Old Man Gloom is coming
Welcome back to The Santa Fe Weekender — five handpicked things worth your weekend, no scrolling required. Somewhere across town, a fifty-foot figure of gloom is being built — and in a week the whole city will gather to set him on fire. Fiesta season is here. This weekend is the quiet before it, so we’ll help you get ready and point you to the last, best nights of summer while we wait.
The main thing
Get your Zozobra tickets — Old Man Gloom burns Friday, September 4. It’s not this weekend — it’s next Friday. But this is the week to act, and here’s why. Every year Santa Fe stuffs a towering marionette full of the year’s regrets — old love letters, divorce papers, bad paperwork, worse luck — gathers at Fort Marcy Park after dark, and burns him to the ground so the city can start fresh. This is the 102nd burning, and this year Old Man Gloom goes up as King George III — a Revolutionary “Spirit of ‘76” theme marking the country’s 250th. The reason it’s the main thing today: general admission is $30 online through September 3, then $40 at the gate. Buy now at burnzozobra.com. Gates open at 4 p.m., kids 10 and under are free with a ticketed adult, and note the clear-bag rule — no backpacks, purses, or coolers, only clear plastic. And Old Man Gloom is just the fuse: Fiesta de Santa Fe — its 314th — runs September 5 to 13, with mariachi, the Plaza markets, and the parades. Full Fiesta guide next Friday.
Eat
Tomasita’s, in the Railyard — red chile, frozen margaritas, and sopaipillas, a Santa Fe institution since 1974, these days filling the old Chile Line railroad depot. Loud, happy, open Sundays, and exactly the kind of New Mexican dinner the coming season calls for.
The Rooftop Cantina at Coyote Cafe, downtown on Water Street — margaritas and Southwestern small plates on an open-air roof, a fine warm-evening perch to watch the light go long over the Plaza rooftops.
Do
Catch the Santa Fe Opera before it goes dark for the year. This is the closing weekend of the 2026 season: Mozart’s The Magic Flute on Friday, and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on Saturday to bring the whole summer to a close. Curtain’s at eight, the sun sets straight through the open-air house mid-performance, and there won’t be another night like it until next July. Tickets at santafeopera.org — come early and tailgate in the lot like a local.
See
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, downtown on Johnson Street. If a monsoon afternoon rolls in, there’s no better place to wait it out than with the largest collection of O’Keeffe’s work anywhere — desert bones, black doorways, and those enormous flowers, a few minutes’ walk off the Plaza. The current show sets her paintings beside the Pueblo homelands that shaped them. Open daily, ten to five.
Also on
It’s green chile season. Late August into September is when the roasters fire up — that unmistakable smell of Hatch and Chimayó chile tumbling in the drum. Swing by the Santa Fe Farmers Market on Saturday morning (8 a.m. to 1 at the Railyard), buy a bag fresh off the roaster, and get it in your freezer before Fiesta — you’ll be glad of it all winter.
And looking ahead: clear next weekend. Zozobra on Friday, Fiesta all the week after. If you’ll want a hotel room or a dinner table during Fiesta, book it now — the whole city fills up.
That’s the weekend. If a friend would love it, forward it their way — they can subscribe at thesantafeweekender.com.
See you next Friday, The Santa Fe Weekender
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