Our founder talks about our move to recycled glass bottles, reducing our carbon footprint, and the wonders of the natural world that moved him to take the necessary steps to make Ilegal Mezcal a greener company.
Ilegal Mezcal founder phoned HQ from Puerto Vallarta in high spirits. He wasn’t always this calm. At the start of the pandemic, as it did with most companies, global chain supply shortages impacted our business. Namely, the glass that makes our bottles. Most Western companies importing glass from Asia —including Ilegal, who works with a small glass broker in Oaxaca that facilitates the process — found themselves suddenly out of glass.
Rexer and COO Michelle Ivey called glass suppliers all over the Western Hemisphere from Canada down to Argentina to no avail. The world had run out of glass. Forced to think outside the box and running out of options, Rexer eventually found a solution within the Ilegal family and in an old process with Fusion y Formas, a recycled glass manufacturer in Guadalajara.
“I called Javi [Mateo], one of our mezcal makers at Los Javis, and I asked if he knew them — he makes a small brand, they make his bottles,” Rexer recalls. “I got their number, I called them up and said ‘I need a million bottles.’ The next day, I was on a plane to Guadalajara to tour their factory.”
Fusion y Formas, a fellow family company, found themselves struggling during the pandemic. The former glass supplier for Patrón, they use an old-school method of melting down collected glass to craft a beautiful, sustainable recycled glass. Finding themselves without a big customer as Ilegal found ourselves without glass proved to be the solution Rexer was seeking out — and better, it reduced our company’s carbon footprint.
“They’re one of those beautiful family businesses, everyone there is happy and treated well — not only do they deliver on time, but they deliver a beautiful bottle,” he says. “We’re trying to move the company as quickly as we can to do things as best we can from an environmental perspective. We also very much believe in working with other family businesses. Recycled glass costs more but is considerably better in terms of the environment and the quality of the glass: it has a slight sparkle to it, a different weight, a slight color when it picks up sunlight. It’s special.”
We spoke to our founder about Ilegal’s sustainability initiatives, the new recycled glass bottles we’re using, and what natural environments have inspired him to create a greener company — and what other business leaders can do to follow suit.
Following the global glass shortage, how did your partnership with Fusion y Formas, your new recycled glass supplier, come about?
They have collection points all over Guadalajara and parts of Jalisco where they collect glass. They gave me a tour of their glass factory and showed me the whole process of manufacturing bottles: how they melt it, where they get their bottle molds from, what the quality of the glass is like. At the table, the founder of the company’s son Andrés [Hernández Romo] told me “Pretend I’m Santa Claus and tell me what you want for Christmas.” I let him know our situation, how I needed to make a lot of bottles very quickly. I think our first order from them was 50,000 bottles every two weeks for a couple of weeks, and built up from there. We had a lot of laughs, we went out to dinner, I met the father — a lovely man — who told me how he first got involved with Patrón. I’m very happy that we’re doing something that’s recycled and to have become one of the larger customers of a family business that was struggling like ours.
maker that uses agave fibers extensively. We prepare these fibers and clean them up, and the artisans come pick up the pulp as a donation.
How have your travels through less metropolitan regions that are quickly losing green spaces— like Antigua in Guatemala, where Ilegal community partner El Patojismo is based— affected your worldview? Has it propelled your desire for sustainability efforts within Ilegal?
Politics and economics are interrelated to the environment, and when you live in a small country, you really begin to see things become much more. In an economy that runs on a relatively small budget, you would hope there were active recycling programs. You would hope the transportation system was not spewing out diesel all over the place, that there wasn’t pollution everywhere. Unfortunately, because there’s poverty, people need to pay less for things and businesses need to find a way to cut corners, choices that often impact the environment. It’s very much a vicious cycle: you have people becoming accustomed to not having recycling or good facilities for taking care of garbage, you get used to seeing it on the street. If there was a desire for people and businesses to be outside and be in a green space that is actually come to life, I think some of them will be successful in keeping those spaces beautiful.
Environmental policies are often cut when it seems they will slow down commerce — as you have shown, that’s not at all the case with Ilegal. What can other businesses do to go green in the face of the current economy and provide a sustainable future and business model?
The actual agave pulp is also being used in some creative ways! Can you elaborate on that?
So in the production process of mezcal, you end up with a fibrous mass of pulp that you need to do something with. People put some of it in bio digesters, or they neutralize it with limestone and then fertilizer. What we have been doing with it is taking it, mixing it with clay and sand, and making a brick out of it to then use in construction. We also work with an artisan paper
When I began Ilegal, I fell in love with parts of Oaxaca that were pristine. There was pride in that conservation, and I asked myself how you grow something and not destroy the thing you fell in love with in the first place. It’s important to keep that on the forefront, and really ask yourself as a company grows if you want to come back to a place that you fell in love with to find Coca-Cola bottles, holes, bags of chips, and pollution in its place. It’s important to build with partners and leave a space hopefully better than when you found it. Commerce, by its nature in this day and age, is far from carbon neutral. In one way or another, we are all polluting a little bit. We have to recognize that, figure out how we minimize our waste, and lead by example. You’re not going to succeed 100 percent in completely reducing your own footprint, but one needs to minimize being part of the problem and tend to your own garden as best as possible.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Santiago Matatlán - Oaxaca, México |
Photo Credit: Lindsay Wynn
The current state of the world, specifically the dire state of our natural habitats, has posed an array of challenges to those of us running businesses. From the highest rungs of the corporate ladder to individual entrepreneurs, we all have to do our part. We have to be real with our current situation rather than put commerce over human beings. The challenge is being able to sustain ourselves while acknowledging this truth. Without Mother Earth, there is no humanity. Without Mother Earth, there is no mezcal.
