Tomo's Mexico City Photos

Tomo posted some amazing photos from Mexico City on his Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crackitbaby/sets/72157600929136568/

Sigh...makes me want a nice camera.

FYI, Tomo and I are doing a photo series called "poetic moments" where I try to look really serene. They're pretty hilarious...well, at least we think they're funny! Here are a few from DF:





I'll update soon. Our week has been crazy busy and I haven't really had a free moment to think, much less post to the blog. But I stayed home "sick" from the field trip to the market today, so I have a few moments to myself to catch up. Stay tuned...

Flickr updated

I've finally uploaded about half of my Mexico City photos to my Flickr account here. I've also updated my posts below with some of my own photos, so scroll down to check them out.

adios DF

Today (Saturday) was our final full day in el DF, and although I'm really glad to have gone on this portion of the trip, I am feeling ready to head down to Oaxaca. Mexico City is the largest city in the world, and the air quality betrays that fact. I had a bloody nose yesterday, which, in all fairness, could also have to do with the dryness and the elevation of el DF. And although it's pretty cheap by US big city standards, Mexico City is much more expensive than Oaxaca.

I woke up earlier than the rest of my roomies today. I'm staying in a room with 3 other gals (there are 4 beds in two different rooms and one bathroom), so my earplugs have come in really handy. I woke up feeling pretty refreshed and I decided to head out with Adrien and Tomo (a Japanese grad student in design) to run some errands and grab a bite to eat. We found a pretty big marketplace about a block away from our apartment, and went for the first taco stand that had a bunch of locals hanging around it. I had two tortillas again this morning, one filled with cheese and mushrooms, and the other filled with cheese and squash blossoms. I think it was a dollar for each one, and my stomach was pretty much set at least until late afternoon.

We got back to the hotel soon after and found a few people sitting in the courtyard, deciding what to do for the day. One of the girls commented loudly that we were getting a late start because "people kept leaving," a comment that was definitely intended for me, Adrien, and Tomo. Oh well, such are the pleasures of traveling with a big group. It's been interesting traveling with a bunch of strangers and I am slowly starting to understand each person's unique quirks and personality traits. There are definitely some I get along with better than others. Once we get to Oaxaca, we will have much more autonomy, so I am looking forward to that as well.



We decided we wanted to go out to the Coyoacan area of el DF, which has a large outdoor market with vendors selling crafts from different regions in Mexico. We traveled via subway, and one of the interesting little tidbits about el DF is that almost every public sign has both a written and visual (i.e., logo or pictograph) component, as a majority of the population is illiterate. The logo representing the Coyoacan subway stop is a wolf or coyote with a hole in the middle of it, howling at the moon. Some of the logos are kind of strange. I saw another sign instructing people to crawl on the ground in case of fire. Instead, the pictograph made it look like you should lay down and do sit-ups if birds are attacking you.

When we got to Coyoacan, the majority of the group wanted to go eat, but since Adrien and I had already had our fill of tacos that morning, we decided that we were going to wander around and shop. I bought an embroidered purse (which subsequently ended up dying my shirt, skin, and pants a faint mustard color) for about $15. I tried to bargain him down further than that, but we were in a hurry, so I just took the price. Apparently we won't be able to get embroidery like this in Oaxaca.

Since we had our share of the market and we still had some time to kill before meeting the others, Adrian and I ducked into a cantina, where I tried the Mexican version of the black and tan: basically Victoria or Corona with Negro Modelo added. It was pretty tasty!

We met up with the rest of the group and headed towards Saint Angel, where the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo studios are located. Adrian and I decided that we wanted to grab something at the market so we told the rest of the group that we would catch up with them. Ceci, who is Raul's friend and a Mexico City resident, told us that we should turn right at the big cross and we would end up on the same street the rest of the group was on. Uh, yeah. Turns out there are crosses on every block in Mexico. We made our purchases and walked down the street...there was a cross on top of a building, but it wasn't very big, so we decided to keep walking. At the next street, there was an even bigger cross, so we figured we would turn there. We power walked for a good 20 minutes, and then we realized that we were probably ahead of the group at this point (the group as a whole walks pretty slow), so we asked a lady on the street how we should get to El Estudio Diego Rivera. We kept asking directions from people until we got there. I've been pretty impressed by my recall and comprehension of Spanish...though I definitely butcher a lot of the language, I feel pretty confident getting around on my own and have become the group speaker when Raul or his boyfriend Michael are not around.

