Part II: That Sophisticated Small Town
created 6/29/2001
I am not a small town person. I am never really used to a place where you have to drive to every place (including just pick up your mails) and most of shops close at 8 pm.
Of course, smaller city also means less diversity (at least ethnically and culturally) and more provinciality. While everybody there seems to know each other for more than 15 years, they are not interested to know you, a new person in town.
Okay, I admit that I was talking about my experience about living in Baltimore. With a population of around 650,000 (and decreasing every year), it is hardly qualified as a "small" town. But I guess you can say it is "small" at heart.
So, I moved to New York, a city with more than 8 million people. Diversity and convenience is never a problem here, but then I complain about its overcrowdiness.
There could always be something in between. Washington, DC, with a metropolitan population of around 3 million, is among my favorite. Though it’s getting crowded these days. (But strangely, isn’t Baltimore has metro population similar to that, why...)
Of course, size of a city is not necessary related to its level of sophistication. Seattle is not even in the top 10 largest metro area, but its sophistication definitely is in Top 5 in this country (think about Bill Gates and Starbucks...oop, I just kidding!).
Then I came to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. A city constantly on the Top 10 list of favorite tourist destination in the U.S. According to some guidebook, it is a place with 'highest concentration of good restaurants' and 'most culturally diverse place outside of New York'. And this city has only 65,000 residents.
Arriving at Santa Fe two days before Memorial Weekend, we could
barely found some nice hotel room. Since it’s the beginning of summer
peak season, hotel rates just started to skyrocket. I took a stroll
around its town square before sun set. With all these Pueblo
Indian-styled adobe buildings (no, it doesn’t look like the logo of
Adobe Reader =>
) and Spanish colonial churches and arcades, it is lovely. Lovely, yes,
but it is hardly as magnificent as I imagined. It reminds me of another
city mixed with both American Indian and Spanish styles ?Cuzco, Peru.
However, Santa Fe is hardly as grand and impressive as Cuzco.
There are quite a few elegant restaurants near the Town Square, with emphasis on “Southwest cooking?and “New Mexican cuisine? Most of them serve tortillas, tacos, fajitas, burritos, and chili. Since I am never really a big fan of Mexican food (you can argue with me that “New Mexican?food is different from “Mexican? and I am a vegetarian now (my travel companion is a also a pro-veggier, so I don’t worry that he insists on going to some big-named steak house), most of these nicely decorated restaurants are not really appealing to me. And thanks to the influx of affluent new residents in the past few decades, most of these restaurants are very expensive (Compared to New York, they are still not too bad..). We settled for a bar/grill place and I had a decent but unimpressive veggie fajita.
I didn’t have chance to experience better parts of Santa Fe until the next day and I learned the lesson once again: "You cannot judge a city by your first impression." Under the bright daylight, those adobe buildings look really exotic for us foreigners/East Coasters (though it’s a little pretentious that even a parking garage is built in adobe style). All the museums in Santa Fe are built in adobe style, as well as its most famous hotel –La Fonda Hotel.
I was just starting to read Simone de Beauvoir’s “L’Amerique au jour le jour 1947?(recently translated into Chinese). She spent three days in Santa Fe in 1947 and she described Santa Fe as fascinating and exotic, which is exactly how we feel now. She thought Santa Fe 'possibly the best American city to sightseeing on foot', which I can also related to. She dined at La Fonda Hotel everyday (sigh, I guess she was much richer than we are) and praised it might be the most beautiful hotel she’s ever seen in her life. I agree with all her statements but I am also surprised how little things have changed since 1947 in this lovely small city.
We visited a few more churches, including St. Francis Cathedral (possibly the grandest in Santa Fe) and Loretto Chapel ("chapel" means it’s 'tiny'). We also stopped by several art galleries. It is intriguing how many art galleries there are in this tiny town. Chelsea (in Manhattan) might have more galleries, but quality of these galleries is no less than those in New York. After my friend went back to hotel to take a nap, I began my ‘museum grand tour?by myself. A $10 dollars "Museum of New Mexico 4 Day Pass" allows me to visit all the state-owned museums. While Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and Museum of International Folk Art are too far out of town, I decided to visited Museum of Fine Art and Palace of the Governors first. Outside of Palace of Governor (the oldest continuing operating civic building in the US), there are many Indian vendors selling their artworks. Inside, the history and old way of life of New Mexicans are in exhibition. It is small but interesting. Next, I visited Museum of Fine Art, a relatively small art museum. The exhibition is okay but I really love its outlay and design. There are also a few museums that are not covered by the Pass (yes, there are really that many museums!). I chose the relatively new Georgia O’Keefe Museum to round up this cultural feast (later on that).
A little far out the town center, is the famous Canyon Road. There are at least three dozens of galleries along this one mile’s stretch. Compared to the galleries near the Town Square, galleries here show even more diverse artworks. There are a lot of abstract sculptures, some Buddhist crafts, a Tibetan garden, and many paintings of Southwest landscape. After my friend got up and we drove there, most of galleries were close (they all close before 6:00pm, this is still a small town anyway), but we still can appreciate many artworks exhibited outside or just peeked through windows. In her book, de Beauvoir was invited to a cocktail party hosted by one of the gallery owners.
I also passed by the Lensic Performing Art Center (just across the street from Starbucks). This theater just finished renovating and re-opened in May. I picked up a program and surprised by the abundance and quality of the performance scheduled there (many performers are all the way from New York). I remember I read that Santa Fe is the smallest city in the US with a symphony orchestra.
Climbing up to the hill overlooking Santa Fe, I found it is really a small town. We did our dinner at Whole Food Market not far from our hotel since it is more vegetarian-friendly. I told my friend that WFM is catered to yuppies and their food is more expensive than ordinary supermarkets because they are 'organic'. My friend wonders how come there are so many ‘yuppies?in such a small place. I said because it’s sophisticated, so many artists want to move here and many rich people want to move here after they retire. Also the great weather, and the stunning New Mexico landscape.
"I think I want to move to Santa Fe too," I said "maybe 30 years from now, after I retire."
With the cost of living like that in Santa Fe, I think I’d better start to save money now.
