artdirector@sfreporter.com
OG Second Street to close next month
After 25 years anchoring the Second Street neighborhood, the appellative brewery announced yesterday it will close the location April 9. The news follows what founder Rod Tweet says were unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a new lease. “We had a 20-year lease on the building at the original location, and it expires at the end of June,” Tweet tells SFR. “That means no lease exits and we had to negotiate a new one, and we’ve been unable to negotiate a new one I’m comfortable signing.” In an open letter posted on social media, the company also notes the shifting “landscape of the restaurant industry” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our company continues to expand and evolve in new ways, especially in wholesale, while traditional food operations have become more expensive and difficult to run. In response, we’ve made a conscious decision to shift our focus and energy as we pursue new growth opportunities.” The company’s Railyard and Rufina locations will remain open and “we are ensuring that they have positions at our other taprooms if they so choose,” Second Street’s post says. “Their commitment to this company has made us more than just a restaurant and a brewery. They’ve created an extended family within our community.”
City touts forthcoming broadband
City of Santa Fe officials say faster internet will be available for residents in the new few years following the City Council’s approval earlier this month for Texas-based Vexus Fiber to install a fiber optic network along existing public rights-of-ways. Vexus Fiber CEO James Gleason tells SFR the city’s needs coupled with its market size motivated the company to expand here. “Based on the growth of the market, a fiber broadband experience would be really well accepted,” he says, and also notes Comcast and CenturyLink both use older broadband technologies unable to provide the speeds his company will deliver. “This is a boon for Santa Fe,” Rich Brown, the city’s economic and community development director said in a news release from the company. “It’s going to bring fast broadband to residential areas of the city that don’t currently have it, and it’s going to support our growing tech, film and entrepreneurial communities, and help attract new businesses. And it grows as we grow.” According to the company, fiber optic cable “uses light for conductivity instead of electricity,” thus allowing for “greater bandwidth, distance, reliability, security and faster speeds.” The company plans to start the buildout of the network this year and estimates full connectivity for all homes and businesses within the city limits to take 24 to 36 months, with the possibility of expanding to surrounding areas once finished. “Santa Fe is fast becoming a dynamic place for forward-thinking institutions,” Mayor Alan Webber said in a statement. “One key piece to our future is reliable, fast broadband for our people to work and live here.”
Aerial survey finds high methane emissions in the state
A newly published survey finds approximately 9% of all natural gas produced the New Mexico Permian Basin in 2019 was emitted into the atmosphere—higher than previously estimated. “It’s bitter news for the climate, but with a hopeful aftertaste,” study co-author Evan Sherwin, a research fellow at Stanford University’s department of energy resource engineering, tweeted yesterday in a thread summarizing the findings. “The bad news is that emissions in this time and this region were as high as they are,” Sherwin tells the Associated Press. “The good news is it was only about 1,000 sites out of 26,000 active wells…it’s just a few percent that were emitting during this extensive study.” The study arrives as the federal government considers new rules to eliminate venting at new and existing oil wells, a step the state of New Mexico took last year as part of the state’s climate change efforts to reduce emissions. A spokesperson for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association tells the AP the industry has made progress on reducing methane emissions since the aerial survey used for the new study took place. “This report being [two] years old offers a snapshot in time that may not be reflective of conditions today but certainly underscores the industry priority and the industry commitment to advancing those rules that will help eventually in reducing the emissions over time,” he said.
COVID-19 by the numbers
New cases: 233; 516,858 total cases
Deaths: 9; Santa Fe County has had 259 deaths thus far (three this month, according to the most recent mortality report); there have been 7,171 fatalities statewide. Hospitalizations: 105; Patients on ventilators: 14
The state’s most recent report on COVID-19 geographic trends for the week of March 14-20, shows Santa Fe County with a daily case rate per 100,000 of 8.5—higher than more than 20 other counties in the state. Under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “community levels” tracking system—which uses case rates along with two hospital metrics in combination to determine the state of the virus on a county level—all of New Mexico’s counties currently have “green”—aka low—levels, except for Cibola County, which is yellow for “medium” levels. That assessment will update today.
Breakthrough cases: According to the most recent weekly vaccine report, between Feb. 21-March 21, 50.9% of COVID-19 cases were among people who had not completed a primary vaccination series; 21.5% were among those who had completed the series but had not received a booster; and 27.6% were among those who were fully vaccinated and boosted. For hospitalizations, those figures change to 71.4%, 13.1% and 15.4%. The percentages shift to 74.7%, 16.2% and 9.1% for fatalities.
