"LaMision de San Miguel, a heavenly music venue, rose on the remains of a beat-up cowboy bar."

she really had was "three load-bearing walls and a liquor license, and a lot of friends telling me I was completely crazy."

Artisans from Mexico, SouthAmerica and Oregon contributed murals, carvings and paintings, including several fascinating interpretations of the sword-wielding archangel St. Michael, for whom the 6,500-square-foot club was named.

Architectural elements of cantera stone -- including a bull's-eye window that graces the facade -- came from centuries-old buildings in Mexico. The bar itself is constructed of wood salvaged from the outbuildings of a nearby 100-year-old cattle ranch, and the Tiffany-style lamps that hang above the bar each are made of more than 1,000 pieces of colored glass.

Every painting, every piece of imported furniture has a story to tell, San Miguel said. "So when you come in, you notice that it is not only the music and the conversation resolating in the air. The walls resolate too."

. . . "Ms. San Miguel, who came to the U.S. in 1964 from Ecuador, has plunged into this new venture with her usual boldness. She arrived in Arizona, via Chicago, San Diego and Oregon, in 1997, having had careers in immigration law and in managing an art gallery, but with absolutely no experience in running a restaurant before she opened the Velvet Elvis. In this second endeavor, after much tearing down and essentially beginning with "three walls and a liquor license," she has transformed a 1915 home and an adjoining building into the new La Mision, an unusual bar and nightclub. Parts of these buildings over the years had been variously a butcher shop, a barber shop, an accountant's office, and from the 1930's, a bar. The "three walls" constructed of adobe bricks made on-site, have been preserved and exposed. The former low roof is gone, replaced with a high cathedral ceiling. The old bar was the Big Steer Bar, bought in 1961 by the Levi Harris family and owned by them more or less from then, though it was leased out in the 1970's and later sold and then regained. Local residents of a cerain age will remember the Big Steer."

". . .Ms. San Miguel brings something of a philosophy to this dramatic new bar: celebrate life, health, and diversity. The entire building, with the exception of the outdoor grilling patio,

"A likeness of a great-granddaughter of Levi Harris now appears in a wall painting in the new restaurant."

[is]. . .smoke-free. The micro-brews and fine wines (many of which . . .[are] organic) are intended to accompany food. She conceives of food and drink as intriguing expressions of culture and will marry diverse cultures in the menu. She has also attempted to celebrate the history of the adobe building's past and to integrate area history and culture into its transformation. Lumber and tin used in various features have been taken from an old ranch building on the Norman Hale Ranch in Harshaw. Several of Patagonia's highly skilled and artistic craftspeople have labored with love on the building. They include Kevin McKay, whose wife in the granddaughter of Levi Harris, Richard "Ike" Isakson, a retired firefighter, and Manual Mingura, a mason. Ms. San Miguel is unstinting in applauding their "genius" and contributions to this complex project."

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