Just wanted to let everyone know that I haven’t gone off the grid. I have been out of town since last week and won’t be back in ELP till this weekend. I just got married to my beautiful wife and am skiing currently!
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
Well, I guess it never “left” but it is now official, for the most part. Organizer Kenny Hansmire hit up all the local media outlets and apologized for his comments on Saturday after the game. I’ll give him props for knowing when he was in 
the wrong and admitting that it wasn’t just the citizens fault. Thank you Kenny. Now I think would be a good time for our mayor, John Cook, to clarify what he said about El Paso. On the radio he said the he was embarrased by the city and lack of a turnout. Embarrassed by the citizens who helped put in $200,000 for the game. 26,000 is a decent number, especially with everything going on that day. Can it be higher, yes, but there are some changes that need to be made.
I understand he was trying to appease Kenny but there was no need for throwing us under the bus. Mayor Cook has done a lot for El Paso but his comments seemed off base in my opinion.
Now that all of that is off my chest, let’s move forward. This game is nice fixture but it needs a major overhaul. Like Kenny said, they need to go back to the drawing board and expectations need to be realistic.
I really hope to see the game next year be here in El Paso because I believe everyone will have the same expectations rather than what transpired this year. I’ve met Kenny before and he is a nice man who truly believes in this game, he is just still trying to work the kinks out.
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
The following interview was done with Laurie Paternoster who co-owns Lynx Exhibits with her husband Mike. What they do is an important piece of the downtown revitalization efforts and the exhibits they bring in give the opportunity to El Pasoan’s young and old to learn about subjects that might not be as accessible without an institution like Lynx.
1) First, a big thank you is owed to you and Mike for starting up Lynx, it truly is a wonderful learning facility for all of El Paso. What brought the two of you to start it, especially downtown?
We love this community. We had a dream for a venue the whole family could enjoy and we thought Downtown El Paso – with its vibrant culture, character and endless possibility – was a great place to start. Funny thing is, the project started out as something else – an indoor playground made of recyclables. But over inflated construction estimates and a floundering economy got in the way, so Mike came up with a less capital intensive dream – a showcase for first-class traveling exhibits that never seemed to make it to El Paso. And so, El Paso’s only traveling exhibit museum was born.
2) How long have you lived in El Paso and have you ever lived anywhere else?
I am a native El Pasoan who, as a journalist, moved away for 15 years to work for major newspapers in Houston, Dallas and Denver. Along the way, I met and married Mike and had two children. In 1995, we decided it was time to move back into a family support network and El Paso was the natural choice. My father was stationed at Fort Bliss and made his home here and my mother came to visit at age 19 and stayed. I also have a brother and sister in El Paso and three more within a day’s drive.
3) What do you think makes El Paso stand out from the rest of the crowd?
Wow. Where do I start? Although El Paso is a major city, it retains that small-town feel in a good way – people are kind and care for their neighbors, you can still park close to any business you patronize; the pace is slow enough to allow us to appreciate life and one another. Our children can learn a foreign language and actually use that gift daily. You can’t beat the weather most of the year and the cultural diversity rivals that of any city in the nation.
4) You have seen a lot of change already in downtown El Paso, what else would you like to see happen?
I would love to see a cohesive partnership for promoting Downtown businesses. With all that is going on, most businesses and developments still operate in a vacuum. Restaurants and museums should be partnering together and developers of hotels and lofts should be partnering with retail businesses they don’t own. Everyone should be partnering with entertainment venues. We have a Border Museum Association that is trying to bring those entities together, but there still is a territorial aspect that prevents some from becoming committed partners. And what happened to the Downtown Development Plan? I would love to see the city take visible steps toward rewarding those putting dollars on the line. Those of us who are investing our own money – not relying on government funding in any way – need recognition and support. And by the way, how about free meter parking on Saturday?
5) What is your favorite activity to do in El Paso?
Anything I can do with my family. But then, that’s what El Paso is all about, isn’t it? We love hiking the mountains, especially at Franklin Mountain State Park and Mount Cristo Rey. We take in new movies and new exhibits at area museums. There is always special activities going on, like the Symphony’s Kidspalooza (March 27) or the library’s Dia De Los Ninos or Generation 2000. We also love sports and there are many teams and venues to support for that!
6) What is your vision for all of El Paso?
El Paso is a teenager, struggling to find boundaries and testing all the rules. It is my hope that as it matures, government entities will find ways to limit our increasingly burdensome tax rates and encourage business growth. If we are destined for the foreseeable future to survive on small business, El Paso should be doing all it can to grow and nurture them. With a strong foundation of thriving small businesses, we might be able to attract the larger public companies we need to increase salaries and our standard of living. At the same time, we need to preserve all that we love about El Paso, our rich history, colorful diversity, beautiful desert environment and welcoming friendliness. One day, we could have a thrivingly unique Downtown, known retail outlets in several areas of the city, useful and well-used public transportation systems and generous support of arts, culture and education.
7) What is your favorite local restaurant in town?
I have yet to meet a restaurant I don’t like! Downtown has introduced a number of new, fun venues. But outside of Downtown we love Il Posto, the Magic Pan and Julio’s.
8) How was the name Lynx created and what other names were considered?
I wish I had a great story, but I don’t. We incorporated the name for use in another business we own and never did. We used it just to get started, intending to rename our recyclable museum and, well, you know the rest of the story. We are considering a makeover though, but can’t decide whether to take the chance now that we finally are known throughout the community. What do you think about a subtle change – to Links Museum? That would emphasize our connections between exhibits and education, family and entertainment.
9) What is your vision for Lynx?
