Fabulous Marfa Regresses to a Trivial Forgotten Desert Town

Rise and Fall of Marfa’s Mythic Status

The first time I heard the name Marfa was four years ago. A young colleague did an article for our internal monthly newsletter and mentioned a weekend in Marfa Texas, the new hyped art hub in West Texas. Back then I did not realize how far Marfa is from Houston and how small Marfa is in terms of population (about 2000) and physical size. The city itself consists of just a few city blocks.

Instagram snapshots have helped Marfa to quickly rise to this mythic status. You see all kinds of peoples’ posing in front of the art installation of Prada Store, the smallest Target in the world, and the movie site of Giant…I knew in theory that all these art displays are a few miles away from each other, but once I was in Marfa, I was dumbfounded finding out how far away all these hot spots were in different directions from Marfa’s city center. I guess it was the very concept of “snuggling art in a vast expanse of the desert”. Art is part of the landscape. The broad nature is the canvas of the compositions.

Instagram snapshots have also amplified the food trucks in Marfa, which captured my husband’s imagination. After our visit to Alpine and Fort Davis, we arrived in Marfa around 3:00 pm on Saturday, September 26, 2020. I was beyond hungry, so much so I was not hungry anymore.

Immediately upon arrival in the city center on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, we did see some pretty girls posing for their Instagram photos. It was so obvious! But our mind was on finding the food trucks. We went everywhere, literally, but did not find any! We saw two or three restaurants but my mechanical husband insisted on looking for food trucks. Eventually, he gave up. A pizza place looked good and he wanted to order pizza now. I was frustrated during this whole process already in now 95-degree weather, so I told him that I only wanted an ice cream bar.

Skip the pizza!

“Good idea! That is what I want too! Skip the pizza!” My husband was agreeable finally, after an all day’s arm wrestling about having lunch in Marfa from a food truck.

Marfa, before the pandemic, could have been once a booming artsy hub with creative works of art under starry desert night skies mixed with the primitive landscape…however, this September, after 6 months of the ongoing pandemic, we found it deserted, far and with no food trucks anywhere around, but there were still Instagram girls and their snapshots.

I will write about our trip from Marathon, Texas to Del Rio, Texas and our visit to the original saloon of Judge Roy Bean in my next article.

Until next time, please take care!