Let’s consider how we ate at Guerrero. At Gibson we had been down the street from Trudy’s and down the block from Casa Garcia’s. At Post West Avenue, we had Frank & Angie’s, Hut’s, and the newly opened Opal Divine’s. At Guerrero we had Cisco’s, Cafe Mundi, and Nuevo Leon.

We would have an Amplifier Friday breakfast meeting at Cisco’s. In the side dining room at the lacquered circle table. Cisco’s was on the next block east of us. Most of the regulars, as I recall, seemed to be law enforcement, legislators, reporters, and locals. The secret tip was ordering your breakfast taco with the tortilla toasted – the tortilla toasts on the stove burner, top and bottom, for a beat. And by breakfast meeting, I mostly mean that we ate breakfast.

We would also have meetings over at Cafe Mundi. Cafe Mundi was a coffee shop on the north side of Fifth Street, also a few blocks east. The Fifth Street that ran in front of Mundi at this point was a glorified alley – one lane. Buildings on the north and gravel, grass, and railroad tracks on the south. My memory of Cafe Mundi is strongly associated with a patchouli smell masking body odor. I don’t think this is a controversial characterization. We would have our meetings outside, in the circulating air.

Nuevo Leon was a Tex-Mex institution, also a few blocks east on Sixth Street. RIP.

Finally, I want to recognize El Milagro, purveyors of fine tortillas and tortilla chips. They made their goodness a few blocks west of Guerrero on the north side of Sixth. Totopos is tortilla chips in Spanish. In Greek, one converts a noun into its superlative form by appending -tatos to the end. My buddies Andrew Letizia, Andrew Holbrook, Brent Gilbert, and I would shove together non-greek words with greek modifiers to best express ourselves. Perisnackirizoh. I snack around – gather food from this plate and that plate. Perisnackirizite! Snack Around! (imperatively). The El Milagro tortilla chips are the totopotatos. The greatest of all tortilla chips. This, also, is not a controversial characterization.