Khal Spencer wrote...
I
saw on the email list last week that Brad (DBA Fusion Multisports) was selling off bike tools. Today
drove by and saw the Going Out of Business sign. Anyone know why the shop is
closing? Poor business or just moving outa here?
Bike
shops in this town have a shorter half life than most fission products.
------------------
It's been a tough go and he finally decided to join the rest
of us and get a stable paycheck. The retail climate in Los Alamos is
brutal. Retail space leasing costs are expensive, margins are small,
people (some, certainly not all) are kinda cheap, online shopping is a killer,
and frankly, Los Alamos is not a vibrant (as in barely breathing) tourist draw
for active people that would ordinarily support a shop like that. You
don't see a lot of out-of-towners coming here to hike/camp/bike/climb,
etc. The tour buses from Santa Fe sort of drop people off at Bradbury or
the NPS center (to get their NPS passport book stamped) and the people don't do
a lot of walking around and shopping.
Brad did participate in the County's Tourism Implementation
Task Force, which commissioned and produced an interesting master plan. A
big part of that document discusses the need for the County to focus on outdoor
recreation to diversify the tourism picture, and hence the economy
somewhat. Now I'm on the Task Force, and so far, we've only worked on
relocating the County Visitor's Center. But as many of you know, we're
trying to put pressure on the County and the National Forest to enhance and
even create some new trails that would make mountain biking a bit safer, more
usable, and more appealing to a wider audience. We have a lot of
interesting trails and some are really cool, but they're not attractive to most
people. Looking around, towns like Ruidoso, Salida, Sedona, Cortez...and
dare we compare to Salida, Durango, and Moab...are making a big effort to draw
tourists. Gosh, even poor 'ol Gallup is passing us up in that department.
There are other things that we should look at in town (i.e.
events like softball tournaments, soccer tournaments, get our hockey tournament
back, more trail and running events, etc...) that would increase our
stock. But, we're actually going the opposite direction on that
front. We seem to have fewer events. That's a long story too, but
it's easy to see that there's something choking off these events that would
contribute to a bit more vitality in town. It's like we've become a
bedroom community or HOA and can't wait to leave to greener pastures every
weekend for our recreation and entertainment spending.
------------------------
A tourism draw is not just trails and outdoors, although that's a
great start. I've never been to a town with such a concentration of wealth, and
so few places to eat. A handful or so full service restaurants, and only two
with a full bar, one of which is closed half the weekend. A number of the other
restaurants are only weekday lunch too. To top it off, only one actual bar, and
a single brewery that doesn't serve food. There is finally a single place in
the town to get a good espresso and pastry, and again, not open Sunday. I've
seen and heard people come up here to see Los Alamos and it's attractions, and
then leave to go Espanola or Santa Fe to eat. And what's unbelievable to me, is
how many people complain that the few restaurants that are here are too expensive!
I've brought friends up here to ride, and had them leave hungry and angry
because the only decent place open Sunday afternoon to eat still hadn't brought
our meals after an hour. And if anyone thinks tourism doesn't involve food,
you're absolutely wrong. So I'd totally agree that more events are in order,
but if you can't feed the event goers, they won't come back.
---------------------------------
I know very little of the inner workings of this county but what
I do know suggests xxxx is not only right but frankly being too generous. It’s
too easy to simplify the problem and just pick one group to blame (horsies,
county council, etc.). Fundamentally, the town/county of Los Alamos has a
“cultural” problem. By this I mean the sort of institutionalized laziness and
lack of creativity that the presence of the Lab and all of its inertia put on
the town. This is not to say that I blame the Lab – I am proud to work here and
it is vital to my own existence – rather, once people leave work (or do
something other than Lab work), there is no energy or incentive to improve the
TOWN. The town and its community don’t have to change because there is always
the Lab. If you want to go out, well, heck, let’s get in that really nice car
and leave. We have enough money, we can ignore some very basic structural problems.
Said another way, the amount of income the lab injects into the community, both
directly and through taxation, allows the town to stay just alive enough that
it doesn’t ever NEED to improve. Much like an addict, vast parts of its life
are broken but it doesn’t care because it has enough to eat and get high.
I realize this is basic economics and everyone knows this but
it’s worth repeating because Los Alamos Town must learn to exist outside of the
Lab. I grew up just south of Durango. When I was a kid, it was a pretty dumpy
post-mining town with not a lot going on. Major money appeared to be modest
tourism (the train – analogous to Bandelier) and various agrarian industries.