We’ve always made a product that puts the organic approach first. The drink we made our name on is made “sin prisa” — no rush, no hurry, just a great mezcal. We have made a commitment to quality, which means we take our time, we use artesanal methods, and we produce a small quantity at a time. This makes our mezcal truly special, and lessens environmental impact.
The plants that we use to make our mezcal are 100% cultivated sustainable Espadín agave, double-distilled in the Santiago Matatlan Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. We do not produce or export wild agave because the supply is limited. In fact, wild agave species in many regions are at risk from over-harvesting. In order to protect the agave and avoid having plants that are too genetically similar, our agave is planted using both seeds and rhizomes. This helps promote the strength of the plant against illnesses. 5% of the agave yield will be left to flower, allowing bats and hummingbirds to pollinate it.
Once the crop is ripe, our mezcal makers harvest the agave plant — which weighs between 40-100 kilos — with machetes and long palanca (crowbar). This is what gives our mezcal its sweet, agave-forward taste. The crop is then roasted for five to seven days in earthen ovens. After about a week, it’s crushed with a traditional horse drawn mill called a tahona. The batch then undergoes open-air fermentation with wild airborne yeast for another five to fourteen days and is distilled in 250-liter copper stills. Any leftover agave pulp from the process is donated to local builders and used to make biodegradable bricks and other eco-friendly materials such as paper. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the pulp’s potential.
By E.R. Pulgar“In the production process of mezcal, you end up with a fibrous mass of pulp that you need to do something with,” explains our founder John Rexer. “People put some of it in bio digesters, or they neutralize it with limestone and then fertilizer. What we have been doing with it is mixing it with clay and sand, and making a brick out of it to then use in construction. We also work with an artisan paper maker that uses agave fibers extensively. We prepare these fibers and clean them up, and the artisans come to pick up the pulp as a donation.“
We give just as much attention to the bottle as we do to the mezcal in it. When COVID-19 pandemic struck, the ensuing global glass shortage kick-started our sustainability initiatives as far as our bottles were concerned. Finding ourselves with nowhere to put the mezcal we make with such care, we were forced to pivot. This became our current partnership with Fusion y Formas, a recycled-glass manufacturer based in Jalisco, Mexico. Besides being the former glass maker for Patrón, they have a long history of helping liquor brands reduce their carbon footprint. Just like us, they were a small family company trying to get through the pandemic. Seeking a customer at the same time we were looking to buy turned out to be a match made in heaven.
They begin by collecting glass off the streets and at recycling facilities. After cleaning it up, the glass is compiled and compressed to create the raw material from which new bottles are produced. When that process is done, each of our beautiful recycled glass bottles is filled with one of our three mezcal expressions: Joven, Reposado, or Añejo. Then, we hand-cork, label, and number them. Along with our new process for bottles, we’re looking at a line of eco-friendly cups to reduce waste. As important as the mezcal itself is, the container is what ends up (hopefully) in a recycling bin, so it’s deeply important that they have the least environmental impact possible from creation to consumption to disposal.
“Recycled glass costs more but is considerably better in terms of the environment and the quality of the glass,” says Rexer about the partnership. “It has a slight sparkle to it,
a different weight, a slight color when it picks up sunlight. It’s special. I’m very happy that we’re doing something that’s recycled and to have become one of the larger customers of a family business that was struggling like ours.” We’re not the only ones taking environmental consciousness seriously — and choose our partners accordingly. Our events partner Forest Hills Stadium is committed to the goal of a carbon neutral lineup, eventually hoping to be carbon positive by 2022. Being climate positive in both our industries isn’t easy, but through their support of initiatives like carbon sequestration and wildlife protection project in Colorado that will neutralize more carbon than they will generate during the 2022 season, it’s clear that the first step is imagining a world of commerce and entertainment with less of an environmental impact. We all want to let loose and celebrate with a glass of mezcal or three, but we can’t do that if there’s no planet and if we don’t clean up afterward. It’s something we take a lot of pride in, and a tenet that our founder built the company on as he fell in love with the lush verdant natural environments he encountered on his travels through Antigua, Guatemala and Oaxaca.
“ When I began Ilegal, I fell in love with parts of Oaxaca that were pristine,” Rexer recalls. “There was pride in that conservation, and I asked myself how you grow something and not destroy the thing you fell in love with in the first place. It’s important to really ask yourself, as a company grows, if you want to come back to a place that you fell in love with and find pollution in its place. It’s important to build with partners and leave a space hopefully better than when you found it. Commerce, by its nature in this day and age, is far from carbon neutral. We have to recognize that, figure out how we minimize our waste, and lead by example. You’re not going to succeed 100 percent in completely reducing your own footprint, but one needs to minimize being part of the problem and tend to your own garden as best as possible. ”
From harvest to bottling, our 100% natural practices reflect our commitment to sustainability and biodiversity in the Oaxaca region. No artificial colors, yeasts, flavors, or additives: the only thing you taste when you get that first sip is agave, sun, smoke and time. Cheers to you for having good taste — and for caring about the beautiful planet that makes this all possible.
You’re not going to succeed 100 percent in completely reducing your own footprint, but one needs to minimize being part of the problem and tend to your own garden as best as possible.
JOHN REXER
Puede ser desalentador existir en un planeta que muere un poco todos los días por nuestra culpa. Es una tarea que requerirá que todos hagan su parte para corregir o al menos mitigar el daño mientras los líderes mundiales actúan — si es que lo harán. Cuando se trata de aquellos de nosotros que manejamos negocios, desde las alturas ejecutivas de la escala corporativa hasta los empresarios individuales, todos tenemos que hacer nuestra parte. Toca ser realistas con nuestra situación actual en lugar de anteponer el comercio sobre los seres humanos. El desafío es poder sostenernos mientras reconocemos esta verdad. Sin la Madre Tierra, no hay humanidad. Sin la Madre Tierra, no hay mezcal.
