Santa Fe, New Mexico: A Southwestern Gem Unveiled

Few people move to a place that they have not seen. I had no job waiting, no home secured, and no familiar face to greet them. I’ve done it four times. Each time, I arrived with nothing but a quiet certainty that I could make it work. That I would. Santa Fe was one of those places.

The first time I saw the city was through the backseat window of a shuttle bus leaving Albuquerque Sunport one late afternoon in February 2012. I was coming from New York City, and the contrast was immediate. The tallest building in Santa Fe is four stories. As the shuttle curved around the mountain and the city came into view, I remember thinking, “Where’s the city?” It was a genuine question. I had expected something more visible, more vertical. But Santa Fe doesn’t announce itself that way.

I stayed at Las Palomas Hotel on West San Francisco Street while I looked for work and housing. The hotel was a few blocks from the plaza, and after settling in, I walked toward it. It was around six in the evening. I passed boutiques, galleries, bars, and restaurants. Everything felt rustic, artsy, and closed, except for the Starbucks off the plaza. That was the only place open to greet me. I walked back to the hotel, wondering if I had made a mistake. I seriously considered moving back to New York.

I told myself I would wait a month. Not because I was convinced Santa Fe would grow on me, but because I owed it to the decision I had already made, to the version of myself that had chosen to leap without a net. I needed time to sit with the discomfort, to let the unfamiliar settle into something I could begin to understand. I had never been to Santa Fe before. I had barely even heard of it. It wasn’t a place I had dreamed about or researched or longed for. It was a name that floated past me in conversations, in passing references, in the kind of moments you don’t think twice about, until they start to accumulate.

Back in New York, it felt like I couldn’t escape it. Santa Fe kept surfacing in ways that felt increasingly deliberate. Subway ads for art exhibitions and gallery residencies. Museum placards referencing the Southwest, with paintings that seemed to hum with desert light. Conversations with strangers who mentioned it offhand, as if it were a place everyone already knew. I’d see the name printed on postcards, in the corner of a photograph, in the footnotes of a book I wasn’t even reading for place. It was surreal. Not loud, not insistent, but persistent. Like a whisper that keeps returning, no matter how often you dismiss it.

At some point, I stopped chalking it up to a coincidence. I started listening. Not to the city itself, I hadn’t met it yet, but to the rhythm of its arrival. The way it kept showing up in my periphery, nudging me toward something I hadn’t yet named. I got the message, not in a flash of clarity, but in the slow accumulation of signs. Santa Fe wasn’t calling me loudly. It was waiting. And I had just enough curiosity, just enough weariness with everything familiar, to follow the thread.

Within a week, I was working as the marketing manager for an art gallery on Canyon Road. I was preparing to move into a small apartment just a few blocks from Las Palomas, and even better, it was a few blocks from the plaza. My casita was at the intersection of San Francisco and Guadalupe Streets. There was a waiting list. I wasn’t on it. But I reached the property manager at the right moment. He “got a good vibe.” Santa Fe wanted me here.

The building had once been a brothel. Fuchsia brick among adobe. Renovated and fragmented into casitas. My casita was in the rear of the complex, in what used to be cold storage. My neighbor, Mattie, was an artist, and still one of the most unique and talented I’ve known. She introduced me to people who arrived in the typical Santa Fe way: by accident, by breakdown, by fate. There’s a legend here: if Santa Fe wants you, it won’t let you leave. People come through, their car breaks down, and they stay. Five years. Ten. Twenty. Santa Fe wanted me. The job. The casita. The timing. It all lined up.

Mattie introduced me to Alex De Vore, one of the most well-known journalists in town. He wrote the music column for the Santa Fe Reporter. Michael, another neighbor, was a sculptor with a growing name. The life I was leading—and the life I imagined that first evening walking the plaza—were nothing alike. I’m grateful I stayed beyond that moment when only Starbucks was open.

Meow Wolf was still small then. They’d just completed The Due Return. They weren’t yet a national name. They considered themselves a welcoming committee for newcomers. That mission still moves me. They introduced me to Kakawa Chocolate House and their Aztec and Mayan elixirs. I’d sit outside under the trees, watching the line spiral toward the shaded patio. At Secreto Lounge, I’d sit by the fire with a cocktail and let the flames carry me. Ecco Coffeehouse had forgettable coffee but great gelato. Iconik Coffee had the best coffee I’d ever had. Café Pasqual’s served the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had. Rooftop Pizza—now closed—made one of the best pizzas I’ve tasted. I’d wait for a table on the balcony, order a margarita, and watch the plaza breathe.

Santa Fe is: La Choza. Cowgirl. 2nd Street Brewery. Marble. The Pantry. The Teahouse. El Farol. Backroad Pizza. Clafoutis. Aztec Café. Op. Cit. Books. The Jean Cocteau. Santa Fe had rhythm. And I was in it.

I would drive to Taos. And stop in Abiquiú. Sit on a perch and let time pass like water through my fingers. Sometimes I’d detour through Los Alamos and into the Valles Caldera, ending up at Spence Hot Springs—my favorite. I’d soak all day, crawl into the pent cavern, and burrow my fingers into the sand.

I helped organize Santa Fe’s first TEDx event. Met George R. R. Martin. Vince Kadlubek. Sam Shepard. Willem Dafoe, in a manner of speaking. I met my ex-wife, who flipped my life upside down.

I followed the signs. Not blindly, but with a kind of quiet trust in the timing of things, and for the most part, I was lucky. I found work quickly, first at the gallery on Canyon Road, where the walls held more than art. I spent my days surrounded by color and texture, by artists who spoke in gesture and silence, and by visitors who came looking for something they couldn’t quite name. Later, I worked at one of the best bookstores I’ve ever seen.

I also worked on the excursion train between Santa Fe and Lamy, a route that once carried the weight of the Santa Fe Trail and now carries stories, music, and the kind of theatrical whimsy that only Santa Fe could pull off. The train—now operated by Sky Railway, with themed rides like the Sunset Serenade and Lore of the Land—winds through the Galisteo Basin, offering passengers not just views but immersion.

I left Santa Fe under difficult circumstances. Not because I stopped loving it, but because I had to choose myself. My well-being had begun to fray. I knew that staying would mean compromising something essential. Santa Fe didn’t make it easy. The same week I decided to leave, I was offered my dream job at the Santa Fe Reporter—a publication that has long been the city’s pulse, covering everything from politics and culture to music and art with a kind of fearless intimacy. It was almost enough to make me stay. Almost. There’s a kind of heartbreak in leaving a place that still wants you. But sometimes, the most honest thing you can do is walk away while the door is still open.

Santa Fe will always have a place in my heart. It offered me the best and the worst. If you visit, it will give you what you allow. Nothing more. Nothing less. It can be defined. Or forgettable. You’ll have to mute the conditioned voice that propels you and let the higher self you’ve stifled guide the way.

And if you do listen, you’ll find yourself in a city that has been called The City Different for more than a century. A place where Pueblo, Spanish, Mexican, and American histories converge in adobe walls and canyon light. You’ll walk streets that once carried the weight of the Santa Fe Trail, and you’ll hear music that drifts from the Lensic, the Plaza, and the corners of Canyon Road. You’ll see art that spans 14,000 years, from Clovis carvings to black-on-black pottery to contemporary installations that defy category.

Santa Fe doesn’t ask you to be anything. It asks you to arrive. And if it wants you, it won’t let you leave.