The restaurants were bad and went out of business a lot. I have no idea what part
was planning and what was luck, but Durango figured out that they were sitting
on a veritable gold mine of outdoor stuff and that virtually their entire
economy could be based on it. Admittedly, access to Durango was/is a lot easier
than here, and yes, some amount of momentum was in place from Purgatory being
close by. It’s still stunning to me just how incredible Durango’s success is
when I go home now, particularly considering we have many of the same basic
goods as Durango did in the eighties. I have to assume that the Town of Durango
felt the existential pressure to (ahem) exist and realized its current state as
a result of turning fully to tourism. In my conversations with people in Los
Alamos, it seems that almost half don’t want to share at all. To them, “this is
our special little nerd-adise and any tourists will just ruin it. Pay no
attention to the fact that I go to SF to enjoy the fruits of tourism in
somebody else’s back yard.” If that’s the case, and the Lab’s money enables it,
there is no hope.
I apologize for this stream-of-consciousness seconding of xxxx’s
letter but I want to vent my frustration over the loss of Fusion. Brad and Rose
are friends and I feel very bad about my own inability to do much to stop what
has happened. I also hope to motivate a bit more honest assessment of the
situation by people who are remarkably intelligent but incapable of realizing
or accepting their own role in the way things happen around here.
-----------------------------------
The elephant in the room is that tourism is hard and the payoff is tough on a good day. I lived in Honolulu for 14 years before moving here and if anyone doubts that good technical salaries from the national lab mean a lot, try living three generations under one roof because most tourist economy jobs pay shit and houses don't come cheap (now that I am home, I can relax the language rules). Santa Fe has similar problems. There may be a lot to eat, but a lot of the service workers can't afford to live here or are living in less lavish quarters than your typical lab rat will tolerate. If we had a vibrant tourist economy in LA, folks would either have to drive up from elsewhere (and transportation costs money) or there would have to be major changes in the housing market.
Los Alamos is LANL and vice versa. I don't blame folks for liking stuff the way it is, since it is a good life. But one dimensional towns have consequences. In 2001 there were more small businesses in Bombtown. But a lot of that has died for a variety of reasons including major highway improvements making it easy to Get Out Of Dodge, the Internet, and high costs of renting commercial property. We have the Twin Towers of Middle Earth, Smith's Marketplace and LANL, with fewer and fewer small businesses hanging on for dear life.
The county worked to try to diversify the bike plan in 2016/17 to take into account both a potentially more diverse local bicycling population and tourists but frankly, I think the county counted on people driving to Los Alamos to see 1940's Manhattan Project memorabilia (is that a good long term plan?) rather than the active living stuff they sell in Durango. Sad as it is, the big push for tourism was based on Federal largess (selling the Manhattan Project memorabilia and the two national parks). It had less to do with individual initiative, i.e., humping the bushes to sell active living tourism. The flow trail was a start but as mentioned by others, if you can't eat and get a beer, its not going to work.
I think LA will stay as it is unless the laboratory takes a major hit and folks have to scramble to fill in the economic loss, as they did in Durango, Buffalo NY, and other places where the traditional economic rug got pulled out. Still, its too bad that a town with so much money and a lot of bicycling can't support a brick and mortar bike shop.
Khal
------------------------------
ZZZZ, I agree with you that it's not all about trails and
outdoors. A diverse mix of activities and events are what make a place
interesting. However, we don't visit Vail for the chamber orchestra
events, nor do we visit Moab for the Irish dances and little theater.
Sure, we catch a show now and then when we're there...to ski or mountain bike,
or both (we enjoy attending orchestra and theater shows in Crested Butte and
Durango).
I've lived here long enough (20 yrs now), and I grew up in Ruidoso, so I've seen the difference between a blue collar town that pulls itself up by the bootstraps to make things happen because they have to, and an affluent town that can afford to drive 45 minutes away to spend the day shopping for a few items and go to nicer restaurants. Putting this bluntly, the lack of restaurants is not the reason we do not have people coming to visit (or staying in town for that matter), but rather the result of people not coming to visit (other than for work) and staying to shop and eat here.
I've lived here long enough (20 yrs now), and I grew up in Ruidoso, so I've seen the difference between a blue collar town that pulls itself up by the bootstraps to make things happen because they have to, and an affluent town that can afford to drive 45 minutes away to spend the day shopping for a few items and go to nicer restaurants. Putting this bluntly, the lack of restaurants is not the reason we do not have people coming to visit (or staying in town for that matter), but rather the result of people not coming to visit (other than for work) and staying to shop and eat here.