Siempre hemos hecho un producto que prioriza el enfoque orgánico. El alcohol con el que hicimos nuestro nombre se hace “sin prisa”: no hay apuro, no hay presión, sólo un mezcal chingón. Hemos hecho un compromiso de calidad, lo que significa que nos tomamos nuestro tiempo, usamos métodos artesanales y producimos una pequeña cantidad a la vez. Esto hace que nuestro mezcal sea realmente especial y disminuye el impacto ambiental.
Las plantas que utilizamos para hacer nuestro mezcal son 100% agave espadín cultivado sustentable. No producimos ni exportamos agave silvestre porque hay poca cantidad. De hecho, las especies de agave silvestre en muchas regiones están en riesgo de sobreexplotación.
Para proteger el agave y evitar tener plantas que sean demasiado similares genéticamente, nuestro agave se siembra usando semillas y rizomas. Esto ayuda a promover la fuerza de la planta contra las enfermedades. El 5% del rendimiento del agave se deja florecer, permitiendo que murciélagos y colibríes lo polinicen.
Once the crop is ripe, our mezcal makers harvest the agave plant — which weighs between 40100 kilos — with machetes and long palanca (crowbar). This is what gives our mezcal its sweet, agave-forward taste. The crop is then roasted for five to seven days in earthen ovens.
Después de aproximadamente una semana, se tritura con una tahona, un molino tradicional tirado por caballos. Luego, el lote se somete a una fermentación al aire libre con levadura silvestre transportada por el aire durante otros cinco a catorce días y se destila en alambiques de cobre de 250 litros. Cualquier pulpa de agave que sobre del proceso se dona a constructores locales y se utiliza para fabricar ladrillos biodegradables y otros materiales ecológicos, como papel. Solo hemos comenzado a arañar la superficie del potencial de la pulpa.
“En el proceso de producción del mezcal, terminas con una masa fi brosa de pulpa con la que necesitas hacer algo”, explica nuestro fundador John Rexer. “La gente pone algo en biodigestores, o lo neutralizan con piedra caliza y luego con fertilizante. Lo que hemos estado haciendo con la pulpa es mezclarla con arcilla y arena, y hacer ladrillos para usar en construcción. También trabajamos con una papelera artesanal que utiliza extensivamente las fi bras de agave. Las preparamos, las limpiamos, y los artesanos vienen a recoger la pulpa como una donación.”
Le prestamos la misma atención a la botella como al mezcal que contiene. Cuando llegó el COVID, la consiguiente escasez mundial de vidrio puso en marcha nuestras iniciativas de sostenibilidad en lo que respecta a nuestras botellas. Al encontrarnos sin dónde poner el mezcal que hacemos con tanto amor, nos vimos obligados a cambiar de dirección. Esta se convirtió en nuestra afi liación actual con Fusion y Formas, un fabricante de vidrio reciclado con sede en Guadalajara. Además de ser la fabricante de vidrio de la marca de tequila Patrón por varios años, tienen una larga historia de ayudar a empresas licoreras exitosas a reducir su huella de carbono. Además, son una pequeña empresa familiar que quería echar para delante después de los efectos de la intentaba superar la pandemia al igual que nosotros. Ellos necesitaban un cliente cuando nosotros buscábamos vidrio — resultó ser una combinación perfecta.
El proceso comienza recolectando vidrio de la calle y en centros de reciclaje. Después de limpiarlo, lo compilan y lo comprimen para crear la materia prima a partir de la cual se producen las nuevas botellas. Cuando finaliza ese proceso, cada una de nuestras hermosas botellas de vidrio reciclado se llena con mezcal que se ha estado sentando en los barriles que horneamos a mano y obtenemos de nuestro productor de barriles Kelvin Cooperage. Luego, los taponamos, etiquetamos y numeramos a mano. Además del nuevo proceso de nuestras botellas, estamos trabajando en una línea de vasos ecológicos para reducir el desperdicio. Tan importante como es el mezcal en sí, el contenedor es lo que termina (con suerte) en el reciclaje, por lo que es muy importante que tengan el menor impacto ambiental posible desde la creación hasta el consumo y la eliminación.
“El vidrio reciclado cuesta más, pero es considerablemente mejor para el medio ambiente y la calidad del vidrio”, dice Rexer
sobre la asociación con Fusion y Formas. “Brilla de una manera específica, un peso diferente, un color sutil cuando capta la luz del sol. Es especial. Estoy muy contento de que estemos haciendo algo reciclado y de habernos convertido en uno de los clientes más grandes de una empresa familiar que estaba pasando por dificultades como nosotros”.
No somos los únicos que nos tomamos esto en serio. Nuestro socio de eventos Forest Hills Stadium está comprometido al objetivo de una alineación neutral en carbono, con la esperanza de ser carbono positivo para el 2022. Ser positivo para el clima en nuestras dos industrias no es fácil, pero a través de su apoyo a iniciativas como el secuestro de carbono y la protección de la vida silvestre proyecto en Colorado que neutralizará más carbono del que generará durante la temporada 2022, está claro que el primer paso es imaginar un mundo de comercio y entretenimiento con menos impacto ambiental. La gente quiere beber y festejar, pero no podemos hacerlo si no hay planeta y si no limpiamos después de la fiesta. Es algo de lo que nos enorgullecemos mucho, y un principio sobre el que nuestro fundador construyó la empresa cuando se enamoró de los entornos naturales exuberantes y verdes que encontró en sus viajes por Antigua y Oaxaca.
