Writing
This is a selection of my published features, interviews, reviews and cocktail writing + photography packages.
You can scroll down to see a few of my favorites, click on “>>>” to see the original publication or click on “Read more…” to do just that on this site.
Saving Horses
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | East Mountain Living
The New Mexico Horse Rescue at Walkin N Circles Ranch begins at the sharp bend in the road and continues on for about 30 acres of fairly flat land out in Stanley, New Mexico. On that land, 40 horses (give or take) at a time have found a temporary home to get their lives back under their hooves. Some have come to the ranch having been abandoned. Some neglected. Some were harmed, mentally or physically. It is awful if you think about it, but you don’t really think about it when you are out at the Walkin N Circles Ranch. Read more…
The Rise of Poke
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | The Bite >>>
The first, and most difficult, part in understanding the rise of poke is to get a handle on what exactly poke is. At its root, poke is a classic Hawaiian dish that consists of raw, cubed fish served in a bowl with rice. However, that definition is often met with contradictory opinions and can lead to ceaseless digressions, caveats, and exceptions. Read more…
What You Missed at the Fair
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | Weekly Alibi >>>
Ribbons adorn the artwork at the New Mexico State Fair. The best in blue, and on down the spectrum with honorable mentions along the way. Just like the prized heifers or the best green chile, there is a quantifiable scale that a group of judges uses to dole out these awards. In the arts buildings, there are signs up telling fair-goers not to take pictures, complete with twitchy security guards at the ready to lunge in front of some Lea County farmer with their phone out. Read more…
The Mine Shaft Tavern
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | East Mountain Living
Much has been said about the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid over the years, but those who have been there before know this place is worth revisiting. Locals know the stories (having crafted many of them themselves) filled with miners and ghosts, bikers and dogs, floods and fires. If you ask nicely, someone will likely share one with you at the bar. The Mine Shaft is as much a place for locals as it is a destination for visitors. It is not a Santa Fe mockup of what a bar in New Mexico should look like. The Mine Shaft Tavern is a real place. Read more…
Viva la Trifecta at Ruidoso’s Win Place and Show
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | The Bite >>>
If I could paint a picture of a small-town bar on a Sunday afternoon where the whiskey pours, the axes fly, and the band plays on, it would be Ruidoso’s Win Place & Show. Read more…
Teddy Roe’s Sweet Spot
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | The Bite >>>
If you go down most any alley in Albuquerque and look behind the dumpster, you are likely to get a surprise. It’s hard to say what that surprise will be, but odds are you won’t find smooth tunes, comfy chairs, and well-crafted cocktails. Unless of course you find your way to Teddy Roe’s speakeasy. You just have to pick the right alley, then look for the door behind the right dumpster. Read more…
Waffle House #545
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | The Bite >>>
On a Sunday morning inside any Waffle House across the country, it can seem like everyone in the place is playing their own version of a Kris Kristofferson song in their head. We seek out comfort foods in uncomfortable times and Waffle House has them. Eggs as you like them, hot coffee, and waffles, of course. Breakfast foods are served 24/7, and with them, a filling, promising start to a new day, regardless of what the clock may say. Read more…
Nina’s Story
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | Weekly Alibi >>>
Viola Arduini knocked on a door in the biology department of the University of New Mexico. She knew that someone in there was doing work with the genetic engineering technique CRISPR and she wanted to work with CRISPR, too. As a visual artist, her background was not innately suited to that kind of work, but she had a purpose; she wanted a poem, a symbol and ultimately the story of the progenitorial Mexican gray wolf Nina to grow, evolve, mutate and carry on in the language of living cells. She found a scientist there to teach her how to introduce DNA into living organisms; Lobos help each other. Read more…
Golf Course Burritoville
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | The Bite >>>
Golf in New Mexico has a few handicaps. Clearly, living through a drought can make things like growing grass a challenge, and raging wildfires can cancel your tee time, but our ferocious winds can also wreak havoc on your game. Read more…
24 Hours in Las Vegas
Words and photos by Clarke Condé
Feature | The Bite >>>
All stories about Las Vegas, New Mexico, must begin with a clarification: this is not the sin city of Nevada, but rather the often-overlooked gem in northern New Mexico, famous, if at all, for playing some other town on the silver screen. Its character is homegrown and genuine, a pronounced difference from the other Las Vegas. You will find no casinos, no gaudy stage shows, and no Elvis impersonators here. What you will find are welcoming faces, great food and a surprisingly familiar backdrop for some historic films. Read more…
