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Today England plays Algeria, so it is fitting for all hooligans to find a neighborhood pub as if we were in Bristol or London supporting the Red Lions, the nickname of the English national team.  Of the bars in Santa Fe, Second St. Brewery resembles the closest thing we have to an European style pub, complete with mutton-chopped bartenders, its own selection of brews and a colorful cast of regulars.

Around the bar were the murmurs and discussions of the US-Slovenia game, in which our Yanks came back from a 0-2 deficit to tie the game and then took the lead on a beautiful set play, only to have the goal disallowed by the referee. The tie could mean that the US will be ousted from advancing to the round of 16, big disappointment for a team that many thought had a chance to go far in the tournament.

However, all bets are not off.

“You saw the heart our boys have when they came back in that game,”  one bearded gent said in between sips of a decadent frothy stout.  “I hope England ties or loses so we can have a chance to move on.”

I was in total agreement, although the US is often considered the lame duck of the World Cup and do not have the fanbase or allure of other teams, today’s game showed that we have something to prove.

As we sat around the pub throwing back pints of cold microbrews and chicken wings, Algeria played steady and came away with a 0-0 tie. While the fog-eatin’ English sulked away in shame looking more like spayed kitties than their lion nickname, a gleam of hope shown from the old bargoers’ eyes; the dream of America’s World Cup lives on.  With a belly full of high-end pub grub and a wide variety of beers—get the sampler— I was content with both the fare and the warm companionship of fellow bargoers.

My content was replaced with anxiety and excitement looking at the bracket later that day. Group C is completely open now and all four teams have the potential to advance.  This cup is getting exciting, get over to Second Street soon to watch the action, eat good food, drink quality beer and cheer on America’s side, we really need the support!

Second St. Brewery Overall Score: 7/10 Golden Boots

This will be an ongoing blog series with a new entry or two every week about a different restaurant or bar to watch the action.  If you have any suggestions for Santa Fe world cup venues by all means e-mail us at culture@sfreporter.com and put “world cup” as the subject.

There were a few that we didn’t have room for on the page, but which deserve a look regardless.

The first concerns Advantage Asphalt, a company that is under investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office in a convoluted money-and-influence scheme reportedly involving several local politicians, including state House Speaker Ben Luján, Santa Fe City Councilor Matt Ortiz and County Development Review Committee chairman Jon Paul Romero.

On June 14, the Journal Santa Fe reported that Santa Fe County officials had cited Advantage “for illegally storing heavy machinery and other equipment on a residential La Cienega property.”

[County Development Review Division Director Shelley] Cobau said that [Advantage owner Joe Anthony] Montoya has a “home occupation” business license for the property. The license allows for small-scale operations, “something that doesn’t affect the residential characteristics of the neighborhood,” Cobau said.

SFR’s photographer visited Advantage’s Los Estrellas Road address last week. Does this like a “small scale operation?”

This appears to the house for which Montoya was initially denied a permit last October—a decision that was reversed without clear explanation by County Manager Roman Abeyta, per the Journal.

County officials told the Journal they weren’t sure when the most recent complaint had come in about Advantage’s property on Las Estrellas. But the records obtained by SFR show an anonymous complaint referred to inspector Rick Lovato by Permits and Inspections Division Director Wayne Dalton on April 14.

The caller “believes there is an unpermitted structure going up at 57B Las Estrellas,” the complaint says. “Neighbor believes that they are running illegal business. They start big machinery up at 6:00 A.M. The business is Advantage Asphalt.”

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Another complaint concerned a property at 6 Jennifer Way, owned by James S Ramsey, whom SFR was unable to reach. The complaint concerns “[a]nother RV lived in with no hook ups” and “debris and junk” on the property.

It still looked that way when SFR’s photographer visited last week, although the complaint was recorded March 2, and Cobau says property owners are usually given 30 days to clean up after a code inspector’s visit.

One thing the complaint didn’t mention: These animals.

Thanks to SFR photo intern Ana Goni-Lessan for traipsing all over the place.

By Intern Drew Lenihan

The Catamount, on the corner of Water and Shelby streets, has been a loyal drinking hole to Santa Fe for almost 15 years now.  Sadly, after all these years it will be closing its doors and moving later this summer, but not until the 2010 World Cup is viewed from the current location’s bar stools one last time.

Many people have fantastic memories there watching and hooting and a hollering for their favorite teams, regardless of sport.  During Brazil and North Korea’s match yesterday, one bar goer exclaimed to me, “I watched Michael Phelps win all his gold medals here; I was here when Zidane headbutted Materazzi,” he said referring to the infamous 2006 World Cup Final.  “It’s too bad it’s got to move.”  Unfortunately I am not one of those people with good memories of Catamount sports watching.

