Back in Taos, New Mexico, to visit old friends, I keep walking past my favorite hangout of years past, Caffé Tazza on Kit Carson Road. It closed in 2018, I think and it had been going downhill from its slightly entheogenic-esoteric height. The food offerings diminished, the interior became grubbier, and the baristas bathed less frequently — but the coffee was always good.
The town’s adobe (and pseudo-adobe) architecture owes something to the Pueblo Indians but also to the Middle East; after all, “adobe” is a loanword from Arabic—and maybe from Coptic into Arabic before that.1
Caffé Tazza, like the gracefully aging El Pueblo Motel, was a favorite place reading, and I like to think that sometimes architecture influences your receptivity to certain ideas.
And now off to the Harwood Museum to look at lowriders and santos.
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![Exterior, Cafe Tazza, Kit Carson Road, Taos](https://i0.wp.com/blog.chasclifton.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/caffetazza.jpg?resize=550%2C367&ssl=1)
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![](https://i0.wp.com/blog.chasclifton.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/tazza-doorway_sm.jpg?resize=600%2C833&ssl=1)
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- Surprise, al-tob means “the brick.” [↩]