el crispito

February 26, 2010

All You Need Is Lala

Lala Cult, Probiotic Supplement

This is a newcomer to the considerable fermented milk market in Mexico: Lala Cult

Lala Cult

They threaten to be the Mexican monopoly dairy, but I will always prefer my beloved Yakult when it comes to this kind of thing. At times it feels as if there really is a cult of Lala that conspires to keep me from being able to buy unusual dairy products offered only by smaller dairies.

Here the Lala cult can be seen surveiling potential teenage adherents, which they will approach later in an effort to induct them.

Lala Cult on the prowl

Posted by crispy at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2010

Gay Tacos

Tacos Gay, Av. Prisciliano Sánchez

This taco stand services the gay club (Caudillos, Avenida Prisciliano Sánchez 407) across the street, and is only open at night on the days the club is open. And yes, the name means exactly that: gay tacos. Although, as the front of their awning states, they also serve hot dogs, quesadillas, lonches and gringas.

Tacos Gay, Av. Prisciliano Sánchez

As one can see, they were closed when we went by there, but Charles asked a local storekeeper about them.

"¿Se sirven con chile?" he asked. I cracked up.

Posted by crispy at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2010

Christmas in Mexico with Bagley

Crispy at Solea in Mexico City

I have uploaded a selection of our vacation photograps as a flickr set, complete with links to further information on the attractions pictured therein.

Posted by crispy at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2009

the tumblr blog

A new quick and dirty model from the Crispito product line.

A bit lighter and more frivolous, I intend to use it when I want to post something quickly without much elaboration.

It will not appeal to everyone. You know what I am talking about.

Posted by crispy at 04:11 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2009

unnurmaria's Mexico Photos

I came across this Flickr photostream while looking for information on the cool-yet-creepy, defunct auditorium that I saw when I went to check out the Monumento a la Revolución this afternoon, the Frontón México.

I really enjoyed browsing through her photographs of Mexico. She has an interesting sensibility and captures a lot of stuff that one doesn't usually see in people's photos of Mexico.

Posted by crispy at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

Larry Orinovsky, Abstract Photographer

Green and Yellow Texture, Larry Orinovsky

Back in college, my friend Brian took a photography class. Unfortunately, he and the instructor did not share the same concept of what the term 'photography' meant. The professor thought of it as pretty pictures of people and places, and Brian thought of it as something more, well, less specific. I thought Brian's photos were lovely and very creative. His professor disagreed. Brian's final grade was probably one of the worst Brian had during his time at USC, and it was not due to a lack of effort.

In my many years since college, I have come to realize that most people do not like vague. They are threatened by endings that are ambiguous. They are tormented by a lack of resolution. They loathe the abstract. Most people would rather look at pretty pictures than study something that they cannot quite make out, appreciating other aspects of the piece besides the blatent representation of the subject. Color, shape, texture, contrast and composition are just a few other elements that make up visual works of art, but many people seem absolutely unable to consider them unless they take place in the context of a picture of something, something specific.

For the minority of folks out there that can take a leap of faith and enjoy pictures that do not try to speak a thousand words, I would like to introduce you to the works of our dear friend Larry Orinovsky. You have heard about him in many of my previous entries because he and his partner Joseph were absolutely crucial to our relocation in Guadalajara, and they still figure enormously in the continuing Mexican experience. Each one of them merits his own entry with the sole purpose of being showered with praise as fun, smart, all-around fantastic people, but today I write to talk to you about Larry's photographs - abstract photographs.

If you are one of those faint-of-heart people that do not consider works by the likes of Arshile Gorky or Elizabeth Murray to be "real art," perhaps you had best turn back now. This is your last warning.

Vertical Blinds, Larry Orinovsky

Larry got a new single-lens reflex camera last year, a digital one. Since then he has been taking a lot of photographs, some your standard subject-verb-object kind of photos, but also a lot of photographs with completely indeterminate visual subjects. He did some research online trying to find others that were taking abstract photographs and was surprised to find that there are hardly any. Sure, a lot of people claim to be doing abstract photography, but extreme close-ups do not count in my book. Larry shoots photos that are truly abstract, and no he doesn't manipulate the form of the images in Photoshop. All the abstraction is somehow done in-camera.

Yes, I must admit that I'm dying to know how he does it. I suspect that he might tell me if I asked, but I am afraid to ruin the mystery. I love to simply look at his photographs and lose myself in the emotions that they evoke. Something that has always interested me in Larry's work (he also paints) is his diversity. He may have a series of things that have the same style, but he is always experimenting with new things. Some of his works are like geometric patterns, while others are like satellite photos of Jupiter's moons.

Cavern, Larry Orinovsky

Larry now has a web site where one can view several of his abstract pieces alongside some more "normal" works. Just check out ABSTRACCIONES By Larry Orinovsky. Larry loves feedback too, and he would very much like to hear what you think of his photographs. If you would like to send him an email with your comments, his address is right there on his home page.

I am clearly not the only one to admire his work. Since he started making his photographs available for sale, he has been busy trying to keep up with the demand for prints. Just recently, several mural-sized pieces sold that were on display at a local lounge; all of them were snapped up within just a few weeks.

Maybe Brian should give it another go.

Posted by crispy at 12:13 PM | Comments (4)

September 11, 2008

In Parque Chapultepec

Chris and Aaron at the monument to the niños heroes in Parque Chapultepec

Posted by crispy at 01:20 AM | Comments (1)

July 20, 2008

New York, New York

View, Empire State Building

Despite Shawn's promise to help out with entries about New York and Boston, I have yet to get anything from him.

In the interest of posting some of the stuff about some of the cool things we did in New York so I can get back to the daily grind in Guadalajara, I'm going to go ahead on my own. If he wants, he can do the Boston entry.

Molly and Shawn at the Campbell Apartment

One of the coolest things we did was to go to The Campbell Apartment. It isn't an apartment now, and in fact, it never really was an apartment. It used to be an office for John W. Campbell, the railroad magnate, tucked away in a corner of Grand Central Station. It has been revived as a very cool cocktail lounge, with a hand-painted wooden beam ceiling and stained glass windows.

My saying this may reveal me as an incorrigible lush - or maybe just a fan of the horribly plush - but I think that everyone that goes to New York needs to have a drink here. It is classic New York in so many ways: big money, big room, big drinks.

Crowd, Empire State Building

New York is huge and crowded. The view from the Empire State Building (above) shows how the buildings are crowded, and the view of the Empire State Building Observatory shows how crowded the people are. This is kind of cool in some ways, as there are spots with a lot of famous or cool places that are all in a tight radius. There is hardly a walk or a cab ride that you take without seeing a slew of landmarks that you have seen on screen or read about in books. "Oh! That was the Sherry Netherland! Wow! The funky Apple Store! Cool! The Plaza!"

New York is also home to a mind-boggling number of museums that have incredible collections. We went to The Brooklyn Museum of Art because they had an exhibition of work by Takashi Murakami.

Brett at The Brooklyn Museum

The guards were a little rude there though. They wouldn't let Shawn simply walk through a section of the museum to check it out because it was 8 minutes until their posted closing time. Then, upon trying to use the bathroom located in the lobby of the museum, they again gave him a hard time because it was closing time, even though it was five minutes before closing time. He blew the guard off and went in the bathroom anyway.

We did not have much luck trying to see The Guggenheim Museum, as 80% of it was closed for the installation of an upcoming exhibition. Their web site did not really make this clear, instead talking about the two small little exhibits that remained open. To their credit, they charged a reduced price, and the two exhibits they had available were quite good. But that, combined with the fact that the outside of the building, a classic Frank Lloyd Wright design, was completely obscured by scaffolding, kind of foiled our Guggenheim experience.

The Guggenheim, New York

The ramps inside were even closed, so all we could do was get this photo of them from the lobby.

The King Cole Lounge, The St. Regis Hotel

We stopped by the St. Regis for cocktails in the King Cole Lounge. It has a mural painted by Maxfield Parrish, the trippy American painter and illustrator.

Radio City Music Hall, New York

There were many other things we did not get to see or do in New York, but hopefully we will get to return in the future for another visit.

Posted by crispy at 10:25 AM | Comments (1)

July 10, 2008

Alla cuelga mi vestido

View From Window, Manhattan

Shawn and I are still on our tour of the United States. Having spent the past month on the east coast, visiting Boston, Providence and New York City, we are now in southern Illinois. Most of the driving is now behind us. Most of the big city experience is over. Now we are spending another week with my parents, then passing through Chicago once more before returning at last to Mexico.

A lot of people have commented to me in email that they miss my blog entries. Thanks for saying so. And to those dedicated readers that have been seeing the bottom of the page creeping higher and higher, perhaps even coming here to find only a blank page, please accept my apologies. I know it is emotionally disturbing to see that. It makes it seem like the author has vanished into nonexistence. Blog entries have been few for a number of reasons.

I've been sending a little more email to individuals on the trip, as many small details have reminded me of particular people and do not seem very interesting to readers as a whole. How many people would laugh about my walking by the Museum of Folk Art in New York City by coincidence or celebrate my home town's "Specialness?" Only a select few even understand what those things mean, so while our trip has been full of many funny moments like those, they have not made it to the page.

I have also been trying out Shawn's preferred mode of travel: to travel first and blog after. He gets upset with me that I spend so much time blogging while we are actually on vacation. He thinks it would be better to just take brief notes (if that) and write about it when we return back home to boring old Guadalajara (or wherever is the relative equivalent of "home" at any given point).

Yet having now tried it, I must say that despite the logic behind taking the opportunity to experience a foreign place in a hands-on manner as much as possible, I need to write about it to process it a little. Also, it helps me to remember the best parts. I really enjoy the funky stuff that happens when traveling around the world, but I have a terrible long-term memory for the details. Already I am starting to feel the little things fading away about Boston and New York - how much did an unlimited Metrocard cost and for how long was it valid? - as is my interest in talking about them. I prefer to write about how a place makes me feel, not simply catalog what I did and what I saw. Any guide book can give better details on things like that than can my hit-or-miss memory.

Last but not least, what I feel like writing about is kind of gloomy. It is sad for me to see the land that raised us slipping slowly into chaos and disrepair, the once-great empire quietly sinking into an apathetic mediocrity, the talking heads telling us all the while that there is nothing to fear, everything will be okay. Yes, it still has a long way to fall, but what we had is gone, and despite a renewed sense of hope that change is possible, to an outsider looking in, it seems that it is all too little, too late.

This time around, the United States seems like a cartoon character that is suspended in mid-air only by the ignorance that she has no ground below to hold her up. Yet I really do not want to write about that. Despite all my caustic commentary and preparations for the oncoming darkness, it turns out that I'm not ready to face the twilight. I still want to write just a little more of the song and dance, before they ask us to pay the bill, and while we still have the chance.

Shawn said he'd help me pick out a few photos of the good stuff from our trip and give me a hand with the copy. Stay tuned for stuff that's a little more fun.

Posted by crispy at 02:13 AM | Comments (4)

June 19, 2008

Providence

Power Plant at Night, Providence

We visited Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of "the biggest little state in the union." Our friend Brett found it "cute" and even "cutesey" at points. I suppose in contrast to Los Angeles, it could be so considered.

I thought it had that cool college town feel that many places do; both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design are located there, right next to each other, in fact. We stopped to see the RISD Museum, which I suspected would have a lot of design-oriented stuff. They did have that, but they also had a bunch of more traditional art such as ancient statuary and European paintings.

The RISD Museum, Providence

That museum is on Benefit Street, which is an old historic street with lots of old houses. Shawn insists that I put in a picture of one of them, so as to give all you dear readers a sample of the old crap that one can see there.

Aston House (built 1790), Providence

In contrast to several other college towns, the college angle doesn't seem to be overdone in Providence. You do not have a lot of ratty bars that cater to the drunken carousing of students, nor numerous mid-quality fast food outlets that pass off sandwiches that are merely overpriced as "gourmet." It might be that this is because Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design are both top-notch schools, or it might be that the city's raison d'être is not just the schools. In any case, it is a very beautiful place with some very interesting offerings.

I wanted to specifically note a place called The Meeting Street Café (220 Meeting Street), because it was incredible. They are more-or-less a deli, but not of your specifically Jewish variety. They have soups and sandwiches, as well as some other entrees and desserts. Everything we had there was really tasty, and incredibly huge. Unfortunately, I was so overwhelmed with the eating experience there, I didn't get any photos.

Apart from the cutsey old homes, there are some killer buildings in the downtown. Among them are...

The Bank of America Building, Providence

...and...

Court House, Providence

...and...

Citizen's Bank/Apartments, Providence

...and...

Some Random Building, Providence

We also had some good Italian food in Federal Hill, and went to a pretty cool gay bar named "Mirabar."

I'd tell you about our shocking hotel fire alarm experience (5:30 am!), but I don't have time now. That'll probably be related in a summary of our hotel experiences in a later posting.

Posted by crispy at 09:09 AM | Comments (2)

June 13, 2008

A Look at Boston

Shawn in Chinatown, Boston

The above shot was taken in Chinatown, as was this one of a bilingual Dunkin Donuts sign.

