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March 23, 2007
Love in Bloom
Jacaranda tree, Guadalajara
Spring is well underway in Guadalajara, as evidenced by the abundundance of flowering things all over town. These shots are from our friend Larry, who has been kind enough to let us post them here for you to see.
We have one of the trees you see above right in front of our apartment building. It is amazingly pretty, but I feel very sorry for the maid that has to sweep up the hundreds of blooms that fall off daily all over the grass and sidewalk.
Peach rose, Guadalajara
Posted by crispy at 12:53 PM | Comments (3)
March 17, 2007
R&R
The Angel of Independence, public domain photo by Eric Shalov
We finally made it to Mexico City. We made it in pretty early, after about three hours of sleep, and after checking in, we went straight to the delicious Kohinoor in Santa Fé. ["tourist" cab from hotel to restaurant: MXN $250] After getting so little sleep, having dealt with airports and taxis, then topping it off with a huge meal, we were crashing hard.
A double espresso at Starbucks didn't help to get me going. I could have dozed off for a while in the cushy chairs there for a few hours, but instead we came back to nap at the hotel. [cab hailed on street from restaurant to hotel MXN $70] At 9 pm, I got up and ironed my clothes in case we want to go out for a Saturday night on the town. We had planned to go visit Papa Beto Jazz Bistro but I think that may not happen; Shawn's comfortably snug in bed and shows no signs of resurrection for the evening. I've been jonesing for jazz a lot lately, but if we don't get to go, it won't be a big deal. It will leave us something fun to do next time.
Instead I may end up just ordering room service and enjoying our front-row seat at the Angel of Independence.
Posted by crispy at 09:08 PM | Comments (1)
When is a flight to Mexico City not a flight to Mexico City?
When it's a flight to Chihuahua!
Shawn and I arrived at the Guadalajara airport an hour and a half early for our flight to Mexico City. Shawn has a three-day weekend because of the birthday of Benito Juárez, so we thought we'd take a fun weekend trip to the capital. We booked our flight on Aero California and our stay at the Sheraton María Ísabel. We arranged the day before for a cab to take us to the airport. We packed the night before. We shut off the gas. We washed all the dishes in the sink and did a last run through the refrigerator to make sure we left nothing that would spoil over the three days we would be gone. It was one of those rare occasions where we did everything just right. We even arrived in plenty of time at the airport; like I said, we got there an hour and a half early.
But instead of writing this entry seated at the desk at the Sheraton looking out the window at the Angel of Independence, I'm at my dining room table at Casa Cubilete, looking at a down-in-the-dumps Shawn. Even though we we got there in plenty of time, and were waiting right at the gate when our flight left, we never knew it was our flight because they repeatedly announced it only as a flight going to Chihuahua.
To be precise, the flight was listed twice, with one destination being Chihuahua and the other being Mexico (what they call Mexico City here). On the departures board, they looked like this (I'm translating it to English for you):
Maybe it's just me, but when I'm looking at something like that, the way that I find the thing I'm looking for, the thing I isolate first, is the destination city. Looking through the airline abbreviations or the flight numbers is more work for me mentally than locating the city first, then drilling down to the airline and flight number. Therefore, when I looked at the board as shown above, I saw the line for "MEXICO" but didn't notice that the line for "CHIHUAHUA" was the same flight number, departing at the same time, at the same gate. Once I had found the three lines that had "MEXICO" in them, I didn't bother looking at any of the other lines. Why would I? I wasn't going to any of those other places.
When they announced the flight, they announced it with the destination of Chihuahua. Not once did they say "Chihuahua, stopping in Mexico" or anything like that. It was always announced as going to Chihuahua and only Chihuahua. It seemed funny to me that they kept announcing that departure, seemingly more than the others, and at one point, an Aero California representative came over to us and asked us if we were going to Chihuahua. We both said, "No." I added, although I guess he didn't hear me, "no, a Mexico." Supposedly, as they told us later, they walked around calling our names to locate us. However, we've noticed that in the US, when this is done, they use a public address system, or at least someone shouts it out. In Mexico, when someone addresses a crowd, they often do it in such a soft voice that only the people in the front of the line can hear and the people in the back might not even know they're being addressed. That was the case with us. We didn't even know they were looking for anyone, let alone that they were walking around trying to locate us.