As a comparison, Ruidoso, a town of about 7,000 year-round
residents, can host events like a motorcycle festival, a horse race, etc., and
draw upwards of 50,000 to 60,000 people on a weekend. They have a LOT of
restaurants and bars...that stay open. Of course, we will not be hosting
motorcycle rallies or horse races, but you get the point. It is
interesting to see that Ruidoso can now draw a lot of money-spending Texans who
like to mountain bike too. And to add to what Khal was saying, Ruidoso
has hosted a nice century bike ride that also drew a lot of interest...although
it appears that road rides are not as popular as they once were, likely due to
incidents with cars. Red River's century is still a pretty solid draw.
I'm not saying Los Alamos doesn't have some nice events and
activities, but they're either more the types of things that we folks with
families enjoy here at home, or what older folks who are on a bit of a sojourn
in tour buses from Santa Fe appreciate as part of their guided
experience. The point is, despite our wonderful outdoor assets, we seem
to be missing something. We don't really have something that stands out
or captivates people's attention for outdoor (or indoor) recreation and
entertainment.
-------------------------------
Inevitably
the conversation came around to it... one more or less trail won’t change
anything about this town. But cutting into the canyon will leave a new scar!
Like a bad tattoo, flow trail = tramp stamp.
1-
there’s never been any concerted effort to advertise what LA already has.
That’d be step 1, duh
2-
real reason nobody visits is ‘cause the place looks like an industrial park and
is full of nerds, churches, and way too many cops
3- I
like it quiet the way it is. Trails are clear, yard is quiet, kids are safe.
Tourists are a terrible pain in the ass and my wife cooks better than PF Chang
and Mr Applebee combined.
People
find out about this place I’ll have to move again.
----------------------------------Yeah, I often wonder if we could sell the trails we have.
Final thought. I wonder if some of LA's problem of people rolling up the sidewalks is topography-driven. You live out on the mesas and even Townsite is a trip in the car. Down in Fanta Se, I can walk to several restaurants and a mall. XYZ, has anyone ever done a survey to find out if people who live on the South Mesa (is that where all the business is?) go out more than people who live on North or Barranca mesa or White Rock?
Yep, LA has very low crime and other signs of those distressful things that happen in communities with low wage/low education jobs. But its all due to the largess of Uncle Sam and Uncle's addiction to nuclear weapons. That's paid my salary for 17 years but I don't think any of us who work in the Land of Coneheads should forget who we work for--all those other people who live in those more distressed communities and whose taxes pay our salaries.
Khal
----------------------------------
Yep, you all need a sour-faced and crass lady to ring in on
this....(sorry TTTT, this won't make you proud of your wife)....Los Alamos, I
think has some wonderfully close and varied trails, some really great
individuals, and magical wildlife. But as far as the "town"
goes....I think it has been choking on something for a long time....and it
ain't a hot dog if you know what I mean ;)
---------------------
Khal, who knew your original email would open a Pandora's
Box of issues...
First off, you all might find it enlightening to reach out to Brad and Rose themselves, along with other retailers and restaurant owners, to learn what challenges small business owners have in this town...or even private developers for that matter. I remember coming here for the first time in 1982 for a school ski race (I'm getting old) - there were actually far more retail and service businesses here than there are now. We even went bowling down in White Rock, and all of Longview was full of stores. Anyway, that's a different era and things change. Our community's economic picture is a complicated, multi-layered set of issues.
First off, you all might find it enlightening to reach out to Brad and Rose themselves, along with other retailers and restaurant owners, to learn what challenges small business owners have in this town...or even private developers for that matter. I remember coming here for the first time in 1982 for a school ski race (I'm getting old) - there were actually far more retail and service businesses here than there are now. We even went bowling down in White Rock, and all of Longview was full of stores. Anyway, that's a different era and things change. Our community's economic picture is a complicated, multi-layered set of issues.
Unless you've had your head in the sand and aren't aware, we
have been in the midst of a local government funding crisis, or scare.
