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El Kookooee 2011

El Kookooee

New Mexico has its fair share of boogeymen: La Llorona, the wailing woman; Zozobra, ”Old Man Gloom”; the Chupacabra, the goat sucker; and El Kookooee, the Boogeyman. These supernatural apparitions bring with them bad luck and ill will. New Mexicans respond by burning them in effigy.

The burning of Zozobra, marking the beginning of Fiestas in Santa Fe, has grown into a major event that draws thousands. El Kookooee, though much smaller, has grown quickly in recent years. The event takes place on the last weekend of October, deep in the south valley of Albuquerque. Schoolchildren design the effigy each year, and each year local artists construct the boogey man per the children’s specifications.

El Kookooee, like Zozobra, is blamed for the ills of the world, and people are eager to place their fears and worries at his feet to kindle his flame.

I, though, think of Kookooee less as a demon and more as a vessel, a sacrificial lamb. As he ascends to the night sky as embers and ash, he carries our worst habits away with him.

Thanks, Kookooee, for bearing our burdens for us. We will meet again next year, when we Burqueños have amassed another heap of problems to unload onto your fiery altar.

Leftovers

Walking around downtown Albuquerque at lunchtime, I found this on top of a traffic signal control box at 3rd and Copper:

Must’ve been one hell of a weekend.  Keep it classy, Burqueños.

Dia de los Muertos – October 2010

Every year, the National Hispanic Cultural Center has a community event for Dia de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead:

Each year in observance of Día de Muertos, the NHCC invites students, teachers and general public to create and display ofrendas (altars) in honor of loved ones, pets and community leaders who have passed away. This installation of ofrendas is always beautiful, engaging and respectful of the traditional celebration. This year, the installation includes an ofrenda created by artist, Jacobo de la Serna in remembrance of bicyclists that have lost their lives on New Mexico roads. Artist, Catalina Delgado Trunk designed an altar for the community to bring their offerings and remembrances on the evening of November 2.

In addition to the ofrendas, the event had an arts and crafts portion where attendees were invited to decorate sugar skulls, make papercrafts, and to screen print their own tshirts.  Here are my photos.  All were taken with my dad’s 50mm lens.  Even though it’s 30 years old, it still takes some amazing shots.

Argentina Album

Zenphoto destroyed my photo albums.  Here is my first attempt to recreate them.

New Photo Gallery – Pride Parade 2010

I’ve added a new photo gallery for the 2010 Albuquerque Pride Parade that took place this June.

P’tit Louis – French Bistro

This was cross-posted at DukeCityFix.

If you’ve been by the corner of Gold and 3rd downtown anytime since January, you’ve probably noticed the corner shop (formerly Ooh-Aah jewelry and before that Ruby Shoesday) undergoing some major changes.

A new French bistro – “P’tit Louis” – is opening today after much anticipation. This is John Phinizy’s first restaurant, and he’s brought with him the brilliant minds behind Scalo and Brasserie La Provence. If their menu is any indication, this is going to be quite the fancy little downtown hot spot, with daily specials including a Râgout du Jour and a Quiche du Jour.

P’tit Louis opens today, and if things are successful, expect to see a few more open up around town.

They’re on the corner of 3rd and Gold at 228 Gold Ave SW. The phone number is 505-314-1111.

Las Vegas – May 2009

The famous neon of Glitter Gulch, on the Fulmont Street Experience

A friend of mine recently moved from San Francisco back to her home town of Las Vegas, NV.  She was upset that whenever any friends visited, all they wanted was to drink and gamble.  ”Fine,” I told her.  ”I’m flying out there for a weekend, and you can show me the Nevada that you grew up in.”

The first night we hit the Strip, not to gamble, but to people watch.  The lights, the sounds, and everything else were overwhelming, and everywhere people were caught up in the heady illusion of instant gratification without apparent consequence (the next morning, of course, would be different).

The next day we drove two hours north to Beatty, which is five miles west of the ghost town Rhyolite.  Between 1905 and 1911,  the gold-rush town grew to a population of 5,000 and then dropped to nothing.  Financed largely by Charles Schwab, the town in its heyday was highly advanced and sophisticated.  Now, all that stands are a few empty shells of buildings.

The gold dried up in Rhyolite, but its sister town, Beatty, proved to have a much more abundant, important, and reliable resource:  water.  Beatty provided the water for the gold mining town, and when Rhyolite blew away on the sands of time, Beatty stuck around.  It’s still a lonely little town, but it’s full of incredible characters.

A ghost in Rhyolite

Stuck in Beatty with not much to do, we hit the town’s three bars, which had all sorts of locals who welcomed us with arms wide open.  They were a trip and a half, and we made some memories that won’t soon be forgotten:  climbing into an abandoned basement church, wearing a viking helmet, and the urinal whose flushing mechanism was the brake lever of wall-mounted motorcycle handlebars.

Lea County Fair and Rodeo

Last week I headed down to the southeast corner of New Mexico, to the Lea County Fair and Rodeo, held at the Jake McClure Arena in Lovington.  As a city slicker from Cleveland, it was by no means something I would normally attend, which made it all the more incredible of an experience.

Fairs in general are an otherwordly experience.  There are the bright lights and tinkling, repetitive sounds of the Midway.  The sickeningly alluring odors of deep fried twinkies, roast turkey legs, funnel cakes, and other things you probably shouldn’t eat but are too intrigued to resist.  Not to mention odors that are just plain sickening without being alluring – overflowing trash bins, port-a-potties, and the livestock yards.

Ah, livestock.  This is one part of the county fair to which I’ve never had much exposure.  Down in Lea County, though, livestock is a way of life.

Lovington is just a few miles away from Texas, and it shows; it feels much more like the Lone Star State than it feels like New Mexico.

See the entire photo gallery here.

Bob and Bob (2003)

2004-04-16 The Italian Automobile

As I’m sitting on a bus, I probably have little personal experience upon which to base an analysis of Italians and their driving. However, this journal is as much about observation as it is about experience.

By American standards, cars – as with just about anything here – are quite tiny. More so than any other is probably the Smart Car, a joint project between Mercedes and Swatch. With a cabin just barely large enough for two, the car also has no apparent front or back end… it’s just a little capsule on wheels.

Yet, with cars as small as they are, the people who own them use them for everything. I’ve seen people sleeping in Puntos, eating in Minis, reading the paper in Pandas.

Still, considering the way loitering is as popular as soccer, perhaps it’s more of the Italian love affair with the street. Instead of Americans, who are only concerned with getting from Point A to Point B, Italians are content simply to enjoy the ride.