TRAVEL TRIP: Albuquerque, travel day seis

If you are just tuning in, I like taking travel trips by myself. No, scratch that, I LOVE taking travel trips by myself. However, I am stuck at home while the boyfriend is out of town and damn it, I am going to do something about it. I will take a "travel trip" in my own current city. No, I am not doing mushrooms ... I am visiting Albuquerque with new eyes!

Saturday, February 27, 2010.

Being a tourist in the town that has raised me since age 10 has all the problems of a loveless marriage. It'd be disturbingly easy to yawn out another Saturday, keeping my eyes half-closed through my familiar routine. Wake up, make coffee, recreate New York fashion week for the audience of four cats, a stuffed unicorn and three dead cockroaches for a few hours and finally, settling into my butt print on the couch with a bottle of cheap wine ... YAY?

NAY, I SAY! LET'S PLAY TO-DAY* (Thanks, Dr. Seuss.)

*Cringing, but too lazy to go back and delete ... sigh.

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This Saturday had to be different. It would be the only Saturday of my Albuquerque TRAVEL TRIP and if I was having trouble finding adventures on Tuesday, then Saturday would surely make up for it. SATURDAY! The day boring normies turn off their t.v.'s and schlep around town. And me, I'd be joining em.

this is definitely how families interact (in hell)

I had a list of to-dos, keeping in mind that when I travel I fucking travel budget. I'm talking about no more than $0.50 spent doing activities:

• Get my and the cats' names written in various calligraphy from Loma Colorado Library from the Southwest Calligraphy Society.

• Interview the smelly Rastas in front of Satellite Coffee on Central and Harvard.

• Watch the LOBOS vs. BYU game on t.v. at the SUB.

• Attend the grand opening of a youth sponsored mural at 516 Arts.

• Check out desert plant nurseries around town.

• Drink cheapo beers at a house party with the band, Pierre.
  

I'm not sure what the Jewish religion thinks about giving animals Hebrew names, particularly from a shiksa, but it comes from a place of love so maybe that somehow makes it tolerable? Anyway, I haven't given them human Hebrew names. I decided on Jewish dish names because they're so lovely I could eat them (figuratively)! Ew, cat stew, I just barfed. Anyway, say hi to Moshe "Gefilte Fish" P-B, Chompers "Prune Hamantash" P-B, and Baby "Matzo Ball Soup" P-B.

Unbelievably, the rasta people who sell Bob Marley looking at Jesus towels on Central were NOT THERE! Of all days to do the wake and bake at home, you pick SATURDAY?! There are prime consumers walking down the sidewalk! WHERE ELSE WILL THEY BUY THEIR GREASY DREAD LOCK COVERS? Answer: the head shop across the street, but whatevs, I was looking forward to taking snaps of the very unusual, very real presence of Rastafarians in SE Albuquerque.

Moving on ... let's go to the SUB for the Men's Basketball game. It was playing on a screen projector.

Quite unspectacular, I have to say.

ASUNM had comfy chairs set up, free popcorn and nachos, and punch (non-alcoholic), yet I counted no more than eight people actually enjoying it. At one point, a homeless man came in and dug his hand into the big popcorn bowl instead of using a shovel utensil and somebody's mom asked security to arrest him. Poor old man :( No one was even eating the stale popcorn!! Plus, no one was cheering, booing, or making any noise of any kind. I felt like I was sitting in the afterlife theater in Beetlejuice that Adam and Barbara walk through to get to the dead lawyer with a hole in her throat. Omg ... I could have condensed that description a little better. ANYWAY, sitting there with the student zombies was sort of sucking my exciting tourist energy. I left early. I can only imagine what happened after the Lobos won against BYU. Probably nothing. They probably dumped the popcorn and other food into a dumpster and went home to watch a Friends marathon.

Where is Albuquerque's active campus life? Larry Barker, park your jag and figure this out for me!

Actual cops were called to arrest a poor homeless man for eating free popcorn. Can this be UNM's motto?

I watched the East Indian guys play soccer with a kickball for a little while and regained myself.

I missed the Calligraphy event to waste my time at the SUB and didn't really feel like going to the Mural grand opening or desert plant nurseries so I walked home. My camera died on the way. It was kind of overcast for most of the day and you know desert people don't deal well with gray skies. I think it just makes us all want to go back to sleep.

My overall review for Saturdays in Albuquerque is this: any given weekend there are five to twenty incredibly fun and free events in the city. If you decided to spend $25 or more then the events leap up five-fold. The main problems are the overlap of events on Albuquerque Events Calendars. I read through twelve events calendars on Saturday morning and kept seeing adverts for poetry readings and Buddhist meetings that I'd never go to. I can't remember ever reading more than three event calendars in SF or LA, but maybe that's my own problem. There's so much youth oriented events going on in those cities than I force myself to only look at a couple events, but here in Albuquerque I figured it'd be teeny art galleries all day that I ticked off too many other events. I knew I'd miss most of them and just gave up on all of them. Gloom :(

Here are the event calendars I mainly used:

Albuquerque Library Events

City of Albuquerque Events

Weekly Alibi Events Calendar

Local IQ Events Calendar

Duke City Fix Events Calendar

Upcoming Events & Things To Do

Albuquerque Community Calendar

Albuquerque Journal Events Calendar

UNM Today

It's A Trip - Albuquerque

Alibi's event calendar comes very close to listing everything you'd want to go to if you are a happily childless party girl who enjoys art and deconstructionism. If you are not me, then I don't know if you'd still like it. If you are an old person then I would stick with Albuquerque's Community Calendar and Library Events. The Local IQ's event calendar is only good for a laugh. And I've only just found the It's a Trip website, but they do a very, very good job of keeping up with Alibi's Events and the Journal's events. We'll see if I still like it in a week. I'm fickle.

Of course, I went to a band practice house party on Saturday night, where I lost my keys and sat on the sidewalk at 3am until I had enough courage to call my mom for help. This would never have happened if I really were traveling, so I sort of fucked up there. Luckily my hangover would deter me from drinking for the rest of the travel trip. Wonderful.