Vaccinations: 91% percent of adults 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 77.6% have completed their primary series; 45.5% of adults 18 years and older have had a booster shot; 12-17-year-old age group: 71.2% of people have had at least one dose and 61.6% have completed their primary series; Children ages 5-11: 39.3% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 31% have completed their primary; Santa Fe County: 99% of people 18 and older have had at least one dose and 87.2% have completed their primary series.
Resources: Vaccine registration; Booster registration Free at-home rapid antigen tests; Self-report a positive COVID-19 test result to the health department; COVID-19 treatment info: oral treatments Paxlovid (age 12+) and Molnupiravir (age 18+); and monoclonal antibody treatments. Toolkit for immunocompromised individuals. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Listen up
LitHub’s Micro podcast recently kicked off its third season, and includes a piece by New Mexico poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. Baca’s “Buffalo Poem” was published in The Buffalo Way, a project from the Wildlife Conservation Society. The poem, LitHub writes, “can only be described as thunderous, with a rhythm akin to its buffalo subjects.”
Where there’s smoke...
As this newsletter recently mentioned, Gallup-based artist Eric-Paul Riege will be one of the exhibitors at the Toronto Biennial, which begins March 26 (here’s that Art in America profile of Riege again, in case you missed it the other day). And so will Belen-based artist Judy Chicago, whom Barron’s interviews this week about her “favorite things.” Her New Mexico studio, Chicago says, is her favorite place to make art: “It’s where I’ve spent most of my life. If you’re going to spend a lot of time somewhere like that, you have to make sure you like it. It’s a big space, white, with music, and my cat, Tuxedo.” That studio playlist, by the way, includes Leonard Cohen, and her favorite Cohen track is “Everybody Knows,” which Chicago says she played “endlessly” while creating her Holocaust Project. As for her exhibit at the Toronto Biennial, Chicago will present one of her “smoke sculptures,” titled A Tribute to Toronto, which will be her first smoke sculpture created on a floating barge.The biennial’s senior curator, Candice Hopkins, tells ARTNews the biennial staff had been talking with Chicago “for quite some time” about creating a smoke sculpture for the event—the first commissioned for Canada—and has been working closely with the artist and her “pyro team” to mitigate any ecological concerns. Hopkins also notes the importance of understanding the history behind such works: “When Judy started making them, they were really in response to a very male-dominated history of Land art, like Michael Heizer’s monuments, which were literally moving earth and created long term change in really sensitive environments, often deserts. Judy wanted to do something that had the lightest touch possible.” Also, if Hopkins’ name sounds familiar, it’s because she used to live in New Mexico before moving back to Canada (where she was born) and was on the curatorial teams for SITE Santa Fe’s biennials in 2014 and 2018.
Happy kitten and puppy season
While kitten and puppy season sounds more winsome than, say, allergy season, spring’s concomitant fecundity carries certain challenges for animal caregivers. To wit: The Santa Fe Animal Shelter says hundreds of kittens and puppies will end up at the shelter in the coming months—last year, the shelter helped more than 500 underage animals, and most manifested during spring. That’s why the shelter recently kicked off a supply drive campaign. Puppies have to be at least eight weeks old and kittens need to weigh two pounds before they are available for adoption. While the baby animals grow, the shelter needs supplies such as kitten milk; special dry and wet food; puppy pads; nurser kits and other sundries “so when these vulnerable animals come into the shelter, we are ready with the necessary tools to give to our foster families,” Murad Kirdar, public relations officer of the shelter, said in a statement. “March through September is the typical time of year when felines reproduce and during this time, hundreds of orphaned and underage kittens will rely on our New Hope Department (foster program) for the around-the-clock care they need to survive.” Foster families also are needed, Kirdar says. Need more convincing? Here are some cute pups that just showed up this week and here’s a photo of a tiny little kitty drinking from a bottle. And here’s a link to information about how to help, which also includes links to the shelter’s Amazon and Chewy wish lists.
Break out the T-shirts
Yesterday’s morning snowfall melted quickly and now the National Weather Service forecasts a shift to warmer weather. Today should be sunny with a high near 60 degrees and northwest wind 10 to 15 mph, with temps climbing into the low 70s this weekend.
Thanks for reading! The Word is watching and listening to Ukrainian cellist Denys Karachevtsev play Bach surrounded by the destruction in his hometown of Kharkiv.
