A daily series, Connect! Unite! Act! seeks to create face-to-face networks in each congressional district. Groups regularly socialize but also get out the vote, support candidates and engage in other local political actions that help our progressive movement grow and exert influence on the powers-that-be. Visit us at Daily Kos every morning at 7:30 A.M. Pacific Time to see how you can get involved. The comment thread is fun and light-hearted, but we're serious about moving the progressive political agenda forward.
|
The orange pinpoints are the location of each organized group of Daily Kos readers.
If you'd like to join a group, click on a point and a box will pop up showing contact links.
If you'd like to start a group, contact navajo for instructions.
View Interactive Map of Daily Kos Regional Communities in a full screen version.
|
What's Your Favorite Mexican Restaurant ?
Note that this is not a regional topic. Yes, I write from Tucson, Arizona, the home of the finest Mexican cuisine in the country, but wherever you live in the US, there's sure to be Mexican restaurant in your town. There was a Mexican restaurant in New York City, for example, as early as the 19th century. Mexican food was introduced to the Big Apple by Buffalo Bill.
In 1886, William Cody was already a notional celebrity for his Wild West show which brought to the United States (and soon, the world) the Great Frontier of the young land with a cast of hundreds. Cody brought his cavalcade of the conquered to New York City to close out the year, camping in the first incarnation of Madison Square Garden. Ads taken out in the local papers promised “a grand drama of civilization,” a “most artistic, enjoyable instructive and gorgeous presentation of the Hurricane Wild West.” But at the bottom of the ads lay a curious addendum: “A genuine Mexican Restaurant now open.”
Cody never explained what Mexican food had to do with the submission of the West, and the “Mexican Ranchers” who populated his show alongside Native Americans and cowboys were more accurately vaqueros, the Tejano riders from which the American English “buckeroo” derives and from whose womb cowboys emerged. But Cody’s Mexican restaurant—staffed by Mexicans, with mescal and chocolate shipped in from Mexico to end the meal—became a New York sensation, with lines of Gothamites waiting to taste the curiosities, “inflamed and excited by the hot chile peppers and the other condiments which burn like caustic,” according to an observer.
That quote is from a book I recently read called
Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America by Gustavo Arellano, editor and food blogger at the
(If you're interested, and have an hour to spare, here's a two-part interview that Arellano did with Arizona Daily Star columnist Ernesto Portillo Jr. during the 2013 Tucson Festival of Books, recorded and broadcast on Community Radio KXCI.
Pt.1 and
Pt.2) Arellano did a lot of research trying to track down where American Mexican food came from and how it got popular. He talks about how the most popular dishes evolved into their current forms, and the major chains, like Chipotle and Taco Bell. (That chain was founded by
a guy named Bell.) He talks about the national brands, like Ortega, La Victoria, Rosarita and Pace Picante, and there's a chapter on Tequila too. One interesting point he makes is that it's really not that important to be seeking
authenticity. Yes, there are regional Mexican specialties made with regional ingredients, but food is food and culture is culture and they are what they are. No use making a fetish of "authentic Mexican cuisine." Taco Bell may not be good Mexican food, but there's no denying its Mexican origins.
In Chapter Five: How Did Americans Become Experts at Writing Cookbooks on Mexican Food he talks about Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless. He calls Mexican food snobs, the seekers of "truly authentic cuisine," Bayless-istas. In one of his columns for the stick a fork in it food blog (HERE) he was talking about Bayless opening a place in L.A. and presuming to bring "authentic" Mexican to Los Angeles, from Chicago, right ? Bayless saw it and responded in the comments, pretty funny. The OC Weekly gave bad reviews to the restaurant, Red O on Melrose (Warning: autoplay at link, pause at lower right in red. Also note: $50 carne asada, $20 enchiladas and "Mexican Street Corn" $9 each), and Arellano says Bayless is "a Diva."
