I spent a pleasant Cinco de Mayo afternoon pretending to sell books on Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza.
The plaza, traditional center of every Hispanic town, is one of my favorite places. For those of you in Anglo territory, picture a town square in adobe anchored by a church instead of a courthouse. Santa Fe has a famous plaza flanked by the 400-year-old Governor’s Palace and an array of upscale restaurants, galleries and shops.
Albuquerque’s plaza is more intimate and interesting. If you look past the storefronts, you can see that most of the buildings were originally family homes. The massive wooden doors and adobe walls show enough genteel decay to remind you that the place is 300 years old.
The Old Town Plaza is touristy, with the obligatory tacky souvenirs and average Mexican restaurants, but it’s also a place of secret treasures. The shops and galleries are tiny and distinctive. We’ve done several book signings at a bookstore on the plaza that supports local authors. Courtyards off the main plaza conceal clusters of shops around quiet patios.
My co-author knows a guy who runs a cafe in one of the courtyards, and we occasionally are invited to sell our book from a table on the patio. The Patio Market is its own distinct village with a couple of galleries, a yarn shop, a jewelry repairman, a boutique and the cafe facing a patio with a fountain. It’s beautifully landscaped, thanks to the wife of one of the gallery owners.
Because most shoppers stumble across the courtyard by accident, the cafe guy brings in live music on weekends to make the place more of an attraction. My co-author and I are part of his promotion scheme, though we probably are not enough of an attraction to offset the free sandwiches and coffee we get.
Old Town, inexplicably, had no major Cinco de Mayo celebration on the plaza: nothing like the Elvis festival they had a few weeks ago. The main focus of Cinco de Mayo in Albuquerque is stepped-up police DWI checkpoints on Saturday night. In the Patio Market, the matronly singer who usually strums a guitar was amplified by a Mexican karaoke group. Wish I could understand Spanish: I suspect some of the lyrics she was belting out were bawdy.
It’s a better venue for people watching than book selling. The courtyard gets a steady trickle of visitors, mostly tourists with the occasional local character. Those who are not using the market as a shortcut to the parking lot stop and listen to the music, and a few listen to my elevator pitch for the book. The most popular activity is taking pictures: of friends, family members, the courtyard and especially the flowers.
Sometimes we sell a couple of books outside the cafe, sometimes not. I didn’t sell any on this Cinco de Mayo but had a delightful afternoon anyway.