no such thing as bad publicity

Los Pollos Hermanos

File under sad, but true: a fast-food burrito chain where a fictional drug trafficker runs his organization has become one of Albuquerque, New Mexico’s more improbable tourist attractions. As “Breaking Bad” finishes filming its final season in the city, the popular show has brought about a major boost to the local economy – yet it’s also creating a dilemma for tourism officials having to consider the ultimate cost of exploiting their city’s ties to a show that centers around drug trafficking, addiction and violence. (The show follows the fictional character of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned meth lord.) While other popular television shows such as “Sex and the City” and “Seinfeld” have spawned a veritable cottage industry of location-based tours, “Breaking Bad” has provoked a pattern of drug-themed products springing up around town. The Candy Lady store recently capitalized on the show’s popularity by selling blue “Breaking Bad” meth treats – sugar rock candy that looks like the meth sold on the show. And the Great Face & Body shop developed a new line of blue bath salts called Bathing Bad. (For the record they are not the street drug known as bath salts.) Meanwhile, Masks y Mas Mexican folk art store near the University of New Mexico sells papier-mache statues of La Santa Muerte — Mexico’s Death Saint who counts drug traffickers among her devotees. (During the chilling opening of the show’s third season, a pair of cartel assassins is shown crawling to the saint’s shrine in Mexico to request some divine help.) Tourists are also flocking to sites that before the show were unknown and unimportant: the suburban home of White, played by Bryan Cranston; a car wash that’s a front for a money-laundering operation on the series; a rundown motel used frequently for filming; and the real-life burrito joint, Los Pollos Hermanos, which is a fast food chicken restaurant on the show. “It’s raised the visibility of the city,” said Tania Armenta, a vice president for the Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau, which created a website of the show’s most popular places around town to help tourists navigate. But whether it’s a perception tourists might come to equate with, say Ciudad Juarez, remains to be seen. Until then there’s apparently no such thing as bad publicity.

Share

in the eye of the beholder

Four hours ago I was in the middle of nowhere contemplating art, infinity, and my place in the universe; now I’m killing time in a suburban mall before flying home, fascinated by something called Hot Dog on a Stick. I guess art really is subjective.

Share

sundowners

One of the ancillary benefits of this particular location: little line on the horizon, which means a stellar sunrise in one direction and a spectacular sunset in the other. Returning to the rigors of civilization is going to be constricting.

Share

panoramic perspectives

Of course, I couldn’t resist – despite the limitations of not only the medium but also my technique. Click each panorama – then click it a second time in the new window – for a sense of scale far greater than I would have thought possible.

Share

the lightning field

No single image could do justice to The Lightning Field, Walter De Maria’s epic land art installation. It’s just too big – conceptually as well as physically – to be contained inside the boundaries of a frame. Yet at the same time there is something in human nature which begs to try to capture it in some way, shape, or form. So, I thought I’d include a series of individualized perspectives. Taken together they might amount to something, but until film and photography develop multi-sensory properties, it’s not even close to experiencing it as both participant and observer at once. For greater detail, click each image.

Share

little house on the high plains desert

At last we’ve arrived at our little house on the high plains desert – home while visiting The Lightning Field. A composite of a number of early 20th century homesteader cabins, the house is comfortably spartan and even elegant. It has everything we might need and nothing unnecessary that might clutter the space or the mind. A fridge is stocked with a simple supper and the fixings for an earnest breakfast. A wrought iron bed aligns with the east-facing window, promising bedtime stars and a sunrise for an alarm clock. Oh, and did I mention there is nobody around for miles and miles? In short, it’s perfect: just us and the art.

 

Share

el malpais

Ninety minutes due west of Albuquerque you’ll come upon Grants, New Mexico, a depressing one-horse hamlet if ever there was one. It’s sole redeeming feature is the only liquor store within many miles. (I bought both the red AND the white; I suggest you do, too, should you ever find yourself in or around Grants.) The town is also the turn off for Quemado, my next destination, which is another hour and a half away. The views on this part of the road trip have so far been little more than rock-strewn landscapes and truck stop casinos. Yet on the road south of Grants the underwhelming turns unexpectedly scenic – and amazingly untrafficked – as you enter El Malpais National Monument. The name means badlands in Spanish, which is an apt description given the extremely desolate and dramatic volcanic fields that cover much of the park’s area. Yet El Malpais is also home to some of the oldest Douglas Fir trees on the planet, so you’ll find the topography, at times, abruptly shifting from fallow to verdant and back again. An easily accessible point of interest is the La Ventana Arch, a naturally occurring sandstone arch. And if you have the urge to lay down in the road and have your photo taken, well, this is an ideal place to do that, too.

Share

get your kicks

The Mother Road, Route 66, is one of the most famous highways in American culture. It originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, before ending at Los Angeles, covering a total of 2,448 miles. It’s brief but storied rise and fall reads like a parable of modern America. Route 66 served as a major path for those who migrated west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and it supported the economies of the communities through which the road passed. During World War II, even more migration west occurred because of war-related industries in California. Route 66, by then fully paved, became one of the main routes and also served for moving military equipment. In the 1950s, it became the main highway for vacationers heading to Los Angeles. The road passed through the Painted Desert and near the Grand Canyon. Meteor Crater in Arizona was another popular stop. The sudden uptick in tourism in turn gave rise to a burgeoning trade in all manner of roadside attractions, like teepee-shaped motels, frozen custard stands, Indian curio shops, and reptile farms. It also marked the birth of the fast-food industry: Red’s Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Missouri, site of the first drive-through restaurant, and the first McDonald’s in San Bernardino, California. Changes like these to the landscape cemented the road’s reputation as a near-perfect microcosm of the culture of America, now linked by the automobile. People doing business along the route became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought (unsuccessfully) to keep the highway alive in the face of the growing threat of being bypassed by Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System. Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, but progress eventually won out and it was officially removed from the United States Highway System in 1985 after it had been decided the route was no longer relevant. Portions of the road now recognized as Historic Route 66 have since been designated as National Scenic Byways, including this stretch through Bernalillo, New Mexico. The state has almost 500 miles of Route 66 bisecting it, making me hip to Nat King Cole’s timely tip:  this isn’t the last chance for me to get my kicks on Route 66.

Share

thank you, i think i will

Share

sunrise: bernalillo

Sunrise over the pueblo-style buildings at Hyatt Tamaya, northwest of Albuquerque in historic Bernalillo, is as picturesque as you’d expect for a resort which sits at the foot of a 10,000 foot-high mountain range:  it pierces through the cloud cover and creeps across the foreground before illuminating the Sandia crest with a flourish as dramatic as a magician who waves his handkerchief over an empty fist one moment, only to reveal a bouquet of flowers – or a bunny! – in the next.

Share

journey into the west

Share

looking for lightning

I’m off this Memorial Day weekend into the desert of Quemado, New Mexico to take part in Walter De Maria’s monumental land art project, The Lightning Field. Without cell service or internet I’ll be spending quality time in a simple hut, interacting with the art and the remote landscape. So, no live blogging but expect a full report next week. Fingers crossed for lightning. Not that it’s essential to the experience: it’s about the journey and not the destination. Even when it’s all about the destination.

Share

Proudly powered by WordPress
Theme: Esquire by Matthew Buchanan.