Winners & Losers

Newness

Winners
Downtown burrito lovers

Wee ahh smooo hammeee…holl on…(gulp)…Sorry, SFR just had to finish Chef Kimo’s handheld chicken burrito. We are so, so happy that, after six weeks of being closed for renovations, The Burrito Company on Washington Avenue has reopened its doors. Downtown regulars will notice new flooring and cabinets, but the real changes are in the back, where owners Arquimides and Eleanor Castro overhauled the entire kitchen. The plan for 2009, according to Eleanor: “We’ll just try to keep the prices low, the food made fresh daily.”

Pedestrians and bicyclists

The City of Santa Fe just opened 1.2 miles more of trail along the Santa Fe River, formerly the country’s most endangered river. The trail now extends from Camino Alire to Frenchy’s Field for cyclists, joggers and speed walkers alike to enjoy. Trail wonks (and at least 100 of ’em turned up at the last meeting) can pose questions to representatives of the Santa Fe Parks, Trails and Watershed Division and the Santa Fe Watershed Association from 5:30 to 7:30 pm on Jan. 13 at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center’s community room.

Undersheriff Robert Garcia

Over the course of his two terms, Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano has earned a reputation among crime reporters as a public servant who will bend over backward to personally handle media inquiries. However, as of Jan. 5, there’s a new media contact in town as Solano passes press duty on to Undersheriff Robert Garcia. Is term-limited Solano introducing Garcia to the press in order to groom him for the sheriff’s badge? Solano chuckles and tells SFR, “Let’s leave it at that.”

Losers
Spanish readership

Citing economic hard times, the Santa Fe New Mexican has stopped printing its stand-alone Spanish-language news magazine, La Voz, and added it as a new weekly section in the broadsheet edition. Perhaps the smarter action would’ve been to instead make the New Mexican an insert in La Voz: According to numbers from Nielsen Monitor-Plus, advertising in Spanish-language media held strong in 2008 and analysts expect it will weather the economic crisis in 2009 better than English-language media.

New Mexico film

Sure, in 2007 and 2008 New Mexico films raked in acclaim; most memorably, No Country for Old Men took home the Oscar for Best Picture. But the only new awards NM films are eligible for so far in 2009 may be “Razzies.” Two NM films—Swing Vote and Beer for My Horses—are in the running for  Worst Picture in the Golden Raspberry Awards. Not a single New Mexico film is listed as an Oscar contender on the top gambling Web sites.

Wikipedia

An enterprising proponent of Santa Fe’s living wage may want to update the Wikipedia entry for “List of US Minimum Wage,” which begins: “Out of the entire country, states or cities, San Francisco has the highest minimum wage at $9.79.” Nope. Santa Fe earned that title on Jan. 1, when the new “living wage” increased 42 cents to $9.92.

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