I-40 runs through Albuquerque’s midsection like a Mexican leather belt with a big rodeo buckle. At I-40 and Carlisle in Albuquerque is a new ” Green Jeans” shopping center built using shipping containers, Albuquerque’s new building material craze. While the old woman who lives in a shoe is a theme of yesteryear, the Santa Fe Brewing Company, along with a local builder, Roy Solomon,have created a new urban retail center combining shipping containers and more traditional materials. People are on the move in our 21st century and you can easily be asleep in Albuquerque tonight and wake up tomorrow in Singapore. Shipping containers are generic, sexless, and have no personality. They are big Lego’s; easy to move, stack, transform. They fit our generic drug, unisex bathrooms,one size fits all world. Doing investigative research on shipping container building with Alex, the architect, we visit, see, and leave the new shopping and dining complex feeling the place is well done but not that exciting or cost effective. Where I want is to live is in my own container mounted on the deck of a huge oil tanker sailing to the world’s ports, having scrambled eggs and bacon with green chili for breakfast, as we round the Cape of Good Hope. Till that happens, Green Jeans, with its craft beer, home made tacos and stacked containers, will have to do.
Wow, I had no idea anything like this existed in Albuq.? ABQ. Has changed a lot in the last 10 years! Much too big for my current taste I’m afraid…but still a place of interest and investment…so I hope it …or at least real estate….does well in the future!