Adrien and I got to the studios and waited for the rest of the group...and waited...and waited. After about 45 minutes, we figured they changed their mind about going to the studios, so we decided that we were going to do the studio tour and go back to the hotel afterwards. Luckily, we ran into the rest of the group inside the studio. I don't know what happened, but we somehow ended up getting there 45 minutes before them even though we had walked the whole way and they had walked about halfway and taken a car the rest of the way. I guess that's how much time it takes to herd cats.

After touring the studios, we did a little self-guided tour of some of the downtown cantinas. Apparently it used to be pretty nasty and dangerous downtown, but recently there has been a number of renovations on the old buildings by the owner of Sanborns. He is renovating a bunch of the gorgeous, European-style buildings into lofts and fancy yuppie apartments. It's kind of weird to think that there is gentrification in Mexico, too. The first cantina we went to, called La Opera Bar, was absolutely gorgeous. Very art nouveau, with tons of carved wood, luxurious booths, and velvet wallpaper. Wow, this place was stunning! We sat and had a beer and left to check out another cantina. The next one we walked into was considerably more run down, but fantastic nonetheless. I guess it was an homage to bullfighting, with large murals of bulls and glass-enclosed cases with mannequins dressed up in matador outfits engaged in various bullfighting scenes. Everything looked like it had about 10 years worth of dust on it, but the room had that kitschy charm that I tend to like. We sat down to eat and decided it might not be clean enough for our sensitive American stomachs (one gal already had her food poisoning incident come and go on the first day). We walked down the street to check out a restaurant that someone had recommended, and found it to be delightfully non-touristy. The entire place was packed with people drinking and eating tacos. I got a taco al pastor, a taco adobo, and something called salchicha pierna. I couldn't figure out what that was besides being made of beef. The food was outstanding and I think it only cost 70 cents per taco. We had a little bit of a surprise when the waiter came up and told Ceci that someone at the table had a secret admirer and that he was drawing her as we spoke...and when I got up to go to the bathroom, I found out it was me. This old man had drawn a portrait of me, which he very nicely gave to me on the way out. Kind of sweet and kind of creepy at the same time.Apparently I am very exotic here because I am so tall...but also, I look a little like southern Mexicans because of my slanted eyes. It will be interesting to see how confused people will be by me when we get to Oaxaca.

We ended our night by going back to the bullfighting museum cantina and taking tequila shots as we danced to a very eclectic mix of reggaeton, drum and bass, and bad techno. Again, I was amazed at how much we had accomplished in one day. We spend all day on the bus to Oaxaca tomorrow, so I was happy to spend my last day in Mexico City going out with a bang.

Frida y Lucha

Today was another "hip-hop-and-ya-don't-stop" kind of day, where we were pretty much walking nonstop. It's kind of interesting when you travel--you realize just how sedentary our lives are at home and how little we actually walk and move our bodies as they are meant to be moved. I am pretty much pledging my allegiance to the cult of Keen; I bought a pair of cute mary janes at REI before I left and they are saving my feet from destruction during these long days of constant walking.



We started off our day by getting breakfast at the corner food cart. A senora was making little quesadillas with homemade tortillas, nopales (cactus) and cheese. Yum! I had two since I had no idea when we were going to be eating again. We stood on the corner for almost an hour eating our breakfast. Everything takes a little longer in a big group...as the T.E.A.M. likes to say, it's like herding cats.