The book identifies four major styles of Mexican food in the U.S. The first is Tex-Mex, which is what Buffalo Bill was peddling. It is from Tex-Mex that we get chili con carne, combination plates and chips and salsa with every meal. Another is New Mexico Mexican, which is a style all its own with the green chili and blue corn. There's Sonoran, which came across the border in Arizona, and Cal-Mex. Cal-Mex is basically Sonora-style food, with soupy refrieds and big flour tortillas, due to an influx of Sonorans into California. Although there are a couple of interesting Cal-Mex contributions, the "Mission-Style" burrito for example, sold wrapped in foil and taken nationwide by Chipotle, is from San Francisco, I've always been a bit disappointed with Mexican food in L.A. This makes perfect sense, since Cal-Mex is but a pale imitation of the true and authentic original Sonoran cuisine.
Towards the end of the book Arellano lists his top 5 Mexican meals. His #1 absolute favorite is the Mexican Hamburger from The Original Chubby's in Denver. #2 is Rolled Tacos from Chico's Tacos in El Paso. His #3 selection is Taco Acorazado from someplace called Alebrije's Grill in Santa Ana, California. Ask a Mexican what his #4 all-time favorite Mexican dish is and he'll tell you it's the Sonoran Dog from El Güero Canelo right here in Tucson, Arizona, which he goes on about for 3 pages. #5 is The Night Hawk Special from El Rancho Grande in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The book ends with a little postscript about the Sleeping Mexican. We've all seen the image and maybe wondered about where it came from. So did University of Arizona professor Maribel Alvarez. Arellano wrote about her for the Tucson Weekly, April, 2012:
Alvarez is a Cuban by birth who grew up in Puerto Rico before her parents sent her to live with an aunt in Long Beach, Calif., in 1980, because it "seemed like a really safe place to hide from communism." Bucking the stereotype of the conservative Cuban exile, Alvarez gravitated toward the radical politics of the Chicano movement, focusing specifically on the arts. She earned a master's degree in political theory from Long Beach State, then a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Arizona, focusing on the material culture of northern Mexico. She then helped found MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, an art space in San Jose, Calif., dedicated to exploring off-topic, frequently taboo subjects.
In 1996, Alvarez accepted an offer from the UA to run its folklore department. Her doctorate had focused on craftsmen in the borderlands who worked with plaster to create statues and coin banks, of which the sleeping Mexican was by far their best-seller.
"My first reaction to the image was influenced by my education. What I learned really quickly is that your social standing shapes the lenses from where you see the images," Alvarez says. "I saw it as a stereotype, an offensive stereotype that the gringos used to put Mexicans in their place."
But when she asked the workers about the image, their reaction shocked the professor.
"They'd tell me, 'You see a stereotype in that? What sick mind would see that? How perverted is the gringo mind to think anything bad of it?'"
The workers would explain that the man they called Pancho was a hard-working mexicano who was resting, because he got up really early for a long, noble day of work. As Alvarez interviewed Mexicans in Arizona and California who owned the image, she became intrigued by Pancho's dual identity.
"On one hand, politically conscious Chicanos got really, really mad about it—they go nuts when they see the sleeping Mexican," Alvarez says. "But here in the border, in the barrios, people use the image for decoration in their front yards as a symbol of home. And that's fine. One statement is not invalidated by the other statement."
Over the next decade, Alvarez investigated the origins of the sleeping Mexican, interviewing artists who created it as art or as commerce, and presented her findings in academic papers and symposiums. She also amassed her own modest collection of the image.
