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Hey, you had your say.
Here's our two cents.
Best Place to Strike Out
Ragle Park Batting Cages
We're not talking about when you drunkenly procure a fake phone number as Swig closes down; nope, we're talking about 32-ounce bats, pitching machines and batting helmets. Not too many people know the round chain-link aluminum structure that stands like a weird, raggedy hogan on the side of Zia Road (at the corner of Yucca) is actually a full-on, functioning batting cage, with four different pitching machines of varying speeds, for both softball and baseball. It's never crowded (it's open 4:30-8 pm during the week; 11 am to 5 pm on Saturdays; noon to 5 pm Sundays), so you get to spend more time swinging than you do on deck, and the place supplies different weight aluminum bats and different sizes of helmets. The cages are run by Dick Mann, who originally designed the site for a group of realtors 14 years ago. "When they decided they'd rather sell a $1 million dollar home than fix the motor on Number 3," Mann says, "I bought it back from them." Ah-a purist; we bet, despite his occupation, Mann doesn't believe in the DH. (Jonanna Widner)
Best Underrated Civic Improvement
The Railyard Park
While all the glory is grabbed by plans for a ho-hum new convention center and a beaten-into-submission design for a state history museum and schemes for development of the Railyard property keep disintegrating in a squawk of squabbles louder than any hobo tussle, the Trust for Public Land's creation of a Railyard Park is quietly cruising along. The once-blighted stretch across the street from Whole Foods has been dramatically, if stealthily, spruced up this year and the near future will see an increasingly elegant transformation from creepy rail tracks to the new center of public life that the Plaza just ain't no more. To find out more for yourself, visit
or tell TPL you're curious (409 E. Palace Ave., Suite 2, 988-2939). (Zane Fischer)
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Best Place to Update Your Blog
Aztec Café
Really, blogging isn't nerdy-cough, cough-so you might as well own up to your secret Internet obsession and update your site in a place where you're not alone. At the Aztec (317 Aztec St., 820-0025), you'll find motivating tunes, funky art, tasty sandwiches, espresso milkshakes and a steady flow of patrons who are infinitely cooler than you are. The laid-back "anything goes" mentality makes you feel right at home, and after you sit down and plug in you'll notice the Linux-based free computer in the corner and the programmer at the next table intensely engaged in a lively round of EverQuest II. As cool as everyone seems to be, the café is really a sort of mecca for computer nerds like yourself. Did I say "nerds?" Yeah I did. And I said it proudly. (Laura Parisi)
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Best Story Time for Grown Ups
The Lannan Readings and Conversations Series
It's no secret our fair city is a mecca for cultural freedom and creative diversity. The Lannan Foundation (www.lannan.org) contributes to that tradition through its tremendously popular readings, where poets and writers of the highest caliber share their works and ideas with an intimate, attentive audience. The coming season promises us encore presentations by Salman Rushdie and Amy Goodman, plus visiting wordsmiths WS Merwin, AS Byatt, Robert Hass, Howard Zinn and TC Boyle, and local luminaries Leslie Marmon Silko and Simon Ortiz. No cookies and lemonade, but there is a cash bar. (Farren Stanley)
Best Artery for Urban Adventure
The Santa Fe River
Okay, so the Santa Fe River isn't much of a river. Most of the time it's just a ditch with about three gallons of Aquafina coursing its way through our parched little city. But when Mother Nature leaves the faucet running long enough for the trickle to become a torrent, it's the primo spot for Santa Fe's outdoors enthusiasts to get a short shot of adrenaline on their lunch break. During high season, kayakers flock to the eastern edge of Alameda to run a watery gauntlet into downtown. When the water level plummets, the river walkway still offers the most scenic spot to forget you live in the freaking desert. Sure, the pock-marked path that follows the serpentine stream is a sprained ankle waiting to happen and any errant step will soil your Tevas with Spaniel slime, but you gotta enjoy the greenspace where you can get it. It may not be as adventurous as, say, darting Frogger-style across Cerrillos during rush hour, but the river walkway nonetheless offers a fleeting fix for tree-huggers wanton for arbor to embrace within the city limits. Plus it's the best place in downtown to dump a body when you have a corpse in your trunk that needs to be jettisoned, stat. Or so we've been told. (Nathan Dinsdale)
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Best Anti-Nuke Statement
Nuclear Watch New Mexico's bid to run Los Alamos National Laboratory
Last week Nuclear Watch New Mexico (
) released its joint bid with Tri-Valley CAREs to be the next manager of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Both groups have been involved with numerous activist works involving environmental and worker safety at the lab. LANL's management contract is up for bid for the first time in the lab's history. The University of California, which has run the lab since its 1943 inception, has teamed up with Bechtel, BWX Technologies and Washington Group International to submit a bid. Lockheed Martin and The University of Texas are in the other contending group. Will Nuke Watch and Tri-Valley get serious consideration from The Department of Energy and The National Nuclear Security Administration? Maybe not. But their bid also is a testament of criticism to the nation's nuclear policies and, as such, is a unique and powerful piece of political protest. Plus, it's all out there for the public to read-unlike the other proposals. (Julia Goldberg)