For quite some time, the County has been receiving what amounts to a government
handout in the form of GRT for all receipts on LANL business in Los Alamos
County (i.e. we don't *really* need GRT from the retail/service segment of our
local economy). Prior to that, Los Alamos functioned more on a level,
real-world tax-based economy, and it showed. New facilities took a long
time to be funded, services were modest, etc. When the County began
receiving the GRT, all principles of capitalism went out the window, and with
it, quite a bit of community spirit of "do for ourselves"
mentality. The County sort of resembled a drunken sailor on leave, with
big road rebuilds, lots of big construction, etc. Some of it was good and
needed, but some could be considered frivolous. For some reason, the ice
rink upgrades cost $2M instead of the originally scoped $1M.
With the new LANL contract up in the air, we've had to
curtail our entire County budget structures, and go completely flat -- many of
you probably don't know that or what the details are, and haven't noticed it
yet because we had already encumbered money for everything before. You
would have begun to notice it next year perhaps, and then it would have become
much more apparent in the years to come. We were about to see a massive
shift in what the County could commit to or support. In other words, we
weren't going to have the big Sugar Daddy paying for everything. We, here
at the County, were the first to feel it with open positions suddenly being
filled (resulting in having to pick up more slack), and our salaries went flat
- no raises at all, even for cost of living. This is a bad thing because
there are people here who are very talented and would nicely fill roles in jobs
that are becoming widely available at the Labs. The County would start
losing the quality people who have been recruited during these fat years.
It would be a noticeable loss if this pattern continued for more than a couple
of years.
With the GRT, the County even went so far as to push private
developers out of business because the County has acted as land developer
(LEDA) with far more power than small developers. The County managed (or
manages) the Smith's deal (that's actually still County and LAPS land with a
lease agreement with Kroger), and even the new development down in White Rock
(Mirador) is a sweetheart deal for the developer because the County put in a
lot of cash to pay for it. We have been so fat and drunk with LANL cash
that we even snubbed our noses at private venture capitalists who have wanted
to purchase old buildings for renovation and restoration to get them up and
running again. Instead of supporting that effort, the County has taken a
hard line to have them demolished or entirely gutted. That is not
something you'd see in most towns. So, we still have blight because it's
too cost-prohibitive to live up to the standards.
Los Alamos is a single-resource type of economy, kind of
like a mining town or similar, but we haven't seen the jobs dry up like they
did back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s in places like Salida, Moab, Crested Butte,
Durango. This forced those towns to reinvent themselves...admittedly not
the model we're after, but it's still something to consider. As a real
functioning community, we're not actually self-sufficient, and rely heavily on
the imposed tax structure set up with LANL here. We're structured like
the "Candy Land" towns of the former Soviet Union (Arzamas-16, or
Sarov, the sister city of Los Alamos) in which we receive special funds for our
existence. If we didn't impose all of those taxes on LANL, ostensibly
there would be funding available for more research...or at least that is the
party line. Heck, even our very existence up here is special and requires
a massive amount of wasteful resources just to supply us with water and
waste-water treatment, electricity, waste disposal, etc. Our existence
here on this high mortal coil is anathema to the climate and environmental
stewardship, but here we are and we have to get on with it. There is
certainly a segment of the population here that gets caught up and cut off in
our self-made cloud of hauteur and piety regarding...well, just about
everything. It's an easy tendency to become hypocritical - which is where
this leads to the discussion about trails.
In the interest of crusading against the tendency to become
so smug as to actually enjoy the smell of our own farts when it comes to
"our" trails and how they should be viewed, programmed, maintained,
or revered, some background on how they got there and how they exist now is
necessary for perspective. First off, MANY of the most popular trails
that we have on County-owned land and the ski area (and even quite a few FS
trails), didn't even exist at all prior to the period from 2000-2005/7 (which
is the post- Cerro Grande Fire reconstruction and new trail development
programs). So, if you use trails like the Bayo Fireline, Tent Rocks,
Zipline, Pueblo Rim, many segments of the Perimeter, the Camp Hamilton
Connector, almost ALL Pajarito Mtn trails, new sections of Bayo, North Kwage,
etc.(the list is long)..., then you should understand that you're using
virtually BRAND NEW trails weren't there at all just a few years ago. In
fact, relatively speaking there were very few "trails" per se, on
County-managed land. Only the concentration of [most] trails below the
aquatic center/bridges/Acid Canyon, the north/south Bayo Bench trails, and a
handful of others resemble what they were 15 years ago, or so.