Dunkin Donuts in Chinatown, Boston

The Theatre District is next to Chinatown, and one gets the "border effect" of sorts at the Wang Theater.

Wang Theater, Boston

Let's just say that I was greatly disappointed with that place. Not so with the Museum of Fine Arts.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

They have a great Asian section, as well as an incomparable section of portraits of several early Americans.

Portrait of Paul Revere, MFA

They have a lot of pre-American stuff too, like the British lion on top of the Old State House, seen below.

Lion, Old State House

This is one part of the Potato Famine Monument, which shows an Irish immigrant woman looking back to the Old Country.

Potato Famine Monument, Boston

This building has fire escapes that are all spiral staircases.

Buildings with spiral fire escapes, Financial District

These are homes in the South End.

Residences, South End

These are in the Union Park area of South End.

Residences near Union Park, South End

These last two were not taken in Boston itself, but rather in Milford, an outlying town where Shawn and I spent the night. This first one was such an oddity that I had to include it. I figured readers (apart from those who live in Oregon) have not seen full-serve gas for a long time. It was roughly the same price (or cheaper) than the self-serve gas places in neighboring towns.

Full-Serve Gas, Milford

And the former smoker in me has to gasp at these cigarette prices. Note that these are on sale.

Cigarette Sale, Milford

Posted by crispy at 09:28 AM | Comments (3)

June 12, 2008

Specialists Admitted in Rear

General Hooker Entrance

It's even funnier because it's an entrance for the State House.

Posted by crispy at 06:03 PM | Comments (1)

June 08, 2008

The Photograph That Helped al-Qaeda

MBTA Advisory, Riverside Station

I was snapping this very photo of a sign at a train station for a collage I'm going to make once we return to Mexico of signs telling of all the things Americans are not permitted to do when I heard a voice asking, "May I help you?"

"Oh!" I exclaimed, having not seen him walking over. "I'm just taking a picture of the sign."

"You're not supposed to take any pictures of the equipment," he told me.

"No photos of any equipment?" I asked, not exactly sure how a sign was equipment.

"No," he replied with a sigh, indicating a mild annoyance.

I suspected I knew the reason for this, despite its being utterly ridiculous. Recently, I have been stopped from taking any number of seemingly innoccuous photographs like the one above.

The first time we ever ran into the phenomenon, we were in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Shawn was going around to see the locations used in the opening credits of one of his favorite shows of all time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show - the house where she supposedly lived, the park where she walked, the street where she tossed her hat in the air. When attempting to take a photograph of the escalator she rode in the Nicollet Mall, he was stopped by a private guard that wouldn't allow him to take a picture "for security reasons." At that time, it actually took us a while to figure out how a photograph of an escalator could be a threat to anyone's security, but by now, we've heard it as often as we've heard the one about putting your liquids in three-ounce bottles in a clear Ziploc® bag in your carry-on luggage.

All the same, I like to hear them say it. I put the camera down and asked him.

"Why is that?"

He looked at me for a moment with a corner of his mouth raised and issued a brief snort, and replied simply, "9-11." He stopped just short of following that with, "...smart-ass."

I thought I'd try to lighten the mood a little, so I asked him about what caused us to notice the sign in the first place: to reach the exit of the station, one has no choice to cross the tracks (visible at the lower left) about five feet from the location of the sign telling riders it is FORBIDDEN. I asked him how one was to get out of the station if they adhere to the mandate of the sign.

He was not amused.

"You exit down there, in the yellow zone," he said, pointing to a strip painted on the ground.

It was late. He didn't need some joker taunting him about the rules; people probably hassle him about the contradictory signage on a daily basis, each one thinking they're the genius that was the first to notice it. I abandoned my hopeless mission to turn his frown upside down and exited the station as he had indicated.

In my defense though, I wouldn't have joked with him about it if I could have just taken a photo of the sign. In his defense, he seemed, by his manner and tone of voice, to realize that it was ridiculous that I couldn't take a picture of signage at the station.

It made me wonder exactly how long people will continue to actually enforce such ridiculous knee-jerk prohibitions in the United States that were pushed on them in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. I mean, honestly. Even if I took a photograph of the entire station, it's a train stop in a suburban town in Massachusetts. It's unlikely to be a high-priority target on even the most unambitious terrorist's list. I would be open to consideration of the idea that high-resolution photographs of more serious targets (Grand Central Station, airport terminals, Fort Knox) might be of aid to those wishing to do harm to the United States and its citizens, but one would be an idiot to think that a tourist's snapshot taken in a train station, especially one that simply shows what a sign says, is helping terrorists.

I know, it's easier to just write a blanket law that uses language like "transportation facility" and "equipment" than to exhaustively list which manifestations of those things are subject to a law and which are excused from it. I understand that such vague terminology has certain advantages to legislators writing the laws and those who enforce it. Yet when will the old chestnut of selective enforcement of such laws start to kick in and give people a little relief from the martial law effect in the United States?

Even the guy that told me to stop taking photographs seemed to find it ridiculous, but he had to do his job. Will life in the United States be like this for the rest of my life?

Posted by crispy at 10:59 PM | Comments (8)

June 01, 2008

Toronto: What I Liked

CN Tower, Toronto

Two and a half days in Toronto is not much time. It is not enough time to experience a decent sample of what the city has to offer, let alone to get a good feeling of what the city is really like.

Given that our stay at the Sheraton Centre Toronto was the worst part of our trip (I won't go into that here; let's just say that the $18 veggie burger was not the only rip off there), I wanted to talk about some of the great things I liked about Toronto.

View from the CN Tower, Toronto

Toronto is a huge city. It is big not only in population and area, but in vertical space as well. Unlike Shawn, I am not a huge fan of high views, so I let him go on his own to the CN Tower to get his fix. The pictures he took there show how massive the city is, in terms of big, tall buildings. I have yet to reach New York City, but Toronto is in many ways how I picture it: skyscrapers cluttered together perilously close and teeming with surging masses of people betweent them.

View from the CN Tower, Toronto

I also liked that the people here are of all different types. Half of the population here is foreign-born. We had a cab driver from Kenya that told us about being thrown into jail in the United States at a border crossing and being held for six hours in a crowded cell just because the country where he was born (but hasn't lived for more than 20 years) is on "the list." We heard all kinds of different languages on the radio here, many that I couldn't identify, and of course, the ubiquitous French.

Multilingual Signage, Royal Ontario Museum

I love Mexican food. I have found a number of places in Guadalajara that have tasty delights that I miss already, having been on the road for a couple of weeks. Yet the ethnic diversity results in a great diversity of ethnic restaurants, the likes of which I'm not even sure they have in Mexico City. We didn't eat there, but yesterday we passed an Eritrian restaurant. We were so taken with Full Moon Vegetarian Restaurant (638 Dundas Street West, 416/203-1210), a place that serves a huge selection of all-vegetarian Chinese dishes, that we ate there twice. We also had great Indian and Thai food too.

Full Moon Vegetarian Restaurant

This was a sauteed eggplant with vegetarian ham, which had a beautiful palette of rich colors.

Eggplant with Vegetarian Ham, Full Moon restuarnat

Big cities always have the best graffiti, and Toronto has some of the best I've seen in a while. Moreover, one doesn't tend to see all that many boring, crappy tags, but when there is graffiti, it's almost always the elaborate kind that demands real artistic talent.

Graffiti, Toronto

I don't like to see Shawn in pain, but this was one of the funniest unexpected things I saw on the trip. I looked up from taking that last shot and saw him bent over and rubbing his back next to this sign. I quickly snapped another shot just because the symmetry was so funny.

Shawn In jured, Toronto

Posted by crispy at 11:45 PM | Comments (3)

May 22, 2008

Chicago: Part One

Chicago

Given my previous apprehensions about returning to the United States, it was fitting that we got our first taste of just what I was talking about before we even left Mexico.

To get to Chicago from Guadalajara, we had to go through Mexico City. Getting from Guadalajara to Mexico City was uneventful enough. We took off, we were in the air for about 50 minutes, we landed and we walked for what seemed like 5 miles to get from our domestic arrival gate to our international departure gate. We waited for the announced boarding time, and at about five minutes before, the doors to the jet bridge opened and out marched a small army of private security personnel, each armed with a folding table and pair of rubber gloves. In near-perfect synchronization they set up the tables and donned the gloves, while an airline employee rigged the nylon-belted posts around them to restrict entry to one central point.

Shawn and I were confused, since we'd not left the secured area of the airport while switching planes, and we'd already had to go through an additional x-ray of our bags when we crossed from the national terminal to the international one. The gate attendant made the call for the boarding of the flight and people started lining up. We were about to have our carry-on baggage inspected for a third time.

Shawn and I couldn't believe it, and we were discussing amongst ourselves what the possible cause could be for having to go through this yet another time. None of the other passengers boarding flights in our area - one to Frankfurt, another to Buenos Aires - had been subjected to this special treatment. We were trying to figure out why we were so lucky when a voice behind us spoke up in English.

"It's because we're flying into the United States," he explained. "The US requires an extra security check for foreign flights going into the country now."

"What?" I asked. "We've already been through two other checks already, one just 500 meters back. Is this some new thing? We haven't flown into the US for a little over a year, but they didn't make us do this last time."

"Yeah, it's getting worse there every day," he said.

They also made us throw away any bottled water we had before boarding the plane.

We landed at around 1 am at O'Hare airport in Chicago. Clearing immigration and customs was a breeze, and then we got to spend the next four and a half hours in the airport, waiting until the shuttle service started running so we could get downtown and drop off our bags at our hotel.

At the airport, there were two places open. One had such American delights as veggie burgers, onion rings and root beer, all things we can get in Guadalajara but they're hard to find and expensive. Well, scratch that. They cost about as much after being specially trucked in to Mexico as they do here, what with the relatively high prices here.

The other place advertised having drinks like espresso and latte, but it turns out they only offer brewed coffee at night. One has to wait until 6 am to get expresso or latte. They also had a range of nine different sandwiches, including stuff it seemed strange to advertise the way they did, like "corned beef on white." One of these sandwiches was a veggie wrap, and it was the only item of the nine offered that one couldn't get between 10 pm and 6 am, continuing the idea that seems to be a worldwide misconception: vegetarians do not eat after sundown.

It was also the first example reinforcing one of the recurring themes we always notice about the United States when we arrive: it's the land of nitpicky little rules. No loitering. No skateboarding. No smoking within 50 feet of the entrance. No bills bigger than $20. No music past 9 o'clock. No food or drink. No substitutions. No minors. No shirt. No shoes. No service.

Eventually we were able to get a shuttle from the airport to hotel, but since we had nine hours to go before we could actually check in, we left our bags and went out to kill some time in the city. We went first to the Tempo Café (6 E. Chestnut Street), a 24-hour diner-style place with excellent food where we got omelettes. We went to get more coffee at a Starbucks, then did some browsing and buying at a Border's.

We took a cab to Chinatown, where Shawn took a few pictures and we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for some spring rolls. They normally had meat in them, but they were happy to make them vegetarian on our request. The only problem being that, when they arived, they were nothing but lettuce and a sprig of cilantro rolled up in a sheet of rice wrapper. It was still only noon, and we had three hours to kill, but I was starting to hallucinate from being up so long. We walked to the train and took it downtown, where we walked a few blocks and stopped at another Starbucks for more coffee and to pass another hour.

We were really dragging on the walk back to the hotel. We crossed Michigan Avenue, and what seemed to be a couple of blocks that took us about 10 minutes to travel when we were going in the other direction in the morning, seemed to be several miles that took forever to traverse in the afternoon. At last we arrived at the W Chicago - Lakeshore and checked in. We had made a special request on our reservation - that they secure a copy of the Wallpaper City Guide for Chicago in advance and give it to us at check-in. Sure enough, they'd done it.

We took a nap and showered before going down to dinner, where we were reminded of one of the things we miss about the United States while living in Mexico: the great diversity of great ethnic foods available here. At the Mediterranean-style restaurant in the hotel, they are running a special series of dishes from various Asian regions. We had a vegetarian pinkabet, a dish popular in the Philippines, and ordered some smaller plates: spanikopita, hummus and mixed olives. I got a couple of Manhattans, made with Maker's Mark, a label we just can't get in Mexico, where the only non-Scotch whiskies places ever seem to have are Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. I'm not sure which was more intoxicating, the bourbon or the vast selection made possible by American-style capitalism.

Still reeling from the conflict of the love-hate relationship I have with the land of my birth, I retired to a matress that was 10 times softer than any I've ever had a Mexican hotel, paying 10 times more than I would for a hotel room there. I switched on The Daily Show, where the brilliant Jon Stewart was somehow able to make me laugh my ass off over Americans talking about how they won't vote for Barak Obama because he's not white, because they have somehow been convinced that he is a Muslim, and because he's "Hussein."

One day down. Sixty more to go.

Posted by crispy at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

April 30, 2008

Querétaro: Part Three

Paper Head Guy, Querétaro

I wanted to see the place where Emperor Maximilian was executed, El Cerro de las Campanas, or "The Hill of the Bells." We set out on foot this morning before noon to check it out.

