The Jardin Principal, the towering Christmas tree, and the surrounding streets have been well-lit for the holidays since Dec. 6, That was the night of our first thunder-and-lightning drenching in weeks.
Timing is everything.
And the rains cooperated, stopping within minutes of the official Christmas tree lighting ceremony and the accompanying fireworks. (What would a tree lighting ceremony be without fireworks? Well, in San Miguel, what would any event be without fireworks?)
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OK, I can sit here all night and write about the beautiful Catrinas and Catrins. About the amazing make-up jobs and costumes. About how people came from all over the world just to parade from Calle Cordo to the Ancha to the Jardin in Centro.
Did I mention this is San Miguel de Allende, the most magical city in the world?
No, I didn’t. And I won’t go on because this is one time, my friends, when pictures speak way louder than words.
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This weekend has been a massive celebration of our community’s namesake, San Miguel, the archangel who drove the devil from heaven. We call it the battle of Good versus Evil.
There was a massive fireworks battle in the Jardin, with rockets shooting over the treetops — the forces of good on the Parroquia side and evil on the side that houses government offices. OK, the optics aren’t all that great for local government, but they must have signed off.
Fortunately, it was all symbolic.
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That must have been some party.
Early this morning, the limpia crew was all over the square in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel de Arcangel with brooms, buckets, and tanks of water. The bucketers would scoop and splash water on the stones and the sweepers descend on the water like hungry birds, sloshing it left and right, until only clean damp stone remains.
Splash and repeat. In the early morning breeze. The first in what feels like months.
While this is cleaning writ large, all over San Miguel de Allende in the morning, women (mostly) wash the sidewalks and streets in front of their homes. Same routine — water, bucket, and broom — as they have been doing for centuries.
Why the public square on a Sunday morning? I can’t say.
A messy party? Too much spilled and melted ice cream? Too much dust? In anticipation of the arrival of a wedding princess or social media queen? Simple hygiene?
You just never know, do you?
Unless you ask.
But why spoil the fun?
Hussong’s Cantina on Ruiz Street in Ensenada, Baja, is one of those checklist places that anyone from San Diego had to visit at least once.
An original Caesar salad in Tijuana (or one of the more unsavory attractions), a margarita at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, a stop for lobster and a pitcher of margaritas in Puerto Nuevo, and a night at Hussong’s, ebbing and flowing with the tide of drunken masses.
Now that was a pretty good weekend.
Hussong’s was unique among cantinas. It wasn’t artificially constructed as some faux Mexican fantasy to pull in the tourists with campy decor and T-shirts. Hussong’s holds liquor license No. 2 in Ensenada and is in the same building John Hussong bought and gussied up in 1892.
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Celebrations are breaking out all over San Miguel this week. Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day, the Red Cross anniversary, the religious Celebration of the Cross, and even the Locos/Crazies begin to honor their patron saint.
Or, you could just go bird-watching. There is that.
I’m guessing the performance of the week will be pianist Théo Fouchenneret and the deal of the week will be The Rondalla Señorial of the University of Guanajuato (free). The most poignant performances will be by the many wonderful musicians coming together to remember their comrade Tony Duncan.
Continue readingLet me start the week by saying, dawg, I’m tired. It may be the hyper-awareness of a birthday of a certain age that came and went last week but really drove home the point: I have had way too many birthdays in my life.
And that realization leads to another realization: I’m tired.
All of this is to say that as I was putting this calendar together Saturday night, I reached a point where finishing this thing wasn’t going to happen on deadline. So, on Sunday, I updated this page with a half-dozen more fun things for you to consider.
And as always, send your ideas and events to robertj.hawkins2012@gmail.com. Thanks for playing along!
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Man, I’m exhausted just thinking about what’s ahead this week (March 3-9). As always, these are just some highlights. There are dozens of weekly shows by our own world-class musicians, performers, writers, painters, and the like.
To find out WHAT ELSE is going on, as usual, I recommend the Big 3:
DiscoverSMA: https://discoversma.com/events/events/
Lokkal Events: https://www.lokkal.com/
San Miguel Live: https://sanmiguellive.com/events/
Feel free to share this with your friends. Pick a night. Go out together. Have fun. Get out of my hair. Without further ado, let’s dig in. We’ve got some booking to do. (Click on any image to enlarge it.)
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All day today, since sunrise roughly, colorfully costumed dancers, drummers, and musicians have been filing into the central jardin of San Miguel de Allende. They fill the four corners of the park in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel with trancelike dances to the steady beat dozens of drums.
For visitors and expats, the pageantry has been extraordinarily colorful and thrilling but there is a deeply religious foundation to it all that goes back 450 years. Centuries ago the statue called the Lord of the Conquest arrived in the region. Señor de la Conquista is a life-sized Christ and one of the most revered images in this World Heritage City, and not only because of its antiquity.
Many of these dancers began their journey on Thursday evening with an all-night vigil of music, ceremony, chanting in preparation for the grueling performances today. I will leave you with these images but if you want to know more, please visit the Facebook page of my good friend Efrain Gonzalez.
He has written extensively on this and the many other cultural events with which San Miguel is blessed.
Be sure to click on any image to expand it.
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Ah, that special time of the year when you ask yourself, “Why can’t I be in two places at once? Or three?” That time is now.
This is the time when people with money from the north pour across the border unchallenged and settle in for one month or several and begin to madly buy up tickets to a vast number of events – all of which we only see a hint of the rest of the year.
But few and far between though they might have been, you could reasonably trust that an empty seat could be claimed moments before a performance would begin.
You know the Season is here because – even though arts and cultural events have multiplied like sex-crazed rabbits – you will frequently hear that dreaded phrase, “Sorry. Completely sold out,” from a voice that actually sounds quite chuffed and hardly sorry at all.
Facebook, in a marvelous act of undercounting, posts a message to me on Monday morning: “Reminder: You have five events coming up this week.” It didn’t even get the right five.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 