In bringing back our feature, “Who’s At Ballroom Marfa This Week?”, I got to speak to Brooke Hampshire, Rebecca Carroll, Lizzy Méndez and Melissa Repko on a busy Saturday afternoon this Memorial Day weekend. The four friends from Dallas were on a tour of Far West Texas, and stopped by Ballroom to check out Sound Speed Marker on their way to Prada Marfa, Big Bend National Park, and beyond. Despite spending only two nights in town, these gals were able to regale me with a bunch of “only-in-Marfa” stories.

Ballroom Marfa: Why did you want to come to Marfa?
Brooke Hampshire: I’ve wanted to come for the last decade…I’ve actually always wanted to visit Big Bend, and…friends of mine in the past have come for the art scene so it just worked out.
Lizzy Méndez: I only knew about the Prada thing and I was like, yes! I mean, when else am I going to be able to see that?
Rebecca Carroll: I’ve always just heard about the art… how unique the town was and that it was very eclectic and everybody had their own thing going on… I thought it was kind of like a cool little reclusive area where it was off the grid so that’s pretty cool.

BM: How did you feel about the work that you saw here?
RC: I really liked Movie Mountain (Méliés). I wish we had more time to sort of sit down and watch the whole thing. The two-screen experience…I’m more of a video art person, it’s a lot of what I did in college. I like the exhibit, it’s movie-oriented, and I like that it’s dedicated to all these separate parts, dedicated to one idea.
LM: It’s also just Texas art, which is cool. You can’t get that in, like, New York City.

BM: What’s been the highlight of your trip so far?
RC: We’ve had many. [laughter]
LM: We had like a 16 hour day yesterday, and we did…we walked to like the edge of town, which is just kind of nuts, because it’s four blocks, and it turns into just like a ranch, and you can see [everything], which was awesome… We did the star party, which was amazing.
BH: Yeah, it was amazing.
LM: We very randomly ended up at [Marfa Public Radio], they were so friendly.
RC: Yeah, we’d gone to the NPR studio, and they took us around and gave us advice and directions on what we should do.
LM: They gave us stickers and we bought t-shirts.
RC: …You asked for a highlight, I don’t know which one of those was the highlight.
LM: It was just a great day.
RC: Yeah, overall, it was sort of a package deal. All of Marfa was a highlight.