It was already hot, and I was in semi-dressy clothes. At first, it wasn't so bad. Walking down Avenida Hidalgo, I saw a bunch of stuff that struck me as funny or cool, and I was able to snap some photos of them.

Lavandería/Tintorería Veronica, Querétaro

I don't understand the one below. It's a sign for a place that sells medical implants and prosthetics, and I'm sure their products help their clients to live fuller, more satisfying lives. Yet I suspect most of them do not go on to be communications directors on the crew of an open-wheel, off-road racing team.

Adventures in Prosthetics, Querétaro

I mean, where did they get this photo? Did they make it themselves? It looks like a poster for a Hollywood summer blockbuster about a racer that loses an arm in a terrible accident but whose courage allows him to take his former teammate to the championships as the tough but caring crew chief that inspires everyone that gets to know him.

A reward is being offered for this lost dog.

Perrito Perdido, Querétaro

Why, I'm not exactly sure. It looks like Darth Poodle to me, but then again, I'm not a big dog fan.

Is it just me, or does this...

I AM A MONEDA!, Querétaro

...remind anyone else of Don Hertzfeldt's "Rejected"?

Soon enough though, we started having to go uphill to get to the summit, and site of the historic stuff I wanted to see. This was annoying because I was a little dressed up, and I was sweating like a pig the whole way. As we got nearer and nearer to the top of the hill, Shawn noticed that all the gates to the park were closed. He started to worry that one had to go in through one specific gate to get in the park, but there were no signs whatsoever anywhere to direct one to the proper entrance. The gates that were closed didn't even have a sign telling one which gate to go to.

This isn't entirely unusual in Mexico, but one would think that, at one of the biggest tourist attractions in the city, they'd have signs telling you where to go to buy your ticket to get in. Of course, our friends Larry and Joseph would argue that this is where you make your first mistake, presuming that people think about such things here.

We finally got to the top, and found that we were in a big empty parking lot, unable to get in through the fence that encircles the whole park. Luckily, Shawn spotted a gate that was ajar, although it said (in Spanish), "EMPLOYEE ENTRANCE ONLY!" They can't afford the time or expense to put a sign up telling you where to get in, but they can somehow manage one to tell you to keep out. I was annoyed, hot and sweaty by this point, so I squeezed in through the gate after Shawn. I wasn't about to go back down the hill just so that I could go back up to get to the proper gate.

View from El Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro

While climbing the hill, I was quickly losing interest in the park, cursing our even thinking of going there. Yet once inside, I was glad to have made the effort, because it was quite verdant and beautiful.

Shawn at El Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro

There is a great, enormous statue of Benito Juárez in the park, which is kind of funny because he was a pretty short man.

Monument to Benito Juárez, Querétaro

Shawn commented that it looked so severe as to seem Russian.

Monument to Benito Juárez, Querétaro

You can't really tell in the above photo as resized for the blog, but Shawn's giving old Juárez the Lynndie England.

The Lynndie England, Querétaro

Emperor Maximilian was Austrian, and had been appointed as Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon during a period when France had conquered Mexico. His reign was brief though, as Juárez and the resistance movement overthrew the monarchy and had Maximilian executed. The family of Maximilian sponsored the building of a chapel to commemorate the re-establishing of diplomatic relations between Austria-Hungary and Mexico in 1900.

Chapel at El Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro

It is a nice little chapel, but it does not seem like people are allowed to enter, but they do have the doors open so you can see inside. When we arrived, a bunch of school kids on a field trip were all bunched up at the entrance checking it out.

Chapel at El Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro

There's also a fountain that is dedicated to children, their learning, and being the future. Yada, yada, yada.

Child Reading Sculpture at El Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro

We didn't notice until posting the picture, but it looks like the kid in the above sculpture is missing a foot. Maybe he needs to visit the prosthetics store and make something of himself, instead of just moping around reading all the time!

We exited the park, buying the entrance tickets as we left. I suspect they thought we were crazy, but I didn't want to explain our whole gate-crashing earlier. We hailed a cab and went to Harry's, a New Orleans-style restaurant and oyster bar in the Plaza Constitución.

Shawn at Harry's

Harry's was a pretty nice place, and they had a handful of things on the menu that we could eat as ovo-lacto vegetarians. Meat-eating fans of Cajun and Creole food would probably enjoy it even more.

I was delighted to discover that they had pecan pie listed as a dessert on the menu, but I was disappointed to find that it was more like a Mexican pay de nuez than a southern US style pecan pie. Instead of having a layer of glazed pecans over that delicious sugary, gooey filling, it was more or less all crushed up nuts in a crust. Not awful, but not at all what I was expecting (and craving).

Harry's of Querétaro

It's in the same building as the Gran Hotel, and seems to be the most happening night spot in the Centro Histórico. We went back later at night, around midnight, to have a nightcap and celebrate our last night in town, but there wasn't a free table in the whole place.

Yet before all that, still in the afternoon, we walked over to try and hang out for a while in the Alameda Hidalgo, a huge park with lots of trees and grassy areas. We had driven by it last night, and it looked beautiful. Yet when we got there, we found it closed. There were maintenance people inside, but all the gates were locked up tight.

Alameda Hidalgo, Querétaro

Again, there were no signs anywhere telling visitors why the park was closed, or when it would be open.

Alameda Hidalgo, Querétaro

We suspected that, since they had maintenance crews inside doing things like watering areas of the grass and sweeping the walkways, they do open it up at some point.

Alameda Hidalgo, Querétaro

Yet since we had limited time in town, we didn't stick around to find out. We took photos through the fence and then decided to get our shoes shined. We asked the shoeshine guy what the deal was with the Alameda being closed and he explained something about how it actually is open at certain times, but he was old and a bit mumbly, so we didn't fully understand his answer. We think it's open on most days but only after a certain time. If visiting Querétaro, and if you want to visit the Alameda, be sure to inquire as to when it is open, or you may be very disappointed when you show up and can't get in.

Alameda Hidalgo, Querétaro

We hoofed it back to the center and walked up Anador Libertad, a very pretty street that is now a pedestrian walkway, to reach the Plaza de Armas.

Anador Libertad, Querétaro

Shawn went about taking photos of the plaza while I got off my feet in a seat off to the side of the plaza.

Plaza de Armas, Querétaro

We had coffee at Gloria Jean's Coffees, where the staff was exceptionally friendly.

Plaza de Armas, Querétaro

As we were leaving, Shawn spotted a restaurant next to the coffee place that said, 'COCINA HINDÚ' - an Indian restaurant! That's our favorite national/regional food, so we were thrilled to find such a place. They were obviously not open, as they had all their tables and chairs stacked outside, and were doing some remodeling inside. Shawn went in and asked if they would be open for dinner, and a man told him, yes, at 8 pm.

Plaza de Armas, Querétaro

We were excited and immediately decided to return for an Indian feast that night for our final dinner in Querétaro.

Plaza de Armas, Querétaro

As we left the plaza, we were surrounded by a bunch of school kids who wanted to interview us in English for a school project. They had some 20 questions about genetically-modified foods. It was incredibly hard stuff for non-native speakers, but they did a pretty good job.

We walked back to our hotel and relaxed for a while in the air conditioning. Eventually we showered (again), shaved (again), ironed our clothes and went out for our Indian delights. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the restaurant, the furniture that had been piled up outside was piled up inside. We entered and a bunch of people were all sitting around talking. We asked if they were open, and they said that they were opening on Friday. I was a bit miffed. I said that someone there had earlier told Shawn that they would be open at 8 pm for dinner, and the woman that seemed to be an owner apologized to us. We were really bummed because we were really looking forward to Indian food. It's very hard to find it here in Mexico.

It was nice however, to actually get an apology for being misinformed by someone on their staff. That usually doesn't happen. Normally you get a shrug and a laugh, and nothing more. Because people think it's better to tell you what you want to hear rather than to tell you something that will disappoint you, people lie to you all the time here, and nobody thinks there is anything wrong with that.

While we didn't get the chance to eat at the place because we're leaving Thursday afternoon to return to Guadalajara, I submit to you the information on the place in case you are going to Querétaro and would like to try it out. The place is called "bhaji" and is located at Pasteur Sur #8, in the Plaza de Armas. Their phone number is (442) 224-2814.

We ended up taking a chance on an Italian place called Trastevere (16 de Septiembre #28; 212-1472) and were positively surprised. Instead of the exact same boring three or four vegetarian dishes that they offer at seemingly all the Italian restaurants in Mexico, this place had interesting dishes that we have never seen anywhere else in the country. We had a cheese fondue with artichokes and grilled tomatoes that was out of this world, followed by a spinach and cheese ravioli in pecan white sauce for Shawn and a spinach lasagne for me. The service was excellent and the atmosphere quite nice: an open courtyard adorned with several interesting paintings. After our Indian disappointment, it was an absolutely delightful end to the evening.

Tomorrow we head back to Guadalajara, but we have had a great time here in Querétaro. I would recommend it highly to anyone interested in a good mixture of the historic charm and modern 'conveniences.'

I just wish they would get a little better about their signage telling visitors details like where the entrances are and when places are open so one doesn't end up wasting a lot of time.

Posted by crispy at 11:31 PM | Comments (5)

April 29, 2008

Victoria Soda

Victoria Soda, from San Juan del Río

I am delighted to have discovered yet another Mexican-made soda that has somehow thus far survived the Coke®/Pepsi® holocaust that has killed off nearly all the independent soft drink manufacturers of Mexico: Victoria!

It is manufactured about 32 miles southeast of Santiago de Querétaro in San Juan del Río, Querétaro, the second largest city in the state. It is also imported to the United States by The Victoria Beverage Company, Inc., Conroe, Texas.

I saw it at the Oxxo, and selected the unusual red currant flavor over the more typical lime, apple, sangria, and orange. At first, I thought it was a little funny tasting, but the more I drink, the more I like it. It seems a little weak on flavor, but it's certainly not weak on sweet.

I was unaware of the Spanish word for red currant, which appears to be grosella.

Refresco Victoria, de San Juan del Río

Black currant is grosella negra.

Posted by crispy at 09:32 PM | Comments (3)

Querétaro: Part Two

Shawn reads The News at the Museo de Arte, Querétaro

Today we woke up early to make use of the continental breakfast at the hotel. It was, as I suspected, nothing to write home about. In fact, it was not anything worth writing about in the blog, apart from the fact that it forced us to get up early, and that let us get a pretty early start on the day.

Before noon, we got the the Museo de Arte de Querétaro, which normally charges MXN $30 per person for admission, but it is free every Tuesday. We paid the additional MXN $15 to be permitted to take photos in the courtyard.

Porticos, Museo de Arte, Querétaro

They currently have an exhibit of work by contemporary Mexican painter, Carlos García de la Nuez there, and we both really enjoyed it. He uses mixed media to cover huge (10' x 10'?) canvases, but unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos of those works.

I can show you some of the details of the architecture though.

Inside the Museo de Arte, Querétaro

All the faces of lining the courtyard are different; they do not repeat.

Inside the Museo de Arte, Querétaro

However, they all terminate at the bottom in this single-leg and foot ornamentation.

Inside the Museo de Arte, Querétaro

We then moved on to the Museo Regional de Querétaro. The admission there is normally MXN $30, but it was free today because it was Tuesday. Again, we paid the few pesos extra to be allowed to take photographs inside the museum.

Hallway, Museo Regional de Querétaro

I wanted to go there because they supposedly have the table on which the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed. Unfortunately, we were not able to find it anywhere in the museum, and it looked like a huge section had been closed off. We did find the desk where the orders to execute Emperor Maximilian were signed.

Poor Max Was Bound to Die

Tonight, we are hoping to go out to either Bangkok Mex Thai, or Chino Lung Xing
 (Blvd. Bernardo Quintana 110). The former only has photographs of the food items online, no real menu. If it turns out they do not offer any vegetarian food, we will try to get to Lung Xing, because we've read online that they have vegetable dishes with tofu. I'm not holding my breath in either case.

Posted by crispy at 02:38 PM | Comments (2)

April 28, 2008

Querétaro: Part One

Chris and Shawn at the Hotel Quinta Santiago, Querétaro

The ride from Guadalajara on the bus was pleasant enough. We both slept off and on for most of it. The films were Rush Hour 3 and Monsters, Inc. The former was subtitled yet still unwatchable, while the latter was dubbed, much to my annoyance, for previously mentioned reasons.

Our cab from the bus station to the Hotel Quinta Santiago cost us MXN $37 (about USD $3.54) and took about 20 minutes. We were delighted to find that the hotel room was huge and quite comfortable. We took a few moments to figure out where we wanted to go with the help of a handy free map they had in the lobby, and then we struck out to get lunch and a feel for the area.

Shawn Surveillance, Querétaro

In mere summaries and snapshots, I fear that one Mexican colonial town comes across as identical to all the others. It is hard to convey the subtle differences that exist between each of them with a hastily put together collection of photos with brief notations. Querétaro seems to me like a composite of Morelia and Guanajuato. Like Morelia, the public areas around the center are spacious, yet like Guanajuato, they seem somehow more gussied up for tourist consumption.

There are the requisite plazas, with beautifully manicured trees and walkways.

