This morning’s experience in Guadalajara: immersion in a huge crowd for Les Girafes, opérette animalière, a spectacle from Compagnie Off in France.

Giraffes. Opera. Fire. Explosions. Truly spectacular.

There are places I go that seem just right, like the gods took an MRI of my brain, sorted it all out, and spit out a custom-tailored place.

Impronta, in central Guadalajara, Mexico, is the best the gods have ever done: it’s a print shop–publishing house–coffee shop–bookstore.

There is a tree growing through the middle of it.

There are dogs.

Linotype machines and letterpresses.

A rooftop fire pit.

A gallery.

Friendly people.

Great coffee.

Where do I sign up?

The Tree

We sat in front of it, on a metal park bench, eating brownies and drinking coffee. The tree rises through the building, and out above the roof.

The Print Shop

Impronta makes books. Makes them. They set hot metal type, print the pages and the covers, sew the bindings.

The means of production are at their fingertips.

The Riso Room

Impronta also uses more recent printing technology: on the second floor there is a Risograph room, complete with a flask of that lovely Risograph pink.

The Gallery

One floor up from Riso is a gallery and multipurpose room. Today it appeared that an exhibition of Linotype ephemera was going up or coming down.

Lisa’s comment: “This is the room I’d like for our studio.”

The Rooftop

The rooftop is delightful.

The Coffee Shop

We started our visit in the coffee shop. It’s long been my pipe dream to combine coffee and print shops: this was it, in living colour.

Excellent cortado; perfect service.

The Bookstore

At the front of the building is the most delightful bookstore, selling a mix of house-made books and those from others.

There is something so special about picking up a book made from scratch in the same building.

I could not leave empty-handed, so choose a copy of Alti Plano Subtropical by Kimberly Kruge.

The book is stunning.

The Best Place There Is

David Lynch wrote this in Catching the Big Fish:

Some mornings, in a perfect world, you might wake up, have a coffee, finish meditation, and say,“Okay, today I’m going into the shop to work on a lamp.” This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a “setup.”

For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. You may need a working music studio. Or a computer room where you can write something. It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen.

If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will go away. You didn’t fulfill it—and that’s just a heartache.

That’s what went through my mind today, walking through Impronta: it is a lovingly-resourced setup for making printed things. The setup includes not only the machines and tools, but the creative and literal food to fuel it all.

I left inspired not only to hone my setup, but inspired to dive into creation following their spirit.

What a place. 

We are nearing the end of our stay in Mexico City’s San Angel neighbourhood, and it’s taken me almost two weeks but I’ve found my favourite coffee shop: Padre Café.

It’s a 20 minute walk, over cobblestoned streets, from the home exchange we’re staying in, just steps from chaotic Av. Revolución, but a quiet oasis nonetheless.

The coffee is excellent, so much so that I had much too much of it.

I started with a simple espresso:

I liked the espresso so much that, when I realized I had another 30 minutes before my rendezvous with Lisa and L., I ordered a Monte Alban: two espresso shots, steamed milk, local chocolate.

It was delicious. And. Too. Much. Coffee.

Beyond the coffee, the space is beautiful, the staff warm and friendly, and the prices reasonable.

We head to Guadalajara on Thursday; I’m hoping to find my way back to Padre one more time before we leave.

Let’s say the wise elders got together, tasked with creating a museum perfectly suited to me: Museo del Objeto del Objeto in Mexico City might be what they come up with.

The museum asks, in its name and in its exhibitions, “what is the object of the object?” And it does so with pitch-perfect curation and design.

See also The Museum of Norm. 

It’s not that I didn’t know that Lisa spoke Spanish, but it’s another thing entirely to listen to her speak Spanish to a taxi driver for an hour, wending through Mexico City traffic: like waking up one day and finding out you’re dating The Batman. 

Looptail g. Just down the street from our temporary house in Mexico City. Books about food. What’s not to love about Librería Gallina de Guinea!

On the weekend they played host to Feria del libro comestible, a festival of food and print, with exhibitors from all over, including Canada’s Chutney magazine.

Happenstance is a lovely guide. 