Here is part of what Alvarez wrote for the postscript to
Taco USA:
The short answer is that the sleeping Mexican became popular because, despite a boatload of inglorious uses of the image as stereotype, the image is also ambiguous, functioning in the iconic world of advertisement for many working-class Mexicans and Mexican-American restaurants as an emotional and residual reference to Mexico’s indigenous, rural, hardworking, thrifty and resourceful populations (“la gente humilde”) and a folk culture that places value on balance, rest, nourishment and relaxation in order to carry on. Jill Janis of Tucson has collected dozens of Yellow Pages from all over the united State as well as Europe with the image associated to Mexican restaurants and motels ( presumably, invitations for the weary traveler ); her extensive collection includes more than two thousand pieces, from matchboxes to lamps, clothing, and antique furniture, that depict the image.
The earliest known representations of the image were not visual and did not include the saguaro; the large cactus indigenous to U.S. Southwest desertlands was most likely added as a redundant reference to vacationing (resting) in the American Southwest in the post-World War II era, when widespread automobile ownership facilitated travel to border towns for middle-class Anglo families.
My favorite Mexican restaurant ? Well, when people visit from out-of-town I always send them to
El Charro. It's a historic restaurant and they were the originators of the Chimichanga. Thrillist did a thing where they named the most iconic restaurant for each state (
HuffPo) and they chose El Charro to represent Arizona. Some people like
Mi Nidito where President Clinton ate when he was in town. Note the "President's Plate," that's a lot of food. For me, right now, I like this place called
Taco Giro. It's in my neighborhood, on the same block as one of El Güero Famoso's ubicaciones, and they deliver. They also serve a dish from Guadalajara that I've been working on called Carne en Su Jugo.
So how 'bout it CUA-ers ...
What's Your Favorite Mexican Restaurant ?
Latest Updates on Regional Meet-Up News Can Be Found Below the Orange Group Hug.
Let's Build Communities!
Our team is here to provide support and guidance to new and existing volunteer leaders of each regional and state group, helping them with recruiting, organizing and executing social and action events.
We invite you to join in this effort to build our community. There are many ways to pitch in.
If there isn't a group to join near you, please start one.
Instructions on HOW TO FORM A NEW DAILY KOS GROUP
List of All Existing Meatspace Groups
Where the Kogs Are: Index/Directory of the 130+ Localized Daily Kos Groups
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY
by Sara R ♥ for Koscadia
The Koscadians welcomed Ojibwa and navajo to Portlandia. Ojibwa blessed some quilts for the Community Quilt Project and a delicious pot luck was enjoyed. All edifying for the holidays.
Here's one photo:
Seated L-R: Sara R, winglion & loggersbrat
Standing L-R: Angie in WA State, also mom of 5, Drewid (hiding), BOHICA, watercarrier4diogenes, Ojibwa, exlrrp, llbear, navajo, Ozawa and ozsea1
Please visit Sara R's diary for many MORE photos! Enjoy! You can still REC it. You can join Koscadia by sending a Kosmail to Sara R.
by Thinking Fella ♥ for Four Corners Kossacks
There are meet-ups and then, there are EPIC meet-ups. The current designate always upstages the previous one. And that is precisely what Thinking Fella has done with this event. We were all green with envy when he announced it with just a few short weeks notice. He had a fantastic turnout anyway. Try to top this event. With 58 scenic photos of gorgeous Colorado and wonderful Kossacks, Thinking Fella showed us who's boss when it comes to meet-ups. He holds the trophy now. Who wants to take it away from him? Throw your gauntlet down at any time.
It's important to note that this terrific diary inspired 8 more people to join the Four Corners Kossacks. Again, Thinking Fella knows what he's doing. High five, buddy!
Here's one photo:
L-R: Mr. & Mrs. Unknown, Mr. & Mrs. unfangus, Lucytooners with her hands on Mr. Lucytooners shoulders, Tom Morrissey, Allison Morrissey, Thinking Fella (rear), HeroMachine (kneeling), Kim (in hat) & her partner Nan (in train), Darcy (in front of Kim) ERRN & Mr. ERRN (kneeling), and Dr. lurker & Dr. lurker (both standing)
Please visit Thinking Fella's diary for a zillion MORE photos! Enjoy! You can still REC it. You can join Four Corners Kossacks by sending a Kosmail to Thinking Fella.