Once the flight for Chihuahua left, we figured we were about to board, since we were the next flight out of Gate 14. But when time went by and they didn't start announcing our flight, we went to look at the board. It said that our flight was "CLOSED." We looked to find someone working for Aero California and finally came across the guy that asked us if we were going to Chihuahua. As soon as I showed him our ticket and started out saying (in Spanish), "We're going to Mexico but it says the flight is closed..." He said (in flawless English), "Oh, that flight left! I asked you if you were going to Mexico or Chihuahua and you said no!" Whether or not he truly believed he had asked us this way or if he knew he was lying, I don't know. But he didn't ask us if we were going to Mexico or Chihuaha. He asked us if we were going to Chihuahua. Period. We were not. We said, accurately, "no."
We got our luggage back, and after a lot of hassle talking to a manager, they put us on another flight. To their credit, they didn't charge us any additional fees. They kept maintaining that their representative asked us if we were going to Mexico or Chihuahua when he came over, but my Spanish isn't as bad as all that. The bummer is that we've now missed one night of our vacation in Mexico City, and since our hotel was prepaid, we lost USD $150 on a room we're not sleeping in tonight. It also involved another MXN $200 to get back from the airport, then another MXN $200 to take us back to the airport tomorrow at 6:30 am.
The moral of this story is, know the final destination of your flights and bus routes. This is common with bus routes, I realized later. You may buy a ticket on a bus line that goes through seven different cities and stops at the bus terminal in each one. The tickets and the boards don't necessarily list all the stops on the trip, and often at the gates, you have to identify the bus by its final destination, as it won't list an on-the-way stop in the banner above the driver's head. Usually, they list only the final stop, or on occasion the most major stop on the route. I just didn't think about that happening with airline tickets because when I bought them, I entered in the destination of Mexico City in the search. Not once when I bought the tickets did it talk about the flight being the flight to Chihuahua that stops in Mexico City, nor does it say anything about Chihuahua on any of the receipts, confirmations and itineraries. Yet it worked for our needs because it goes from Guadalajara to Mexico City. We just didn't have any idea that Mexico was just a brief stop on its way to Chihuahua.
Shawn, having so little free time feels like this has really soured the whole weekend. Hopefully we'll still have enough fun to make it worth going, even if we get there a day late. Hopefully nothing will go wrong tomorrow.
Posted by crispy at 01:41 AM | Comments (5)
March 11, 2007
Mexico City: Vegetarian Chains
I was writing a comment on Chowhound earlier tonight and I realized that I'd not put information in the blog about a couple of chain restaurants in Mexico city that serve a pretty wide selection to vegetarians. They are not strictly vegetarian, but they have a surprising number of vegetarian options. It's rare that I can open a menu and have a selection of more than three things. With these two restaurants, I think I had to spend 20 minutes or more deciding from among their various options. Vegans will have a harder time, especially at Saks, as traditional food here tends to use dairy products.
The two are Saks and La Buena Tierra. Saks is traditional and has an elegant atmosphere, whereas La Buena Tierra is more international and modern. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos to share with you of these two places, but the continuation of this entry has a list of their locations. There are other places to write about, but it's handy to know these since they have many locations.
Saks locations:
Insurgentes Sur 1641
Col. San José Insurgentes
5615-1500 & 5611-4803
José Ma. Velasco 100
esquina con Damas
Col. San José Insurgentes
5615-1500
Insurgentes Sur 4342
Col. Tlalpan
5485-3500
Plaza San Jacinto No. 9
Col. San Ángel
5616-1601
Campos Eliseos No.133
Col. Polanco
5545-6560 & 5545-6506
La Buena Tierra locations:
Atlixco 94
Local A
Col. Condesa
5211-4242 & 5211-4229
Anatole France 120
Local 9-10
Col. Polanco
5281-2324 & 5281-2363
Insurgentes Sur 2036
Col. Insurgentes
5575-1549 & 5575-1593
Periférico Sur 4606
Col. Pedregal
5528-3436 & 5606-2720
Centro Comercial
Col. Santa Fe
2167-4037 & 2140-4038
G. González Camarena 111
Col. Santa Fé Corporativos
5393-7174 & 5292 -8182
Plaza Satélite
Ciudad Satélite
5393-7815
Posted by crispy at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2007
Guest Room: Painted!