Jardín Guerrero, Querétaro

Yet just a few blocks off of these, one quickly comes to the Mexican equivalent of row houses along old cobblestone streets.

Street Scene, Querétaro

Doors range from the simple to the ornate, but there is always an artistic touch.

Door, Querétaro

I especially liked this one...

Door, Querétaro

...because of the stone birds above the doorway.

Detail of Door, Querétaro

There are the statues, like this one dedicated to Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, aka La Corregidora, a conspirator in the Mexican struggle for independence against Spain.

Monument to La Corregidora, Querétaro

She is elevated on a tall pedestal, flanked by eagles resting on cannons that are draped in what look to be flags.

While looking upon this monument, Shawn made the observation that there are so many women throughout history that played crucial roles in freeing their societies, only to have their gender given the shaft by the male-dominated governments that they helped to establish.

Monument to La Corregidora, Querétaro

One occasionally runs across something that just seems odd. I sometimes find out after-the-fact that these things seem funny because I don't understand what is actually being said or I do not know some secondary meaning for a term. This tends to give Mexican readers of my blog no end of fun in ribbing me.

In this case, I understand the word la moraleja to mean "the moral," as in "the moral of the story is..."

La Moraleja Parking, Querétaro

Maybe one of my Mexican readers can set me straight as to why this isn't as odd as it would seem to someone not in the know.

Many times, the things I remember about a specific city are images that are not intended to be artistic, but they achieve a certain accidental beauty that stays with me even after I've forgotten which statues of whom are in which parks in whatever cities. These are things that never seem to come across properly in blog entries or flickr albums.

A Mona Lisa for our times, Querétaro

This is a wall that was originally painted a certain shade of yellow, but has subsequently acquired a patchwork of other shades as graffiti and cracks were painted over through the years.

Yellow Mural, Querétaro

Running the length of half the block, this wall is an unintentional mural of chromatic minimalism and abstract expressionism, akin to that of Josef Albers...

Yellow Mural, Querétaro

...or Mark Rothko.

Yellow Mural, Querétaro

Sometimes it is just a face in a crowd that strikes me, and the moment is horribly poignant because I know, unlike all the tourist attractions that I can visit time and time again on return trips to any given city, I will probably never have the chance to see it again.

Cutie, Querétaro

Sure, the haircut, the shoes, or (as in this case) the pants might make me laugh a bit.

Cutie, Querétaro

Yet I cherish these snapshots among all those of the monuments, buildings and landscapes that I take in our travels across the country, because the people are the most beautiful part of Mexico.

Posted by crispy at 10:54 PM | Comments (2)

March 01, 2008

Graffiti: Calle Morelos

Graffiti on Calle Morelos, just west of Avenida Chapultepec

Graffiti on Calle Morelos, just west of Avenida Chapultepec

Graffiti on Calle Morelos, just west of Avenida Chapultepec

Graffiti on Calle Morelos, just west of Avenida Chapultepec

Graffiti on Calle Morelos, just west of Avenida Chapultepec

Graffiti on Calle Morelos, just west of Avenida Chapultepec

Posted by crispy at 01:56 AM | Comments (3)

January 26, 2008

Turndown Service

Results of Turndown Service, Sheraton María Ísabel

Not all hotels do it, and among those that do, there is no consistent set of things that comprise it. Often it involves leaving a chocolate or some other little token on the turned-down linens. Also common is changing out towels that the guest might have used during the day. On occasion, I've had a hotel staff member just ask if everything is working properly, if we need anything restocked in the minibar, or if there is anything else we might want before bed.

If you have never heard of turndown service before, it's not a big surprise. Not all hotels do it. In fact, not very many seem to nowadays. Shawn had never heard of it until he went to Thailand seven years ago. Nowadays we only tend to get it when we stay at Starwood properties, and even then, it's ridiculously inconsistent.

For example, in our recent stay in Mexico City, at the Sheraton María Ísabel, we got turndown service on our second night there, but not the first. Even then, it wasn't much of a service. They didn't even turn down the linens. They moved the remote control for the tv and the guide listing which channels were which to the bed, and left us a solitary foil-wrapped chocolate. This is what confuses me: they know that there are two of us in the room, so why leave us just one chocolate? Starwood hotels are not exactly what one would call economy lodging. Can't they afford one chocolate per guest, not just one per room?

Solitary Chocolate, Sheraton María Ísabel

To me, it seems like if you are going to bother with turndown service, you ought to do it right. Why go through the trouble just to do something lame like leave a chocolate that people have to fight over. At least leave a knife so the two guests can cut it into halves. If I were running a hotel, I'd offer much more interesting turndown service. Maybe like the carts they have in prisons and hospitals, I'd go around with DVDs or books people could enjoy before turning in for the night. Heck, since it's my fantasy, I'll even throw in the option to have a story read to you if you want. You could also provide a short massage for those that were so inclined. Of course, if it was a big hotel, you'd have to have a fleet of massage therapists, and even then, you'd probably want to schedule each person's at a specific time.

I have also read that some places leave an aperetif on the nightstand in their turndown service. I don't tend to like apertifs, so I'd probably offer a fifth of bourbon and, since I'd have to be living and working where folks were not so uptight about drugs, a couple of valium or vicodin, delivered by a geisha that would also give you a good-night haiku.

So if you could design your own ideal turndown service, what would it include?

Posted by crispy at 09:45 PM | Comments (1)

January 25, 2008

Mexico City By Night: Part Two

Twilight view from 10th floor of Sheraton María Ísabel, Mexico City

We switched hotels today and got a new view.

Twilight view of the Angel of Independence from 10th floor of Sheraton María Ísabel, Mexico City

Posted by crispy at 06:19 PM | Comments (1)

Mexico City By Night

Sunset view from 16th floor of the Sheraton Centro Histórico, Mexico City

Shawn and I went to PapaBeto Jazz Bistro last night, where we saw the Juan Alzate Cuarteto. They said the cover was MXN $80, but we ordered food, and it seemed that we were not charged this. Their one vegetarian entree was spaghetti with a tomato sauce with tons of mushrooms, so despite the fact that I despise mushrooms, that's what I got. After picking them out and donating them to Shawn, it turned out to be pretty tasty.

Yet it is obvious that you don't go there for the food. The space is pretty small, the color scheme hideous (maroon, pink, grey and green), and I've seen better bars on airplanes. Still, given the fact that it's the only place yet I've been to see jazz in this country where they don't use an electronic something (synthesizer in place of piano, a drum machine instead of a drummer), I was thrilled to kick back, throw down a few Jack Daniels (at around MXN $70 each), and enjoy the show.

Sunset view from 16th floor of the Sheraton Centro Histórico, Mexico City

I was pretty impressed with the piano player, Nicolas Santella. He was both cute and talented.

Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me, so I did not get any photos of him. That also kept me from snapping shots of the smorgasbord of hooker ladies lining the street we took getting back to the hotel. There was no effort being made at all to look discreet. They were clad in such stuff as white leather miniskirts, tube tops and huge cha cha heels. It was a beautiful sight to behold.

I must sign off for now, as we need to check out of the Sheraton Centro Histórico and move over to the Sheraton María Ísabel, the grand dame on the Paseo de la Reforma, which our taxi driver told us yesterday was the first five-star hotel in Mexico City. Maybe that's true.

Posted by crispy at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2008

Panama: Parting Thoughts

Now that we are back safe and sound in Guadalajara, I have time to post a few random thoughts about Panama that are too small or not funny enough to merit individual entries.

It should be noted that we did not venture beyond Panama City except when we went to Colón, the port city on the Atlantic side that is the destination of the Panama City Railway. I might post an entry about Colón, because it is probably the most dangerous city that I've ever been in, and it might prove helpful for those planning to take the train to know about it. We highly recommend the train trip, but the several hours that one must pass in Colón if one takes it (unless it's part of a tour package) might be enough to recommend against it. Note that it takes a lot for me to recommend not taking a train whenever possible. Colón is that bad.

Yet that experience aside, our time in Panama was limited to the captial, and there is a lot of beautiful country to visit outside the city. We prefer the amenities that cities provide, so we tend to stick to urban centers when we travel. Panama City did not disappoint. It is vibrant and exciting, rich with history and a very promising future. Shawn and I both expect it to become one of the world's premier destination cities within the next decade, and it is impossible to ignore the growing pains they are currently having along the way. They have gone from a city whose main reason to exist was to support the canal and the people servicing the canal to a city where people flock to enjoy the gambling, food, beaches, nightlife, retirement opportunities. They have not been able to grow fast enough to meet the demand, but it is not for a lack of trying.

According to our driver Roger, the Ministry of Tourism in Panama has been trying to educate service personnel on how to deal properly with foreign tourists. Unfortunately, employers do not want to allow the employees the time off to attend such training, nor do they want to pay for it, even though the Ministry of Tourism pays for half. Unfortunately, it shows in the level of service one receives at the restaurants and hotels there. Most of our complaints are about a phenomenon that we started to refer to as: This is what you want. This is what you get. You ask for one thing and you get what the service provider decides to give you.

Among our complaints about Panama are some of the following. The majority are about restaurant service.

Restaurants are often out of or do not really offer items they have on their menus, and servers do not seem to know about it.

Shawn and I had several experiences in restaurants in Panama where we would order something on menu only to be told a considerable while later that they did not have it. I believe that sometimes they had run out, but at other times, I think they just never stocked those items. As vegetarians, we order things that people never order otherwise in these meat-centric countries. It is amazing how frequently the things kitchens happen to have "just run out of" are the vegetarian items.

In one case, Shawn ordered a falafel sandwich from the menu. When it arrived, some 25 minutes later, it was a chicken sandwich. He called the waitress over to tell her, and she confirmed that he had ordered falafel. He opened it up to show her that it was chicken, and she just stared at him. We told her that we were vegetarians and could not eat pollo, and she silently picked it up and took it back to the kitchen. She returned a couple of minutes later explaining that there was no falafel; she offered no apology and no offer of anything else.

Servers that suck.

On another occasion, Shawn and I ordered the ravioli at a restaurant. The waiter came out after a while and told us that they did not have ravioli. At least he told us this before bringing us whatever the cook decided to serve us instead. He asked us if we would prefer to get spaghetti or fettucini in the sauce we had selected. Shawn asked for spaghetti and I asked for fettucini. When the food arrived, we both had spaghetti.

I would like to say here that we did have notable exceptions to this complaint, with excellent servers at Manolo's Cafe, the Four Points hotel restaurant and S'cena. However, Panama has a reputation for really bad service, and our experience generally supported that finding.

In general, Panamanians are not very friendly.

This was inconsistent, and we met a few people that were exceptionally friendly, nice and helpful. Yet on the whole, the people there do not seem very friendly. They are not mean nor rude. They just are not very friendly. It is hard to win a smile from Panamanians.

Almost any time that we would say thanks (or in most cases, "gracias"), people would not acknowledge it. Often when they did, it was with an "Okay." It seems the more educado of the people there would say the equivalent of "it is nothing," or "it is my pleasure," so I do not think that it is a cultural thing where the concept of "you're welcome" doesn't exist.

It's not cheap.

Again, there are some things that you can get pretty cheaply in Panama, but on the whole, it's not a bargain. Well, compared to traveling in Europe, it's a steal, but there are a lot of things that are as expensive in Panama as they are in the United States.

Our hotels that we stayed in ranged from USD $90 to $155 (including taxes) per night, and none of them were five-star establishments. Cushier places like the Bristol Hotel run about $300 per night. The Marriott is USD $280. Dinner out at Habibi's cost us USD $60 for two.

Shawn, as he is wont to do, looked into real estate listings to see how much propery costs in Panama. He saw many condos listed for USD $500,000, and he saw homes ranging from USD $250,000 to $750,000. Another source claims that new housing costs have doubled in the past two years, but apparently if you buy a used place, it is cheaper.

It is really hot, humid and rainy.

We went for the coolest time of year, and even so, it was constantly above 80° F (26° C) with 70% humidity. We were also there for the driest time of year, yet it rained 7 out of the 9 days we were there. I was not as bummed out about the heat as Shawn, although I was not crazy about the humidity, and the rainy aspect was a little inconvenient when we wanted to get out and about.

Despite all that, we loved our time in Panama, and hope to go back again sometime soon. Hopefully after they get a decent service ethic, but even if not, we would go back for the following.

The city is beautiful.

Panama City skyline, from Casco Viejo

It has some places that are less beautiful than others, but the skyline is magnificent and getting better all the time. Everywhere you go it's nice and verdant, with lots of beautiful, old, spreading trees and lush grass. It's right on the ocean and nestled up against mountains. Certain parts of it have architecture that looks like the Vieux Carre in New Orleans. There is no shortage of scenic beauty in Panama City, and we hear it's even better if you venture outside the city.

It is hopping.

After being in the relative snoozearium that is the second-largest city in Mexico for two years, it was THRILLING to be in a city that parties all night long. Sure, Guadalajara has clubs where you can dance to dreadfully repetitive techno or the same moldy Reggaetón hits you've been hearing everywhere for the past three years until 5 in the morning, but in Panama City, you have that plus bars and British pubs that are open late, late, late, clubs that play rock music, several chains of 24-hour restaurants and a handful of completely independent ones and casinos that never close.

