two santa fes

DOWNTOWN
REAL TOWN
2ND ST.
AMAZING LARRY
KARAOKE
URSULA

I started out my weekend traipsing through the Plaza for the Girls Inc. crafts fair and feeling that the only way to accurately describe my reaction to the fair would be: Blech. I'm sorry. Girls Inc. is great and all but why do we think that the best way to appeal to Santa Fe tourists is with these generic schlocky fairs? Why not incorporate real Santa Fe events into the downtown scene? Why are they so disparate? Peace Day was going on in The Railyard and was so much more real and vibrant and interesting.
And, just a few miles away, The Second Street Experience was well underway and was a taste of local Santa Fe. Local vendors, like Aware, skateboarders, kids, tons of local musicians (Amazing Larry is the photo on this page, a great band with Andy Primm, Lehra Gordon and Bjorn... something, why can't I remember anyone's last name?). There was local food (Back Road Pizza among them), And so much more, like Hollis Wake, Ray Charles Ives, 100 Year Flood etc. etc. Meanwhile, downtown, there was this crazy-ass New Age flute music playing and all sorts of weird crappy art that, I'm sorry, I don't even think was made locally. It doesn't make any sense to me. You could have been anywhere USA downtown at some generic flea market. Over on Second Street, you were in Santa Fe. End of story. Also a very Santa Fe event, later that evening, was the film premiere for Ursula Coyote's karaoke mockumentary, which was very fun and very funny. Tthe glamourous woman above is Ursula, who was dressed to the nines. Actually, everyone was dressed to the nines except, you guessed it, me and mine. We looked, well, we looked like this:
J, DAN & GRACE