With maybe a bit of New Orleans thrown in for extra fun.
I lived in San Miguel for nine months over two winters and got to know the place pretty well. But every time I visit, like just recently for the San Miguel Writers’ Conference, I learn something new about this city that everyone describes as ‘magical’ (I know! So cliché!)
I do know that 10% of San Miguel’s 80,000 residents are expats from the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere, people who’ve left their lives behind to immerse themselves year-round in San Miguel’s cultural offerings and perfect climate. But I always thought that most of those expats (with the exception of myself and maybe 50 others) were retired. I was wrong.
The city that once lured Diego and Frida, the muralists Orozco and Siqueiros, portrait photographers and Beats (Neal Cassidy died mysteriously on the town’s train tracks), continues to entice artists, writers and musicians from the world over. And they’re not all over 60.
Which brings me to my first Ten Things You Probably Don’t Know About San Miguel:
1) Although in the daytime you might feel like you’re in a commercial for relaxed-fit jeans from Sears, once it gets dark, all the young people—gringos and Mexicans alike—come out from hiding. (Nobody knows what they do in the day.) At night, they flood the bars, pubs, nightclubs, cafes and the town’s central square, the Jardin. Typically they’re American or German twenty or thirty-somethings, disillusioned with the politics and stiffness of their own countries. It reminds me of what Paris of the 20s must have been like, an underground world pulsing with creativity, full of writers, artists, musicians, dancers and photographers. In San Miguel, you can rent a pretty place to live for less than $400 a month, eat fresh yummy tacos for under two dollars, and talk to your friends over Mexican coffee about how screwed up the rest of the world is. It’s the ideal place for this.
2) San Miguel is safe at night. I often left bars at 2 a.m. (see #1) and never had a problem walking home through the streets at night. At that hour, if you’re a woman alone, the taxi drivers can be creepy (although always polite in the day), but walking at night is fine and actually, totally enjoyable.
3) You can buy fantastic clothes at the Tuesday Market for two dollars. There are endless rows of tables filled with piles of new clothes that didn’t sell in the U.S.
4) The best thing you might ever eat in your life can also be found at the Tuesday Market and it’s called a gordita. It’s a thick corn tortilla filled with stuffings and salsas of your choice, then grilled. They’re about $1.50.
5) Gorditas make you fat. The word ‘gordita’ actually means ‘fat’ in Spanish. The term is also used affectionately for a cute chubby girl—probably one who eats a lot of gorditas.
6) You can take zumba classes every morning of the week with a kick-ass local instructor who all the local women swoon after (even though he’s gay.) Classes are two dollars.
7) And if you’re really into exercising you can run through the park every morning with the locals and then run up 514 steps (Choro Steps) for a view of the whole city.
8) You can get free wireless internet all day long at the local Starbucks. (I know it’s Starbucks but it’s the most beautiful one you’ve ever seen, in a 300-year-old high ceiling colonial building. The gringos protested its arrival, but the locals all wanted it.)
9) Houses in San Miguel are cheap to buy right now since so many Americans are flooding the market trying to sell the second homes they can no longer afford.
10) Even though it’s a cliché, San Miguel really is magical.
11) Bonus addition to the list: Because San Miguel is such a writers' and artists' mecca, it hosts really cool workshops, like the 2016 Summer Writing Workshops (where American novelist Diana Spechler will teach Writing A Page-Turner, Playwright Merridith Allen will teach Writing the Play that Moves You, and I, Laurie Gough, will teach The Art of Memoir and Travel Writing. Come join us in San Miguel this summer! It will be fun!)
***Read Laurie's latest book*** Stolen Child: A Mother's Journey To Rescue Her Son from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
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