Doing a bit of research into creation of that stretch of multi-modal wonder we Burqueños now take for granted, the Paseo del Bosque Trail. Our most popular stretch of walking/rolling, and only walking/rolling (well, almost) in town didn’t just come with the River as a nature-presented geologic/hydrologic package.
It had to be created and it wasn’t always easy.
We current users of the Bosque Trail experience the very occasional bother (e.g., overly zippy ebike users) today, but these days we fortunately don’t get almost run over by hillbillies driving Dodge pickups. It’s interesting to me how pioneers such as City Parks and Recreation planner Cathy Cisco (see story text above) harnessed support and overcame hillbillies in planning, building, and maintaining our cherished trail overcoming nefariousness like:
“Poles embedded in three cubic feet of concrete had been placed under the Old Town Bridge but were pulled out by a four-wheel drive vehicle with a winch.”
As this is the Internet and not a book you’re holding in your hands, I’ll dollop out this history over a few posts, closing today with a helpful editorial from the Albuquerque Journal’s board in response to the Dan Herrara story above:
Yes, “very modest concession to the needs and peculiar requirements of a very small minority” isn’t exactly the most ringing endorsement of the trail and its “peculiar” users, but that’s part of what interest me here. How do “very small minorities,” whether “peculiar” ideas or groups of people, become established ideas/groups over time? And how might our very noticeable current national backsliding to hillbilllydom impact patterns in establishing/maintaining current “very small minorities”?
Yeah, those are pretty big questions for a single blogpost. For now, I’ll just stop there and close with a simple “fucking hillbillies.”
Better Burque 
So much to love here. First, Google “Jim Nachtwey.” My journalist brain asked “How the hell did he get that shot?” You’re seeing a photojournalism giant at the start of an amazing career. “F/8 and be there,” as the legendary Arthur Fellig probably never said.
Second, the bollard wars!
Third, this so touches on questions of small-d democracy and the provision of goods and services for “peculiar” minorities. Ima embrace that word.
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Don’t stereoptype people. When I flipped my bike 180* after sticking the front wheel into a grating, a long line of cars passed by with people laughing, and it was a pair of Deliverance types going to get the valves for their Harley ground (they showed me one of them) who picked me up and took me to the hospital. Gallup, NM.
My father was pure WASP, from Depression-era Atlanta, and left to marry a Filipina. 54 years later he retiored to a small town in NW Georgia where I spent a summer during graduate school vacation. I worked on followup for the 1980 census: I was a skinny young-looking 25 year od Asian American in geek glasses driving around the outskirt neighborhoods asking residents how much the earned and many bathrooms they had. Uniformly, black and white, all treated me with attention and respect. I was never the subject of discourtesy, let along rudeness or threats.
My younger brother would visit from SoCal and do his evening runs in neon tights. All he got was polite 1-finger waves from passing pickup trucks.
You are confusing urban youth trash, black, white, or brown, with real Southerners. Country folk tend to be dignified, self-respecting, and other-respecting.
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Anon: Pure hillbilly/cracker from North Central Texas here. I figure I’ve paid my dues and can call a hillbilly a hillbilly regardless of ethic/racial origin. Understand your stereotyping dislike, but also understand it’s avoidance of same that’s help leave us in this predicament. I understand real Southerners, as you put it. I wish I didn’t. Thanks for reading and commenting. – Scot
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