Michael McCormick
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
Michael McCormick is a puppeteer and creature creator who worked with Jim Henson on some of his most memorable productions including The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. As part of the Albuquerque Museum’s new exhibit opening this Saturday, The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited, he will be introducing The Dark Crystal at a film screening followed by a Q&A. Clarke Condé sat down with McCormick in his Albuquerque home to talk about his work with Jim Henson, the craft of puppetry and the creatures he created. Read more…
Anna Martinez
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Albuquerque Courier >>>
Anna Martinez made it plain in the first poem she read after being named Albuquerque’s new poet laureate — “Take nice and shove it.” Martinez has lived her life speaking out, speaking her truth and speaking to defend the truths of others. Now that she is the city's poet, she has no plans to change. Not two months into her tenure she is already getting hate mail. Imagine a poet getting hate mail about her words. Those must be some extraordinarily powerful words. Read more…
Adri De La Cruz
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
Scrimshanders are a rare breed and their work has entered the American consciousness chiefly as the domain of 19th century whalers. But this Friday, Fourteenfifteen Gallery will not be showing the scrimshaw work of some second mate named Delmar from The Rose of Nantucket, but rather the scrimshaw of Adri De La Cruz of Albuquerque. Her take is pure New Mexico. Read more…
Levi Romero
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
Levi Romero is a natural choice as the state of New Mexico’s first poet laureate. His poetry details New Mexico. It speaks to the people and the place. It is steeped in the culture. And, obviously, you would want your New Mexico poet laureate to seek out the writers, poets and storytellers throughout The Land of Enchantment while tooling around behind the wheel of his ’58 Impala. Romero is the right guy for the job. Read more…
Laura Paskus
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
You’re a smart, clued-in reader, so clearly you have a fairly good idea about the impact climate change will have on the state of New Mexico. Odds are the reason you know that is due in large part to the efforts of one woman: Laura Paskus. For two decades she has been sounding the alarm about the devastating effects that our massive input of carbon into the atmosphere will have on the Land of Enchantment. Read more…
Leon Natker
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
Where does hate and intolerance come from? On the streets, on social media and in national campaigns, it infuses the conversation about the direction of our civilization. Its antonym, “empathy,” is a focal point of the Biden presidential campaign, oddly making a basic human emotion part of a partisan debate. Strange days, indeed. Read more…
Hondo Baca
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
When a family of rodeo clowns lose their parents, the only thing they can do is to pull together as a family, put the band back together and raise money for a proper clown funeral. After a number of drama-filled performances in Albuquerque, Darlin’ and the Rodeo Runners have raised enough to give their beloved Ma and Pa the grand send-off that rodeo clown royalty deserves. Read more…
Sarah Kennedy
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Albuquerque Courier >>>
What began as an intellectual exercise has manifested into a comedy club. Why isn’t there a permanent, designated space for stand-up comedy in the state of New Mexico? What would it take to create a place like that in Albuquerque? Who could do such a thing? Read more…
Cannupa Hanska Luger
Words and photo by Clarke Condé
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico artist who works in sculpture and reclamation. His work reclaims part of the past in hopes of informing our present. His piece Be(Longing) on display at 516 ARTS speaks to the horrific decimation of the buffalo as part of our American history of Western expansion and the genocide of the native population. Clarke Condé spoke with Luger while he was installing Be(Longing) at 516 ARTS to talk about where his work fits into the larger scope of this exhibit and beyond. Read more…
13 Election Myths
New Mexico’s Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver Debunks Them All
Interview | Weekly Alibi >>>
Suppressing the vote is a time-tested strategy deployed by those fearing that the voice of too many people will hamper their oppressive ways. As we begin the final lap of what seems like a presidential election season that has gone on forever, a disinformation campaign is afoot that deserves to be kicked back. Read more…
Elvis and Birds
Review | Weekly Alibi >>>