After we finally finished our breakfast, we jumped on a bus towards downtown to check out the historical district and its surrounding buildings. We got caught in a bunch of traffic and decided to jump off when we found ourselves at a standstill by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and we noticed that the huge Frida Kahlo retrospective (to commemorate what would have been her 100th birthday) didn't have the rumored 4 blocks of lines. I had been wanting to check out the show, since I really appreciate artist retrospectives...it gives you such a great idea of the artist's true interests, their motivations, etc. While waiting in line to get in, we talked a little bit about why Frida was so popular after her death. Raul says that her work wasn't very popular at all while she was living and that her fame has come posthumously because the story of her life is so vibrant and tragic. I am sure that is partially true, but I am also inclined to believe that her work is of particular interest now because her paintings (from this woman's perspective) alternate between a tender and willful expression of the female condition during the 1940s and 50s. Now that we're pretty deeply past the women's liberation movement, her voice is now, more than in the past, utterly relatable. For example, this piece, to me, was particularly heartbreaking:



Previously, I had only seen Frida's self-portrait painting work, but the show had a couple of her still life pieces and one work of collage that I found interesting. They also had a number of photos of her. I was glad that we got to see the show (i was afraid that we weren't going to go)...though I got the feeling that some of the group wasn't that into her...and I couldn't really gauge whether it was because we had to wait in line for a little while, or if because she was so popular and it was "cool" to be "over" her. Seriously, this show is a big deal...there are posters for the show plastered all over the city, and they proudly proclaim that this a "HOMAJE NACIONAL" (national homage). For those of you that have been to Mexico and know the level of machismo that can be achieved here, you know that it is no small potatoes when a woman is treated as a national treasure.



We walked out of the beautiful art-deco Bellas Artes building straight into a group of naked men who were protesting...something. Nobody--not even the locals--seemed to know what they were mad about [actual conversation: Hope--"What are they protesting?" Mexico City Resident--"I don't know...everything?"] It was the biggest group of naked people that I had seen outside of Burning Man, and strangely, enough, it made me feel really comfortable and at home, as weird as that sounds.

After we got our fill of the naked men, we walked through one of the oldest parks in Mexico City (apparently part of the Spanish Inquisition had occurred in this park) to arrive at the Museo de Arte Popular (i.e, the Craft museum). This was actually a really great introduction to the various crafts from different tribes from all areas of Mexico, and I took some photos of the work that I found particularly interesting (posted on my Flickr page here). Honestly, I was blown away by the craftsmanship and detail of some of these pieces. I apologize for the quality of the images...everything was behind glass, which made it hard to photograph, but in person the work was stunning, and made me even more excited to get down to Oaxaca (where a lot of this work originates).



After recharging with a couple of coffees made by the hardest working man in Mexico City (seriously, this poor guy was running the cash register, making the coffees, making the sandwiches, and delivering all the goodies to our tables), we went downtown to check out the old square and some the surrounding historic buildings. We decided to have lunch in a very fancy cantina, which was housed in an absolutely gorgeous building. I felt like I was in the middle of Provence, as snotty as that sounds. :) I ordered beef with squash blossoms (flor de calabasa). YUM. This place was great! Unfortunately, when the bill came, it was a serious buzz kill, as it's kind of difficult splitting the bill with 9 other people who had varying levels of drink and eat. All of a sudden, I remembered that I was with a bunch of college students, when I kept having to throw down 10 more pesos, and another 10 and another 10.



My harshed buzz was soon recharged with the thought of our plans for the evening. We were planning on attending the Lucha Libre fight that night. For those of you that haven't heard of La Lucha Libre, it is sort of like WWF, but the wrestlers wear iconic masks, fantastic costumes, and, as I found out later that night, have midget sidekicks in gorilla costumes. We really had no idea what to expect. As me and Adrien (one of the gals on the trip that has become my little buddy) are the ones with the most Spanish speaking skills, we were left to try to garner tickets for the rest of the group (we had tried to get tickets earlier that day, but the lady at Gandhi, the local "Tower music", said that they had no more tickets in any price level that were seated together. So, we found a scalper that had 5 seats together in a decent part of the arena Mexico, and after some tough bargaining, we talked him down from 200 to 180, and then down to $900 for all 5 (which, actually, is $180 per ticket). Math is hard...let's go shopping! Actually, I'm not sure that we could have done any better, as it was a serious madhouse there and we could barely make it through the crowd because it was so thick with people. All of that was worth it, though, as we got to see Mistico fight (apparently he is muy popular). It was SOOOO funny...the entire thing was staged and the kitsch level was VERY high. Whenever someone got thrown out of the ring, the entire front row would jump out of their seats to get out of the way because they knew that the next guerrero was going to jump out of the ring to body slam them. One fighter, Alex Koslov, was a favorite with the ladies for his good looks (he didn't wear a mask) and his gyrations. Whenever he made a good move, he would rub himself and rotate his hips, and the girls would go crazy.