While the Catamount has amazing potential to house and quench soccer hooligans’ thirst; I wasn’t able to see the appeal of the place to a soccer fan. The staff was overtly uninviting, kind of a “Oh you’re here to watch soccer, not buy our crappy food” attitude and the server pretty much ignored my table once I had order my appeasement plate of 3.85 chips and salsa.

In theory, it’s great the Catamount is upholding the sanctity of the World Cup and staying around until it is over, even with the landlord increasing the rent by more than 50%.  In practice, the staff acted like they wanted out of there and didn’t care what’s happening in South Africa this month.

Most tables were empty, except for one group of Brazillian yellow-and-blue-clad college students who were enthusiastic until the stagnant atmosphere of the place seemed to suck the fun out of them too, even when the Samba Boys found their rhythm and practically danced up and down the field in the second half, chasing North Korea back to the DMZ with a 2-1 win.

I have always been a huge Brazil fan and I should have been a lot happier, but the Catamount was about as authentic as the North Korean fans, who because of the repressive nature of their government are not allowed to leave North Korea and go to the cup. As a result, all “North Korean” fans at the game were Chinese actors hired by Kim Jong Il’s regime.  The physical setup of the Catamount’s downstairs was just about as homely as a North Korean holding cell.

The couple of TVs were awkwardly positioned and the main upstairs bar, complete with 10 enormous TVs, pool tables, and drink specials wasn’t even open.  Brazil easily beat the team of Kim Jong Il puppets—rumor has it that the North Korean dictator hand picked every player on the team—and as the teams trudged off the pitch, Brazil to party, North Korea to meditate to their dictator’s photo, I too got out of the Catamount before the waitress could frown at me again. My message to the Catamount: The World Cup is a party; stop being such poopers.

The Catamount Bar and Grille: Overall Score 3/10 Golden Boots

This will be an ongoing blog series with a new entry or two every week about a different restaurant or bar to watch the action.  If you have any suggestions for Santa Fe world cup venues by all means e-mail us at culture@sfreporter.com and put “world cup” as the subject.

Lenka Novakova's installation is among the many video art pieces featured in Currents 2010.

By: Chloé Davis

People need an escape from reality that moves and breaths, an escape they can hear and that will suck them in then hypnotize them. This is where Currents 2010 comes in. Currents 2010 is a prototype for a hopefully annual event called The Santa Fe Video Art and New Media Festival. Currents 2010 focuses on many of the same things as Site Santa Fe’s The Dissolve, another exhibit of video art and new media work (12-5 pm, Sunday June 20, SITE Santa Fe,1606 Paseo De Peralta, 989-1199). In fact, The Dissolve is one of the biggest sponsors for Currents 2010 and they happen concurrently.“What we want to do is make a first-class new-media event yearly. New Mexico has a great deal of talent, and we want to make [New Mexico] a premier center for video art and new media work,” Frank Ragano, producer of the event, tells SFR. It’s true, Woody and Steina Vasulka, Flame Schon and David Stout, who moved to Danton, Texas at the end of summer 2009 but will be returning to Santa Fe for this show, will be showing their work in Currents 2010.

The producers of the event (Frank Ragano and Mariannah Amster) in the future hope that their event will become more citywide. They would like to see it hop from venue to venue and always include both the local community and artists from around the world.

“Our events are always free to the public, It makes it easier for every one to become aware of the fairly new art form. We are already making plans with The Boys and Girls Club for them to make trips to the show,” Ragano continues. Getting youth involved is an important part of Currents 2010; it features video art by teens from high schools around northern New Mexico. Youth are a big part of the event, but certainly not the only part.

Schon is a well established artist in the world of video art. Schon’s work is known for its psychedelic and abstract quality. She would not go into too much detail about the installation for the sake of keeping it a secret, only to be reviled on the opening night of the show. Her installation was one of many being to be built on at El Museo Cultural Tuesday afternoon by the artists with the assistance of friends and students.

“It’s a translucent chamber of sorts,” Schon tells SFR of her installation. “I want it to be something deep that people can sink into,” she says.

It took many people to start setting up Schon’s installation today and will again tomorrow. However, two days is nothing. She has been working on this installation for roughly four months. “I had to be in the right mind-set to work on [the installation]. I used things to distract myself when I was not in that mind-set but knew I should be working,” she says.

If you are already a fan of video art and new media, or completely new to new media and video art it is worth at least swinging by to see what everyone involved has been working to for many months.