Elvis and Birds by Ben Roe Jr. currently hangs in the naturally lit and underappreciated gallery space of the South Broadway Cultural Center as part of the group show Recurrences, joined by work by Roberto Salas and Bobby J. Jones. A work of driven by collage, Elvis and Birds is an assemblage of parts with a complexity best considered by separating the main elements and taking them one at a time. Read more…
Dark Depths II
Review | Weekly Alibi >>>
Stranger Factory’s Made in New Mexico IV group exhibit, on display through Feb. 2, is full of the kind of high-caliber work from the stable of Stranger Factory artists that we have come to expect. Consistently, they have provided this city with a venue for art work that, for lack of a better term, is a bit creepy. Macabre? Eerie? Lurid? Read more…
Santa Fe Noir
Review | Weekly Alibi >>>
Akashic Books has hit on a formula to bring writers from a place together to tell the darker stories of their city. Delve into the tales from the Twin Cities, Oakland or Mumbai if you want to get a perspective on these places you won’t find on their tourism websites. Santa Fe gets the same treatment in Santa Fe Noir, but what makes Santa Fe Noir different is what makes Santa Fe the City Different. No city in the country is based so completely on mythology. Let’s not forget, they just made up most of that stuff in the plaza to attract tourists. Read more…
More Clouds to Come
Review | Weekly Alibi >>>
Lance Ryan McGoldrick’s piece More Clouds to Come is a disappointment to anyone trying to throw something out. Approaching any dumpster is not exactly a thrill, but maybe if you were walking along the path by the river, and then back to your car at the Pueblo Montaño Trailhead with an empty cup in your hand, it might be a welcome sight. McGoldrick’s dumpster will offer you no comfort in that task. You will be denied. It does not work as a dumpster. You will leave this dumpster full-handed. Read more…
Send Her Back
Review | Weekly Alibi >>>
If you want to get your point across and stir up a controversy, placing the baby Jesus in a cage and the Virgin Mary in handcuffs is a great way to start. As part of the exhibit Cuatro Corazones One Spirit currently on display at the South Broadway Cultural Center, Jemez Springs’ own Raymond Sandoval has hit on an exquisite formula for making a statement about America’s current obsession with immigration and deportation. Read more…
The Breaking Bad Sculpture
Review | Albuquerque Courier >>>
It was a lovefest at the Albuquerque Convention Center on Friday for the unveiling of the Walter White and Jesse Pinkman statue and why not? Breaking Bad was transformative for Albuquerque. It changed the way we saw ourselves and the world saw us. It made the film industry in this town. People bought houses with the money they made working on the show. Locals flocked to be background actors so they could point themselves out to their friends on the TV. While there are critics of the statue, in a city where a guy got shot two years ago over a dispute about the kind of statues we should have here, things could be more controversial. Read more…
The Radio Engineer
Review | Albuquerque Courier >>>
Let me introduce Joshua Benjamin Johnson’s The Radio Engineer into the context that seems most appropriate, the car. There is something of a gallop to American road songs. It’s not a specific tempo that defines one but rather something in the cadence that evokes those windshield wipers keeping time. I’m not sure if Johnson intended The Radio Engineer to be a road album, and I’m not even sure if I’m even ready to call it one, but I will say that when the brushes slide across a sharp snare drum, it starts to sound like that's the kind of thing it could be. What I can say, regardless, is that it is an album suited to the road. Read more…
What I Know Is True
Review | Albuquerque Courier >>>
Lucy Barna’s new album What I Know Is True treats the Madrid singer/songwriter’s songs softly and honestly. It is an album full of tight compositions and straightforward orchestration. It is a fair reflection of Barna’s years playing live but goes beyond that to make good use of the studio, allowing the songs to be absorbed without distractions. Read more…
Big Feelings
Review | Weekly Alibi >>>
Gigi Bella’s new collection Big Feelings is not a narrative work, but its poems flow like a drive through the streets, stopping at lights to check your phone for a text message and maybe pulling into the Golden Pride drive-thru for a number nine breakfast burrito. The poems string together to form a world that is intimate and often irritating. Brendas, gaslighting white boys, cheating lovers; they are all there in good measure. Many of the poems are tinged with sadness at times, but not to the point of lament. These are statements of fact, dispatched from an aching heart. Read more…
The Art on the ART Bus
From the tree removal to the business closings to the traffic congestion, it has become a popular pastime for drivers and pedestrians navigating Central Avenue to criticize both the merit and the execution of the Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) project. On our best days, we remain hopeful; on our worst, we curse the thing. Leaving that aside, let’s consider the little “a” art of the ART project. Soon (hopefully) these buses will be on the road and with them comes new public art worthy of closer inspection, if for no other reason than its declarative intent issued by the mayor. Read more…
