Trace Turns 11!

Our "Trace-man" turns 11 today.  Feliz Cumpleaños amigo!  This last year Trace has become a "water kid" and runs off to the ocean almost daily.  It makes him happy and makes him even happier to be out there with friends.  He does great in school, speaks Spanish like a local and surfs like crazy. Te queremos mucho!

Trace turns 11.

Anthony Bourdain RIP....Remembering A Previous Post That Means So Much More Today

We originally posted this article back in May of 2013.  Wow!  I just read it again and it means more now than it ever did 5 years ago with the sad news of Bourdain's death this week, the current policies and attitudes of the United States government and just the fact that we are now more a part of Mexico.  Please take a moment to read Anthony's message as only he could have written it.

Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.” But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us. The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see. What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness. Its archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime. It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them. To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North. I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.

Anthony Bourdain

A New Casa In 2018 - June Construction Update

So here we are  in June of 2018 and we are STILL under construction.  We have watched so many projects begin and be completed around us and here we are.  Still building! What gives?  Well, the last two months have seen all our guys move up to the roof and complete an "add on" project.

Why an add on in this stage of the project?  Well, once we had the ceiling of our main living level in place we stood up there and saw the view.  The same exact view that we saw almost 12 years ago when we purchased the property.  The view that no one knows is there.  The view that was the one big reason we bought this steep narrow little lot in the first place.

We also knew we needed a few things that were not included in the area of the main house.  A laundry, additional storage space and a utilities(hot water, water pressure pump) location.  This 4th level location provide a place for all that.  So, we pitched the idea to our builder and he came back with a price.  NO price he came up with was going to be a good one at this point but we knew that this additional work would make a good house GREAT!  Plus, since we had open permits and a crew onsite we would be in a position to get the work done with a whole less hassle and cost than if we did the work down the road a couple years.

The addition is really four parts.  1. A perimeter wall around the open/interior courtyard that is open to the living level downstairs.  The wall will provide security and still allow for light and ventilation.  2. A laundry room/bodega space.  We needed a laundry and the bodega provided some securable storage space that would have some ventilation. 3. Utility space with an area for Ashley to work on whatever she can dream up.  The water pressure pump and hot water heater needed a dedicated space that would be out of the elements.  4. Outdoor terrace.  THE spot. Ocean view and sitting area and a location for a small bar/sink and future grill.

The perimeter wall is pretty much that.  Allow light and ventilation and provide security.  One side of the perimeter is a row of steel posts.  Sturdy enough to repel a zombie attack and cool looking as well.  At some point this courtyard will have a see through polycarbonate roof to allow light in and keep rain, debris and people out.  The roof will come down to the tips of those spikes.

Looking toward the front of the house from courtyard.  Window will be over bar/sink on the side.

Laundry/bodega door to the left, door to front terrace on right.  Living room below.

Courtyard wall towards neighbor's property line.  Pappelillo tree provides a canopy of sorts.

Steel spikes separating Ashley's work space and courtyard.  Doorway on left goes into courtyard.

Covered utility location.  No, not sexy but a great part of the add on.

600+ sq ft rooftop terrace with ocean view

Looking back toward terrace door and future bar/sink location.  Steel spikes visible.

From the street no one even knows the space exists and is totally unexpected when seeing the reaction of friends who have come by to take a look.  The terrace area certainly needs some seating and shade.  That will come someday in the future.  Plastic chairs and an umbrella for a while.  Some of these pics are a few weeks old but for the most part they are ready to finish floors, seal and paint walls.  The crew will then make their way to the lower house and out the front to finish exterior items.  We are told two more weeks.  We will see but we feel like we are soooooo close!  More soon.

A marked up plan.  The only one I could find.  Ocean view to the bottom of drawing.