By Caroline K Gorman

The Ghost of Milagro Creek
By Melanie Sumner

The Ghost of Milagro Creek made its way to me with a Post-it note across the front that read “important local writer.” It struck me that all writers are important to wherever it is they can be considered “local.” Community pride wants to boast that one of our own has made it and personal vainglory wants the satisfaction of knowing all the common details about someone who has succeeded. And then there’s always the simple delight inherent in recognizing familiar places in the pages of books.

So there are many good, respectable reasons for considering an author to be important merely because of origin. However, the interesting thing about this “important local writer” is that Melanie Sumner isn’t. She lived in New Mexico for three years, from 1998 to 2001. And then she moved away. But she is happy to borrow Taos’ colorful atmosphere as a setting for her book.

Unfortunately, the type of book which Sumner wrote depends very greatly on her status as a genuine local author. It is a crime novel with a tired premise involving a love triangle, childhood friends and murder. This book depends heavily on setting and characters in order to be interesting. The setting is “the barrio in Taos,”and the narrator is Ignacia, a Jicarillo Apache who is necessarily considered “a witch” by her neighbors, and two boys, Mister and Tomas. Regarding setting—well, I’ll leave that to people who are actually local to Taos to decide.

As for the characters, they are passable. Certainly the voice of Ignacia is strong, even if her character as a “witch” is a little stale. Unfortunately, a gimmick early on mars the narrator’s voice; Ignacia dies and proceeds to narrate for a few chapters. After that, Ignacia’s voice becomes difficult to discern, though she is in theory still narrating. Maybe the problem is that after narrating from within a coffin, not much else can be interesting.

The Ghost of Milagro Creek is certainly readable, as long as you don’t get stuck on details like the insertion of random Spanish words. (The author says she met a “tree-cutter from Belize” in Rome who helped her insert some Spanish words. She selects the words in as thoughtful a manner as someone adding pepper to a dish in an attempt to spice it up.) I believe one of the  Hispanicized words was “des.” In my many years living on the border, I have yet to hear someone say “des” when the two words on either side were in English.

But back to readability: It’s readable. The timeline is a little all confusing in the beginning, but it straightens out. As the story of a passion and a crime, it is interesting. Unfortunately, the constant presence of distractions makes it difficult to focus on the plot. For example, the center of the love triangle is described as wearing ‘high heels, tight bell-bottoms, and some sort of a bra for a shirt.” (p.1-2). When I read this, I thought the scene was taking place in the 70s, although apparently it’s  1995. This jolted me a little out of the narrative flow; I had to go back a confirm what the year actually was. Little things like this, including slang that was presumably supposed to be representative of the 1995 barrio scene,  just made me either cringe or question my own sense of space and time.

However, the sentences that aren’t dialogue demonstrate very clearly that Sumner has been well-trained. The grammar is never painful, and there is a love of combining details about the corrosion of man-made things with facets of the New Mexico landscape. She is mercifully short and simple with the grand emotions of the characters. And there is always the joy of seeing places which you know intimately, but which are unknown to the wider world, appear in print.

Ready for the answer? Dorothy “Duffy” Rodriguez, a former deputy secretary at the Department of Health who earlier this year was at the center of two whistleblowers’ allegations of nepotism and fraud. (Read SFR’s coverage here.) So far, neither allegation has been proven—but when Rodriguez left the DOH in April, many of the comments on SFReeper.com were euphoric.

“Duffy…was a corrupt bully who was feared by all in the agency,” one commenter wrote. Another described the news as “too good to be true!”

But Rodriguez has a brand new job: Secretary of the Taxation and Revenue Department, where she’ll replace Rick Homans—who in turn will take over from Steven Landeene as director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, according to a press release from the Governor’s office. And the wheel turns.

Felonious Groove Foundation will be performing at Block Party

4–9 pm Wednesday, June 16
Corner of Marcy & Otero streets

Summer is great. Everybody knows this. But sometimes the late sunsets can make the day drag on, trapping one between the end of work and the end of the day. Fortunately, there is a fun solution: The Santa Fe Reporter Block Party!

Join us to celebrate the release of Summer Guide 2010 and get your party on!

Mingle with all your fellow Santa Feans at the profusion of fasinating booths: Big Sky Learning, the Green Party of Santa Fe, Warehouse 21, SpaNomad, and so many many more. Or, if you’d rather, just listen to some great music: La Junta plays ‘Southwest funk hop,’ the Rev. Karol King Kong brings the funk, Venus Bogardus plays post-punk and the Felonious Groove Foundation plays their own funk. Food is provided by Backroad Pizza, Cowgirl BBQ, ECCO and Second Street brewery. Plus there’s a performance by the Santa Fe Spirit All Star cheerleaders!

There’s no excuse for a boring summer day when there are block parties to go to!