Event Organizers! Please contact wink from Netrootsradio.com by KosMail to schedule airtime with them to live broadcast the date of your Event. Wink & Justice will then promote it on The After Show radio program!
Saturday, January 24th
LA Kossacks Monthly Meet-up
TIME: 2:00 PM
LOCATION: Casey's Irish Pub
613 S Grand Ave. • Los Angeles
ORGANIZER: Send susans a kosmail to attend
RSVPs:
1. susans
2. Shockwave
3. Otoelbc
4. Joshua Bloxom
5. Chiwere
6. jakedog42
7. 714day
8. Joe Bacon
9. Frank Vyan Walton
10. KatSkahnne
11. gmats
12. Just Saying
13. Ducktape
14. Doctor Jazz
|
Maybees:
Brecht
|
Latest diary: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Orange County Meetup January 24, 2015
Saturday, January 31st
Koscadia Meet-up
TIME: 1:00 PM
LOCATION: TBD
[Address] • Portland
ORGANIZER: Send Sara R a kosmail to attend
RSVPs:
1. Sara R
2. winglion
3. loggers brat
4. Angie in WA State
|
Maybees:
justiceputnam
|
Latest diary: Koscadia 12/28 meeting recap, next one 1/31!
Saturday, January 31st
Houston Kossacks Meet-up
TIME: 1:00 PM
LOCATION: Collina's Italian Cafe
502 West 19th Street • Houston
ORGANIZER: Send Chrislove a kosmail to attend
RSVPs:
1. Chrislove
2. nomandates
3. scott5js
4. krwheaton
5. jmbar2
6. cosette
7. Mary
8. Alan
9.
10.
|
Maybees: |
Latest diary: Houston Area Kossacks: RSVP for our January 31 meet-up!
Saturday, February 28th
Texas All-State Meet-up with Meteor Blades, Denise Oliver-Velez and navajo
Please come for an afternoon of camaraderie and progressive strategizing with Big Orange flavor! Out-of-state attendees welcome!
Lunch and Seminar c/o Daily Kos
TIME: Noon - 6:00 PM
LOCATION: Max's Wine Dive
"Fried Chicken and Champagne... Why the Hell Not?"
207 San Jacinto Blvd • Austin, near convention center
Cocktail time First drink c/o Daily Kos
TIME: 6:00 PM
LOCATION: CRAVE
340 E. 2nd St (around the corner from seminar) • Austin
ORGANIZER: Send nomandates a kosmail to attend
RSVPs:
1. nomandates
2. Chrislove
3. Meteor Blades
4. Denise Oliver-Velez
5. navajo
6. johnatx
7. mrs johnatx
8. Blood
9. cosette
10. anotherdemocrat - Vege*
11. bastrop
12. Warren Pease
13. Patience John
14. noteaforme
15. blue armadillo
16. RLMAC
17. TexMex
18. JC Dufresne
19. TexasLibertine
20. politik
21. Mr Pea
22. PDiddie
23. Mrs. Diddie
24. suesue
25. mr suesue
26. Sandia Blanca
27. Noisy Gong
28. Essephreak
29. laderrick - Vege
30. getlost
31. TulsaGal
32. AndyT
|
Maybees:
texasmom
texasdad
BlueMississippi
MargaretPOA
BlackSheep1
scott5js
Deja (+1-2)
boadicea
blueisland
postmodernista
Texan001
Ignacio Magaloni
|
* Needs vegetarian meal
Latest diary: Latest diary: Texas Kossacks statewide meet-up, with Meteor Blades, Denise Oliver Velez, and navajo
navajo maintains the above event list. Kosmail her if you have any diaries
about your event or if you have changes or additions.
EVERYONE is welcome, tell us what you're working on,
share your show and tell, vent, whatever you want.
This is an open thread. Nothing is off topic.