A Short and Sordid History

Way back. Way, way back. Like, 2005 back, during the Bush II years back. A roguish and idealistic Burqueño crossed paths with a roguish and idealistic Masshole. The two gathered reviews from friends and friends-of-friends of everything they’d tell a weekend tourist not to miss. Three months and innumerable Tall Boys later, 125 copies of Your Guide to the Albuquerque Underground were printed in Adam’s living room, and distributed to participants of the 2005 National Poetry Slam. At 20 pages – including the cover – and packed to the margins with the finest bars, eateries, tattoo shops, and the safest places to pick up a hooker, the Guide was a sight to behold. Then, essentially, they forgot about it.

In 2007 another big poetry event prompted a remake of the Guide, and another in 2008, in a slimmer, student-focused edition, with editorial support. Then came 2009, our landmark year. 76 pages, 3 collectible covers, and the guts printed on overstock high-end papers. We debuted it June 12 at the Atomic Cantina. Then 2010 – 144 pages, the paper doll visage of Don Shrader, and a party at The Kosmos – and 2011 – scaled back to 92 pages, and a party at Dialogue. In 2012 the full Guide went to lunch, leaving its secretary in charge of everything here, at the website. In early 2013, we released An Arrival Guide, a slim Guidito reminiscent of our first book, and are taking the rest of the year to recoup and rethink.

What identifies us in the guidebook industry is our authors: you. Sure, we don’t contain every opinion in town, but we encourage reviews from anyone who’s been somewhere three times or more.

Now with seven issues under our belts, we’re trying to push the notion of a Guidebook forward. We eat and drink heartily. We throw parties. You come to them. Everyone feels good.

Our website is a growing, searchable, updated homebase for our books. We hope you’ll contribute to it – your review might even go into our next book.

Our Mission: To provide a compendium of useful, honest, and concise and unpretentious reviews, written by anyone who has patronized an establishment three times or more, as a resource for people visiting, moving to, and living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.