New Mexico Mercury

Even after all these years, Albuquerque still remains an invisible city, in reality a kind of Shangri-La of hidden natural splendors and cultural riches unknown to most Americans, lost in the shadow of Santa Fe, and still largely unknown to itself.

For all the countless hours of volunteerism, all the creativity and risk taking, all the scholarship and design genius, and not to mention the countless millions of dollars expended on Albuquerque’s urban landscape, we still seem to be hiding out, selling ourselves short. It can’t be because we don’t believe we’re worth any better. Many of us know we are. But some of us, I suppose, have our doubts.

A genuine esprit de crops about Albuquerque as a city with an identity of its own is missing here. We’re not an Austin or Portland when it come to pride of place and pride in our self worth as one of the major centers of creativity, across the spectrum from poetry to hard science, in the nation.

The ruling elites have always wanted us to be a commercial version of Denver or Phoenix , or San Antonio. And we’re not. We’re uniquely who we are.  They’ve allowed our “branding” as a city to make us look like also-rans, like a wannabe big city, not the superbly beautiful, cultural and intellectual center of the Southwest that we really are.

So the image we present to the world is drab and contradictory. And the self-image we harbor about ourselves is not much better.

A couple of decades ago the ruling elite hired a prominent local advertising agency to spiff up the city’s image. And one of the requirements was to have no visible dirt, no brown, in the images.  They tried to make us look like Iowa City, with trim lawns and picket fences, and completely overlooked our real virtues.

And still, to this day, folks fly into the Albuquerque Sunport, one of the more handsome, and certainly unique, airports in the nation, and they drive right though town on the way to Santa Fe, without taking a second look.

While I find the idea of branding and imaging making something of an anathema, it is a fact of modern life. And we stink at it. And we lose money that we all desperately need here, because we stink at it. And what a wretched irony that is.

Albuquerque is in the enviable position of not having to make up stuff to give itself a winning image to the world.

When you drive east on I-40 from Los Angeles, Albuquerque is the first major city in 880 miles. It’s strategically placed as an oasis city, 232 miles from El Paso. 275 miles from Amarillo, 330 miles from Phoenix,  332 miles from Denver,  482 miles from Salt Lake City and 483 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada.  And the oasis of Albuquerque is blessed with a natural magnificence few big cities on earth can hold a candle to – the Sandia/Manzanos, the Rio Grande with its wild bosque,  the West Mesa Volcanoes, and the ocean of desert all around.

Unlike Santa Fe, we are so much more than a tourist destination, though we are that too. We haven’t gentrified ourselves out of half of our population. We do have a major research university in our midst, a major national laboratory and all the satellite companies and spin off entrepreneurs that come with it. And yes, we are the biggest city in the poorest state in the union. But what Albuquerque lacks in raw cash and capital, it makes up for in the brilliance and commitment of its volunteers and advocates, its artists and cultural workers, its local small businesses, many of them bookstores and restaurants that  win accolades from a demanding clientele.

Viva the Balloon Fiesta, the Lobos, the Railrunner, the Big I, and the downtown skyline, but Albuquerque is so much more than that.

It’s the volunteers, the culture workers, and the artists, photographers, writers, actors, and musicians, who make us what we are. 

Who could deny that our superb cultural institutions are among the best in the West, and the nation. The Albuquerque Museum is absolutely first rate, the great secret treasure of the city, with a collection of artists that’s as good or better than museums with vast endowments. Our museum has been built with the love of generations of volunteers who honor our history and our creative community with their tireless effort. The same is true for the city’s bio park, its zoo, and its fine libraries, including the three million volumes at UNM’s Zimmerman Library. When you add the University’s Fine Arts Museum and its splendid Maxwell Museum of Anthropology you have the nucleus of a perpetually interesting cultural experience.

The New Mexico Mercury knows how many splendid writers and poets there are in Albuquerque – they’re really countless. There are more theater companies, more bands and other groups of musicians, more classical music, and more poets in this city per capita than perhaps anywhere else in the West.

The University is a cultural magnet and a vast resource for Albuquerque. Yet it’s rarely, if ever, part of the city’s branding. And it doesn’t do a very good job of telling its own story, and highlighting the fascinating research done, in all fields, every day of every year there.

So as the mayoral election of 2013 approaches this October, it would be heartening to see City Hall come up with something more than plans for a 50 mile bike loop around the city, as nice as that is, something more than fast buses, and misbegotten plan to gentrify the river and the bosque.

We need a mayor who not only “gets” Albuquerque, but really loves it, one who is deeply proud of it, and can honor the countless hours of giving and sacrifice made by those who’ve struggled over the decades to make the most of our city’s superb cultural landscape, one who will learn how to tell the story, the whole story of this city, not just the chamber of commerce version, not just the federal establishment version.

No we are not Seattle, not Portland, not Austin, not Chapel Hill.

We are Albuquerque, a fascinating, beautiful oasis in the desert. And its time we stop fiddling around trying to look like somewhere else, trying to be a generic big city, or trying to dodge the Breaking Bad version of who we seem to be. We need to come together amongst ourselves, rediscover our depths and beauties, and tell the world that story, honestly and completely.

(Creative Commons feature images: Balloon by Artotem, Mural by Ingrid Truemper, Modern House by Rex Brown.)