. The Boulder Cruzer Club rides past us on their tricked-out one-speed cruiser bicycles, sporting outrageous costumes, wacky noisemakers and shouting, “Happy Thursday” to all within earshot. Many riders dress up in drag; at least one dons what appears to be a bear costume. Another has rigged his bike frame to hold a boom box, which blasts classic rock to downtown patio dwellers. At one point the light at 13th and Spruce turns red, forcing a group of about 20 riders to stop beside us. We are frozen for a moment, them staring at the Banjo Billy bus, us staring back at the Cruzers. It is a moment that is pure Boulder, a mirror image of two of the city’s most interesting traditions come together on one street. It’s a reminder that perhaps the only thing more colorful than Boulder’s past is its present.
“Banjo Billy’s Mystery Machine” - Boulder Weekly
We’re Just a Wild and Crazy Ride!
We got another mention in the Daily Camera. Seems people just can’t get enough of our wild side.
A spin on the wild side: Banjo Billy a Boulder sight
Matt Branaugh
Posted: 05/31/2005 12:00:00 AM MDT
Take a 36-foot school bus, strip off the roof, bust out the passenger windows, strap some wooden fence pickets on the sides, and add a stereo and microphone system, and what you get isn’t really like anything Boulder has seen.
And we’re talking about Boulder, so that’s saying a lot.
Soon, you may be able to check it out for yourself. Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours is rolling out, bringing a tour that weaves throughout the city every day during the summer months. The company is in the process of lining up a license from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, the state agency that oversees commercial transportation.
Customers will get an 80-minute tour highlighting history and mystery, voting to hear which of the 10 ghost stories and five murder tales - sans JonBenet Ramsey, since all of them pre-date 1966 - available from a hillbilly tour guide while viewing notable historical sites, the Mork & Mindy house included, of course.
“I wanted it to reek of Boulder,” says John Georgis, a Boulder resident who spent six years developing the idea before finally deciding to go after it. “Anything fancy wouldn`t work because Boulder is more organic. It`s eclectic.”
For Banjo Billy`s, eclectic might be an understatement.
In 1999, Georgis trekked through Europe solo, using bus tours as opportunities to meet people. More often than not, he says he endured a lot of boring ones.
“I found what people were looking for was something educational, but mostly entertaining,” he says.
After he returned, he bounced around the idea for a zany-styled bus tour with some friends. Georgis, who mines data for marketing companies for a living, kicked around a couple of concepts.
A trolley car? Too bland. A log cabin bus? Too heavy for wheels. Then came the idea of throwing up fencing on the sides of a bus, ripping off the roof and replacing it with a pitched tin roof, effectively creating a look unmistakably hillbilly.
In February, Georgis headed to Illinois and shelled out $6,000 to buy an 11-year-old bus. He drove it back and got to work, calling upon his girlfriend Beth Godden to help with design.
The party starts outside - with mini-disco balls dangling in front of the bus` warning lights and a rubber chicken strapped to the roof by a string of Christmas lights - and continues inside, where Willie Nelson blares on the stereo, more lights hang from the windows and an Egyptian tapestry drapes across the roof with a large disco ball.
Then there`s the seating. Georgis kept six of the original bus seats and had Godden re-cover them. He yanked out the rest, replacing them with four recliners, one couch and four horse saddles perched atop separate sawhorses. In all, he can seat 28 people.
Georgis leaned heavily on the Carnegie Library, as well as the work of local authors Silvia Pettem, Roz Brown and Ann Alexander Leggett, to compile the history. He hired two Boulder Valley School District bus drivers. He also has three tour guides, including himself, to help with the work load.
Georgis is working on partnerships with local retailers and hotels, and already has nailed down one with the Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites.
“They`ve been great in their marketing and they`ve been proactive,” says Dan King, co-owner and “Ambassador of Cool” at Boulder Outlook. “It sounds like a cool idea.”
Banjo Billy`s has done a few runs with local groups already. Revenue is coming in, which is good news, considering the insurance costs more per month than what he paid for the bus, Georgis says. But it`s worth it - and it`s been fun.
“We need something to keep Boulder weird,” he says.
“A Spin On the Wild Side” - Daily Camera (Boulder Dirt)
The “Dirt” on Banjo Billy
Check it out! The Daily Camera did a profile on us!
On the bus: Taking a spin on Banjo Billy’s hillbilly contraption
Daily Camera staff
Posted: 10/05/2005 12:00:00 AM MDT
As a Boulder native, I just had to check out the hillbilly bus that’s been driving around Boulder all summer, offering tours of my hometown.
So on a recent Saturday, I put John Georgis, owner of Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours, to a test: Could he really tell me things I don’t know about a town I’ve lived in for 22 years - and could he successfully entertain me on a Saturday morning after a night of drinking?
With that in mind, I find myself waiting for the bus, with its trademark peaked tin roof, to come rolling up to the front of the Hotel Boulderado, the pick-up point for all Banjo Billy’s tours. As the bus rumbles down the street, I can’t help but wonder whether it’s going to break down. It has the essence of a decaying shack.
“The insurance on this is more than my mortgage,” Georgis admits to me later.
Georgis has converted an old school bus by boarding up the sides with wood fencing, adding the roof and even placing antlers and a dangling rubber chicken at the front.
The bus drives up, and Georgis, aka Banjo Billy, opens the door and, coffee in hand, enthusiastically asks me to come aboard.
The first thing you encounter when you step inside the bus are four saddle seats, but, since it’s early, I settle into a large armchair rather than straddle a saddle.
Dressed in Converse shoes, orange-tinted sunglasses and a secondhand jacket that matches the armchairs in the bus, Georgis explains that the two chairs and the so-called “death couch” in the back came from the Salvation Army. Georgis’ girlfriend, Beth Godden, helped him cover them.