That’s a good question. Mike and I have visions of expansion dancing in our heads! But we are still dealing with a weak economy and a culture that is slow to embrace the traveling museum concept. In the best of all worlds, we would see Lynx fully developed into both buildings with a wide selection of cultural entertainment for families.
10) What is your current exhibit and why should people come visit?
Based on opening weekend attendance, Extreme Deep: Mission to the Abyss is our second most popular exhibit. Of the 10 we have opened in El Paso since 2007, Bodies Human: Anatomy in Motion was the most heavily attended. The Deep focuses on amazing ocean exploration, featuring hands-on activities for examining shipwrecks and strange life forms at the bottom of the sea. You learn about Alvin – which explored the Titanic – and other robotic submersibles that made fascinating discoveries like the origin of sea vents. We also have wonderful partnerships with Five Star Divers, which provided spectacular undersea photographs and diving gear to try on, and the Carlos M. Ramirez Tech2O Learning Center, which loaned us interactive activities to learn about water molecules and groundwater sources. Finally – drum roll please – we have El Paso’s first stingray touch pool provided by Livecargo Pets and Supplies. You get to touch a live Atlantic Stingray and see unique fish – including a shark – from various parts of the world!
To learn more info about Lynx Exhibits, please visit their website by clicking here.
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
El Paso schools struggling. http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_14357559 Education is so important to our town’s future and it needs to be addressed/fixed asap…I know this takes time and it is a state wide program but I bet there are some local remedies that we can put in place to help fix this problem.
It appears that Texas vs. The Nation might have seen its last game in El Paso. After 26,000 people showed up, the mayor and Kenny Hansmire decided that El Paso was unworthy of such a game. My thoughts on this….bad scheduling on Kenny’s part (middle of the day, UTEP game that night, Super Bowl weekend)
He can blame El Paso all he wants but if thinks he did no wrong, then he is lying to himself. I think its great to host a college all star game because it opens up our city to those who might not come here otherwise and gives players a chance to shine for scouts, however, they need more to pull us in besides a logo that says Pro Football Hall of Fame…seriously Kenny, that is supposed to make us want to come? I understand that he was frustrated and disappointed but he has to know that saying a comment like the one below is only going to create a very unapologetic public towards his game.
Here is Kenny’s quote from the El Paso Times:
“We have the logo of the Pro Football Hall of Fame out here,” Hansmire said. “El Paso wants to be an NFL city? Good luck.”
This game needs big names to draw fans and that will be the case no matter where you put it. Oh yeah, here is the article. http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_14352016?source=most_viewed If I were Kenny I would try the game here one more year and if it doesn’t work out then go somewhere else. However, judging by his statements and the pulse of the public, it appears he is already heading back east towards San Antonio or Dallas.
This is not an El Paso phenomena, it happens everywhere where these games are played, just look at what happened with the Hula Bowl.
http://www.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/stories/012005aaf.html (cash strapped game needs to stay in Hawaii)
http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2005/08/29/story1.html (2006 Hula Bowl might be homeless)
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
I purchased Volume 1 of the Ghost Stories of El Paso and I absolutely loved it. One of the creepiest photographs that they show is the El Paso High School class photo with a girl whose face/body is there but is blurry. They asked the people who were around her in the picture if they remember someone being there and all of them said no….weird!
The padre up the Franklin Mountains is really intriguing to me…anyone up for a trek to go find that secret mine shaft where the gold is hidden??
I highly recommend this DVD to anybody who wants to learn more about El Paso’s ghost stories. Volume 2 is also out and I plan on purchasing that DVD too. Here is a preview of both volumes and link to the El Paso Gold website.
For those who are still reading, I will share with you a ghost story of my own. Back when I was living in San Antonio, I was out late with my friend Jacob. We were driving back home in a rain storm late at night on a road where there weren’t any cars. As we were headed down the road we saw a person walking on the side of it. We looked over at him and saw a really pale man with long black hair and dressed in all black, probably in his twenties.
He didn’t look back at us and after we passed him we look at one another and thought it was weird to see a guy walking down the side of a road late at night, in the middle of a rain storm, and no umbrella. We continued on for a couple of miles before we turned left off of Blanco onto Bitters. As we made our way up the hill our conversation stopped. To our right was the same man we had passed a couple miles ago…still walking, long black hair and clothes, pale skin. However, this time when we looked over, he looked back at us….worst chills I have ever felt in my life.
We turned to each other and immediately yelled “Did you see that! That was the same guy…how could he…did we really see that…let’s get out of here!” Was it real or just two guys playing a joke…who knows but I will always remember it and the feeling I felt when he looked over at us.
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
These guys made an impressive comeback and beat a U of H team who was out to play spoiler. I am so happy all the fans got to see this team win a gritty one. Now we need to sell out the the Don this Saturday against Tulsa!! btw…Derrick Caracter played like a beast, kind of reminds me of a Shaquille O’Neal type of player.
Click this link for ticket info.
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
went to UTEP for a couple of years before he dropped out and headed to Austin to launch his music career. I love that El Paso has played a role in so many peoples lives…even if it was for a short period of time. Actually, 93.1 radio DJ lady said he attended elementary, middle, and high school here but I couldn’t find anything online to back up that claim.
Anyway, thought it was interesting since I enjoy his music and thought I would share it with you.
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
The following pictures are of El Paso’s downtown at night time. I am curious to know your thoughts of downtown and what you would like to see changed.
I really love the old architecture that populates many of the buildings downtown. When I look at the pictures above, I see a downtown that will soon be vibrant and a major draw for visitors and citizens alike in the region. I’m curious to see how they will redesign the plaza and if they will close any of the surrounding streets. How about we bring the live alligators back downtown? Could be a lot like the bear pit at Baylor University. I would also like to see the new space formatted for music festivals since it is the center in downtown.
My name is David and I am living El Paso.
