Hey, It’s Santa Fe / N(H)M-AKA-MP

Posted by votergirl in Recent Work, Santafe.com

By Mark Feigenbutz/ Photos by Tim Kassiotis

If you’re young and fancy yourself hip and find yourself in Santa Fe and want to find every other youngin hipster Santa Fean, get to a Meow Wolf event. If you’re young and fancy yourself hip and find yourself in Santa Fe and you don’t know what Meow Wolf is, then you’re either old or unhip or located somewhere other than Santa Fe. If you’re old, look them up in the Yellow Pages. If you’re unhip, Google them on your Blackberry. If you’re not located in Santa Fe, then you won’t understand Meow Wolf’s significance anyhow.

What is Meow Wolf’s significance? Well, it’s, like, the only organization of its kind that gets young, hip Santa Feans together to do uniquely young and hip, Santa Fean shtuff. What kind of shtuff? Shtuff like trippy, artsy-rave shindigs where you put neon face paint on your face as a starting point for it to end up elsewhere, find yourself in no less than three conversations about The Universe (yes, The Universe is a pronoun) and dance your B.O. off until it coalesces into a wonderfully Santa Fean B.O. Jambalaya. Why do I keep asking myself questions that I inevitably answer and, more important, why do I keep employing the word “shtuff?” Because I’m young, I’m hip and I’m finding myself more and more “Santa Fe.”
“Santa Fe” is less a physical location than an anomalous “Huh?” To illustrate, photographer Tim Kass and I showed up to the event at 9 p.m. because the bar owner said it started at 8 p.m., when, in actuality, it got rolling around 11-ish. I’ve only been in Santa Fe for one year and seven months and this did not phase me in the least. Because, hey, it’s “Santa Fe.” (And that is the red-handed proof of Santa Fe’s anomalous “Huh?-ness” – that when something happens that conflicts with the rest of the immutable laws of reality that hold the rest of the world together outside of Santa Fe, you simply shrug your shoulders and say, “Hey, it’s Santa Fe.” And it is.
And it was. It was in the, “Hey, you work at Video Library!” and the, “That girl goes to the Co-op!” and the, “Some guy just asked Tim and I to make out with him!” Tim and I both declined, even though it seemed more of a conceptual art piece than a sexual advance. It was also “Santa Fe” in the, “Hey, there’s a 71 year-old man getting down to some dubstep!”

Wait; there was a 71 year-old man getting down to some dubstep?” Hey, it’s Santa Fe.

Turns out that that 71 year-old man was the really freaking hip father to the really freaking hip 18 year-old behind the turntables.
But wait, you can’t go off the rails like this; not this late in an article which you’ve already set up to end up elsewhere.
Hey, it’s Santa Fe.
So anyways, the really freaking hip 18 year-old behind the turntables is Noah (“Noah’s [his] birth name, but everybody knows [him] as Holiday.”) McAllister (but he goes by Mickey Paws.)
Remember: Santa Fe.
Noah (Holiday) McAllister AKA Mickey Paws has only been DJing since November of 2011 but is well on his way, having met Meow Wolf through Warehouse 21 – the ridiculously and awesomely Santa Fe teen art center. And what’s even more refreshingly-ridiculously-awesomely Santa Fe is that he’s outspoken about the fact that his beats are clean. He’s “stayed away from drugs the whole time. It’s just the music, the lights and the atmosphere [that are] like the drug for me.”
Raymond, Noah (Holiday) McAllister AKA Mickey Paws’ (from now I will refer to him as simply N(H)M-AKA-MP) really freaking cool 71 year-old father, agrees, adding that, “For both of us, the high is from the music.”
With his clean mind, good attitude and reverence for his 71 year-old dad, N(H)M-AKA-MP is an anomaly all his own, even in an anomalous place like Santa Fe… and was the night’s only one that I couldn’t shrug off with a, “Hey, it’s Santa Fe.”