Dispatches from New Mexico: Tripping on Ginger

NNew Mexico has an alarmingly high number of natural & health food markets including the standards like Whole Foods and Wild Oats, the smaller local varieties as well as the international Talin Market. Between Albuquerque and Santa Fe I’ve been to half a dozen different markets in the week and a half that I’ve been here, and the combined population of these two cities is less than that of San Francisco. Because of this easy access, the state is bursting at the seams with an unprecedented variety of ginger beer. The New Age hippies and their younger counterparts – the “dreamcatching yoga greenies” –  must have developed a bit of a ginger habit. The thing I can’t seem to wrap my brain around is what are they doing with the stuff? I’ve yet to stumble across a single bottle of Goslings – or any top shelf dark rum for that matter – so they can’t be using it for Dark and Stormies? Are these health nuts just drinking the stuff straight? A prospect I’ll never understand – and one, that personally, is a bit offensive. Could they be wasting away their afternoons stumbling over tumble weeds in the high desert tripping on Moscow Mules?

The ugly truth – that no one in New Mexico wants to talk about much less admit – is that they are creating a generation of ginger addicts. And these are not even civil ginger addicts – hipsters who waste their afternoon at a downtown bar with Dark and Stormy in one hand and and an iPhone in the other as they update their Facebook status letting everyone know they just botched another job interview. No these are full blown ginger addicts tripping late into the night and occasionally stumbling onto the set of the David Letterman Show half dazed and spouting off about their upcoming hip hop music career. Side note: If your ginger dealer ever tells you he just sold the same stuff to Joaquin Phoenix either pass or clear your calendar for the next three days.

While the ginger epidemic has yet to make it’s way into the political conversation at either the state or national level, local police blotters around Rio Rancho have started to publish reports of young teenagers experimenting with Reed’s Premium Ginger Brew – which is neither premium nor in my opinion deserving to be linked with other ginger beers.

The sad thing about the ’09 ginger epidemic is that the definitive events have certainly not yet occurred. Inevitably some poor soul who can’t get top grade ginger beer will turn to it’s cheaper and more readily available bastard cousin ginger ale. There have even been isolated reports of ginger chemists who are trying to pass off Sprite with a splash of Coke as a perfectly reasonable substitute for a good high ball of ginger.

But to hell with what those bastards in Washington say; a good trip on ginger, Goslings, and a wedge of lime can awaken the human spirit like few things in this world. In fact the only thing that worries me about the unhealthy obsession I’ve developed with ginger is where it may eventually lead – is ginger beer just a gateway to the next harder substance? And what will that be? Word on the street is Clamato is the new ginger….but I’ll save that for another story.

More of my pictures from New Mexico available Flickr