All in all, I'm amazed by the number of things that we did in one day, and I am seriously grateful that I got to see la Lucha Libre live.

en el DF

I finally made it in to Mexico City (called el DF by all the locals--kind of like Washington DC) last night after my flight was delayed about 45 minutes because the pilot thought we were in gate G rather than gate A. Doesn´t exactly inspire confidence in your navigational skills, Mr. Pilot! Anyway, two gals from the trip were waiting for me at baggage claim for over 2 hours so we could take a cab together to the hotel, Casa Gonzalez, in the Cuahtehmoc district of el DF. I felt pretty bad that they were waiting so long, but it was really nice to have someone to find my way with. There are 6 of us students here on the Mexico City portion of the trip, which was an entriely optional extension of the Oaxaca class. So we´re spending our time checking out the museums, the fabulous architecture, and the nightlife.

We got to the hotel at around 7 PM and headed out to get a bite to eat at The Pink Zone (also known as Zona Rosa), :) a pretty hevily touristed area with lots of young people walking around, making out, watching futbol, and making out some more. Seriously, everywhere you turned, there was a couple making out. One of the gals conjectured that it was because they don´t have a private place to make out since the country is so heavily religious...I am not sure if the assessment is true or not, but seriously, it was PDA on display in The Pink Zone. We found a place to eat...most of the resturants were packed because entire families were out watching the Mexico vs. Argentina game (and if you´ve ever spent any time in Central or South America, you know these people take their futbol seriously). Unfortunately, Mexico lost. (Sorry, Mexico!)

We went out again after Raul made it into town and got a couple of drinks at a place called Saltido something something, which was a very cute place in the Contessa district. Apparently this area used to have a racetrack , which they took out, and now huge Victorian-flavored house line the oval that used to be teh racetrack. Saltido something something was a cute little Victorian that had been renovated to be a bar, with an adorable vintage/modernist mix of furniture and wallpaper. Seriously, the interior designers in teh group (who will be meeting us in Oaxaca) would be drooling. I´ll upload photos once we get to Oaxaca and I´m able to have internet access off of my laptop (on the hotel computer right now).



Today was an excellent day touring the Casa Luis Barragan. Barragan was one of Mexico´s most famous architects, and it was easy to see why from this house, which beautifully integrated modernism and an indigenous flavor. The stairs you see above are his claim to faim...if you can see, they have no base. instead, tehy are cantilevered into the wall so they appear to be ¨floating¨. Every room was painted a different, brightly colored hue, and every room contained some reference to his strong taste for privacy, religion, women, and horses. Yeah, strange combination, but somehow it worked. The man was famously a recluse and rumored to be gay, despite his devout Catholicism, though the tour guide didn´t say this. I had never been in a space before that felt so incredibly personal. For example, Barragan was very tall, almost 6´4", but he made all his doorways around 6¨5" so that he would have to bow down when he entered every room, in order to show reverence. Also, his way of framing space was just incredibly different and unique. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside, so here are a couple I´ve pulled off the web:


from: http://www.vitruvius.com.br


from: http://www.esteticas.unam.mx


from: http://www.casaluisbarragan.org

Our visit to the Barragan house was followed by a visit to the Bosque de Chapultepec, an absolutely enormous public park with several museums, including the Museo Rufino Tamayo, which houses contemporary art, and the Modern Art Museum, which houses all the "greatest hits" of the Mexican modern movement. Both museums were gorgeously built and had great collections, though I was especially fascinated by a collection called The Atlas Group, by Walid Raad, which was established to preserve the contemporary history of Lebanon, and not surprisingly, focused a lot of war and car bombings. One of the gals said that the entire project was faked, but I haven´t found any evidence of that, and I hope it´s not true, because the show was incredibly powerful.

Anyway, I´m off to grab a bite after a very deep and satisying nap. I´ll try to post daily, but I won´t really be able to post any of my photos until we get to Oaxaca this Sunday. Until then...