Twenty-three years ago, I wrote this about my friend Stephen Good:

I have known and kept in touch with Stephen longer than almost anyone else I know. At times it’s been a challenge — it’s hard to be a Godless heathen when you’re corresponding with someone who is prone to starting sentences like “I remember what Jesus said about bowling…” But we’ve worked out a common ground (he leaves out direct God references and I leave out my constant questioning as to the actual existence of God), and I’m sure we’ll be friends until we die.

And we were.

Stephen died on Saturday.

I hadn’t talked to Stephen in more than a year. Our last conversation was prompted by a one sentence email from him:

I need to talk to you.

I called him. We had a long chat, about everything you can possibly imagine. Somehow, through everything that separated us—and there was a lot—we stayed connected and interested over almost 40 years.

In a text to mutual friend in the weekend, I described Stephen as among the smartest people I’d ever known, and among the most naive. Those two combined took him to places of fascinating creativity and exploration, and to places of great challenge and tragedy. Somehow, in all of it, he kept the glint in his eye, the enthusiasm for to being curious.

I will miss you, old friend. 

The air compressors at Charlottetown-area gas stations are a dreadful bunch: many of the tire pressure gauges are faulty (or missing), those that charge money for air—a violation of all that is holy, in my books—often have faulty payment systems, and some of them simply refuse to emit air at all.

I’m happy to report that I’ve found the best air compressor in town, and it’s in Stratford, at the Mel’s Shell:

This compressor is free, it works, and it lets you dial in your desired PSI, and stops when that pressure is reached.

It’s on the right side of Mel’s, near the A&W drive-thru entrance. 

Our Dutch friends, printers Martijn van der Blom and Roy Scholten, have launched a fundraising campaign for a book about printing with LEGO, The Hilversum Method:

In 2023 we made our first book, showcasing a selection of projects from the first ten years of printing: Print & Play. The Art of LEGO® Letterpress.

Since then, we regularly get questions about how we do it. Because people all over the world are now happily printing with LEGO®. But not always with the quality and richness of forms that can be achieved using the Hilversum Method.

In this book, we will explain how it works, and why it’s such an endlessly fascinating way of working.

We’ll explain the technical aspects of designing, building and printing. And go into the specific creative and artistic opportunities in this approach to image making.

The book will be available in both Dutch and English.

You may recall our own experience printing in Hilversum with Roy and Martijn last year: they are creative, talented, and generous printers; you will not go wrong supporting their campaign.

For the past 6 weeks our neighbours have had a crew on site every day working on their complex century-old mansard roof.

Being cooperative neighbours, we’ve traded our driveway for their garage so that the crew can have room to work. 

The room they need has been primarily for lifts like this one:

This Genie Boom is, I’ve learned, one example of a “Powered Aerial Access Platform,” and we’ve heard its beep-beep-beep sound, every time it moves somewhere, so frequently as to almost be habituated to it.

You see these “PAAPs” all over town these days: our Queen Square neighbourhood has been a hotbed of construction activity since the Province House conservation started a decade ago;  with that, and the Daniel J. MacDonald building gutting, the Confederation Centre of the Arts renovations, one is seldom safe from the beep-beep-beep.

I got curious about what seems to be the sudden transformation of construction-at-height from using scaffolding to using these machines, and I found some insight in Powered Aerial Access Platforms (PAAPs): Their Use and Benefits, from CIB World Building Congress 2007, which describes their deployment in South Africa:

Enhanced access, enhanced productivity, maneuverability, and enhanced safety predominate among benefits resulting from using PAAPs in lieu of other access, such as scaffold platforms and ladders. Enhanced worker satisfaction, overall cost savings, and enhanced client satisfaction were identified by between 33 % and 40 % of respondents. Slightly more than a quarter of respondents identified enhanced stability, hassle-free work, and lifting of materials and equipment.

A more recent reference, from a not-unbiased vendor, CMC, The Impact of Aerial Platforms on Working at Height:

Technological evolution has radically transformed how works are carried out off the ground. Whereas in the past the use of scaffoldings was the norm, today, the advent of aerial work platforms has revolutionised the industry, significantly enhancing efficiency and safety. In particular, aerial work platforms offer a combination of flexibility, swiftness and safety, which are key elements to increasing productivity and reducing operating costs.

A check of the local market showed that I could rent a PAAP for about $2500 a month, which seems cheap given the labour it saves compared to the cost of erecting and dismantling scaffolding, to say nothing of its ability to heft heavy things up and down.