I can never get enough of downtown El Paso.  I worked there for 8 years back in the 90’s (!) and many of the now vacant buildings were open, bustling even.  To a 20-something kid, it felt like a lot was going on.  Now, much of downtown looks like this store front:

Much of El Paso’s downtown may be old but it has character.  We don’t have a lot of ultra modern buildings so it’s looked the same for decades. The 00’s were kind of tough on our downtown. The downturn in the economy caused a mass exodus of large businesses, hurting the smaller ones that relied on those workers to be there spending money.  I’m bummed that I can’t develop film at Reeds Camera or have a pitcher at Main Street anymore. There’s no more Bridge Gallery for a nice sandwich and art at lunch.  No more Kress to shop at, grab a taco and your pay bills.

Attempts to revitalize have come and gone and the recent burning of the historically significant, First National Bank building, has renewed interest in improving and enforcing building codes.  Despite some stagnation, there has been progress. The Mills Building has been completely rebuilt from the inside out. Transformed from a brown eyesore, The Mills is the crown jewel on the edge of a burgeoning arts district, complete with its own weekend Art Market.

While I’m nostalgic for some of my old haunts, new businesses have opened and have staked their claim in El Paso’s future.  Restaurants like Kipps Cheesestakes and the Percolator have weathered the tough times. In the case of Kipps, they are actually expanding their business to a new eastside location.  If Hotel Baghdad can been refurbished into a Doubletree, there is hope that something better will rise in the burned out location of the First National Bank building.

You could say our city is in a unique period of change… finally. The recent primary battle between longtime incumbent Silvestre Reyes and challenger Beto O’Rourke may have temporarily divided us, but O’Rourke’s win has signaled a more progressive future.  Our downtown has a front row seat to a new direction and will hopefully be better for it.

More pic’s can be found here: Lunchtime Downtown

More pics here: Walking Around

This weekends Cinco De Mayo coincided with a Supermoon. The lunar event marks the closest the moon gets to earth during its orbit. It usually makes for a brighter and larger  full moon and this year it did not disappoint. Using some tips from the internet as well as some settings my friend Vince had used, I tried a couple of test pic’s on the 4th and got pretty good results:

The above shot was captured using a Canon EF-S 55-250mm lens and then cropped in Adobe Lightroom.  The results were pretty good and you can see a lot of details on the moon’s surface.  Since Vince’s tests came out as good we decided we would try and setup somewhere in the desert and try to capture the Supermoon on Saturday.

Saturday proved to be somewhat of a challenge.  There was cloud cover on the Franklin Mountains and we weren’t quite sure where the moon was going to arrive over.  He had met at my house and were getting our stuff packed and missed that the moon had come through the clouds. it had been obscured by a two story house next door.  We quickly scrambled and headed for the hills by the Sunland Park airport.

The orange color is interesting and while I used the same settings I’d used in my tests, the moon was fuzzier in all of our shots.  This was the best of my batch.  I guess the color change or cloud haze might have caused some focusing issues.

We goofed around with some other shots, yielding mixed results.  This was the best of my long shots trying to get the city lights and mountains in the shot.  Next year we’ll be better prepared and try again.

I was driving down Mesa and happened to be passing by the Westside Church of Christ’s sign. It has always prominently displays some uplifting message.  Now, if you have lived on the Westside of El Paso, like me you will probably not remember a time when they’ve not done this. They are the original Twitter account for God.

I can recall from way back when while riding the bus to Moorhead Junior High, us hooligans often would try and twist the phrases into something funny or gross. Hilarity and disrespect would always ensue.  After a while you tend to dismiss them but its always amazing that as far as I know they never repeated themselves even on the sign itself. Here’s the same day’s flip side:

That takes some kind of skill but I guess with a Bible in hand, you can wrangle phrases all day long and not be duplicative. Personally, I’m more excited about the sign just down the street:

Charcoaler now has bacon! Hallelujah!

Usually about once a year I get a craving for El Paso’s favorite local rolled taco dive:

I called my friend Vince and we headed over to Chico’s and had double orders with fries (no extra cheese, I’m getting to old).  We went to the Alameda location and across the street sits Evergreen Cemetery.  After stuffing ourselves with rolled tacos, we finished up and decided to walk them off by checking the cemetery out.

View Evergreen Cemetery in a larger map

Concordia Cemetery may be the “big thing” in town, due to the John Wesley Hardin tie in but Evergreen has its own uniqueness that makes it worth visiting.  It was established in 1894, about 38 years after Concordia and there’s quite a bit of different between the two.  Most of Concordia is dirt and loosely organized; Evergreen has a lot of grassy areas, trees and tightly laid out plots.

The cemetery is still active so there are whole generations of El Pasoians here including many prominent names that you will find on businesses and streets.  It’s a lot larger than it looks and it took us about 45 minutes to cover the main path, skimming the plots as we went.

Like most cemeteries, vandals have left their mark hacking off the heads and hands of many of the statues.  For the most part though it seems to have survived better than Concordia.  There were some neat features I haven’t noticed before at any of the other cemeteries I’ve visited, namely these old limey portraits affixed the graves:

Oxidation was really present on many of the markers and I’m not sure if that was just unique to the stone that were used there or if it was from watering over the years to keep the weeds grass green.

Many of the headstones were really ornate, more than I’ve noticed elsewhere in town.  There’s lots of statue use as well. We also found some cool gothic lettering on one:

There was even this odd juxtaposition of names that was quite amusing:

We even found this fellow who was waiting for his hole to be dug:

We had covered the main path and circled back to the entrance so it was time to pack it in and head back to our days jobs.  You can visit my full flickr set here:

Evergreen Cemetery