Bourbon, Coke and Peanuts
Cocktails | Weekly Alibi >>>
I was sitting at the bar (as all good stories start) when a pickup truck piled with red chiles in the back pulled up out front and out popped a couple of guys in worn cowboy hats who set up a sign and started selling the stuff, fresh, roasted or powdered. My (to remain anonymous) local rockstar drinking buddy sauntered out to see what was what and returned shortly with a big bag of finely ground red chile from the southern part of this state. It was soon agreed upon that this fresh red chile was of such a caliber that we should add some to the local IPAs we were enjoying. Read more…
Aperol Spritz
Cocktails | Weekly Alibi >>>
It seems the cocktail hour has become more fluid of late given the decreased need to actually go anywhere. Begin when and how you see fit, keeping in mind that the Aperol Spritz is on the lighter side of the cocktail spectrum. This is a summer cocktail meant to be enjoyed on the veranda overlooking the Italian Riviera. If the veranda is unavailable, your local picnic table, plastic Walmart chair or kiddie pool will suffice. There are four basic ingredients to the Aperol Spritz and a surprising flexibility to their proportions. Read more…
Moscow Mule
Cocktails | Weekly Alibi >>>
First thing you need to understand about the Moscow Mule is that it was concocted in Los Angeles to sell more vodka and has nothing to do with Moscow, except possibly when your hand is freezing from holding the copper cup you may have a passing thought about that chilly city with a reputation for vodka-drinking residents. The mule part has a bit more grounding in fact and, though not related to the animal, it is better left to the imagination. Really, the entire drink is best left to creative-types because of its adaptability. Read more…
The Basil Gimlet
Cocktails | Weekly Alibi >>>
During the Age of Sail, scurvy took the lives of many a sailor. The disease stems from a lack of vitamin C and renders its sufferers weak, with bleeding gums and the inability to heal properly. It is a nasty time with death looming for the sorry sailor far from port who didn’t pack extra OJ. Fortunately, British cocktail ingenuity among officers in the Royal Navy was brought to bear on the problem of the scurvy sailor by adding a lime cordial to the sailor’s daily allotment of gin. Read more…
The Dill Paloma
Cocktails | Weekly Alibi >>>
Detective Dill Paloma was just settling in for another scorcher in the Duke City when there was a knock on his office door. In walked trouble. It was the kind he’d seen before. It was the kind found at the bottom of a tequila bottle. Dill was ready for it. He reached for a lime and a can of Fresca. Read more…
Arnold Palmer and Jack
Cocktails | Weekly Alibi >>>
Just as Julius Caesar is the eponym for the Cesarean section and Humphrey Bogart is known for holding a joint too long, golfer Arnold Palmer, while surely not the first person to mix ice tea with lemonade, now extends his legacy to the beverage that bears his name. Perfect for warm summer days, the Arnold Palmer is transformed into a cocktail on the 19th hole with the addition of Jack Daniels. Read more…
Honeydew Mint Mojito
Cocktails | Albuquerque Courier >>>
When you take out the blender to make a cocktail, you are making a declarative step to make something extraordinary. This isn’t a Tuesday after work kind of whipped-together bourbon and a dash of bitters deal. Blender drinks involve chopping, blending, crushing and ultimately washing dishware as well. I recommend you make it a declarative by announcing your intentions in a loud, clear voice, “I’m making mojitos!” If you say it loud enough and in the right neighborhood, you might also make some new friends. Read more…
Old Man Collins
Cocktails | Albuquerque Courier >>>
Haven’t we all been through enough? I think we know the answer to that question. The weekend is here and I am recommending for this week’s cocktail an Old Man Collins. Of course, the Tom Collins is a classic from the Victorian era with a storied history, but the Old Man Collins is a bit more therapeutic and perfect after a difficult week of encroaching wildfires, upticks in COVID cases and more talk about rain than actual rain here in Albuquerque. Read more…
Maple Lime Bourbon Sour
Cocktails | Albuquerque Courier >>>
The quixotic effort to produce a palatable maple syrup in New Mexico is admirable, but it’s like trying to grow a decent green chile in Colorado. Maybe you can do it, but we have trucks and highways that work just fine in this country. Putting your efforts into other things (like things that you are actually good at) is my recommendation for this weekend. If mixing up a tasty cocktail that pairs well with thoughts of an approaching autumn is what you would like to be good at, then look no further than the Maple Lime Bourbon Sour. Read more…
The Sidecar
Cocktails | Albuquerque Courier >>>
This drink gets its name from the motorcycle sidecar but seems to have outlived the popularity of its namesake. And why not? The cocktail sidecar is delicious and the motorcycle sidecar is just plain silly. Plus, if into a motorcycle sidecar you are just a passenger, which only really looks good on Iggy Pop. On the other hand, if into the cocktail sidecar you are ready to get the weekend started.