Another Thursday, another wild night at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge, Gentle Reader(s). The joint was jammed pretty much all night long, starting off with a wedding party of Millenial sorts who commandeered the rear portion of the establishment for the first couple of hours. The blushing bride requested 'Mamma Mia' by ABBA, but regardless of what kind of crowd we pulled last night I was resolved to pay homage to two great geniuses of 20th century popular music who passed away this week—Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, both aged 82. I got turned onto Sly early on as his music was ubiquitous when I was growing up in New Orleans. When I saw the Woodstock movie sometime in the early '70s Sly & the Family Stone's set was one of the standout performances that made a big impression on me. The Beach Boys were a different matter. The whole hot rods/surfing/drive-ins universe that they evoked was completely alien to the gritty, swampy urban milieu of my hometown: I didn't have a car, there was no beach, I didn't have a girlfriend, and it was all just so white. I couldn't relate.

I’ve never really thought of myself as a sports guy (and when I say ‘sports’ I mean ‘sport’, for those of you Across the Pond). That’s what I tell myself, Gentle Reader(s), but the evidence might possibly seem to indicate otherwise. When I were but a wee lad I was into baseball—I bought baseball cards, had a bat and a glove, and wore a jacket decorated with team emblems. New Orleans had no major league sports to root for (or ridicule) in those days, and I became a default Cubs fan when my grandfather took me to a game at Wrigley Field in 1967. At some point in the later ‘60s I became enamored of drag racing. I have no recollection of how this puzzling development came to pass, but I compulsively drew tiny pencil renderings of rail dragsters in my school notebooks and had a subscription to a couple of motorsports magazines. Big Daddy Don Garlits—the Swamp Rat, King of the Drag Racers—was my hero. I successfully badgered my mum into driving out to LaPlace Drag Strip on a couple of occasions to attend races, at one of which I met Big Daddy in the flesh. He was eminently approachable, discussed the delicate and combustible art of mixing nitromethane fuel with Inky Mum, and autographed a photo of himself performing a flaming burnout in his signature innovation—the rear-engine dragster. This sacred heirloom was framed and now resides in a place of honor behind the bar at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge.

At long last, Your Humble Narrator has returned to his crepuscular little corner in Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge to spin the toons for the multitudes once again. It was a fairly long hiatus this time around—almost two months—but I figure that my time was well spent as the previous posting on this page will attest. One event that took place while I was out of the Santa Fe pocket was the Matador anniversary. The Little Bar That Could first opened its door (there's only one) on May 5, 2007, and it has been taking names and kicking butt ever since. There was that whole unfortunate pandemic thing back in 2020, but with that one exception the Mat has been open every day of every week of every month for the past 18 years. That is pretty incredible. A wide range of watering holes—most of them within a block or three of the corner of Galisteo and West San Francisco Streets—have come and gone during that period of time, but the Matador abides and, somewhat improbably, so does DJ Inky. The promo image that appears above dates back 16 years.

Ahhh, printemps in New Orleans, printemps in New Bjork! Such joy, such bounteous pulchritude, such not-awfulness of meteorological conditions! Not to deny the appeal of printemps in my beloved Santa Fe, but the wind, Gentle Reader(s), the wind! The near constant gale force gusts blasting eastwards out of Arizona can begin to mess with yo haid after a while, so in recent years I have resolved to put thee behind me, Satanic zephyrs, and decamp to Ink South. This year I decided to append my southern sojourn with a trip to the Big City, the lure of inexpensive non-stop flights from Louis Armstrong International to LaGuardia being too attractive to resist. So, after the numbing two-day excursion across half of New Mexico, all of Texas, and three quarters of Louisiana, I hitched up at Laurel Street and settled in for about ten days before heading north.