The result is an eclectic mix of decorating styles, where no two seats are the same, the ceiling is draped with a tapestry, there’s a disco ball hanging from the center and a gorilla and fake roses adorn the front of the bus.
Georgis shows me that his bus even comes equipped with a stereo that plays banjo music.
“The problem with naming your company Banjo Billy is you have to play banjo music,” he jokes.
Backstory
Before the tour begins, Georgis tells me how his company came into existence. He says it began on a whim when, after traveling through Europe and going on bus tours to meet fellow Americans, he realized that Boulder could use a tour like that.
“Really, I was just meeting people to drink beers with,” he says of his bus travels through Europe.
The Colorado native thought Boulder was the ideal place for a bus tour because of the unique people, “cool artist community” and out-of-town tourists that come through. Georgis, who was born in Pueblo, came to Boulder for a job and has been here for 13 years.
Georgis got his undergraduate degree in business administration at Colorado State University, and he jokes that one of the unique things about Boulder is that most people are educated and, in his case, it takes a degree to be able to drive a bus.
“My parent’s are very proud,” he says.
Georgis decided to create a more entertaining version of the bus tours he took in Europe, and bought a used 1996 school bus off eBay for $6,000 in February. He purchased a one-way ticket to Moline, Ill., to pick up the bus. Georgis says that’s when reality of his decision sunk in.
“I realized I either had to buy the bus or hitchhike the way back,” he says.
Georgis decided to use the bus’ ample space to pick up any hitchhikers he came across on the way back.
“I thought I’d drive along and have this whole Jack Kerouac experience, but for 1,000 miles, I did not see a one,” he says.
Disenchanted, Georgis parked the bus in the snow outside of his home. He says the yellow of the bus reflected into his house.
“I was feeling jaundice,” he says, “I was thinking, ‘Oh, what have I done?’”
He credits his girlfriend’s encouragement for helping get him started on the Astroturf that makes up the floor of the bus.
With the help of a welder, Georgis cut the top off the school bus and installed the tin roof. Georgis then tried to convert the bus into a log cabin, but the logs were so heavy it caused the bus to tip. Instead, Georgis used fencing to line the walls.
Georgis says a friend told him that the bus “doesn’t look like a log cabin, it looks like a hillbilly shack. Are you Banjo Billy?”
Georgis accepted the title, and Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours was born.
In business
Equipped with a luxury limousine license and a sightseeing permit, Georgis was ready to get his business started. He says he had problems with the logistics of where he could load and unload and lucked out when the Boulderado let him park in front of the hotel.
“I was naive about how this would take off,” Georgis admits.
Despite the slow start, Georgis says September was a busy month, and he’s hoping October will be even better. He’s doing a special October tour with 90 minutes of ghost stories, and is planning a future event where 100 percent of the proceeds would go to the Boulder Humane Society.
Georgis plans to run tours through November and says that the currently open-air bus has windows that can be rolled down.
For now, Georgis relies on his Web site as the prime source of business, as well as word-of-mouth and the fliers he puts in hotel lobbies. The 28-seat bus also is hired out for private parties and weddings.
On the bus
My tour takes off early on Saturday, at noon instead of 2 p.m., with a group of people from Michigan. According to Georgis, the 6 p.m. tour is sometimes a rowdier crowd.
The tour winds around downtown Boulder, University Hill and Chautauqua, and, at various stops, Georgis asks the people to vote on either a crime, ghost or history story. My group continually votes for the gruesome, R-rated ghost stories, and I learn about more than just the haunted tower at Macky Auditorium, but also stories related to the Boulderado, the Trident and a long-ago lynching.
All of Georgis’ stories date back to 1966 or earlier, leaving out the JonBenet Ramsey killing because he says he doesn’t want to make money off such a recent tragedy.
Georgis says he has been asked - and even bribed $20 - to tell the JonBenet story and show the slain 6-year-old’s 15th Street home, but he always refuses.
The tour used to include the “Mork and Mindy” house, but it no longer does because the woman who lives there asked Georgis not to drive by anymore.
“She was so nice about it I said yes,” he says.
So without two of Boulder’s most infamous stories, Georgis has to dig deep for his tales, collecting his ghost stories from the books “Haunted Boulder One and Two” by Roz Brown and Ann Alexander Leggett, his crime stories from “Behind the Badge” by Silvia Pettem and his history stories from research at the Carnegie Library.
In between stories, Georgis entertains by using his multi-functional horn to quack at hippies, moo at college girls and whiny at hikers.
“I got my money’s worth the first day,” he says of the horn. “It just keeps giving.”
As we drive through the Hill, people who have seen the bus drive by their homes before shout “Banjo Billy!,” and, in response, Georgis and the Michigan tourists respond, “Yee-haw!”
“The other day, a guy ran outside of his house in his whitie tighties yelling ‘Banjo Billy!’,” Georgis says. “I had to give him free tickets for his enthusiasm.”
It’s apparent from the response of people to the bus that Banjo Billy has become part of what makes Boulder unique, and it’s his enthusiasm toward Boulder that saves the tour from being another boring tourist trap.
“I’ve got the best job in the world,” Georgis sings as we drive through the University of Colorado.
After the ride, we’re dropped off in front of the Boulderado, and as I thank Georgis and head off to find Fast Eddie’s in the midst of Boulder’s Fall Fest, I realize that not only did he tell me something about Boulder that I didn’t know and took my mind off of my hangover, he renewed my love for this unusual town I call home.
“On the Bus” - Daily Camera (Boulder Dirt)
Super Spooky Rides
“The only tour ranked 3.5 ghosts out of 4 for Halloween Tours” - Rocky Mountain News
