Tranquil Buzz Coffee Shop – Silver City, New Mexico

Where have all the hippies gone?  Long time passing.  Where have all the hippies gone?  Long time ago.  Where have all the hippies gone?  Would you believe they’ve all gone to Tranquil Buzz, a coffee shop with perhaps the best coffee shop vibe in the country.  Boasting of the “best coffee in the cosmos,” Tranquil Buzz lives the motto “Love lives here.”  We practically lived there, too.  Well, at least for the first two hours of our day during the three days we spent in Silver City.  Fortunately the AirBnB at which we stayed was directly across the street from what has become a community meeting place with regular events such as poetry readings, open mic music and written word,…

Central Bodega – Albuquerque, New Mexico

As if living just outside of Boston for two years just out of high school wasn’t thrilling (and filling) enough for this rustic clodhopper, New York City was only four hours (with good traffic) away.  There were more languages (800) spoken in New York City than there were people (500) in my hometown of Peñasco, not to mention a population of some 16-million.  All those languages meant a vast diversity of dining opportunities and I wanted to try them all.  Best of all, so many of them were available all day and all night long.  Large, hand-tossed slices of thin-crusted pizza were available from street vendors.  You could even find warm food at some of the Puerto Rican bodegas (owner-operated…