Whoa, it’s like the the Eyedropper’s house, except that instead of coming from above, our “bad neighbor” signs point from the houses to the left and right, as well as from across the street.

This is possibly the most effective way to destroy a business. The second, which this business also claims, is German food. I give this place two months to live.

More after the JUMP!

“Rehydrate with alcohol”—this shit would so not fly in Santa Fe.

The Eyedropper is particularly fond of altering signs/posters/etc. to make them better. She also likes it when they’re changed to say something mostly incomprehensible.

Santa Fe, don’t take this from that other SF city. Send your MORE AWESOME submissions to culture [at] sfreporter.com, subject “eyedropper.”

Thusly, with nigh overpowering nostalgia fueling me, I took in the recent Lou Barlow (of said bands) show on the Cowgirl patio. First off, I was feeling pretty impressed that Barlow was playing such a small venue, but it seems that Santa Fe is getting bigger shows like this more often. Plus, I’m willing to bet Barlow is one of those super-cool and down to earth musicians who subtly rules the land while keeping his head.

I arrived a tad early to check out Sarah Jaffe (myspace.com/sjaffe) open the show. In the days leading up to the concert, I’d heard nothing but good things about the Texas singer-songwriter, and Jaffe started strong with a beautiful voice and a quiet and subtly sad sound. Instantly, I realized there was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Sarah Jaffe folkin' it up

Jaffe’s cellist and keyboardist added complexity to the simple guitar work, but I was going mad trying to figure out where I had heard this before. Then it hit me: I’ve sat in my room listening to Cat Power and Feist too ,and whether or not she realizes it, Jaffe emulates these musicians quite closely. Though Jaffe’s voice is solid, it sounds almost exactly like Leslie Fesit, a fact that kind of pissed me off. Now, I’m not saying that she was bad or anything, but it was just nothing I haven’t heard before. Jaffe’s strength is in her voice and not guitar playing. At times, this seemed to put undue pressure on her band, and a cursory glance at the crowd proved that I was pretty much the only person bored by the performance. It makes sense, though. Those unfamiliar with indie folk/country are bound to be impressed by an artist with such obvious-and worthy-influences. I suppose Jaffe makes a good transition for those interested in getting into these types of music, but I don’t see her having much lasting power in a genre already jam-packed with too many faceless acts that sound exactly the same.

Jaffe wound up her set, and you could feel the excitement in the crowd; a real live rock ‘n’ roll legend was about to play! Lou Barlow set up, and played a goofy song about getting punched in the nose for his soundcheck. Even the soundcheck was awesome.  ”Just go ahead and shout out what you wanna hear, and I’ll probably play it,” He announced. Song titles started flying around the patio, including one lady who yelled, “Play Natural One! Could you play that?” Barlow kind of laughed and replied, “Well, I can, just not right now.”

Everyone was paying super-close attention to Barlow

After a few solo acoustic tunes from 2009’s Goodnight Unkown, the crowd belonged to Barlow. His guitar work seems so natural, but is actually fairly complex and interesting. I was surprised at how much I liked his voice. Not because I thought he sucked or anything, but I don’t think I had ever noted how good it was before. It was soft and restrained, yet powerful and beautiful. Every now and then he seemed to summon an almost Nick Drake-like quality.

The acoustic stuff was great and all, but the show really got moving when Barlow called his band, the missingmen, up to perform. “These guys are Mike Watt’s band,” He told us. This resulted in a “HOLY SHIT!” moment for me. Mike Watt is punk rock royalty, so I figured these dudes must be for real.

the missingmen ruled it

I’ve seen a handful of shows on the Cowgirl patio, but by far, this was the loudest. Barlow and crew rocked so hard and so loud, that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t shut down. Word on the street is that the patio is utilized so infrequently because of noise ordinance bullshit, but for those who were there, you know that this showwouldn’t have worked inside.

Barlow switched back and forth from guitar and bass duty, and even the songs without bass sounded remarkably full. the missingmen proved to be real pros, never missing a note but appearing totally relaxed and effortless. Everyone was freaking out, myself included. I made a mental note to pick up Goodnight Unknown the very next chance I got. I am not even exaggerating when I say that Lou Barlow and the missingmen was one of the top five best shows I’ve ever seen in Santa Fe. The perfect weather on the patio helped with what I can only describe as a magical (gross) evening. Every song in Barlow’s canon was good. Every song. Think about that for a second-how many times have you seen a show in which every single song was good? I’d bet almost never.  It was just past midnight when Barlow switched back to his acoustic guitar for a few more solo tunes and I made my way home. It becomes more and more clear that Santa Fe is finally getting the shows we’ve deserved for years. The show renewed my faith and love of music, and i slipped into a deep sleep with my ears still ringing.