It's racially diverse and the various ethnic groups are well-integrated.

Mexico seems really tolerant to us after coming from the United States, but a lot of times, I have to wonder if that is because they do not have a lot of racial diversity. That isn't to say that there has not been a lot of mixing in Mexico's past, because there has been. It's just that you do not see a lot of ethnic diversity here nowadays, at least not in Guadalajara.

In Panama City, you do. According to recent estimates, some 70% of the inhabitants are mixed Amerindian and white or mixed white and black while 14% are West Indian. Some 10% are white ('European'), and 6% are Amerindian. There is also a Chinese community of about 100,000. That might not be a big plus to a lot of people, but it is to me because I find diversity (ethnic or otherwise) to make a place more interesting.

The food is diverse.

This has a lot to do with the previous item, but the culinary side of travel is such a big thing for me that I think it deserves its own specific item. We had Italian, Chinese, Indian, Lebanese and Mexican food while we were there, and had we more time, we could have enjoyed several other national cuisines.

Of note, Panamanian food is very heavy on meat. For this reason, we didn't have anything that was specifically Panamanian, but those that eat meat would probaby dig it.

Everything is within walking distance.

Given that it is awfully hot and humid, one can get really sweaty walking around. Yet it does seem that one can walk easily from any one place to any other in town. That's not really true, but compared to the scale of some cities we've been to, it is a walkable city. One night we dined out at a great Italian place (Napoli), walked over to El Pavo Real for a few drinks, then meandered back to our hotel, stopping in a casino to lose ten bucks in a slot machine along the way. Traffic can be very bad in Panama City, and the buses are crazy. Therefore, being able to walk around to a lot of different things for an evening's entertainment is quite handy.

They have a great selection of booze.

Living in Mexico and being involved in NAFTA, you'd think that we'd be able to get the vast array of alcohol that people can access in the United States, but unfortunately, that just is not true. I have only seen Bushmill's Irish Whiskey once in this country, and that was in a hotel bar in Mexico City. In Panama, the selection is very good. It is a little slanted towards European bottles; they do not, for example, have a great variety of bourbon, but you can get some very decent gin or Scotch.

We had a very good time in Panama. I would recommend a visit there to nearly everyone I know, but I might add the caveat that it would be better to wait a few years first. They have a ways to go before they have refined their service ethic to properly deal with tourists. Even so, if you were to go tomorrow, you would be sure to find a lot to love about Panama.

Posted by crispy at 04:20 AM | Comments (2)

January 19, 2008

Esperar

Shawn Waiting for Taxi Outside Casa Cubilete, January 2008

Posted by crispy at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2008

Tosca

Ticket for Performance of "Tosca," Teatro Degollado 17 February 2008

Shawn and I will be attending the performance of Tosca at the Teatro Degollado next month with Miguel Chico (the equivalent of "Jr."), an opera aficionado that lives downstairs in our building. It is a "Special Presentation" of the Orchestra Filarmónica de Jalisco, and for some reason, we were not able to buy tickets online. We had to have Charles take us down to the box office at the Teatro Degollado to buy them, but they confirmed for us that it will be a full staging of the opera (not just the music), and we were able to get pretty killer seats.

Posted by crispy at 03:30 PM | Comments (2)

December 22, 2007

¿Qué pasa, ese?

Ese laundry detergent, product of Panama

I wanted to rinse out some of my sweaty clothes in our hotel room sink, so I went to the mini super to buy some laundry detergent. When I got there and saw this box, I had to buy it.

[why this is funny]

Posted by crispy at 05:11 PM | Comments (2)

December 21, 2007

My Kind of Convenience Store

Mini-Super Fuki #2, Panama

This is the store under the Hotel del Alba building, where I bought the previously described Colombiana soda. This illustrates a situation where it might be better to use the pound sign.

Mini-Super Fuki #2, Panama

Posted by crispy at 01:49 PM | Comments (4)

December 20, 2007

Panama: Around the Hotel Torres de Alba

Posted by crispy at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

Panama: On the Ground

View from the Torres de Alba, Panama City

We arrived in Panama last night, after a relatively pleasant flight on Copa Airlines.

Our one observation about Copa, having now flown on them three times, is that one should arrive at the airport about three hours before the departure of the flight, because checking in to a Copa flight seems to take a little over an hour. Their check-in desks are always understaffed, the employees tend to waste a lot of chatting amongst themselves, and when they are servicing clients, they're very slow.

The flight was pleasant enough though, and they did remember to serve us a vegetarian meal, consisting of a little dish of honeydew melon and an alfalfa sprout and tomato sandwich. Because, you know, vegetarian = rabbit.

We took a cab from the airport to our hotel, the Torres de Alba for USD $28.00. The cab driver told us that this would be the price without tip, and he knows that Americans always tip. The listing of the price in United States dollars in this and subsequent Panama entries is not for reader convenience; they not only have a currency pegged to the dollar, like many other countries. They actually use United States dollars as their national currency. As for values below a dollar, they seem to have their own coins, but they also use U.S. coins too.

View from the Torres de Alba, Panama City

The Torres de Alba thankfully has industrial-strength air conditioning, because it's hot, hot, hot here in Panama. It's not even 10 am yet, and it "feels like" 30.5°C (87°F) outside. It is located right next to the enormous Veneto Hotel and Casino, and about a block down the street from a 24-hour restaurant, and even the restaurants that close do so no earlier than 11 pm.

The Torres de Alba also has kitchens in all the rooms. The one in ours is easily four times the size of my kitchen in Guadalajara. Unfortunately, we will probably not be making many meals here in the hotel before we check-out tomorrow.

Kitchen, Torres de Alba

This city is exhillarating. It is hot, crowded, bustling and falling over itself with new growth. Whereas Buenos Aires seems much more like an older, European metropolis, Panama seems fresh and positively Pan-American. Shawn says it reminds him a lot of Miami. The joke here goes that Panama City is like Miami, except people here speak English.

Yeah, a lot of people here do speak some English, but don't be fooled. They prefer to speak Spanish, but it is surprisingly a very Caribbean form of Spanish, where the letter "S" before a consonant apparently costs extra. Our cab driver told us that there are a lot of English speakers here because they have a large number of immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean islands. Given the sound of their Spanish, I'd guess they hae a large number of Cubans and Dominicans here too.

I've been here about twelve hours and I already love Panama. It even has one of my favorite things about Colombia...

Colombiana soda

...Colombiana soda.

Posted by crispy at 07:30 AM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2007

"This is the school I work for..."

Shawn comes home today and tells me about the administration's plan for rewarding the students for good performance. He had suggested extra recess or maybe getting to watch a movie. Instead, the geniuses came up with this killer idea.

Each teacher will get a set of flags for various subjects to put on the wall. The top student in each category will have their photo put under it. WOO HOO! What fun!

They look like this:

Award flag for "Reading Comprehension"

Award flag for "Listening"

Award flag for "Writing Skills"

...but this says it all about he school where Shawn works:

Award flag for "Spelling B"

Another funny thing about it is, they have seven teachers that are supposed to use them, but they only made five sets of flags.

Posted by crispy at 03:21 PM | Comments (4)

December 08, 2007

Megacable Blows

Digital Cable typo listing How to Blow a Billionaire

It's true. I have lost some of my love for Megacable, but I'm saving that for another post.

Instead, today we're going to talk about something they did that made me laugh. Today Shawn was looking at the digital cable guide and he saw the listing for the FX show, How to Blow a Billion...

Proper title on FX-created bumper

...but instead, it looked more like How to Blow a Billionaire. It's a little off, written as Billionarie...

not "Billionaire"

...but it's close enough that we both were shocked and amazed. Maybe that's some way for them to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit from Vivid Video.

In any case, it's a sure-fire way to get people to tune and check it out, even if it is cheating a little.

At least they do properly label it as an 'adult' show.

How to Blow a Billionarie

Posted by crispy at 01:04 PM | Comments (1)

December 06, 2007

Shawn at Plaza Galerías

Shawn, Plaza Galerías

Posted by crispy at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2007

Mandú

Exterior of Mandú Restaurant, Plaza Galerías

Mandu
Plaza Galerías 360
33/3673-2319

As vegetarians in the United States, Shawn and I usually found Asian restaurants to be a pretty safe bet when dining out. At best, they were among our favorite places (Taki's and Tra Ling's) and at worst, they offered the same four or five ubiquitous, boring, yet meat-free, dishes. I can't tell you how many chefs seem to think that vegetarians not only avoid meat, but also variety.

When we moved to Guadalajara and tried out a couple of Asian restaurants, we were shocked to find that they usually did not offer any vegetarian dishes at all. I do not mean that they didn't have tofu dishes. I mean they didn't even have any dishes that consisted of just vegetables. When we finally did find our little slice of heaven, they understood our plight. They said that their tapatio customers would order something like beef with broccoli and pick out all the strips of beef, leaving anything green behind to be dumped into the trash. When that restaurant closed, we felt like we'd lost the only restaurateurs in town that understood us. It was a dark day indeed.

That left us with the sushi restaurants that serve kappa maki, avocado rolls, vegetable tempura, stir-fried vegetables and vegetable fried rice, but it seems like almost all the sushi restaurants offer these five dishes and only these five dishes, with very few exceptions. We like sushi, so we do go out for it often. Yet it seems that Japanese food, and particularly the sushi side of Japanese food, is one of the few socially-acceptable ethnic foods that the people of Guadalajara will dare to eat. It is by far the Asian cuisine most represented here, with Chinese being a distant second. Then all the other contenders - Korean, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian - simply do not exist here. At least, that's what we thought.

The discovery of Mandú, through a friend of Joseph and Larry, did not drastically change the situation for us, but it did offer us a couple of new dishes that we liked and can enjoy now and again when we want vegetarian Asian food that isn't sushi. (Actually, their sushi is pretty good too, and they have a chamoy roll that emulates the pickled plum roll, ume maki.)

Sushi at Mandú

Shawn likes their bibimbap, a Korean dish that they will make for him with tofu instead of meat. Unfortunately, the tofu they use is always the salad kind that comes in vacuum-packed aseptic boxes, so the best they can do with it is to put uncooked slices on top of the dish. Still, it's rare to find tofu of any kind in a restaurant here, so he is happy to get it. Personally, I don't like fried eggs, unless they're scrambled first. On my first trip to Mandú, I ordered the bibimbap and asked for my egg scrambled, and it arrived with a fried egg diced up and sprinkled around the bowl. Not exactly what I asked for, but even if it had been, I wasn't all that crazy about it. Not that it wasn't well-prepared. It should be noted that their execution is quite good with everything I've had there. I just didn't like bibimbap all that much.

The next time I went there, I got the Thai noodles, and asked them to hold the meat. They did, and the noodles were very good. When we went last week with Joseph and Larry, I got the udon with vegetables and tofu, and it was the best thing I've had at Mandú yet. I think next time I'll get that again, but I'll not get it with the bland tofu. It would be better if it were just noodles and vegetables. They also have a dish that is breaded fried cheese on skewers, served with a chipotle sauce.

Interior of Mandú

The first time we went there, we went with Charles, and he asked to see the chef. The chef came out and Charles explained that we didn't eat beef, pork or chicken, nor even seafood. He asked if the chef could make something vegetarian, perhaps something that wasn't even on the menu, for us. He said that he would be sure to prepare our food vegetarian, and he suggested the bibimbap to us. That's when we tried that. He then said that he had a cookbook at home with many vegetarian Asian dishes, and that he'd work with it to come up with some other dishes for our next visit.

The next time I went, I went with Charles again, and he asked to see the chef. He asked if the chef remembered us, and he did. Charles went through the routine again about all the things I don't eat, and asked what the chef might be able to make for me. The chef asked if I'd had the bibimbap. I had. As I mentioned, they didn't really make it like I'd asked. I didn't really want that again. He suggested the Thai noodles that were on the menu, but he could make them with vegetables instead of meat. I figured anything Thai with noodles has to be good, so I decided to try it. It was good. Yet I was getting the feeling that if I didn't get that, we were going to start running out of options. I did not get the impression that he had been looking into cookbooks to come up with anything new.

Of course, I don't hold that against him so much. He is a chef at a restaurant in a mall. I'm sure he has more interesting things to do with his free time than find recipes for two freaks that don't eat meat. I just wish he had not told me a story about cookbooks and being into discovering some new dishes, because I really got excited about it. If he wasn't really planning to do it, I would have preferred that he answer like the owner/chef at the Italian restaurant we went to with Charles, who upon getting the story about how we do not eat beef, chicken, pork, nor even seafood, and being asked if he would make something vegetarian for us, perhaps something that wasn't even on the menu, replied quite simply:

"No."

Larry, Shawn, Joseph and Chris at Mandú

Posted by crispy at 08:27 PM | Comments (2)

November 15, 2007

Beirut

Beirut at Night

Restaurante Beirut
Avenida López Mateos 1308
esquina Lázaro Cárdenas

Shawn and I walked by this place many times while we were on our way to Tai Spice, and we would always say, "We should check that place out sometime." Since we were on our way to have Robert and Kay's delicious Asian dishes, we were never tempted enough to stop. A recent disappointment with one of our regular Lebanese cuisine outlets lead us to finally try Beirut, and we were pleasantly surprised.

