I’ve had a few roadtrips lately, read about those gems here and here.

In my most recent roadtrip to New Mexico we picked a destination based entirely on the name and the fact we thought pictures with the town sign would be funny.

Turns out Las Vegas, New Mexico is a pretty interesting place.  Hollywood has been using this town for movies for decades because of it’s southern facade.  Movies like Easy Rider, Red Dawn, and a personal favorite TV series Longmire all shot here.  Fun fact if you go here and watch the final season of Longmire they basically use the entire historic square multiple times.  All in all there’s well over 100 movies shot here as far as I can tell from the brochure in the AirBnB.

Just some of the things I found that filmed here just in the last 5-10 years:

Elton John: Me, Myself & I, Lucky You, Ocean’s Thirteen, Knocked Up, No Country for Old Men, Redline, Three Days to Vegas, Dasavathaaram, Inconceivable, Iron Man, 21, What Happens in Vegas, Charlie Valentine, The Casino Job, Dolan’s Cadillac, The Hangover, Saint John of Las Vegas, Get Him to the Greek, I’m Still Here, This Is Not a Movie, Hostel: Part III and the list was too long to keep going really…

Here’s a few quick shots I took of the Town Square area.

I recognized most of these from Longmire but there’s lots of guides around listing everything they were used in.

For nightlife there’s only a handful of bars but Borrachos makes some amazing and creative cocktails.  They have a great interpretation of The Dude’s White Russian.  We drank here and danced ridiculously.  I’m far too sexy and modest to post those videos however.

The Skillet which is just down the block has some solid drinks and equally disturbing and crazy decorations as well.

I’d mount that…on my wall I mean…

huh

For burritos we went to El Rialto where we talked with a bartender about the place(he also is the bartender at a couple bars in the town so we ran into him again later).  Food was good and spicy and the tall drinks were very strong.

We also stopped into the old Plaza Hotel which is used in a ton of movies and the bartender also has some great stories of celebrities.  Actually all the bartenders and locals have stories and have been in at least a few films as extras.  This is a great place to get some good anecdotal tales.  Apparently Tommy Lee Jones is the worst and Patrick Swayze was the best.  Neither of those bits of information are at all surprising.

Also when I say we stopped by the Plaza Hotel I mean we came back 3 times to perfect a photo replicating a scene from No Country For Old Men.  I’m OK with the result.

It would be a fun day just going around the town and trying to replicate a number of the scenes from movies here.  Especially after a few of Borracho’s cocktails.  When Meow Wolf gets another exhibit doing that activity will be at the top of our list.