My brother Phil and I made a last-minute trip south to shoot the Todos Santos Big Wave Event off the coast of Ensenada, México, on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010. After shooting Mavericks a few weeks earlier, he let me know they called the Todos Santos contest. With little time to prepare, we rented extra photo gear from George’s, charged batteries, and spent the night in Tijuana. We only got a couple of hours sleep before waking up around 4 a.m. to head to Ensenada.
Tag: Mexico
Over the holiday break, we took three of our nephews (ages 13, 13, 16) on a trip to Oaxaca, México. Here, we tried some grasshoppers in the market. They’re cooked with lime, salt, chile and garlic. They taste surprisingly good!
On our last trip to Guanajuato (November 2006), we took a detour from Rosario’s home state and headed to Amatitán, Jalisco for a tour of Casa Herradura, makers of Herradura and Jimador tequila. Rosario shot the tour with her new video camera while I took photos.
From left: Panóptica (Roberto Mendoza), Bostich (Ramon Amezcua), Hiperboreal (P.G. Beas), Clorofila (Jorge Verdin), Fussible (Pepe Mogt)
A few weeks ago, the progressive Tijuana magazine ZETA published a candid interview with Pepe Mogt (Fussible). In the interview, he expresses his outrage that fellow Nortec Collective member Roberto Mendoza (Panóptica) individually trademarked the name “Nortec” as his own:
Nortec isn’t something between just the five of us. Nortec is part of the same people of Tijuana that made it possible to define the sound and its own cultural movement. Nortec is a sound. Nortec isn’t a brand, nor is it something that belongs to one person alone, or a specific group of people. At least to those of us in the collective it’s ours in the musical sense, but Nortec came from many people that gave an aesthetic and musical life to this movement; and if we have to mention names, we’d say Torolab, Acamonchi, Ãngeles Moreno and an uncountable group of others. (Translation of Pepe Mogt’s comments in ZETA)
Mogt describes the name Nortec as an abbreviation of “Norteño Techno.” He clarifies that the collective registered the name “Nortec Collective” for international distribution, but says he’s unsure of the legalities in Mexico. He says this all came out of nowhere; he was notified on paper and hadn’t yet spoken to Mendoza.
Another collective member, P.G. Beas (Hiperboreal), blogged about the controversy. He confirms the group had no plans to tour in 2008 as each member works on individual or duo projects.
I haven’t the least idea of Robert Mendoza’s plans with his band named Nortec Panóptica Orchestra. The use of the name Nortec like this pisses us off; it’s already disingenuous that a band that isn’t the Nortec Collective uses the name Nortec. It’s obvious that no one in the collective knew that Robert Mendoza would register the name Nortec in Mexico as his own. This would seem obvious, but in some news it wasn’t made clear. Another thing that would seem obvious, but I’d like to underline it, is that we have said a thousand times that without Tijuana, Nortec simply wouldn’t exist. It would be nothing. (Translation of P.G. Beas’ blog post)
Bloggers (BeamTV, Xeelee) clearly agree with the anti-Mendoza sentiment, using words that just don’t have the same ring in English :)
For a few days in November of 2006, we visited Guanajuato. In this video, Rosario reminisces about her first childhood trip to the state’s capital city.
It is done. I finished editing our vacation videos from 2006! I cut it into scenes, but the total running time is almost an hour. This embedded video player shows all of them back-to-back, but you’re probably better off picking and choosing from the list below. You can also download all of them in iTunes if you prefer.
Videos
- San Diego Airport Before Departure: Rosario and I being silly as we wait to board our first red-eye flight to New York.
- Central Park, World Trade Center: We had about 12 hours in NY before taking another red-eye flight to Madrid.
- Madrid: Graciela takes us to Puerta del Sol and Puerta de Alcalá, with a glimpse of the architecture of the Madrid Barajas Airport.
- Elche, Valencia, Alicante: Gema takes us through a few more Spanish cities, seeing la Dama de Elche, a museum, cathedral, castle, and televised World Cup game.
- Barcelona: Marta gives us a taste of the city’s culture.
- Mercat de la Boqueria: The huge market near la rambla in Barcelona.
- Manamana: Marta and Rosario’s version of the Muppets’ song, with some amazing laughter at the end.
- Leonardo DiCaprio at Parc Güell: Only as he was leaving did Marta realize it was him. We went back and found him in a bunch of the shots.
- Dinner with Francisco & José: Conversation with some new friends.
- GaudÃ’s Sagrada Familia: Marta walks us through the famous cathedral.
- World Cup Game: Mexico vs. Angola in Hannover, all dressed up.
- Berlin Wall: Wandering around the city on bike, another World Cup plaza.
- Venice: Apparently not as romantic as expected.
- Florence: Roaming the city with a pit stop in Sienna, World Cup on giant screen.
- Rome: Touring the Colosseum, Pantheon, Vatican and catacombs. |
Originial blog posts from ’06
- World Trade Center almost 5 years after the fall
- A few hours in Madrid
- Cannons, tigernuts and stone women, oh my!
- Ah, Barcelona…
- Berlin during the World Cup
- The journey comes to a close in Italy