Last night I was having sex. In my dream. With a giant roasted chile. Somewhere in the Mexican desert. Yes, of course, it was hot. Sandy. Spicy too. And when it got too hot to stand, it began to rain horchata. Nothing like beautiful, soothing, delicious, ice-chilled and cinnamon-spiced rice milk rain to snap you back into reality: that being 3-freezing-A.M. in the Japanese morning, no taco stands in sight, and the frightening realization my pillow is not only not a roasted pepper (nor, alas, a woman…sigh), but only – you got it – a pillow.
Sigh.
Rolling over, a thunderstorm of memories collapsed upon me: onions, garlic, chiles, avocados, tortillas, salsa, horchata, cerveza, Santa Barbara, Milpas, La Casa del Greco, the avocado tree in back, trading Jose avocados for bagels from Jack’s, La Tolteca, Three Bohemia lunches at La Super Rica, Tacos de Rajas – roasted Pasilla chiles sauteed with onion and garlic, topped with Crema Mexicana, chile verde and cilantro on fresh, handmade corn tortillas, the perpetual line around the corner, Sofia & D all sunglassed up in the glinting warm sun, beers and smiles at the salsa-stained, white plastic table…
The short version of the story is summed up by saying that La Super Rica is the best Mexican restaurant in Santa Barbara. The long version begins in the spring of 1995 when, after almost a year of living in Isla Vista whilst attending UCSB, my cousins invited me to meet them at La Tolteca during a trip up from San Diego. Downtown Santa Barbara being yet a mystery to me, I got lost on the 20 minute jaunt south from Isla Vista. When I finally found it I joined my cousin, her husband and his sister at their table outside the small tortilleria and checked out the menu. After introducing me to P, the sister, it went something like this:
“You haven’t been here, have you? We should’ve taken you to La Super Rica first, but we’ve already had that for lunch and dinner yesterday and we’ll probably go there tonight, so no worries, you’ll come with us tonight, yeah?”
“Umm, yeah.” I went inside to order my burrito and a Tecate. Just having matriculated into the photography portion of the Art Studio department I couldn’t help but notice shots of what appeared to be wartime Japan lining the walls. What appeared to be the iconic shot of the marines raising the flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal, caught my attention. I had seen reprints of the photograph what seemed like a thousand times, but never a framed print. This one was cropped differently or taken from another angle. There was something odd about it.
Handing me my change, the woman behind the register pointed at the photos, “My husband took all of these. He was a photographer in the war. He took that one too, but the military didn’t like Mexicans then, so they gave credit to that other guy. No one believes that story, but it’s true.”
I wandered outside, dazed and wondering how history could get so skewed. Maybe she was telling the truth, maybe not, regardless, she believed what she had said, as doubtless did her husband and entire family, beyond which maybe a few friends and patrons had heard anything about it at all. I said nothing to my cousin. Daydreaming about what it must have been like to have been a photographer, let alone a Mexican one, in Japan during WWII, I sucked on my beer until my food came.
Greasy, overly-creamed and fat American-friendly Mexican fare isn’t what I’ll remember about La Tolteca. Unmemorable as that meal was, more than that photograph is burned in my retinas, but also the way the sun blinded us off our beer bottles as we sat chatting, the breezy shifting shadows of palm fronds falling at improbable angles, ants attacking dollops of salsa fallen upon the uneven sidewalk, and most of all the wife’s big brown eyes. The woman’s eyes, glazed with anger, telling the true history of her and her husband’s story in her breath, her movements, the pauses of her words.
Having lived mere blocks from La Tolteca, I chanced to walk past the storefront a hundred times after that, but never felt the need to go in again. My place became La Super Rica, memorable for good cheap food and cold bottles of beer. Great for providing fodder for future dreams.
I am a documentary and portrait photographer, specializing in a raw approach to shooting everything under the sun. Though I travel abroad often, I am currently based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and am available for assignments throughout North America and beyond.
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All content © 2012 by Manny Santiago Photography