The US State Department has changed their safety ratings for Mexico. The only places in the country where, according to the US State Department, you can just go as freely as you might to, say, Washington, DC, would be Campeche and Yucatan. Everywhere else in Mexico it’s suggested that you should “exercise increased caution.” Some places I love to go, like Jalisco, Baja California, Chiapas, and Queretaro, I’m told I should “reconsider travel.” And my beloved Michoacan and Guerrero are “do not travel” zones, according to the US State Department. So … what does this mean for gringx bartenders?

Agave Road Trip is a critically acclaimed, award-winning podcast that helps gringx bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. This episode is hosted by Lou Bank with special guest Linda Sullivan of seynasecreto.

Episode Notes

The cover to this episode is everything to me. The art is by Gilbert Hernandez — Beto, of Los Bros Hernandez, creators of the comics series Love and Rockets. When I was a 15- or 16-year-old kid, this comic book showed me that comics could tell any story. The magical realism that Beto and his brothers Jaime and Mario depicted in Mexico and Southern California stuck with me. I think a lot of the joy I feel when I’m traveling in rural Mexico now is the discovery of images that they planted in my teenage brain. I was a comics geek growing up — mainly Marvel with a bit of DC on the side. Then some of the alternative superhero stuff when that started popping in the 1980s. But Los Bros Hernandez showed me a whole different world.

That realization of the broader stories that could be told through the medium didn’t redirect the trajectory that I was on in the business side of comics. I landed at Marvel when I was 21 years old, where I made so many friends who are still friends to this day. The angry, sarcastic Greg Wright was one of those friends — is one of those friends, though now he’s neither angry nor sarcastic having become a gentle and loving father who now goes by the more gentle and loving name Gregory Wright. Gregory stepped up to color this amazing Beto art.

And the initial reason for commissioning the art? Since 2021, the National Museum of Mexican Art has welcomed me to help organize their annual spirited fund-raiser, Copitas de Sol. I get to drag in a bunch of spirits brands and a bunch of restaurants and bars, and I get to commission art like this. This cover will be one half of the poster for next year’s Copitas de Sol, which will occur some time in August. And wait until you see the second half!

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