ORGAN GRIND
        Journalism, home & abroad          

The migration of the North American monarch butterfly between Mexico and Canada is a journey of life, death and rebirth, a testament to the tenacity and ingenuity with which one generation ensures that life continues after it has alighted on its last leaf, sprig, twig, or patch of soil, the desperate flutter of wings slowing down until it lies still and dead in the sunlight, its brilliant raiment of orange-red gradually fading to the sepia tone of an old photograph. Life and

When your first opportunity to eat currywurst is inside a massive, drafty suburban shopping mall in Guadalajara, Mexico, you may found yourself meditating upon the un-predictable ways the strands of our complex human universe are interwoven. Also, reflections on the au courant issue of cultural appropriation may occur, being that this dish (an already Frankenstein-esque German street food staple created by a Berliner housewife using local sausage, ketchup, and curry powder c

Sitting in the sun-lit office of Chapultepec-adjacent tattoo shop Chamuca at three in the afternoon, owner and artist Rodrigo Ruiz related an anecdote which may serve to give nuance to the perception still held by a minority, that of tattoo artists as untrustworthy occupants of the squalid depths of society’s lower strata. “I had a guy come in,” Ruiz told the Reporter, “who was burned as a child, leaving a scar all over his chest and entire left arm. Every time he would go to

A succinct visual summation of Ajijic, Mexico's retirement paradise on its largest lake. Ukuleles. More and more, it seems like they’re here to stay. By “here”, I mean the United States, Canada, Japan, and everywhere else outside of Hawaii where the insidious little instrument has lodged itself deep within its host body, impossible to safety extract. It wouldn’t be an intellectual leap to chalk that tenacity up to the instrument’s association with fellowship and bonhomie, s

Mayor Alfaro (center) holding forth during COME's inauguration in October Upon completion of an examination of Guadalajara’s newly minted “COME, Gastronomic Corridor” on two separate occasions, that sobriquet - applied by Mayor Alfaro and a consortium of local business owners to a somewhat drab stretch of Avenida Mexico sandwiched between two giant roundabouts - seemed like a linguistic swindle, a coat of paint perfunctorily applied to a brothel outhouse. However, this dubi

Nothing fogs up the windscreen of the critical faculties like having within arm’s reach an eight-foot-tall tree (fake, but made of real wood) jutting up from the center of your table, decorated all over with small plastic bottles of Patron tequila. Even less conducive to forming a clear-eyed appraisal of a restaurant’s pluses and minuses is having a stream of un-aged agave spirit etch a path down your esophagus vis-à-vis a burnished steel luge wielded by a giggling waitress.

Guadalajara’s Expo Ganadero, an annual livestock fair and competition running from October 5 to November 2, is for the first-time attendee a bewildering overload of several of the cardinal senses. First and foremost is smell: the Aegean stables have nothing on the effluvia that is constantly being emitted by the fair’s furry, feathered or otherwise clad captive organisms. Sound came in second, with the grunt and lo of cattle, blaring banda music and yowling children creating

The recent passing of Hugh Hefner, the silk clad Playboy magazine founder perpetually draped with blonde, big busted women - and a smirking lightning rod for the seething jealousy of men aspiring to the louche decadence made possible by fuck-you money - puts the Guadalajara Reporter in a mind to acknowledge his passing vis-a-vis a story told to us by Chapala’s own Rosemary Grayson about how she became Miss October 1964 - and the magazine’s first British playmate. In 1963, Gr

On a cool evening on the roof terrace of a snazzy Zapopan mall complex ringed by the soaring husks of new construction, a month and change of jazz-related events in Guadalajara both educational and diversionary came to a head in five hours of live music, speechifying and canapes. The Jalisco Jazz Festival is the result of what must be a herculean effort on the part of non-profit Fundacion Tonica and its founders, Gil Cervantes and Sara Valenzuela, who founded the organization

The stylistic breadth in evidence at last Sunday’s Fiesta de la Musica, an annual multi-stage affair in Guadalajara, seemed to warrant optimism regarding the state of the city’s music scene, specifically as it concerns its eclecticism and heterogeneity. That vigor was exemplified by two bands, each teasing Parque Agua Azul’s sultry air with two very disparate sonorities: electro cumbia and shoe gaze/noise rock. Guadalajara’s annual Fiesta de la Musica - modeled after an even

Astute observers of urban milieus, be they dilettantes or professional urbanists, can’t have failed to noticed the proliferation in the past few years of a specific trope which could be described as a haute bourgeois mutation of the classic suburban strip mall, within whose confines are found, say, a collection of boutiques, a variety of vendors hawking whichever foods are currently the “hotness” (Korean tacos, pork belly bao, fried ants), and a couple of expiatory temples of

According to two dispassionate, bored teenagers manning a t-shirt stall, the tiangius cultural next to Parque Agua Azul has been going down every Saturday for about 30 years. That’s a lot of matchbox cars and spiked dog collars. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a tianguis cultural is simply an open-air market where all and sundry is available. At the iteration just outside one of Guadalajara’s largest urban parks, offerings include native handicrafts, Star Wars f

Base criminality? Poetic justice? Whichever way you might lean, it’s safe to assume that the mitered grandees of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara are none too pleased by a recent spate of stealth thefts by brazen, (one assumes) less-than-faithful, parishioners. It’s a scam so simple as to incite envy: place a fake bill of considerable monetary weight - say, one valued at 200 pesos - in the collection plate and take out however much change you see fit. The perpetrator comes aw

At first it seemed like butterflies might end up outnumbering human spectators at this past Sunday’s concert celebrating International Jazz Day. But it was only 2 p.m. The event, organized by the city and consisting of a single stage set up on a short, brood flight of steps below the giant spherical cage that is Toktli, a local band fusing jazz with Son Jarocho Parque Agua Azul’s butterfly conservatory, eventually drew a he