Before/After Painting
Jorge came over and helped me paint the guest room today. Although the color reproduction isn't the greatest in the photos, I think you can see the difference.
I'm much obliged to Jorge, who not only sat in on roller while I did the brush work, but also helped replace the curtain rod and re-hang the curtain. ¡Muchas gracias, Jorge!
Chris and Jorge
Posted by crispy at 03:40 PM | Comments (6)
March 09, 2007
Painting Preparations
Furniture with Plastic
We're expecting a guest at the end of April, and I have reached the conclusion that I must stop procrastinating in regard to setting up the guest room. The first step was to clean it out. Shawn had cleaned the apartment for another event we had, which meant the guest room got loaded up with boxes, old magazines and extra ketchup bottles and cans of beans.
Next is painting. I went out and bought all the paint and supplies on Thursday afternoon with Jorge.
Plaster, Tape, Cable
Now I'm doing all the setup stuff to paint: spackling and sanding bad surfaces, taping off the trim and even masking off the cables that run around the floor. Mexican walls don't tend to have space between them for running cables, so they're always run around the floor and fastened to the wall. This is a real pain in the neck when you want to paint, because you have to decide how to handle that issue. Should you paint them? Painted cables, even if they match in color, always look crappy to me, like the proper time was not taken to deal with them and they just had paint hastily slopped over them. I'm kind of into the technical asthetic anyway, so I prefer to have cables look like cables, even if I'd prefer they were not there in the first place.
Taping Off Cables
The worst thing about this is that these cables pictured here have no real use at the moment. One is the cable for what I presume was the former cable TV hookup. Because this leads in and terminates in the bedroom (and perhaps for other reasons of which I'm unaware), when the cable guys set up our cable, they ran entirely new eyesores along the walls from new holes they punched in the wall.
You also see a phone cable there, the one that's halfway taped off in the photo above. As you may know, we don't even have phone service here. Again with the tech thing, I hate to pull any pre-existing wire, ever.
Tomorrow, Jorge is going to come over and help me paint the room. It's going to be in the 80s.
Posted by crispy at 06:02 PM | Comments (2)
March 07, 2007
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Continuing to use torture under the guise of trying to extract information from prisoners (or 'detainees,' although I fail to understand that distinction) in spite of overwhelming evidence that the accuracy of any information gathered through torture is suspect, seems to indicate an underlying penchant on the part of the torturer for simply imposing suffering on others. It is undignified for any country to practice it, and citizens around the world should not tolerate its being conducted by their governments.
The Mexican government has been accused by groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of systematic torture and corruption for many years. It appears that there is at least some lip-service being paid to the idea that torture is no longer practiced here, but rumors persist that it does indeed continue. Indeed, one of the central claims of protesters in Oaxaca is that the government there is holding and torturing political prisoners, and that is a big reason they are actively fighting to oust the governor, Ulises Ruiz.
It is not out of line for other governments around the world to call on Mexico to stop human rights abuses. But does anyone else find it hypocritical that the State Department of the United States condemned Mexico this week for using torture when the CIA kidnaps people, takes them to secret prisons and regularly uses interrogation techniques like water boarding and 'the cold cell?'
And where are the Americans protesting their government's use of torture? Are they really all that apathetic, or is the media just burying them under more sensational stories like the death of Anna Nicole Smith?
Posted by crispy at 04:46 PM | Comments (3)
March 06, 2007
The Migrant Kingdom
A recent report from the BBC program "From Our Own Correspondent" tells of a theme park in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, which aims to give more Mexicans the experience of trying to illegally enter the United States. That's right, Eco Alberto Park lets you be chased by imitation INS agents across desert and rivers to give you an idea of what it's like to be a real illegal immigrant to the US, all for under 20 bucks!