“Cuando funde Ilegal, me enamoré de partes de Oaxaca que eran prístinas”, recuerda Rexer. “Había orgullo en esa conservación, y me preguntaba a mi mismo cómo cultivar algo y no destruir aquello de lo que me enamoré. Es importante preguntarse realmente, a medida que crece una empresa, si uno desea volver a un lugar del que se enamoró y encontrar contaminación en su lugar. Es importante construir con socios y dejar un espacio mejor que cuando lo encontraste. El comercio, por su naturaleza hoy en día, está lejos de ser neutral en carbono. Tenemos que reconocer eso, descubrir cómo minimizamos nuestros desechos y predicar con el ejemplo. No vas a tener un éxito del 100 por ciento en reducir por completo tu propia huella, pero uno debe minimizar ser parte del problema y cuidar su propio jardín lo mejor posible”.
Desde la cosecha hasta embotellar, nuestras prácticas 100% naturales reflejan nuestro compromiso con la sustentabilidad y la biodiversidad en la región de Oaxaca. No hay colorantes, levaduras, sabores ni aditivos artificiales — lo único que saboreas cuando tomas ese primer sorbo es agave, sol, humo y tiempo. !Salud! A tu buen gusto, y por ser alguien que se preocupa por el hermoso planeta que hace que todo esto sea posible.
The fourth-generation mezcaleros who craft Ilegal use only perfectly ripe Espadín agave, double distilled in Oaxaca, Mexico. Our 100% Espadín Agave (Angustifolia Haw) is harvested by hand and machete.
Once crushed, the roasted agave is transferred into pine vats for natural fermentation. This process takes approximately 7-10 days.
Fermented agave is twice distilled in copper pots and becomes mezcal. Our mezcal is then bottled as Joven, or put in barrels to age to a Reposado or Añejo.
Mezcal to be aged is placed in barrels sourced from Kelvin Cooperage.
maximón, the Guatemalan Patron Saint of Vices, is the embodiment of the twosided coin of good and evil that is humanity, somewhere between deity and trickster, friend and fiend. Enter any Ilegal space and you’ll find yourself in front of a nook replete with flowers, cigars, sweets, money and shots of mezcal left for him in reverence.
These photos were taken on 10/28/22, Maximón’s birthday, which coincides with the Catholic feasts of St. Simon and St. Jude. The annual celebration consists of music, food, ritual burnings, and a celebration in the town of San Andrés Itzapa.
Nostalgia in a glass, inspired by Mercedes Castro’s Mexican anthem
• 1.5 oz Ilegal Mezcal Joven
• 0.5 oz lime
• 0.75 oz agave nectar
• 1.5 oz grapefruit
• 2 oz IPA beer
Add all ingredients to tin and whip. Shake with 2 ice cubes and dump into a beer glass with salt rim and fill with ice. Garnish with grapefruit peel.
A cool and refreshing play off of the Mexican agua fresca
• 2 oz Ilegal Mezcal Reposado
• 2 oz horchata (Mexican rice milk)
• ¼ oz Licor 43
• ½ oz agave nectar
• 1 dash Fee Brothers Old Fashioned Bitters
• Dash cinnamon
Add all ingredients to a blender with 2 cups of ice and blend until smooth. Pour contents into a collins glass and garnish with cinnamon.
A balanced cocktail inspired by the rich and savory flavors of traditional tacos al pastor
• 2 oz Ilegal Mezcal Joven
• 1 oz Achiote-infused pineapple juice*
• 1 oz lime juice
• 0.5 oz agave nectar
• Tortilla salt rim**
*Achiote-infused pineapple juice: Add to 1 qt pineapple juice 3.5 oz Achiote paste and stir until dissolved.
**Tortilla salt: Add 1 cup of corn nuts to a blender and blend until the corn nuts are the consistency of course sea salt. Then mix into 5 cups of salt.
Add all ingredients to a shaker and shake vigorously until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass rimmed with tortilla salt with fresh ice. Garnish with a pineapple slice.
Learn about how our national partner is aiming to make shows this summer as environmentally friendly as possible.
Summer in New York City for music lovers means taking the F Train on the orange line all the way out to Forest Hills-71 Ave. Getting off the train, one is greeted by the leafy neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens and the sound of nearby live music. New York’s widest spanning borough is home to Forest Hills Stadium, one of the city’s largest music venues and one of Ilegal Mezcal’s longest standing national partners. The horseshoe-shaped stadium is a behemoth of live music, bringing a one-of-akind vibe along with our signature Joven and Reposado mezcal cocktails to hundreds of thousands of concert goers every year. Forest Hills Stadium and Ilegal have a lot in common beyond good taste in premium agave — more importantly, we both value and commit to a sustainable future.
“The team at Ilegal really ‘gets it’,” says Forest Hills’ General Manager Jason Brandt. “They know how to be fun and edgy, while also being responsible. They jumped at the opportunity to partner with Small Axe, a hot sauce company that supports sustainable community gardens throughout the country by supplying them with the seeds to bring in a pepper harvest. Together, the three of us developed a couple of spicy cocktails to be sold only at the stadium, and both partners pursued a relationship beyond us. As for us, we now grow peppers on-site and other garnishes for our cocktail program, which is about as sustainable as you can get.”
Forest Hills’ love for the Earth goes beyond growing peppers in the garden, pouring our sustainably-crafted mezcal, or their partnerships with Planet Reimagined’s environmental research initiatives and green-conscious music industry organization REVERB, who helps track their carbon footprint. The summer 2023 season at Forest Hills Stadium has an ambitious goal: to be carbon neutral, and move toward climate positivity. Beyond 2023, they are committed to making shows as environmentally friendly as possible and offsetting their impact and waste.
“We’ve always had an environmental focus here, but we really started to make it a priority after we hosted a Jack Johnson show [and] his team advanced an ‘Eco Rider’ to us,” recalls Brandt. “We found that while we were doing many of the things they asked for, there was more that could be done, and they had just given us a blueprint on how to take the extra step. We decided then that any improvements
By E.R. Pulgarwe would make for that show, we would keep on as policy going forward. We’ve been trying to add and improve every season since.”
