Christmas lights look for a new home

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Electric Avenue

By Susan Stiger
JCopyright ©2007 Albuquerque Journal;Journal Staff Writer

More than 100,000 lights are looking for a home.
Must have traffic access, ample funding for an electric bill, Christmas spirit and a love of children as well as adults who know how to become children again.
The Bugg lights, as they have come to be known, are leaving ¡Traditions! off the Budaghers exit, and skating, rolling, twinkling, lumbering and waddling their way to someplace else on Santa's radar.
Jim Long, owner of ¡Traditions!, said he and Norman Bugg, the original owner of the collection, want to see the display go to an organization with a volunteer base to maintain, store and present it every year.
Snoopy and friends on a skating rink, a fishing polar bear, penguins, reindeer, elves, the North and South poles, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and animation out the wazoo grew into an Albuquerque tradition at the home of Norman and Joyce Bugg over 31 years. But once the Buggs began accepting donations for Noon Day Ministry, city zoning labeled it a commercial enterprise.
Donated to the New Mexico Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit Jim Long started, the display moved to ¡Traditions! in 2002, a location better suited to the traffic that once jammed the Buggs' Northeast Heights neighborhood, to the disgruntlement of some of the neighbors.
"We leave our house dark now," said Joyce Bugg. "That suits the couple of neighbors who complained."
Long is open to ideas.
"It could go to a school, a church, another nonprofit," Long said. "It was always important to us that it be free of charge. That would be a part of the consideration on who ultimately gets it."
Joyce Bugg said she and her husband helped set up the display at ¡Traditions! the first several years and always went to see it. They'll go wherever it goes, she said.
"I miss seeing the children's faces, even the grown-ups'," she said. "It was always free here, although we collected for the homeless. We would never accept money. It needs to be someplace where children who can't afford to go other places can go and enjoy it."
The display can no longer make its home at ¡Traditions! because the center is looking for a new career, having been an outlet center and a festival marketplace with limited success.
Relocating can be tough for dogs like Snoopy, so Long and Bugg are hoping for a permanent spot.
Thoughts? Ideas for a new location?
If your organization wants the display, send a letter of interest to Jim Long at the New Mexico Multicultural Foundation, 201 Third St. NW, Suite 1500, Albuquerque, NM 87102.
Before you volunteer your house, bear in mind that at last count, the display boosted the Buggs' electric bill to about $800 and drew several hundred thousand people to their yard.
E-mail your ideas to [email protected] and we'll take the pulse on a new home for the lights fantastic.