[Read more at the BBC's site for "From Our Own Correspondent."]
Posted by crispy at 10:51 PM | Comments (1)
March 04, 2007
Molotov Breaks Up
I really like the band Molotov.
The first time I heard them was in a gay bar in Tijuana. It was the night that a hooker sat in my lap at the infamous Adelita Bar, after I bought her a few drinks. I was just trying to be culturally sensitive. I mean, here I am, entering her place of business and basically taking up valuable space. The least I could do is buy her a few drinks so she gets something for her time. Besides, God help me when the day comes that I don't have enough class to buy a lady a drink.
I explained to her that the guy next to me was my boyfriend and that I'm interested in guys, but maybe she suspected that that's just a line people use to turn a particular girl down easy. Perhaps she thought I just didn't know what I was saying. Perhaps she figured I just don't know what I'm missing.
Now that I look back on it, having lived here a while, I don't think it was any of that. In Guadalajara, young people are paid by companies to hang out in stores (Wal-Mart is the biggest offender in this regard, in my experience) for the sole purpose of giving you a sales pitch (and on occasion, but not always, a sample) while you're shopping. They'll make sure you know about a particular type of eggs, from their specific benefits to your health to their currently reduced sale price. They will let you know why the product you just pulled innocently down from the shelf is inferior to the one they are going to tell you about.
This can be rather disconcerting, when you are not a native speaker of the language and you just kind of zone out when you do mindless tasks like shopping. All of a sudden, someone is talking to you about something and when you come to it, you realize that they are deep into it already and it's going to on for some while. I have taken to wearing my iPod and listening to it while I shop to try and keep it a more solitary experience, because I feel like in grocery shopping, like electing candidates, they had their chance to make any pitches and promises to you up to the time you walk through that door.
Still, I have looked up from putting my shaving cream in the carrito to see that a young woman of about 19 was in the middle of her speech about another brand. She looked as interested in the product as I was, but I took off my headphones, wagging my finger to indicate that I couldn't hear her. Once I got the headphones off, I thought she'd start over, but she didn't. The first time, because it seems like you don't care, you tell her to start over because you didn't hear what she said at first. You get over that quickly. They're there to do a job, and that's to say the set speech to anyone and everyone that goes by. That's their job, and they don't really put any more thought into it than necessary, because it's a stupid job.
Maybe the whore of Adelita Bar doesn't know much, but she knows how she sells sex night after night, and experience has proven there is no need to deviate from the formula. She sat on my lap because that's what you do after two drinks. It was mindless shift work to her, the other hooker and the bartender. The bar was otherwise devoid of customers, and the management had long ago considered and decided all the big stuff, like whether or not to invest in fumigating to keep cockroaches from crawling along bar. They decided not to.
Since I didn't want to dry hump a woman in a Tijuana hooker bar, we moved on to the aforementioned gay bar. It was cozy and small, crammed full of maricones tijuanenses. We squeezed through and took seats at the bar, drinking tequila. The music is deafening in Mexican bars and clubs, and Tijuana is not a town where a business will distinguish itself by doing something unusual. I don't remember any of the other music they played that night, but I remember "Puto," the song that got me started with Molotov. Everyone in the place started jumping up and down and yelling "¡PUTO!" at the top of their lungs when the chorus came on. It was shockingly chaotic for Mexico, even on a dance floor.
You see, puto is the male variation of puta which is a fairly universal term in Spanish, meaning 'whore' or 'bitch.' One could have described my impromptu date at Adelita Bar as a puta, and while you'd not say it to her face, reasonable men would agree that the term was appropriately used, as she was selling sex. In English, to talk about a prostitute in the masculine sense, we'd say something like 'hustler,' 'rent boy' or 'man-whore,' but in Spanish, all you have to do is switch the 'a' to an 'o' at the end.
Because bigotry is not overly concerned with accurately distinguishing small differentiating details, in Spanish, the term puto became used to identify male homosexuals also, despite the fact that not all male homosexuals are prostitutes. Likewise, it also got used to describe someone as a cheat or coward, or uwilling to stand up for themselves.