It is a small restaurant with about 12 tables and a bar, but the bar is not one where you can actually sit at the bar. A few of the tables are outside, where they also have drive-up service for tacos arabes, which is what Mexicans call any of the various things that come stuffed in pitas like gyros. They also have hookah service, which they call shishas, with flavored tobacco that lasts 30-40 minutes per order.

The food there is relatively standard Lebanese food for around here, although their drink list has several items I've never seen on a Lebanese restaurant's menu before, like agua de flores and yogurt drinks. It seems a little expensive. For example, an order of four falafel with a little salad is MXN $67, although they are larger than average. The quality of everything we have had there has been top notch. They have a vegetarian plate with five items for MXN $99, and everything on it is quite tasty. The service is also very attentive, and they seem pretty quick in the kitchen.

Interior, Restaurante Beirut

They play funky belly dancing videos on the TV and they have a couple of odd fountains with colored lights. On the way out the door, you can stop and check out the items they have for sale, like music CDs and incense. They are open most nights until 11 (I believe on Sunday it is considerably earlier), but they are closed on Mondays.

Posted by crispy at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2007

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bus

Local Area Bus, Guadalajara

Today, almost two years after moving to Guadalajara, I took the bus by myself for the first time.

Before, I usually took taxis or walked to my destination. On a couple of other occasions, I took the bus with Shawn. It was not that I thought I was above taking the bus, nor that I was afraid of the bus being dangerous. The drivers do tend to gun it then slam on the brakes, so it is not necessarily the smoothest ride one will ever experience. Still, I can handle that.

The main reason that I previously avoided taking the bus here is that the one time I took the regular bus with Shawn, it violently and completely disillusioned me of the notion that Mexicans are always sweet and polite. Before taking the bus, I found most Mexicans (apart from the one "Gringo Go Home!" driveby shouting we managed to survive) to be unfailingly friendly, kind and welcoming. In almost all other situations, Mexicans seem very polite and nice. On the bus though, they have some socially acceptable licence to be complete jerks and they revel in it. That is not to say that they are in your face, what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it jerks. It is a lame passive-aggressive rudeness that has a particularly Mexican (or is it tapatio?) flavor.

When I went on the bus with Shawn before, we had to stand because all the seats were already taken. No big deal there; I don't mind that much at all. I did not expect any of the people on there to give up their seats for us. Yet when old people boarded that were barely able to remain standing on terra firma and not a single able-bodied person offered them their seats, I was aghast. Mothers with infants and bags of groceries got on, and nobody offered up a seat. When someone got up from an aisle seat to exit the bus, the person sitting in the window seat would quickly slide over to block access to the empty seat. Riders are instructed to board through the front door and exit from the rear, but even when politely asked, people would not budge to let others move from the front or middle of the bus to the rear exit door. I suspect a frail, blind abuelita who was missing an arm could board carrying a hacking Tiny Tim on her back and nobody would surrender his seat to her.

No, because of the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of the regular bus, I was not all that keen to use it. Yet with Charles out of town, the need to start trimming the budget, and my desire to get out and about more, I decided it was high time for me to start using the bus in Guadalajara.

There are two primary types of inner-city buses, the TUR/Turquesa line and regular lines. They differentiated by their service class, with TUR and Turquesa being more upscale. That just means they have cloth-covered seats, air conditioning that usually works, and best of all, they are rarely full. I am not sure if that is because their price being double the cost of the regular lines keeps their ridership down, or if that is because they have a policy of not stopping for new passengers if all the seats on the bus are taken. We have heard that the latter is the case, but I've seen Turquesa buses go by with people standing now and again. The problem is, there are a very small number of routes (like 2-4) served by TUR/Turquesa, and the remaining hundred or so are served by the regular buses.

A regular bus costs MXN $4.50 (about USD $0.40), and there are no transfers. If you need to take only one bus to get where you are going, the trip costs you MXN $4.50. If you have to take two buses, the trip costs you MXN $9. If you have to take three, it is MXN $13.50. You get the idea. There are so many different routes though, it is unusual to have to take more than two different buses to get to your destination. Of note is the fact that here, bus drivers make change for you. You don't have to have exact change or forfeit any extra.

Local Area Bus, Guadalajara

The TUR/Turquesa buses are turquoise in color, and the regular buses are white or tan, for the most part. Each bus is numbered for its route, although some numbered routes are split into "A" and "B" or "Via 1" and "Via 2" because they have slight differences somewhere along the route. The routes are all loops, although it is often the case that the loop is just turning around at the end and tracing the first half backwards. I'm not sure if a passenger could pay once and just ride around indefinitely, or if they charge you each time you pass the start or end point of the route. Most routes start in the early morning (between 5 and 6 am) and stop between 11 and 12 pm. Much to my annoyance, there are no late night or 24-hour bus routes.

To catch the bus, one must go to a designated bus stop, and when the desired bus comes along, put out her hand to flag it down. Most stops are used by multiple routes, so the driver does not know that a person wants to get on his bus unless they signal in this way. From inside the bus, a request to stop is made by pushing one of the little buttons on one of the handrails that run along the aisle.

Shawn has had buses fail to stop at a designated stop even though he has his hand stuck out to signal the driver. Did they not see his hand? Did they not stop because he is a gringo? Were the bus drivers just being jerks? Any one of those is possible. Sometimes if the bus is in the left lane and there is other traffic in the right lane, the driver will just skip the stop, just like our water delivery guy will sometimes skip bringing us water if there is no good parking spot right in front of our building.

Bus Stop, Guadalajara

There is a book for sale at newspaper and magazine stands called the Guía de rutas del transporte público, which details the bus and light rail routes. It is about 5" x 7" and costs about 15 pesos. In the front of the guide, it has an indices of colonias (neighborhoods), major streets and sites of interest. Each entry in the index lists the route numbers that run by that neighborhood, street or attraction, so to go from point A to point B, one must find a route number that is common to both. If both places do not share a common route, the map of the route must be used to determine where two routes, one for each point, intersect. The hard part about doing that is that the route map shows the route on a map of the entire Guadalajara metro area that is like 2" x 2". It is nearly impossible to really determine what streets the buses run on by looking at the map, so they just give you a general idea. Then one has to verify that the routes actually do cross (or to which they come close) by reading the list of streets the each route takes, also listed for each route in the guide. They do not make it easy.

Macro Shot of Route Map, Guía de rutas del transporte público

At times, people get on the bus with guitars and sing for tips. The guy on my bus today was not too bad. Shawn, on the other hand, tends to score people that bang on guitars not set to any recognizeable tuning with no recognizeable rhythm while they yell along. It would be really cool if they had a 15-piece mariachi ensemble strolling up and down the aisle playing music like on the Tequila Express, but I do not think that is likely to happen any time soon. Nor are they likely to have go-go dancers or geishas serving tea.

It would probably take something like that to make me sincerely love taking the bus in Guadalajara, and as it is, I am not sure that I will ever be able to stomach how inconsiderate people are on it here. Maybe I will just try the old chestnut that is so good for dealing with crazy people that yell at you on the bus in the United States: plug in the headphones, crank up the iPod and just pretend they are not even there.

Posted by crispy at 01:48 PM | Comments (4)

November 13, 2007

Mothra!

The Moth That Ate Cleveland

I often talk about how this place is teeming with life. Larry gives me a hard time when I remark about this, because he and Joseph lived in Puerto Vallarta, where it's really teeming with life. But to me, I've never lived in a place with so many different kinds of wacky bugs, reptiles, birds and animals.

About once a year, we'll be sitting in our living room and an enormous moth or butterfly comes in through the open window. Above is this year's model, which we first noticed when it flew into Shawn's face. We were able to catch it in a plastic bag when it stopped to rest, and we released it back into the wild.

You can't really tell from the photo, but the wingspan on this thing was at least five inches. The piece of wood on the left (there are two pushed together, but you can see the line where they meet) is four centimeters (just a bit more than one and a half inches) wide.

Posted by crispy at 12:31 AM | Comments (2)

November 12, 2007

Cheese

Chris and Shawn, Mío Cardio

Posted by crispy at 08:44 PM | Comments (4)

October 30, 2007

Score!

Ticket for the Sonofilia Festival, December 2007

In typical Mexican fashion, we lucked out and noticed the announcement in the Ocio this past Friday, which finally explained what was up with Bjork's announced, yet mysteriously vague, appearance in Mexico. She will be the headlining act at the Sonofilia Festival, to be held in Huentitán on 8 December 2007. As far as I can tell, this is the first Sonofilia Festival ever.

The tickets are rather outrageous: MXN $1200 for general admission (the only ticket available), and the sales outlet (Super Boletos) charges a 5% commission on top of that. That's better than the 10% commission and additional per-order fee charged by TicketBastard, and I suppose by international standards, that's about right for a festival with five bands (Claude Von Stroke, MSTRKRFT, Ratatat , Jay Jay Johanson and Björk).

According to a map of the event on the Super Boletos web site (unable to be linked here because for some reason they've done it as a stupid Flash file linked to with Javascript), the grounds will have restaurants and bars scattered about, which will be nice since the event runs from 6 pm to 3:30 am. I was annoyed to read that we will have to bring our passports to the event in order to gain entry. It's so smart to take such important documentation, especially if it is difficult and expensive to replace, to crowded events where everyone is whacked-out, including you. Yet I was impressed by the fact that their Frequently Asked Questions explicitly (and rather shockingly) state that they will have vegetarian food available.

I guess if I lose my USD $67 passport while in a drunken stupor from a couple of MXN $100 shots of tequila and have to forfeit my USD $600 air ticket for our Christmas vacation in Panama, I can console myself with a MXN $150 veggie burger. Cool!

Posted by crispy at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2007

Cine Mexicano por Cable

Sindicato del crimen, Cine Mexicano por Cable

I mention de Película, the cool Mexican film channel we get here, often.

I figure I should give Cine Mexicano por Cable a brief mention. I tend to reflect more fondly on de Película since it was my first saturation of Mexican cinema when we first visited Guadalajara and were camped out at the Hotel San Francisco Plaza. Cine Mexicano por Cable was around then, but de Película used to show their films uncut back in those days. Cine Mexicano por Cable started annoying me early with commercials.

Sindicato del crimen, Cine Mexicano por Cable

Still, they show a lot of really great films. They show a lot of crap too, but for me, that is half their charm. Cine Mexicano por Cable is on basic cable for Megacable, and on digital service it kicks back on channel 420.

That's right.

Sindicato del crimen, Cine Mexicano por Cable

Along with the mighty de Película, CMC helps me in my neverending search for the Mexican Russ Meyer or that En kvinnas ansikte en español. They're having a Ciclo Luchadores this Saturday. They're running Blue Demon and Santo movies all day.

Posted by crispy at 01:52 AM | Comments (1)

October 22, 2007

Another Funny Mexican Product

Product Label, Food Keepers Storage Bin

I suppose the product itself isn't that funny. It's a plastic storage bin, sized to fit under a bed. It even has nifty little rollers to make it easy to slide in and out from under your bed.

The funny thing is that they call it Food Keepers, despite the fact that the label clearly shows office supplies, not food, and right under the Food Keepers part, it says bajo cama:

Detail, Food Keepers Product Label

...which means "under bed."

An under bed food keeper? It's like they had Homer Simpson in mind.

Posted by crispy at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2007

I went on a date with a real clown last night.

I was looking through a newspaper while in San Luis Potosí, San Luis Hoy. I turned the page and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what I thought were personal ads for something like Clown Seeking Clown:

Clown Classifieds, San Luis Hoy [larger image]

It was one of the most surreal things I'd ever seen. But, I figured, clowns need love too.

On closer investigation, I saw that they were just clowns for hire, advertising their services...

...as clowns.

I hope.

Posted by crispy at 12:18 PM | Comments (3)

October 18, 2007

FM3:3

Cover, Non-Immigrant Visa

In the last entry on this topic, I had a list of other things I had to turn in to get my FM3, the non-immigrant visa for living in Mexico. I turned those in last week, and this past Tuesday I was able to go pick up the little book shown above. This makes me an official, legal, non-immigrant visitor to Mexico, who can be in the country without restriction on coming or going, for a full year. It is renewable (without the whole long application process I went through to get it) for up to five years.

Inside Page, Non-Immigrant Visa

The whole thing is pretty simple. On the first page inside, on the left, there is a list of rules and limitations for the visa, and on the right is the date of issue, government seal and the signature of the head of our local immigration office.

Inside Page, Non-Immigrant Visa

Then on the next page there is all the information specific to me, such as various dates (the date I entered the country, the date I applied, the date the visa was issued, my birthdate, etc.), the number of the visa, my birthplace, my gender, my marital status (in Mexico), my signature, a photo and even my fingerprint.

Note how in the photo, I have the "wet look" that is ever so popular down here.

There's another official seal and once again, the signature of the local immigration chief. I don't know why they have to sign and stamp it twice, but if you've been in or around bureacracy in Mexico, you'll know they're really big on that. I suspect that's pretty common worldwide.

