With the demands of work, school, and adult life in general, setting aside time to read long-form stories is challenging. And if you collect articles on your browser, perhaps you’ve amassed an intimidating number of tabs by the end of the week.
To help you out, we’ve rounded up a collection of stories you should queue up this weekend:
1
Rolling Stone, Coyote Bros: How Hard-Partying College Kids Became Immigrant Smugglers
Max Bocanegra and Stephen Sluyter organized one of the largest smuggling rings in Texas. In the summer of 2012, the college students earned as much as $25,000 a week smuggling people across the U.S.-Mexico border. This Rolling Stone piece follows how they went from living large to having their operation crumble.
Read it here.
2
Pitchfork, The Next Revolución: Adventures in Modern Mexican Dance Music
In its latest Electric Fling column, Pitchfork explores Mexico’s underground dance scene through N.A.A.F.I., Demian Licht, and Comunité – a Mayan Riviera festival. The piece is separated into four sections, and puts “pioneering female producers, culture-mashing crews, and utopian vegan festivals” at the forefront.
Read it here.
3
LA Weekly, How a Korean-Colombian Restaurant Has Become a Hub for L.A.'s Underground Hip-Hop Scene
Los Angeles restaurant Escala serves pinto beans, plantains, Korean barbecue short ribs, and arepas, while music from artists like A Tribe Called Quest and Naughty by Nature blast from the speakers. The “eclectic blend of Asian, Latin and African flavors” is courtesy of Chris Oh, a Korean-born chef who grew up in between Colombia and L.A. LA Weekly explains how his restaurant become a hub for underground hip-hop in L.A.
Read it here.
4
The New Yorker, Mezcal Sunrise
31-year-old Bricia Lopez – who we recently featured in our Locals Only column –has built her brand around mezcal, which is why people even call her the Goddess Mayahuel – the Aztec deity of agave. The New Yorker wrote an in-depth profile on Lopez, who confidently pitched opening a mezcal bar at her father’s Guelaguetza restaurant. Her father didn’t know if people in the U.S. would embrace the distilled liquor native to Oaxaca.
Read it here.
5
Munchies, Coming to Terms with Mexican Feminism in the Kitchen
In this Munchies piece, Teresa Finney explains how seeing her grandmother reluctantly take kitchen duties shaped her views on cooking for a long time. However, when she neared 30 something changed. “What I once dismissed as a mere gender expectation–particularly that of a ‘good Mexican woman’–I instead understood as something I deeply enjoyed… ” she wrote. “Cooking stopped being something I felt I should reject out of loyalty to my grandmother, or in the often problematic name of mainstream (white) feminism.”
Read it here.