A key part of these improvements has been the venue’s conscious effort to offset carbon emissions. Forest Hills supports a conservation project at Medford Spring Grassland Conservation in Colorado. The initiative aims to significantly neutralize any carbon emission generated during the summer 2023 season. If all goes according to plan, REVERB’s calculations — based on the venue’s square footage, predicted fan and employee travel to and from shows, electric and gasoline usage, waste created, and other considerations — predict Forest Hills Stadium will offset a total of 2,119 tonnes of CO2e while protecting 6,900 acres of land from being developed.
venue’s efforts. “We are lucky to be incredibly well served by the MTA and the LIRR, so we work to promote public transit in pre-event communications. Once onsite, we try to make it as easy as possible to participate. We make sure our vendors are using the right products and that we are buying post-consumer recycled products. We utilize a single stream recycling program to simplify the process, and we’ve set up a system in which we can recover all the cans and other recyclables that are generated onsite and get them back into the recycling stream. Fans will probably notice the free water stations (bring your own reusable bottle or pick one up here), the solar phone chargers, and the recycling bins throughout the venue, and can participate in various contests and other fundraising initiatives. That is all straightforward stuff that should just be the norm.”
An approach to environmental sustainability in live music is a pre-eminent concern as our climate gets hotter each year. Forest Hills Stadium’s plan for climate neutrality is centered in plans to eliminate waste while creating efficiency and minimizing carbon output. Running a green-conscious live music space entails a lot of care, seeing where carbon sources are and seeking to lessen and, eventually, eradicate them.
Plans and predictions aside, the Forest Hills team maintains that the big picture is possible through small change — and they’ve already gotten started. Forest Hills Stadium is introducing twenty-eight upcycled shipping containers throughout backstage and frontof-house, LED and energy-efficient fluorescent lighting onstage and in public spaces, free drinking water refill stations, solar-powered phone charging stations, shore power to power artist’s production needs while eliminating air pollution, and a comprehensive recycling program to divert recyclable materials from landfills.
“We try to show that being eco-conscious is as much about small steps that we can all do to help, instead of grand gestures or changes to the concert experience,” says Brandt of the
“Each season we further refine the model and last season we actually were able to offset more than we created, thus becoming ‘Climate Positive’,” says Brandt. “[To become climate positive, venues need to] buy post-consumer recycled products. Recycling is a coin with 2 sides. Not only do we need to get as much material as possible into the recycling stream and out of landfills, we also need to help create the demand for recycled things by buying recycled products. If a healthy marketplace exists, recycling can be truly effective. It might be a little pricier, but it’s worth it.”
The Forest Hills Stadium team has a big season ahead, with summer headliners including giants of their respective genres like The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Maggie Rogers, and Willie Nelson. Still, Brandt maintains he’s most looking forward to working with the people who make the show possible behind-the-scenes: “We get a chance to build a community of great seasonal employees, and to work with the amazing folks out on the road making the tours happen,” he says.
JESSE WILLIAMS
DANIEL ARNOLD
ZOE-LISTER JONES
MARTIN REV (SUICIDE)
HAMILTON LEITHAUSER
NEV SCHULMAN
TCHOTCHKE
“YOU’RE NOT ALONE IN THE NIGHTTIME...”
Read Part I - II: ilegalmezcal.com/la-cuadra
...Maybe by then I could refine my approach. Or maybe she’d be ready for me and just knock me on my ass with a stiff-arm. Either way, I had to keep moving myself. Little Feet was set to hit the court at Basketball City in thirteen minutes.
L ET it be known that the absence of a strong sense of time is one of my congenital defects and, over the years, it has surely contributed to my paucity of legal tender. Where some of our brothers and sisters might have cleft pallets or a clubbed feet, I have an internal clock set to cuckoo. I liked to think of it more as twisted optimism, a belief that the laws of the time-pace continuum will bend specifically for me. They never do.
Moreover, even when I make every attempt to be punctual, the universe conspires against me: a flat tire for instance, maybe a misplaced piece of paper where I had scribbled an address, a scintillating conversation with a homeless person on the street, or perhaps the prospect of getting a phone number of an attractive woman on the checkout line at the grocery store. You name it, shit just always gets in the way of me being on time. Back when I was living in that Soho loft, I even went so far as saying affirmations every morning for twenty one days. The affirmation was this: “To be on time you have to be early. Today I will be early.”
It did not work. Nothing did.
My chronic tardiness exasperated friends who I often left waiting outside movie theatres, or sitting hungrily in restaurants. So it was nothing out of the ordinary to arrive at Basketball City drenched in sweat, twenty minutes late, having missed an opportunity to catch Little Feet in conversation before he was lost in a sea of other basketball players. I’d have to improvise again.
Basketball City was different than the sun-dappled path encircling the reservoir
of Central Park. At the park there were wispy, lovely women and a gentle breeze. Here were the sounds of basketball shoes squeaking on hardwood, virile grunts, boinging fiberglass backboards. The air smelled of rubber and gym sweat. Again I was beset with the dilemma of how to make my approach, only this time with the very real possibility of getting my ass kicked. To say the least, I was feeling excessively white and non-muscular. I felt as if I opened my mouth to speak, some high-pitched noise would come out, as though I had just hit puberty.
“Get with it John,” I said to myself. “Just play the part, brace up. Rent is coming due.”
I threw my clipboard and backpack under a folding chair and rolled up my shirtsleeves. I folded my arms and scanned the many basketball courts, all with practice sessions taking place. I walked along the perimeters of the courts, pacing up and down as I had seen coaches do on TV. Every so often I nodded my head in approval of a basket made by someone hitting a lay-up or jump shot. I clapped aggressively for three beats as the players ran past. I rubbed my chin with my forefinger and thumb as though I was appraising their talent.
In short, I was only fooling myself, but that was good enough.
