We were lucky enough to have two friends in Albuquerque to visit—we spent our three days in Albuquerque at the home our high school friend Robin Dutcher (pictured) shared with two fellow Americorps volunteers. We’re lucky we caught Robin when we did—she told us she was only in Albuquerque for another month, and then was off to San Francisco to attend clown college.

Our other friend was my NYU Local colleague, Charlie Eisenhood. Charlie made the 2008 UWIRE 100 for his work blogging about the Take Back NYU! Occupation at NYU Local, and he’s currently blogging for the Albuquerque Journal. With the two of them and Robin’s boyfriend, we tried some local New Mexican food.

New Mexican food is, unsurprisingly, remarkably similar to Mexican food, but with some subtle differences. Charlie and Robin told us that New Mexican green chili was something of a local specialty. The meal also came with something called sopapillas—essentially fried dough that could be filled with either honey or the sort of ingredients one might put into a burrito.

But enough about the food, delicious as it was; the town of Albuquerque itself was a cool, but profoundly weird place. Part of that, I’m sure, has to do with its efforts to establish itself as a new Vancouver, one of the places that Hollywood goes to film thanks to the tax breaks provided by the state. According to some of the people we talked to, Val Kilmer has an estate in Albuquerque, from which he is contemplating a run for the governor’s seat.
But besides the growing Hollywood presence in Albuquerque, the pre-existing gestalt of different cultures and sub-cultures rubbing up against one another is just strange. And I say this with the utter certainty that we only saw a small glimpse of the whole story.