Hard Times

Besides the fact that a repairman will now answer his phone on the first ring and show up at your house within the hour, there are other signs that the recession has finally reached Taos. The saddest and most obvious are the empty storefronts. In a small town with few storefronts to begin with, the darkened windows of once-booming tourist shops, art galleries, beauty salons, cafés, and restaurants cast an eerie pall over the Taos Plaza and nearby streets. While there were a fair number of people gallery-browsing and walking their dogs near the Plaza on a warm April day, we still had the feeling that a major change had taken place. The lead story in the Taos News last week outlined how the recession had turned the local housing market upside-down, and for the first time ever, the glossy real estate insert listed several foreclosures on every page. On the bright side our favorite restaurant, Sushi Hattori, was packed with locals at lunchtime. But even this very popular place, which had stopped advertising years ago because it couldn't handle more than thirty customers at a time, now displays its own placard on the big wooden sign at the Overland Ranch complex.

It's tempting to think that punctual repairmen and no more condos are great things for Taos, but many Taoseños struggle with unemployment in the best of times. For their sake, we hope that the economy will bounce back sooner than expected and that a "closed" sign will simply mean that the owner has stepped out for a quick lunch.