Author: Marcia Blondin

Ash Wednesday yesterday, the start of Lent that will end with Semana Santa and Easter, which means we have 40 days of so-called High Season left. By the Sunday following Easter Sunday, the touristic doors slam shut; everybody goes home to their other lives, leaving us empty sidewalks and beaches. Oh, and bank accounts. I…

Yesterday started with the great tianguis in Coapinole, Sharon and I wandered and dug through piles of clothing and came out the other end with three choice pieces each: sum total spent, 180 pesos between us! We also stocked up on beautiful veggies for about half the price of “in-town.” From there we went to…

I had mango smoothies yesterday afternoon at the Vallarta Factory with my new friend Jamie Brickhouse. His recent appearance at the theater at Art Vallarta has caused quite a stir in our community, with fingers reaching out to various powers that be to find space for him later this season to come back and tell…

One of my favorite days every month is the First Saturday Fiesta at Arte Vallarta Museo. The enormous courtyard was full of people eating, drinking wine, listening to the live jazz trio, and catching up with like-minded people they hadn’t seen anywhere else for a month. The fantastic David Jones exhibition, Line and Color, continues…

On this day, in 1991, 34 years ago, I got on a plane in Vancouver, two suitcases containing my life stored onboard, and flew to Puerto Vallarta to be reunited with the soul that I left here in 1986 after my first bewitching visit. That block of five years was the longest of my life.…

Open Mic at Nacho Daddy this week held a few surprises, including having Nick Dorado filling Gouda Gabor’s enormous shoes as host for the evening. His lovely voice has been missed in Vallarta, and it was terrific to have him back home from Chicago at last. Another beautiful surprise was seeing and hearing Patsy Meyer…

A lot of people journeyed up the Cuale River yesterday afternoon to Rancho Santiago to feast on Hollis’s barbequed ribs and the music of Fleetwood Mac. It was a warm, sunny day, and I arrived early, thanks to Hollis picking me up while I was waiting at a bus stop on Lazaro Cardenas. I caught…

Teatro Vallarta’s lobby was all abuzz last Sunday evening, before the start of the RISE Grand Finale, with head paparazzi Josef Kandoll Wepplo snapping away, making all of us look better than we really do. Folks crowded the bar and the conversation levels were excited and loud. Towering over us all was the coach for…

ART VallARTa on Pilitas was again the center of attention as Jamie Brickhouse presented his one-man show Dangerous When Wet – Booze, Sex, and My Mother to a sold-out rapt audience. Jamie’s monologue, nearly 90 minutes of a one-sided conversation, is based on his book by the same name. It was published after his mother’s…

The Grand Finale for the So, You Think You Can RISE? talent competition is this Sunday at Teatro Vallarta at 7 pm. It has become, in four years, one of the most important events of the season. Not just to raise money for the RISE Children’s Shelter but also to galvanize our entertainment community. I…

We had a good crowd at Qulture yesterday for our weekly Scrabble games. Everyone is welcome to come and play, and we would appreciate any turntable game boards you are no longer using. No worries if tiles are missing; we have a bag full of replacement letters. Thanks in advance! I went last night to…

The Beach Boys Tribute Tuesday out at Rancho Santiago last evening filled everyone with nostalgia for the old days when the most important thing in a young guy’s life was his hot car and the women wistfully recalling bikini days on hot summer weekends by some body of water. I got there early enough to…

Levi Kreis’s exuberant return to Vallarta and The Palm Cabaret and Bar necessitated adding chairs to accommodate the number of people clamoring to see him as quickly as possible on Opening Night (he does have a few more shows). To exclaim that he is such a great entertainer, I would have to become more evangelical…

In the past ten years, I have been to some epic parties with off-the-chart shenanigans like recreating scenes in a pop-up of Night of the Iguana, complete with a bus, or a dinosaur-sized alebrije jostling dancers for space during a street party, or the time 700 people showed up over three hours to see what…

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody. I hope romance is in your life if that’s what you want; I envy those with time for it. I have a love story to tell that keeps getting hung up on the same issues, and I don’t know how to fix it and make it come out ‘happily ever after’…

What a fun-filled day yesterday! I won three out of four games at Scrabble. Incidentally, our Club needs more boards, preferably turntable ones; if you can help us, we would be grateful. From Qulture, I flew down to Nacho Daddy for Colina Spay and Neuter Clinic bingo and won one game. Ball caller Lydia Damato…

Dreamer of Dreams opened Sunday night at Coco Cabaret and stars America’s Got Talent Brian Justin Crum and a couple of fine aerialists, Woody Fox and Raul Valle. Now 38 and a decade away from competing on AGT, where he finished in 4th place, he had us riveted by his powerful voice. I felt his…

Describing Zoe Lewis in concert is the same as writing down exactly how butterflies fly and fish swim and getting the mechanics of it just right. She flits about onstage, landing here and there on a light or heavy piece of subject matter and deals with them equally – an election result that makes her…

A week today is St. Valentine’s Day! Chocolate is celebrated here in its country of origin, and what better way to take the herbal tinctures you need than to eat infused chocolates! Dark, rich and healthy chocolates that are handmade by Ricardo Mazcal, our local wizard of plant medicine. I use a number of Ricardo’s…

The Third Annual Mr. Vallarta kicked off yesterday at Coco Cabaret with 11 hopefuls onstage and an appreciative audience. Vallarta’s only ‘beauty’ pageant dealt with just that: How do you look in jeans and a button-down shirt? Round Two: just the jeans and everyone’s favorite part, Round Three, a mere speedo. A vast amount of…