Albuquerque, NM Feb. 24

before we left.

Albuquerque, NM – Feb. 24, 2006

We left Denver at 10am on Friday February 24, headed south on I-25 to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our car was stuffed to the breaking point, and it’s good that none of our friends took us up on the offer to come along because they couldn’t have fit. Our entire trunk was filled with the dvds and tshirts and buttons that we plan to sell on tour.

The day couldn’t have been more perfect for driving. It was beautiful- sunny with bright blue skies. We made our first stop in Raton, NM to try to exchange our laptop adapter at a Radio Shack. Unfortunately they didn’t have the adaptor that we needed so we continued on our drive, eating wasabi peas and peanut butter filled pretzels. We stopped to get gas at Wagon Mound, NM.


wagon mound


We arrived in Albuquerque about 6pm and went to our friend Kris’ mom’s house. Pat was amazingly nice, and one of the calmest people we’ve ever met. She works at a middle school for children who have been institutionalized. She teaches them how to garden, among other things. When we got to the house, she had some homemade soup made of seasonal vegetables heating on the stove. We had dinner and pleasant conversation before we had to leave for our screening at Off Center Arts.

We got there at about 7. Basement Films hosted our event. They were really nice people. They even had some posters made for us on a cool printing machine called a Risograph machine.



Off Center Arts is a community art space for low to no income people. There is also a store that people can sell their work in. The woman, Janis, who runs Off Center Arts was amazing! She did her dissertation on urban home space. She took us on a walking tour of downtown Albuquerque and pointed out some new development and gentrification. She also told us about her critique of new urbanism.

We went back to Off Center Arts when the film was done playing and answered some questions. People brought up some interesting points including the tension between new urbanism and gentrification, and the temporary reclamation of space through alley gardens in Albuquerque.

The next morning we went out for coffee with Sarah and Tyrell from Basement films and had more scintillating conversation about public space, urban planning and driving up the west coast.

A guy who runs a “cult-horror-trash” video store across the street from Off Center Arts came over to the screening to buy three copies of the dvd for his store. We were kind of surprised because Living Room is definitely not of that genre, but flattered nonetheless.



We also managed to lose our special plastic orange thrift store cups that we got for the tour by leaving them at Off Center Arts. Figures.

Neither of us realized how big Albuquerque was. The sprawl stretched on to infinity. Courtney was impressed by the futuristic looking highway architecture but it mostly terrified me. -liz

Here are some nice pictures of the desert (in either new mexico or arizona).