Horse Shoes In Santa Fe

On any typical night here in Santa Fe we are constantly looking for new and interesting activities to do around our apartment. Last nights adventures led us to Wal-Mart in search of some board games. After perusing the aisles for quite some time we were unable to find a cost savvy yet still fun game to play. Then as if it were some sort of miracle come to save us from boredom we found the greatest invention known to man. Giant pink plastic horseshoes.

A New Geometry

Experiencing the works of Michael Leyton, is an example of reasonable intelligence and over developed ego. Presenting on the concept of symmetry in geometry and how art was a method of data storage. While the opening explanations of how complex symmetry was defined in geometric objects, the remainder of the presentation dealt way too much with the speakers ego to be truly appealing.

Manipulated Images at the Complex

Last night's presentation was a visual extravaganza with just about every technological visual representation imaginable. I'm not going to lie, I didn't understand a large portion of what was going on. I assume that it's because I'm uncultured. A lot of the videos I felt could have stood to be shorter.


TV On The Radio "Staring At The Sun" from benton-c bainbridge on Vimeo.


There were 5 artists showcased, 3 of them local artists. Susanna Carlisle, David Stout, and Cory Metcalf were among the local artists featured, and the other 2 artists, Matt Marello and Benton C. Bainbridge.

Acequia Interview and Site visit with J.J. Gonzales

This past Thursday, the 19th of March, JP Gonzales, Andrew Tremblay and I (Dave) visited the Gonzales family property for a tour and interviewed JP's father, J.J. Gonzales (pictured above with JP). He gave us an extensive general history and background of acequias, water rights as well as local La Cienega history of acequias.



Their family is preparing for an "acequia dig", which happens each year. Twigs and leaves are cleaned out of the waterway and a fresh trench is dug out in preparation for the rainy/harvest season. The leftovers from the winter need to be cleaned out of the acequia pictured above. The picture below shows the remnants of controlled fires clearing out the ditch.



The text of the interview is here, and the audio will be edited and posted soon. AND BY SOON WE MEAN RIGHT NOW

PART 1

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PART 2

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PART 3

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PART 4

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PART 5

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PART 6

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PART 7

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PART 8

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PART 9

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I pardon the length but the entire interview is about an hour long, so sit back and enjoy it while I try to make/locate an Mp3 widget with a playlist option.

Zia Diner by Sam

Zia Diner offers a wide selection of food encompassing both the native Santa Fe diet as well as a multitude of other ethnic foods. It is open 7AM-10PM daily. So far the group favorite is the breakfast burrito, Christmas style, which you can find on the online menu found here. We also seemed to enjoy the gingerbread and pumpkin spice milkshakes. Although it does cost five dollars it can be shared by multiple people.

Music at Meow/Wolf: A Night of Hip-Hop, Ambient Rock, and Shenanigans

To prove that the only thing to do at night in Santa Fe is not just hanging out in bars and eating at restaraunts, I decided to check out the music scene and see what all the young people are listening to these days.

Meow Wolf is a self-defined artist collective off of second street that deals in a lot of performance and location art, and their studio does not leave a lot not to the imagination.




Initials BR opened with a slurred but intricate rap sequence. The music streaming on his website was much clearer than how he sang at Meow Wolf, but it's more the music that you allow to wash over you in waves of syllables, which was certainly the experience tonight.

We Drew Lightning followed, but since they do not exist at all on the Internet they are not worth mentioning other than their presence.

Microfiche closed the evening with music that can only be experienced. So Here.

The night was cold, but the place was warm, the people fun, and the music great.

Ojo Caliente: A Dearth of Discomfort

For the first weekend of all of us here at the complex we decided to do the manliest thing we could think of.
You guessed it: Spa treatment.



Ojo Caliente Hot Springs lies a little more than an hour out of Santa Fe and has been regarded as a sacred healing place by many Native American tribes for hundreds, if not thousands of years. At some point after colonization the inhabitants evolved it into a very lovely spa. As you can see from the previous posts we concluded that all of the stress from meetings and Acequia tours and skiing and St. Patty's Day celebrations was really getting to us, so we decided to treat ourselves to a bit of mud.



After arriving, we paid an entrance fee equivalent to most theme parks, showered, and entered the main area. A quiet place with "Whispering Only" signs omnipresent, it first appeared to be an overdecorated private pool. We split off into groups and entered the different enclosed bathing pools, of which there were several. The one I entered first appeared very popular, including a description that bathing in this particular pool would help in digestive problems, improve your skin complexion, cure all ailments and boost your vitality and wisdom by one point each. I felt I couldn't pass the opportunity up.



Like most great things, the experience was vivid in the way that is not easy to describe. I initially approached the idea of Ojo Caliente with a reluctant distrust, but after losing track of the minutes spent submerged in mana-replenishing minerals I didn't want to get out.

The mud bath was out of order at the time, but the soda bath was working just fine. As were the arsenic baths and the natural water pools. Each provided a slightly different temperature to treat you in, varying from tepid to almost unbearably hot. Each pool also provided a slightly different flavor, though I could not conclude if that was solely the effect of the natural spring or the bathers therein.



The gang reconvened at the largest pool, which felt the coldest at the time, due of course to our somatosensory system and it's foolish, foolish thermoreceptors.



We also spent a good while in the hammocks strung around the place, sweated in the steam rooms and saunas, and the bravest of us actually drank from the hand pump in the middle of the spring, which had signs that stated the spring has been believed for hundreds of years to hold healing properties for those who drink it (but the establishment and administration is not responsible for any adverse health effects resulting from the imbibing of the spring). Sam, our food and restaurant critic, described the taste eloquently as "warm ass".



Overall, Ojo Caliente is a great place for people who think they have to pay for something to relax, as well as for people who think they don't.