As I did this, I scanned each court for something beyond the usual drills of lay-ups and free throws. Then, at last, I saw him one court down — Little Feet. From a distance, I knew it was him because there was a crowd on the sidelines and cameras were clicking. There were photographers with tripods and those bent on one knee, snapping, snapping, snapping. There was a heavyset woman with gold chains around her neck in a powder blue tracksuit. There was another woman standing beside her, perhaps her sister, wearing a pink track suit. There were also two tall white men, with slicked back hair in expensive suits. But most importantly there was the uptown wunderkind, a street-baller from the Bronx, his black basketball shorts hanging off
him so you could see six inches of boxer shorts. When he turned, I saw his face flashing a grill of gold teeth. His body, even standing still, seemed to defied gravity. Then the crowd parted for an instant and I looked down. Little Feet.
A whistle blew and he headed to the court. As I watched him play, I could see his style was clearly unorthodox, effective but unpolished. There was contempt and hostility in his movements, his elbows looking like they wanted to nail someone in the eye socket while his hands deftly dribbled the ball. He was not tall for a basketball player, about 6’3”, but it did not matter. He threw shots from the top of the key and swoosh! He took a couple more long jump shots from near the sidelines, again swoosh, swoosh. A much taller player jumped on the court to go one-on-one against him. Little Feet made a quick steal, ran circles around the taller player, then made a head fake that looked like a boxer dodging punches, pivoted, made a drive and then flew through the air and did a backwards dunk. The backboard vibrated, the rim grinned. On the sideline, jaws dropped.
Little Feet looked down at the floor, threw a shoulder into the solar plexus of the taller player as he passed and moved down court with a swager.
As the game continued, my eyes were torn between different parts of his anatomy. My job was to look at feet, but the fierce beauty with which he played had my eyes caroming in my head. It was like watching a compact lion attacking lumbering, defenseless elephants. I forced myself to focus. Little Feet’s sneakers were last year’s Nike Air Jordans.
I watched in awe for another twenty minutes until the pick-up game ended. The tall white men in suits talked to Little Feet, patted him on the shoulder and shook his hand. Someone brought him a towel, someone else a bottle of Gatorade; more photos were snapped and then Little Feet walked toward the women in tracksuits. Now or never, I thought.
JOHN REXER was the Founder and Co-Publisher of La Cuadra Magazine (2005-2015), which was produced in Antigua, Guatemala. The Part Time Stories were serialized in La Cuadra, and chronicled the adventures and misadventures of the years when he made a living by taking whatever job came his way. Here are some of those stories.Pictured: John Rexer and Mike Tallon
I elbowed my way through the throng, and as doing so it occurred to me that every segment of society has its fawning class, its hangers-on, its groupies, parasites and pilot fi sh — thosewho are there for the free ride and hoping some of the money and glitter of talent clings to them simply because of proximity. In that sense, I too was a pilot fi sh, one hoping to help someone else capitalize on a physical anomaly attached to exceptional athleticism.
I made my way directly in front of Little Feet and stuck out my hand. “My name is John Rexer and I represent Nike.”
The two women in tracksuits pushed their way between us. The one in blue said, “You talk to us, not him. We’re his managers.” Her tone was menacing. Little Feet smiled a gold smile that had fuck you written all over it. I reeled off a quick explanation and got the phrase “$3,000” in several times. I said that he’d have to come to the ad agency for the photo shoot, after which he’d get paid. I gave his managers the address in Tribeca and the time of the shoot. The managers leaned in and consulted together, then with Little Feet. The manager in pink then turned to me and asked, “What’s that address, again?”
I told them again. The conferred together again. After a few minutes they broke their huddle and the manager in blue said, “Aiight. Deal.”
I presented them with papers to sign, they gave me their phone numbers and an address where they could be reached. I asked if I could snap a few test photos. That was also aiight. Before they left the court, we reconfirmed, again, the time and place for Little Feet’s shoot. Walking past me, Little Feet patted me on the head, smiled and showed me that gold.
Score! And the big fi sh, too! One down. I was ecstatic. Flush with success and false confidence, I hopped the subway across and uptown to Asphalt Green to check out more female runners. To my surprise I was quickly able to find two women who fit the bill and were more than flattered to be considered model material. What a day! Damn, I was good.
I hopped the subway to Little Italy and met Amy at the bar. “You’re late, but earlier than usual,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, I took a sip of her beer. “But I had a great day. I got a basketball player and two runners. It didn’t start off that well but it sure ended well. How’d you make out?”
“Amazing. I found the most gorgeous man in the world,” she said. “Gorgeous. Definitely one they can build the shoot around. He’s from Portugal, a cross-country runner who went to college at NYU. And, I mean, he’s just . . . beautiful. Olive skin. Sleek, jet-black hair with a face that could have been minted on some ancient coin. I scouted every sports store I could think of and then, just when I was about to leave Paragon, I saw him looking at running shoes in the women’s section. We had coffee together. He doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going out after the shoot is over. Look at this photo.
She passed me a Polaroid. He was indeed gorgeous, almost impossibly prett y, with gentle eyes and a physique that you could tell was made of some strange alloy that God was testing out on a fortunate few.
“He’s perfect,” I said.
f OR the next few days we continued
our search and by the middle of the following week, between the three of us, we had succeed in finding an assortment sinewy creatures whose feet would fit the absurdly small prototype shoes for Nike. Shauna seemed to have a conjured many of them from somewhere between her tarot deck and Ouija board. They just materialized.
Also during that time, the rats in the apartment grew more brazen. They were like gangs on street corners. They had us outnumbered and they knew it. Shauna adopted a mangy cat that lapped milk in a saucer and sat on the tattered couch. It had no interest in the work it had been brought in to do. It was completely worthless. If I opened a novel and began to read, the cat purred at a volume that made me want to take a bat to its head. If a rat ran by the couch the cat froze, as if not to be seen. Yet, if I went to move it’s lazy ass from the couch, it clawed me and hissed.