But that's it. Now I'm legal for a year. A year from now, I have to go back and renew it, but I don't have to go through the whole process again. I'm glad for that. It involved so many trips: 4 to the immigration office in the federal building, 2 to the bank, 2 to the photographer's studio, and 3 to a copy shop.

Posted by crispy at 01:22 PM | Comments (4)

October 12, 2007

San Luis Potosí: Part One

360° Panorama of the Plaza de Armas, San Luis Potosí [larger image]

Shawn had a four-day weekend, so we decided to visit another Mexican city that we had not yet seen: San Luis Potosí, the capital of the state of San Luis Potosí.

In 2005, it had a population of just over 685,000, making it only the 15th largest city in Mexico. It is known as la ciudad de los parques because there are so many parks here. We had to ride five hours in a bus, heading northeast from Guadalajara. If you have Google Earth, you can call it up.

It is not high on the list of tourist destinations within Mexico, and to be honest, we did not decide on it as our next domestic destination because of any particular attraction. We selected it simply because we could get to it in a relatively short time (less than a full day) and we had never been there. It is outside what is considered Mexico's colonial circle, but then again, some say that about Zacatecas. Like Zacatecas, it has its own particular charm, no small part of which is the fact that it is not a big tourist destination. We were not expecting much, yet we have been very pleasantly surprised.

First off, it lives up to its reputation as a city of parks. It seems that the slogan is taken as a guiding philosophy, for one sees many spaces of only a few square meters about town where a mass of plants or cacti have been squeezed in to spruce them up a bit. The more formal parks offer a diversity of trees, plenty of benches, well-maintained sidewalks, verdant lawns, and fountains that are operational.

The city is a pedestrian paradise. Large sections of the historic center have been closed to vehicles, providing safe, wide venues for foot traffic.

In other places, they have nice shaded walkways set apart from the streets, like this one (pictured below) that stretched so far we could not see the end of it.

Walking is not the only thing to do in the city, however, and just because they are not known as one of the colonial gems of Mexico, it does not mean that they do not have their fair share of historic attractions. Along this walkway is a famous historic and architectural icon of San Luis Potosí, el caja del agua.

Because I learned caja to mean''box' or 'cage' in English, I hear this in my head as "box of water" or "cage of water." Both seem funny to me. It is actually a colonial-era water tank, which is notable for its size and ornamentation. A sign, printed in Spanish and English, located next to the caja del agua, tells that there are others about the city, but they are all smaller and not ornate.

There are things like clock towers...

...non-traditional (for Mexico) architecture...

...gargoyles...

...theaters...

...gazebos...

...and temples...

...in San Luis Potosí that we passed while walking around the centro histórico. We passed by this ice cream shop, and I had to go in to try their coconut ice cream.

Stepping inside was like stepping into the 50s.

It was part of this larger building, which is the Mercado Tangamanga, a typical market where they sell all kinds of stuff from religious candles to seafood. The design was so reminiscent of the Pan Pacific Auditorium from the golden days of Los Angeles that I stood there a while looking at it, thinking of what all it would take to find an old musician who would help me turn it into a hip nightclub/roller-rink.

The old metal furniture inside the Fonda Doña María looks like its as old as the building itself (and it probably is), but it's in great condition.

La Cubana is a tienda de abarrotes, the Mexican version of a corner convenience store, and is just up the street a block or so from the Mercado Tangamanga.

This convenience store has been open here since 1875.

After all that walking, Shawn and I both decided to shell out the MXN $10 (just under USD $1) each for a shoeshine.

They let you read the newspaper for no additional charge.

I considered buying a donut-making machine, but I just don't have the room in my kitchen.

Posted by crispy at 11:33 PM | Comments (3)

October 09, 2007

Oh, wait...

Cinépolis coupon, 10 October 2007

I went to the cinema tonight and noticed on my box of popcorn an eye-grabbing notice that said "Don't forget to peel off the coupon on this box!" (but in Spanish, of course) I turned the box around, found the coupon and peeled it off. I was excited to get a pretty cool offer, like reduced-price movie tickets any day of the week (instead of just Wednesdays like Cinépolis usually does)...

...until I noticed that the coupon's validity ended nearly two weeks ago.

Posted by crispy at 10:19 PM | Comments (3)

September 16, 2007

La bandera nacional

Poemas Patrioticos Mexicanos, 1953

In honor of Independence Day, I bring you a patriotic poem from the book, Poemas Patrioticos Mexicanos, put out in 1953 by Editorial Olimpo, D.F.

LA BANDERA NACIONAL

     ¡Altanera
la bandera
la bandera tricolor,
nos inflama
con la llama
sacrosanta del valor!

     De victoria
luz de gloria
de sus pliegues despidio;
y sus lampos
en los campos
de batalla reflejó!

     ¡Cuán hermosa
y orgullosa
en el mástil al flotar,
la admiramos
y aclamamos
en la tierra y en el mar!

     ¡Cuán divina
la ilumina
refulgente claridad:
que es doquiera
la bandera
de la santa libertad!

(Anonymous)

I bought the book when Tara was here at the used bookstore on Avenida Juárez, a block or two from the Madoka. It cost me MXN $20, which is a bit steep, considering the fact that all the pages are yellow, brittle sheets and many are cracked in half. Still, it was so chock-full o' emotional, nationalistic propaganda, I had to buy it.

After I got it home and started going through it, I discovered a few delightful treasures the previous owner had left behind. The first was this set of hand-crafted paper sheep.

Paper Sheep

The others were these photos of George Sewell and David Cassidy.

Photographs of George Sewell & David Cassidy

Posted by crispy at 03:05 PM | Comments (1)

September 08, 2007

Truck vs. Stoplight: Round Three

Cubilete and La Ermita

I don't know what it is with trucks and our corner stoplight. It's like old Bavarian saying mentioned on Sprockets about a fat man and a sprinkler: They are soon together.

I was in the shower and Shawn was just laying down to take a nap. I heard this strange, loud noise through the window in the shower that opens up to Avenida Cubilete. It wasn't as much a bang as it was a creaking sound. There was a fairly bright white light, then things went back to normal. The sensation was a little strange though, like when you are party to a mild earthquake, and you're pretty sure you just witnessed something out of the ordinary, but then again, it might have just been an acid flashback. I was disillusioned of the latter when Shawn came into the bathroom and asked if I was alright.

I told him that I was fine, but I did hear a strange noise. He ran to look out the window and saw the telltale sign of something gone wrong: a collection of the neighbors all standing out in the street looking at something. Then he noticed the stoplight pieces all over the ground and the wires dangling from the poles.

Hanging Power Lines Stopping Traffic

He came back into the bathroom to report that someone had yet again hit the stoplight. I told him to take some photos (the first is his, from our balcony), and I hurredly rinsed off, toweled down and got dressed to go snap some others outside. When I went out, Juan, the guy that runs the cool laundromat across the street came over and he filled me in. A moving van ran into the top part of the light and bent it 45° to the north, knocking out one of the lights and breaking the power lines servicing it. Then some other neighbor came over and started talking to him about it. The other neighbor told Juan that he'd reported it to the police and then they started chatting. Since I had nothing to add to the conversation, I just snapped some more photos and went back inside.

Juan Talking With A Neighbor

This is the third time since we've been living here that a truck has hit the stoplight on our corner. Since we've lived in this apartment now for 20 months, that means that someone takes it out every 6.66 months.

The Broken Stoplight

Usually, the city comes out and replaces the stoplight pretty quickly - within a couple of days. At present it's a safety hazard because of the drooping power lines. After the sun goes down, cars passing through the intersection are not going to be able to see the downed power line as well, so hopefully the CFE will come deal with that a bit sooner.

Posted by crispy at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2007

El Cachorro: Tacos al Vapor

El Cachorro at Work

El Cachorro
Tacos al Vapor
Mercado de Abastos
Calle Trigo esq. Nopal

View in Google Earth

I have not gone into detail about the various types of tacos that exist here in Mexico; it's worth a dedicated entry, because they are numerous and diverse. It's not just hard vs. soft like you usually find on el otro lado, where the difference is usually the kind of tortilla (flour or corn). In Mexico, the type of taco is usually determined by the method of preparation.

One of my favorites is al vapor, which more or less means "steamed." This denotes that the person making the tacos has made a bunch of tacos with pre-cooked fillings in corn tortillas the night before, loaded them up in an enormous steamer pot, and is selling them directly from the hot, steaming pot. It should be noted that the stuff inside the tacos is not cooked by the steaming process; the steaming process keeps them hot for serving. An additional aspect of this process is that they come out nice and moist.

I learned about El Chachorro one day because I was talking with Charles about potato tacos. He told me that some of the best were to be found at a particular al vapor taco stand in the Abastos Market, the market where people go to buy stuff in large quantities. (abastos means "supplies," and this is where corner store owners go to buy cases of soda and kitchen managers go to buy 40-pound boxes of tomatoes) The problem was that tacos al vapor are a morning-to-noon thing, and I often do not even wake up until then. Yet the Abastos Market is a great place to buy top-notch produce at very cheap prices, and if you want to get the good stuff, you have to get there pretty early. Not like crack-o-dawn early, but like 10:00 early. Even I can manage that. So as these things eventually work out, I ended up at the Abastos Market one day at just the perfect time for tacos al vapor, so we made a preliminary stop at El Cachorro.

I've been a fan ever since.

El Cachorro Tacos al Vapor

Like a lot of food that fuels the machinery of the working class, El Cachorro is street food. Opinions vary widely on whether or not it is safe to eat street food; some people that will not touch it, yet many know it as their primary source of sustenance. There are a handful of things that validate a street food source for me, like the food being served hot, a considerable number of people at the stand, or the recommendation of a friend. This place had all three.

You can see the different varieties they offer in the top photo: cicharron, lengua, frijol, papa and huevo con chorizo (pig skin, tongue, bean, potato and egg with sausage). You can get a soda, or an agua fresca for MXN $7, which is just under USD $0.70 to go along with it. It says "agua," but this means agua fresca, and at El Cachorro, that means de piña (pineapple), always.

The family makes up a huge number of these tacos every day, in the wee hours of the morning, and then loads them into the steamer pot to keep them warm all through the morning as they're being sold. They keep the different types in different areas of the pot, but they are all mixed in together so the grease from one kind drips down over the others. I suspect that I've ingested pig skin or tounge grease that has dripped onto my potato tacos, and I don't even want to know if the frijol version has some kind of animal fat in it. For an El Cachorro taco, I'll deal with it. (I don't make such blanket exceptions often. The last time was with miso ginger soup at Taki's on Colfax.)

El Cachorro Serves it Up Piping Hot

The thing that really sets apart the El Cachorro taco al vapor is the double tortilla. Everywhere else I've had them, they come as a single tortilla encasing the filling. At El Cachorro, you get two fine quality corn tortillas wrapped around your tongue or potato, and it makes it not only a lot more filling, but easier to eat. The taco al vapor is by nature a very soft, mushy taco, given to splitting and losing its filling. This never happens with an El Cachorro taco because if the inner layer comes apart, the outer layer still holds it all together.

This also lets the lucky consumer of the El Cachorro taco load on more of the delicious salsas that they have at the taco stand. They have three different kinds, which they distinguish as mild, medium and hot, but they are three entirely different types of salsa. The hottest kind is made with tomatillos and habañero chiles, but I usually go for the mild kind just because I like the flavor the most. They also have the ever-present minced cabbage and the carrot-jalapeño-onion in escabeche. That's one of the great things about taco stands in Mexico - they inevitably have all kinds of delicious things you can add to the tacos or eat on the side. I have yet to see the range of condiments you find at taco stands here in Mexico equaled in the United States. It's not a selection of five or so hot sauces. It's pickled red onions, escabeche, avocado salsa, various chile salsas, cole slaw, chipotles en adobado, grilled serrano chiles, diced fresh tomato-cilantro-onion-chile (known often as pico de gallo in the US, but more often called salsa mexicana here), jicama, limes...the list goes on and on.

Oh, and note how, in the above picture, they serve you on a plastic plate, but it's covered by a plastic bag. This is done at nearly all street food vendors though; it is not limited to El Cachorro. This lets them reuse the plastic plates without their ever getting dirty. When you're done with your food, you (or the stand attendant) strips off the dirty plastic bag from the plate, throws it in the trash and slides a new bag over the plate. Voila! It's a fresh clean plate for the next customer.

Some of El Cachorro's Salsas and Condiments

El Cachorro is so popular that he has expanded this year. He now has a couple of other stands located in the Abastos Market, and this original stand has a self-contained lavamanos, a little sink where you can wash your hands before eating. You can see a corner of it in the left side of the photo below. For a street food stand, that's getting really fancy.

El Cachorro Draws a Crowd

Oh and for those of you interested in the language, cachorro means "puppy," and that's the owner's nickname. I do not know his real name. Charles always refers to him simply as el cachorro, and I always know exactly who he's talking about.