Forest Service trails that are either brand new, or were
completely reconstructed since Las Conchas, often with heavy machinery, include
Water Canyon, Canyon de Valle, Pajarito Canyon, lots of Perimeter, lower Cabra,
most of Pajarito Trail, lots of Canada Bonita and Guaje Ridge trail from
Mitchell all the way down to Guaje Reservoir Rd. The un-permitted
"Camp May Trail" just appeared over the last few years. We
dozed Guaje Canyon twice, only to have it blown out by floods both times, so
that trail may not ever get rebuilt. Most of what we recognize as the
Perimeter Trail from Quemazon (who remembers how nice Perimeter was before Quemazon
was even there?) to the Arizona Tank service road (where Mitchell Trail takes
off) didn't exist in any form or fashion comparable to what it does now.
We just went out and carved an entirely new trail through there, and rode
motorcycles all over it to the cemetery and back for weeks to beat it in...same
for a lot of the trails out near Rendija. The local cross-country ski
club, Southwest Nordic Ski Club, a 501c3 non-profit, has a contractor's license
and a GSA contract with the government, so it was able to apply for and receive
federal funding for the purpose of reconstructing and constructing new trails
(in all of Los Alamos) after Las Conchas Fire of 2011. Various land
managers and volunteers organized to design and align new trails, RFPs were
developed and advertised, bids were received from construction companies, and
projects were managed to get the trails either reconstructed, or constructed
new entirely. Quite a lot of trail around here did see construction with
machinery and quite a few of us stayed up late working on the projects.
Once Craig Martin came on board at the County to fill the
new role of the Open Space specialist/manager (didn't exist before), a lot of
trails that we know and love (although not necessarily built for mountain
biking in mind) within the County-owned lands began to take shape and added
probably 80% more trail mileage in a span of seven, over what was there prior
to 2004, or so. Moreover, many of the most prolific volunteer trail
builders who were here in those years (spending a tremendous number of hours
and contributing hard labor) have either moved, or moved on to things like
raising families and coaching soccer. The flow trail is not really
different from all of those other trail development efforts, but it's interesting
and puzzling to hear the "Johnny-come-lately, I don't need that, I'm so
awesome that I can ride the other trails and win Strava segments" category
of sentiments toward it. I suppose this comes from the misunderstanding
about how our trail system got to be what it is currently, and how it is
planned and managed.
There is a movement to develop Los Alamos County into an
IMBA-recognized ride center. The development of trails for multi-use, and
also for mountain bike use in mind is part of both the IMBA plan, and the
Strategic Tourism Master Plan. IMBA has evaluated (over the course of two
years of work) our trail system against criteria that would be the
selling/advertise-able points of an area, or linked system, characteristic of a
"ride center," as they call it. We didn't meet the entry level
of that set of criteria, but they did document and describe how the objective
could be met, and what level our area is capable of meeting -- essentially,
they said Los Alamos has tremendous untapped potential, but needs organization
and work to get there.
There are a number of you here on this list who have put in
a lot of sweat equity and have been a part of the movement, and there are some
new folks who are learning about it all and are willing to be supportive - so
far it's been successful. Hopefully, we can continue to move
forward. For the others who want to maintain status quo...we're not there
yet. This isn't where the line in the sand has been drawn. And,
it's understandable if you don't live here and don't care...hopefully you quit
reading before you got this far.
If you want to give me your opinion, I frequently ride the
Thursday evening short track session. I ride an old heavy beater, and I
myself am an old and heavy beater, but you still gotta keep up so I can hear
you. Quinn, Hugh, and Warren don't say much, so that frees my mind up
considerably.
Finally and hopefully, in understanding how we got most of our trails built, you can perhaps see that it's somewhat comical to hear people obsess and complain over little efforts from others to improve drainage, tread surfaces, add a little embankment, move a rock...OMG. If Taber spends his afternoon working to make some improvements, I think the words and sentiments we all should strive to express are: THANK YOU!
Finally and hopefully, in understanding how we got most of our trails built, you can perhaps see that it's somewhat comical to hear people obsess and complain over little efforts from others to improve drainage, tread surfaces, add a little embankment, move a rock...OMG. If Taber spends his afternoon working to make some improvements, I think the words and sentiments we all should strive to express are: THANK YOU!
--------------------------------------
Thanks for being patient with the length. I tried to
be succinct, but the issue has a lot of implications. It's kind of an
abstract thing to relate public budgets and policy, and project the effects on
the community, both short and long term. It's good that there are
community leaders here that are taking all of this seriously and understand
that progress can be made. Thankfully for all of us, the County did make
a formal commitment to open space and trails back in the 2000s and have not let
it gather cobwebs. Eric Peterson has his job cut out for him, and
hopefully he sees an increase in support because he's overburdened terribly as
things are now.