My tilted and toxic room was no refuge. Scattered about the floor were rattraps that Shauna had set and reset, even when I moved them to the hallway. Did Shauna intend them for me, was she hoping I lost a toe? Was she trying to drive me from the loft and not the rats? If you live in New York City and have roommates, these kinds of paranoid thoughts are far from uncommon. Leading up to the shoot, I slept little and with one eye open.
t HURSDAY arrived and we had a meeting scheduled at the ad agency to share with them our stable of dainty-hoofed athletes. The agency was on the second floor of a repurposed factory building in Tribeca. We walked into the office and Amy tugged my shirtsleeve. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I think they must do their recruiting in kindergartens.”
I looked around and understood what she was saying. The office was a playroom: beanbag chairs, pinball machines, 20-something creative types zipping by on skateboards with their lap-tops in their hands, videos were playing in conference rooms, not a suit or tie to be found, bowls of candy and fruit on coffee tables made from surf boards. Everyone was dressed in retro something or other, carefully selected, carefully tattered, seemingly used and vintage, but too clean and appointed. Everyone doing their best to attract attention to themselves while effecting a could-not-care-less attitude.
How the fuck do people get jobs like this, I wondered. It seemed I had been born too early to fit in here, and too late to fit in anywhere else in the job market, which, truth be told, was fine by me. At the end of the day, I liked all the odd jobs. At the end of the day, I liked most of my odd jobs and relished my insecurity and where it landed me. But wow! This romper-room office was wired with the latest in Apple computers of every size. It was as though Steve Jobs had backed a sleigh to the loading dock and played Santa Claus. As we were led to a conference room, the back of my skull registered a knot of combined envy and disgust.
The art director sat us down and we fanned out our photos. He looked as though he was not old enough to shave, but he was elated with the photos and potential models we had brought him, particularly Little Feet and the beautiful Portuguese runner. That was all that mattered. He complim-ented us, said je looked forward to working with us in the future. He gave us yo-yos with the company logo on them as gifts. He reconfirmed the dates of the photo shoots and most importantly, he wrote Shauna a check. That meant I was to be paid! We hit the street of Tribeca at a run on our way to an afternoon drink. We had a wonderful long weekend.
Then the first tiny shoe dropped.
it was Monday and I had just tossed several full rattraps into the dumpster down the street.
I was entering the loft when Shauna grabbed my arm and said, “Little Feet, he fucked us.” “What?”
“We have to get to the agency now. They want to talk to us. Well, they want to talk to you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“All the computers at the agency were stolen, they say Little Feet did it with a couple of accomplices.
We ran from Soho to the ad agency in Tribeca. The playroom looked like all the children had thrown a tantrum. The surfboard coffee tables were broken, beanbags were slit and there was not a computer in sight.
Police were taking reports. The art director and one of the cops took us back into the conference room to show us the security camera footage. In grainy black and white, three figures entered in ski masks around four in the morning. Two appeared to be large women, the third was a male of about six foot three. Though you couldn’t see their faces, the male intruder had, of course, disproportionately tiny feet.
It really was almost comical. Tiny feet and tearing up the beanbag chairs. Tiny feet and smashing tables. Tiny feet and stuffing laptops into a large backpack. I felt guilty for something I had not done. I hung my head and gave the police all the information I had about their whereabouts.
Shauna again must have contacted the beyond, because she magically smoothed things over. The agency fortunately had everything on their computers triple backed up somewhere off site, and Shauna found another basketball player with tiny feet in two days. The Nike ad campaign shoot was only going to be delayed briefly.
On the day of the shoot, when all was in the clear, Amy and I decided to celebrate. We were looking forward to a day off , hitting a few galleries, drinking their free wine and eating their free cheese if they were located far enough away from the Gourmet Garage with the epic rat infestation. Then we’d spend an evening at the Film Forum. It was more or less a tradition.
As far as I was concerned, all was wrapped up. Despite the looting of the office everything else had gone smoothly. We had accomplished the impossible again. But more importantly, it was a quest that temporarily erased from my mind the painful, biting questions of an itinerant life: Who am I? Who should I be? What am I doing with my life? Part time jobs like this one were a way to silence the noise in my head, but only for an absurd few days at a time. Still, today was a day off and it was treasured.
As per usual I was running late. When I arrived at the café, Amy was already sitting at a table drinking coffee. I smiled and waved then walked to the counter and ordered myself a triple espresso, a fresh squeezed orange juice, and a chocolate almond croissant. I was feeling rich, flush with some cash, on top of the world — though in reality, after I paid rent I had about $160 to my name. I took a seat across from Amy.
“A day of play?” I said.
Amy said nothing. She just stared at me.
Her quizzical face was blank, like there had been a momentary short circuit. Her normally piercing eyes were flat. She began to say something, but paused.
“You alright?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s been a long morning. Where have you been?”
“I got up early and took a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Sorry I’m late.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, while you were taking your morning stroll, I got a call from Shauna. She’s at the ad agency. My runner — the most beautiful man in the world — he didn’t show up for the shoot.”
“Did you call him?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Well . . .” She slid that day’s New York Post across the table. “My runner will definitely not be showing up for the shoot.
I took the paper. It was folded back to page three. On it was a photograph of the gorgeous Portuguese runner, but he was in handcuff s, surrounded by New York’s Finest. The headline read:
I read the first paragraph:
In a tragic case of a date gone wrong, a Bronx man committed murder last night after he found out the woman he took home from the bar was actually a man. Fernando Santos, who admitted to drinking heavily last evening, said he went into a rage when he discovered the “woman” he took home was not what he’d call a real lady. In an on-the-spot confession, Santos told police that did not intend to kill anyone and immediately called 911 after the act, requesting an ambulance. When the police arrived, he turned himself in peacefully.