Well-meaning straight people are always explaining to me that, 'That's so gay!' is not a derrogatory slur against gays, and I suspect that compared to having someone scream, 'Die faggot!' as they hurl a brick at your head, this holds true. Since these are people that are socially beyond screaming brick-throwing, they are much nicer and better intentioned. They don't seem to understand that by using the word 'gay' as a substitute for 'lame,' by the transitive property of equality, you're saying that 'gay' is 'lame.' To them I say, thanks. It means a lot to me that you care enough to try and explain why it shouldn't be offensive. That would indicate that you think my opinion on the subject matters, and lots of people out there (like those in the screaming brick-throwing category) don't. That's nice. Thanks. But the bottom line is, I'm offended by people saying "That's so gay!" At least when they're not also pointing at a picture of Paul Lynde at home with his dog.
The use of the word puto to describe someone with what you consider reprehensible personality traits seems offensive to me, wheras if I hear someone use the word in the other two senses, I can differentiate when someone is using it with the intention of being offensive. The other way seems like a more systematic bigotry, and that's always creepy.
The whole puto thing was mildly controversial for the band, and they went around justifying that they didn't mean anything against gay men, they meant it to describe people who won't stick up for themselves. In any case, the gay men in the Tijuana bar didn't seem to care, and in fact, had taken it on as a Mexican gay anthem. So to me, it remains that: a loud Mexican rallying cry for the putos of Mexico, for which I have undying respect. And while I might lecture the boys of Molotov on the subtle connection that I described above and tell them that using it that way is ultimately offensive, I love the song 'Puto.' Among my cherished, growing collection of Mexican memories, it will remain an early favorite. That and the real puta sitting on my lap in Adelita Bar.
After that first exposure, I started listening to more of their work and I found that they were really much more musically literate and talented than they were given credit for, using some very classic sounds to create something very new. I have been surprised that they are not considered the Mexican Led Zeppelin down here. In my opinion, they're the best thing to happen in Mexican rock music since Carlos Santana. If you are a friend from my Boulder and Denver days, I probably forced you to listen to them on multiple occasions. I don't think anyone really got into them much besides me, but they were big enough in the United States to score tour dates and airplay on indie stations.
I highly recommend checking them out. You need to have at least tolerance for rap, hip-hop, metal, classic guitar rock, sex and swearing (in English and Spanish) or you probably won't be able to take it. If you like at least one of those things a lot, you might find them interesting.
Like I said, I really like them. I have happy memories associated with them. They get people angry about how their songs demonstrate a united Mexican effort to reconquer the southwestern part of the United States. They have a song that uses a litany of classic Mexican and American foods to describe the female anatomy. It's witty and naughty, in English and Spanish!
Therefore, I am sad to learn today that they are most likely breaking up.
Their web site, which I would normally consider to be the last word on this, says only:
Separados ¿o no? ¡¡Nadie Sabe Nada!! Enero 18, 2007Por el momento, desde Molotov.com.mx no podemos confirmar ni desmentir los rumores que desde hace unos días giran en torno a la banda. Hay fuertes rumores de separación, ya aparecidos en diversos medios, pero nada de eso es 100% seguro. Mas información próximamente...
Broken up...or NOT? no one knows anything!
January 18, 2007As of now here in molotov.com.mx we cannot confirm or negate the rumors that have been circulating in the past days of a possible break-up of the band. Such rumors have been circulating in several media outlets, but nothing is 100% sure. More information soon...
Unfortunately, I learned about it because rocking neighbor Alberto mentioned them, and after some joyous conversation about how wonderful they are, he broke it to me that he heard that they'd broken up. He opened the copy of Friday's El Publico (March 2) and showed me the headline:
Aunque los integrantes de Molotov disolverán el grupo, cada uno se dedicará a actividades relacionadas con la música
That uses the future tense, but it states in black and white that they are breaking up the group. The article goes on to confirm that one of the band members announced in a press conference (El Publico does not give the date of the press conference) that the band members are "worn out and sickened by the same journey," and that they want to continue to pursue music individually. I think that probably spells the end of Molotov. That makes me really sad.
Gracias por la música, cabrones.
Posted by crispy at 01:36 AM | Comments (8)