Quite a few people have commented to me that they figured
Fusion went out of business because of the flow trail issues, but that really
had nothing to do with it. In fact, the flow trail is a project that was
not actually conceived of, or proposed by a community group, but rather the
tourism consultant that relayed the idea to the Council, supported and detailed
by the IMBA consultant. Some members of the Council researched it (even
going up to Colorado to see and ride some!), along with the County Admin. It
was deemed a feasible, low-cost, high ROI project that had benefits for people in
the community, as well as being an attractive outdoor recreation asset.
The idea also engaged other County entities, such as the Atomic City Transit,
etc., so it also had attractive ancillary aspects. The Council, along
with the P&RB, tapped an ad-hoc "committee" to scope and present
the project proposal (3+ years ago now). That is how I and a few other
infamous characters got involved with it. It came through that series of
commissioned master plans, researched and developed by nationwide professionals,
then parleyed to us as local "on the ground" experts (for lack of a
better term).
All of us who got put on the block to champion the project
(including Brad) have become very frustrated that the project's concept and
plan has not been well presented. I do not understand why information has
not been forth-coming, or why there hasn't been more productive dialogue.
This is bad because a lot of misunderstanding and mistrust has developed
unnecessarily.
Finally, the project has a PIIP on the County's website:
https://www.losalamosnm.us/government/departments/community_services/parks_recreation_and_open_spaces/openspaceandtrails/
https://www.losalamosnm.us/government/departments/community_services/parks_recreation_and_open_spaces/openspaceandtrails/
(it's the drop-down at the bottom of the list)
The concept for the trail is not to be a crazy, bike-park
style trail, but sort of a hybrid back-country trail with a flowy feel,
integrating the most interesting features and feel of the canyon. In a
lot of sections, not much is going to be done to "build" the trail,
other than to sweep away the pine cones off of the existing rock. The
gradient will parallel that of the canyon itself, remaining more or less on a
steady trajectory that avoids steep drops. It'll be a community-style
trail, not a ripper trail. That being said, there will be some flowy
elements where they fit, but won't be forced into it like you'd see at a bike
park. The zone with the most construction impact will be where the original
steep trail from the lower end of the stables (with the big water bar drops
are) intersects with the old eroded Lujan "road" -- heading steeply
down (east) to the bottom of the canyon. For about 250 to 300 meters, a
"bench" will be constructed to keep the trail from dropping
quickly. It will eventually align with a more gently sloping hillside at
the base of a band of low rock cliffs. It's nice in there because it can
weave and wind among a nice low-density forest. The really nice thing is
that toward the bottom of the canyon complex, where it joins with Pueblo
Canyon, there will finally *be* a trail. Currently (unless you use the
bandit game trails, etc.), there is no trail from the confluence of Bayo &
Pueblo Canyons, to the "Y". This will most certainly be a nice
improvement. Maybe that lower part could be multi-use, not just a
bike-specific trail. I do not really see the point of restricting its use
in that lower part. The gradient is low and the speed will be too.
There's another proposed project to [finally] enhance and formalize a few of
those little bandit trails that start and stop in that area, so maybe that'll
be the case. That corridor/area has been a long time in the works. We'll
see. There are a lot of historical sites/artifacts in there, being so
close to the Big Otowi and Little Otowi villages. Now, with the
Pueblo/Bayo access road all covered in asphalt millings from the NM502/4 mill
& overlay project, it'll be nice to have a different alternative for
travel.
OK, now I'm done...
OK, now I'm done...
------------------------------------
Great conversation, and most of us agree we would like a bit
more going on in Los Alamos. But this sounds like a stitch and bitch club
unless each of us is willing to be part of the solution.
I offer one way to do that: support the restaurants that are
here doping a good job. And I mean at dinner time, not lunch, if we want to
help the nightlife. It is easy but lazy to say all the restaurants suck. We go
out here quite a bit. (OK, partly because we both work and get too lazy to
cook). There are more decent meals available here than you think. Here are a
couple you maybe don't think of:
Little Saigon. Read their story on the website. OK, the
decor and ambiance mostly suck, but they make quite good Pho and Bun. We go
down to White Rock at least a couple times a month to get some.
Sirphey. Different
way of running a food place, but they make some really good quality stuff and
the meals change all the time. Great to get some variety.
If your reaction is, "but it costs $11 and I could get
it for $9 in a big city," you are part of the problem.
Broken Mike