I took a sip of my espresso and looked up at Amy again. Her face was still blank, except for a hint of a sardonic smile at the edge of her tightly closed lips. The check, after all, had cleared. I was very hungry and wanted to take a bite of my almond croissant, but thought better of it.
Impossible,” I said. “What are the odds?” A smile now twisted across Amy’s face, but her lips were still tightly clenched. I tried to think of something to say. The pause was too pregnant.
“Do you want to go to the loft and count the dead rats that we caught last night?” I ventured feebly. I was, after all, becoming prett y handy with a rat trap. She was only slightly amused.
As we sat in silence, I wondered if there was a direct correlation between abnormally small feet and criminality. Had anyone ever done such a study? Always thinking how I would make my next dime, I wondered if I could draft a grant proposal and get money to do such research; I did have two case studies, in a manner of speaking. It was either that, or maybe becoming a rat rustler.
Amy looked at me, slightly nervously, and said, “Wait. What are you thinking?”
“Oh . . . nothing,” I said.
I took a sip of my espresso and glanced about the café. I wondered about the other conversations people were having at the other tables.
“Whatever it is, I’m in,” Amy replied...
This Earth Day, Ilegal Mezcal hosted more than 80 folks (and lots of dogs) at our headquarters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to celebrate the planet. To kick the spring off right, we partnered with several local organizations: by the end of the day, Yaro Studio had led a wildflower seed bombing of the neighborhood, Julie from Fear Less Grrl conducted a self-defense demonstration, we raffled self-watering pots from Greenery Unlimited and Ilegal picnic packs full of merch, and we had raised $950 for Java Street Community Garden.
For us, the highlight of the day was the launch of our new cork recycling program at HQ. The initiative opens our space as a drop-off location to receive used cork from our neighbors every weekend. Ilegal HQ invites locals to drop off cork from spirit and wine bottles, bulletin boards, wall tiles, and more. Collected cork is then shipped to a processing facility via a carbon-neutral shipping program where it is repurposed into shoe soles for the shoe company SOLE. Eventually, we want to be able to send shoes to our palenque workers in Oaxaca, make upcycled cork turntable covers for our music program and available on our online store, and expand the program from our headquarters into other community gardens in the city and eventually into a national effort with our partners across the U.S.
Ilegal is no stranger to the benefits of cork, both for the environment and for storing our mezcals. We use Portuguese cork to cap all of our bottles, which allows the mezcal to breathe and age better. Cork naturally absorbs CO2, a greenhouse gas that causes global climate change. Helping cork trees grow means investing in a more carbon-neutral future: since cork trees need to absorb more CO2 to grow bark, harvesting it boosts carbon consumption by up to five times.
For each ton of cork harvested, a cork forest absorbs an average of 55 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore, a single cork represents 55 times its own weight in carbon sequestered. Cork oak trees in Portugal alone help offset 10 million tons of carbon every year. We are proud of the fact that by treating our carefully-made mezcal with all the respect it deserves, we are helping care for the earth where it is grown.
As the sun set on April 22nd, we had raised necessary funds to put towards Java Street’s community beds for repairs, soil, and landscaping fabric so Greenpoint residents could pick herbs for years to come — because Earth Day is every day. We are committed to respecting and protecting our planet within our local communities and within our greater organization around the world, from the Portuguese forests where our cork grows to Oaxaca where our mezcal is slowroasted before you taste it. No Earth, no mezcal.
JOVEN (Un-aged)
Full bodied agave flavor. Light smoke, lingering heat. Ideal for cocktails or perfect on its own.
Awarded Double Platinum by the ASCoT Awards.
REPOSADO
(Aged to taste for 6 months, using a combo of new and used American oak, medium char barrels.)
Velvety throughout. An exceptional drinking mezcal. Named Best Reposado for 2023 by Esquire.
ILEGAL AÑEJO
(Aged to taste for 13 months, using a combo of new and used American oak, medium char barrels.)
A gorgeous spirit rivaling the world’s finest scotches and cognacs. Rounded. Full. Rich. Yet untamed. “Best of the Best” - Best Aged Mezcal, year over year at the Tequila.net Awards.
ILEGAL 7 YEAR AÑEJO
(Aged for over seven years in 35 barrels of French Oak.)
Exceptionally smooth and especially rare. Awarded 96 points by Wine Enthusiast, and named Agave Spirit of 2022 by Bloomberg.
Mezcals have been aged since the 1700s, in wood barrrels, and glass and clay containers, often in small batches and saved for special celebrations.
Ilegal helped introduce the world to aged mezcal with our Reposado and Añejo expressions. Our aged mezcals are rested in American oak, medium char barrels sourced from Kelvin Cooperage. Each lot of Ilegal Reposado is aged to taste for 6 months; Ilegal Añejo is aged to taste 13 months.
In 2022, we introduced our 7 Year Añejo Mezcal. Aged in just 35 French Oak barrels, this expression further expands our showcasing of barrel aged innovation and artisanal craft.
Around 2004, John Rexer began smuggling mezcal from Oaxaca, Mexico to Café No Sé, his clandestine bar and music hub in Antigua, Guatemala. The mezcal became popular very quickly. In 2006, John created the brand Ilegal, originally just to supply the bar. On the back of each bottle of Ilegal you will find it says “Originally produced for: Café No Sé, Mezcal Bar.”
Ilegal Mezcal has a beautifully balanced profi le, with a mouthful of agave and a hint of smoke. Handcrafted in small batches by fourth-generation mezcaleros, our Joven, Reposado, and Añejo mezcals are all made with perfectly ripe, sustainable Espadín agave, double distilled in the Santiago Matatlán Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. 100% natural, Ilegal Mezcal uses no artificial colors, yeasts, flavors, or additives. Our practices reflect our commitment to sustainability & biodiversity in the Oaxaca region. Commitment to quality is apparent in every step of our process, from harvest to first sip.
