Dinner Party Tertulia
We've made some nice friends here in our neighborhood, and on the first of February we had three couples over for dinner. Which was a bit of a challenge, since I had so thoroughly purged all of all our "entertainment" stuff before we moved.
The china, the glassware, the table linens and decorative stuff -- I had accumulated so much over the years and we weren't going to move it cross country and we certainly weren't going to host parties when we got here. We got rid of it all.
So we had to make do. It was lovely anyway and dinner was great (Jim cooked) and we had a relaxed but lively tertulia sitting around the table after dinner.
These neighbors are all Santa Fe long timers. They got discussing how the town has changed, which is a common lament from anyone who has been here a while.
They remembered that the plaza used to be where you went to buy your kids shoes, or to shop at Penney's or Woolworth's. There was a drugstore there. Now it's all jewelry and high end furnishings and very expensive restaurants. Tourists.
Marcy Street had a card shop and stores where you went to buy necessities. Joan had her own knitting and yarn shop there for years. Now it's all art galleries. Because tourists.
The high school used to be right in the center and shop owners complained about ninth graders loitering in the stores after school. Now the school is the city convention center and nearby boutiques don't have anything a ninth grader would be interested in.
The complaints went on, and it is no different than any other small town where times have changed, but in some ways it is different. Because Santa Fe is becoming a caricature of itself -- tourism drives the economy and the result is not just loss of old time institutions, but an off-putting trend toward turning into a theme park idea of what the old southwest was.
And it isn't just in our neighbors' times, it has been happening since the 1920s when Santa Fe got discovered by artists and easterners with money who wanted adventure. The remote dusty outpost of the former Spanish empire grew as outsiders moved in. And took over.
It's the reason Jim and I are here -- we came as tourists and liked it and decided to move here. And even these three couples had originally come from elsewhere a long, long time ago -- Frank and Joan from Albuquerque in the 1960s, Jim and Beverly from Texas, and Juan and Johnny from New York.
It's strange to start feeling accepted by these neighbors. We are still new, but we are part of the local scene too -- we don't really go to the plaza for anything, we avoid the great restaurants that the tourists frequent, we don't shop for jewelry anywhere, and we complain about out of state visitors and their money. We're even starting to accept "mañana" -- the local Santa Fe culture that says whatever you want done isn't going to happen. Not today.
We are straddling both worlds. We are still wide eyed newbie transplants, entranced with what this place has to offer. And we live within the local culture too, which looks at all the enchantments of New Mexico sometimes nostalgically, and with some distress at what it is becoming.
The china, the glassware, the table linens and decorative stuff -- I had accumulated so much over the years and we weren't going to move it cross country and we certainly weren't going to host parties when we got here. We got rid of it all.
So we had to make do. It was lovely anyway and dinner was great (Jim cooked) and we had a relaxed but lively tertulia sitting around the table after dinner.
These neighbors are all Santa Fe long timers. They got discussing how the town has changed, which is a common lament from anyone who has been here a while.
They remembered that the plaza used to be where you went to buy your kids shoes, or to shop at Penney's or Woolworth's. There was a drugstore there. Now it's all jewelry and high end furnishings and very expensive restaurants. Tourists.
Marcy Street had a card shop and stores where you went to buy necessities. Joan had her own knitting and yarn shop there for years. Now it's all art galleries. Because tourists.
The high school used to be right in the center and shop owners complained about ninth graders loitering in the stores after school. Now the school is the city convention center and nearby boutiques don't have anything a ninth grader would be interested in.
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| Stores on the plaza a long time ago |
The complaints went on, and it is no different than any other small town where times have changed, but in some ways it is different. Because Santa Fe is becoming a caricature of itself -- tourism drives the economy and the result is not just loss of old time institutions, but an off-putting trend toward turning into a theme park idea of what the old southwest was.
And it isn't just in our neighbors' times, it has been happening since the 1920s when Santa Fe got discovered by artists and easterners with money who wanted adventure. The remote dusty outpost of the former Spanish empire grew as outsiders moved in. And took over.
 |
| Burro Alley off San Francisco Street in the 1880s |
It's the reason Jim and I are here -- we came as tourists and liked it and decided to move here. And even these three couples had originally come from elsewhere a long, long time ago -- Frank and Joan from Albuquerque in the 1960s, Jim and Beverly from Texas, and Juan and Johnny from New York.
It's strange to start feeling accepted by these neighbors. We are still new, but we are part of the local scene too -- we don't really go to the plaza for anything, we avoid the great restaurants that the tourists frequent, we don't shop for jewelry anywhere, and we complain about out of state visitors and their money. We're even starting to accept "mañana" -- the local Santa Fe culture that says whatever you want done isn't going to happen. Not today.
We are straddling both worlds. We are still wide eyed newbie transplants, entranced with what this place has to offer. And we live within the local culture too, which looks at all the enchantments of New Mexico sometimes nostalgically, and with some distress at what it is becoming.
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