Posted by crispy at 11:53 AM | Comments (1)

August 22, 2007

The Trees of Guadalajara

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

It seems like in Mexico, trees are the enemy, as if they are to be feared, avoided, and whenever possible, hacked apart until they are barely alive. This might not be the philosophy throughout the entire country - Mexico City does not seem to share the maniacal tendency to slice and dice their trees - but in our neck of the woods, any time any part of any tree gets within a meter of power lines, phone lines, fences or buildings, out come the men with chainsaws to remove not only the limb that threatens to offend, but all the main limbs. It is as if the whole tree is being punished for its impertinence in trying to grow.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

Although the cutters seem ready at a moment's notice to lob off all the limbs of a tree, conversely they seem hesitant in their slaughter once they have set to it. One rarely sees a tree cut off at the bottom of the trunk. Instead, they leave the center of the tree standing, stripped of all branches and foliage, leaving only segments of the limbs, like a deciduous Venus de Milo.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

This poor specimen below stands across from our apartment building. It provided nice shade for the woman that sells tacos every weekday on the corner, but the branch on the far right began to grow too near the power lines that you can see in the shot. Even though it was the only branch that threatened to come anywhere near the wires, all the limbs of the tree were cut off.

I walked outside one day to wait for my cab, and I saw the crew of three men starting to dismantle the whole thing. By the time I returned from my errands, this is all that was left.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

Nobody seems to know why they cut trees like this in Guadalajara. Nobody seems to find it attractive. Everyone I have talked to finds it ugly, and none can explain the logic behind stripping trees down so severely but not removing them entirely.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

There are many neighborhoods in Guadalajara that have no trees whatsoever. Apart from little ornamental tokens here and there and a couple in Plaza San Francisco, the centro histórico and surrounding neighborhoods have no trees. Starting around Avenida Federalismo as you head west from the downtown along Avenida Vallarta, you start to see a few more here and there. Parque de los Colomos has a lot of trees, but it is clearly set apart from the ritzy, tree-free residential areas that surround it. It is as if it were a tree ghetto where trees are tolerated and not as viewed as threatening as long as they are kept isolated in a self-contained area.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

A shopping complex for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club near Plaza Galerías has a few ficuses littered about throughout the enormous parking lot. On the hot days before the rainy season comes, when the sun blazes in the sky and there is little breeze to cool things down, customers treasure the little islands of shade created by those trees in that sea of baking asphalt. All the spots in the shade fill up before any others. Even if people have to walk from the far edge of the parking lot where there are no other cars, they will take park in the shady spots to keep their cars cool.

So why do tapatios not plant more trees, and why do they do this to the trees that already exist?

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

I have heard it argued that after the trees are savaged like this, that new growth will start again and the tree will soon be just as leafy as it was before. This is a load of hogwash.

To the extent that the leaves do come back, they come back as shown in the photo below. A few twigs grow out of the side of the hacked off branches and start to put out leaves. This is hardly as leafy as the tree was before, and it results in a weird combination of poofy/gangly, like a recently trimmed French poodle.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

After a few years of struggling back, it might get to where it looks like this.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

This is an example of a tree that survived pruning and managed to slip under the radar thus far. It's safe, but for how long?

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

Others are not so lucky.

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

The ones that do not make it are left to stand like this for years on end. This one, across the street diagonally from our apartment, has been like this since we moved in, coming up on two years now. Who knows how long it stood like this before we got here?

Pruned Tree, Chapalita Sur

Posted by crispy at 03:32 PM | Comments (5)

August 06, 2007

There's No Place Like Home

Sign at Immigration, Mexico City Airport

(...unless it's Mexico City, and then it's like home but much, much more hardcore.)

We have returned to Mexico after having been in Buenos Aires for a month.

I must say we had a lovely time. Buenos Aires is beautiful, elegant and enormous in scale. The food is delicious. (Curse them! It's going to take months to drop the pounds that we gained there from all that pasta and pizza!) There are very beautiful people there. They take coffee seriously. All in all, depite a few inconveniences with our rented apartment and the freak snowstorm we were apparently so lucky to witness, I really dug the experience. We'd like to go back again for a visit. Only the next time, we'll go when it's not so cold.

Yet it's very nice to be back in Mexico. It's easier to understand that Spanish here, the people know how to relax and have fun, and it's hard to beat the weather. Buenos Aires was fun to visit, but Mexico is our home. People warned us that we might not want to leave once we were there, but luckily, we're quite happy where we are, at least for the time being.

Posted by crispy at 06:51 AM | Comments (1)

May 27, 2007

Midnight cinema in Mexico

Musicians from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Alberto thinks Mexican cinema mostly sucks. It's a widely-held belief here in Mexico, especially among those that don't remember the good old days when stars like Andrea Palma and Ramón Novarro graced the screens.

But I've mentioned before that Mexicans tend to think their own stuff is crap. Shawn's students don't want to get candies from Mexican marcas, the only kind that will do is something like Hershey's® or M&M Mars®. I hated to see Mexicans with no pride in their national products. I mean, who doesn't like candy?

I've had a lot of types of Mexican candies now and I have to say, I can see where they might be coming from. Some Mexican candies are hideous. I am sure some are just an acquired taste, but there seems to be a trend in Mexican confections for things that are perhaps very sweet, but also very bitter, sour or burning. Maybe there is a cultural subtext behind it and coming to love those candies is coming to terms with the national condition. Maybe kids hate them because they've not yet learned to courageously smile on through the sour of the tamarind paste or to maintain a graceful composure through the searing of your mouth lining brought on by the powdered chile dusting. There might be something there that speaks directly to the resigned calm of the Mexican spirit in that. Maybe there is no psychology involved, and we all hate them simply because they suck.

Mexican cinema has the same thing going on. There are films that are breathtaking additions to world cinema and some that would make Ed Wood recoil in horror. And just like I enjoy some exotic Mexican candies that taste a little strange, I also have a strange fondness for some trashy Mexican films because they're so alien to me. I often cannot sit and watch one paying full attention to it, nor usually do I make it through a whole one before I change the channel. Still, I've seen enough in bits and pieces that I feel comfortable making a few comments on some interesting aspects of midnight Mexican cinema. (I call it that because it's usually shown late at night before 6 or 6 am, when the Mexican movie channels go back to showing classics from la época de oro or "golden age" of Mexican cinema.)

I have difficulty accurately judging the age the films. They look to be about five to ten years older than they really are. Sometimes you can date them properly from products, advertisements or fashion, but the film stock itself will look like a bad 70s movie when it's really a bad 80s movie. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe the cameras and other equipment used were old? Perhaps the processing was not as cutting edge as what I'm used to seeing from the 80s? In any case, when watching Mexican color films from the 60s through the 80s, they're usually a lot more recent than you think they are.

Grieving Wife, Mil caminos tiene la muerte

Contrary to the oft-heard complaint, there is no shortage of roles for older women in Mexican films of this (or any) era. It tends to always be the same role: the elderly grandmother or the devastated wife crying at the side of the coffin of a recently murdered innocent during a wake or funeral.

The imminent threat, La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Younger women don't often fare too well either. They're usually the victims of rape. Whether this serves as a twisted gratification in the male gaze or merely as the realization of the ultimate national masculine nightmare, I am unsure. During the era of these films, all good guys are macho and all the women in their lives chaste and pure. Contrary to popular belief, machismo does not dominate contemporary Mexican culture. You see those stereotypes nowadays once in a while, but more often than not, they're the subject of gentle mocking.

The destiny of a young female character, La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Not so in the midnight movies that take place in the countryside or desert, with a cast of all cowboy-clad males. They look like cowboys everywhere, but of course, they're Mexican. They don't necessarily have to be cowboys. They might ride horses or they might use motorcycles. They might be the toughs of no specific career other than initiating random violence and criminal escapades. In any case, the cowboy otfit means tough and macho.

I once saw a movie here once where the enemy was the gringo hydrological engineer that came to a small agricultural pueblo to help with their irrigation problems. He was tall, skinny, white, blond and wore glasses, and while he had a ridiculous accent in his Spanish, when things turned ugly in a town meeting and the crowd (dressed in flannel, jeans and cowboy hats) threatened to lynch him, he understood every word they were saying, even in the heat of the moment. Maybe he was a highly educated spy or a plant from a multi-national narcotics ring. I don't know because I stopped watching.

This type of film usually plays upon the fear of a violent disturbance to domestic tranquility in a family or small town by an outsider, like Shadow of a Doubt. In a similar vein, you have films wherein a group of outsiders, like a gang of ruffians on motorcycles, comes to a place simply to terrorize it. Sometimes this involves violence committed for kicks and other times it is an orchestrated plot like a kidnapping or attempted robbery of a poor family mistakenly thought to have money hidden somewhere in their house.

Motorcycle gang rides into town, Mil caminos tiene la muerte

Often in the end of these fearmongering movies, the love interest gets killed. I don't mean they are killed in the beginning of the film, giving the hero or heroine cause to take up a mission of avenging their deaths. I mean that at the very end of the film, they're killed by some pointless tragedy or accidental oversight, like not making sure that the bad guy is really dead and he comes back to life just long enough to aim his gun at and fatally shoot the girl whose father has just been rescued by the hero-boyfriend from the gang of maniacal kidnappers. It seems that films of this era needed to have an unhappy ending for some reason, even after all is said and done and the day has been saved. The moral is that you should never be too happy, I guess.

A more lighthearted genre popular in the 70s and 80s is the sex romp. These are just like the sex romps in the rest of the world, but in Mexico they have Sasha Montenegro.

Sasha Montenegro

She's interesting because she was born (1950) in what was then Yugoslavia, moved to Argentina, then ended up in Mexico, but best of all, she had a 20-year affair with a president (1976-1982): José López Portillo y Pacheco. He was still married at the time, but he got a divorce and the two married in 1995. She had two children with him. He was taken sick though, and she had to struggle with his children from his former marriage for visitation rights in the hospital. Since his death in 2004, she has been battling them in court for her part of the estate.

De todas todas (1985) demonstrates a common feature of the Mexican sex romp: the male lead can look like Ron Jeremy, but he's always surrounded by beautiful women.

Dinner scene from De todas todas

Yet despite these ridiculous aspects of Mexican films from the 70s and 80s, they are not without their charms. First off, they do more with less. They are obviously low-budget productions, but it seems that a lot of thought has gone into their production. Even in cheap movies with absurd storylines, you will come across creative blocking, breathtaking lighting or incredibly sharp editing.

Maribel Guardia and Rafael Inclán, De todas todas

In Mil caminos tiene la muerte, from 1977, the group of toughs is a little more nuanced than in most films. The group is detained by the inevitable Man, who is acting as the man does and threatening the toughs. As the toughs are pushed into a corner by the Man, they strike back. First we see the faces of individuals in the group just as they are starting to act, punching a cop or hitting a townsperson over the head with a chair. Before the blow lands, we cut to a scene in which that particular character is having a very bad previous experience with a prior Man (an abusive father that beat on the individual and his mother), then cuts back to the individual landing a punch on the Man in the present day story. This way the characters are developed, and you identify and sympathize with the individual. You know that in attacking the Man, they're accomplishing the greater social feat of breaking with the will of authority.

These films often evidence Mexicans' love for their country, or more specifically, for the diversity to be found within it. The various cities in Mexico are all renowned for their own particular characteristics or attractions. For example, Guanajuato is known for its tunnels and mummies, where as Tijuana is historically famous for bordertown excitement. The midnight movies you see here often exploit those characteristics in their locations, and it's a fun way to find out about the different regions of of the country and their specialties. It's especially fun to check out, say, Tijuana of 1975.

There is no shortage of music in Mexican movies from the 70s and 80s. Whether it's a mariachi ensemble or two drunk guys singing off key in a roadhouse, you hear all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of films from the 50s and 60s that were showcases for that hip new music that all the teens were listening too. These often have juvenille deliquency themes also, which makes them doubly entertaining for me. (My favorite is La edad de la violencia from 1964, which has a Spanish-language version of "Moon River" and the classic Sonora Santanera, "La boa.") The films of the 70s and 80s do not live up to the quality of these classics, but you can see how they're similarly throwing in music to try and liven it up a bit and give the audience a little more pow for their peso.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the trashier side of Mexican cinema is taking screen captures of the outrageous things they do and posting them on my blog. Someday, maybe I'll figure out a way to take motion picture clips from the tv and post them on here, so you can see their nuttiness in action. Until then, if you want to check it out, maybe you can order it through your local provider.

Posted by crispy at 02:13 PM | Comments (2)

La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

I was watching La muerte cruzó el río Bravo on de Película, one of our better movie channels here. It was the undisputed best before they started cutting the films and showing commercials.

It shows a lot of Mexican films that are more recent. A lot of these are, well, disappointing. Yet a gem comes along once in a while that knocks your cultural socks off. I looked up from reading the news online to see if La muerte cruzó el río Bravo had gotten any more interesting.

Unfortunately, I was so stunned it took me a while to boot up our camera, discover there was no charge at all in the batteries, change the batteries, then snap a few shots of this scene. I shall call it, 'the playing pool on horseback scene' from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo:

Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

It's hard to tell, but that's a pool cue in his hand, and another one in the hand of his opponent.

Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

It is even harder to tell that they are both riding horses, but they are.

Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Here the pool table is a little easier to see. As you can see, playing pool on horseback is very popular with the locals in this part of Mexico. I'm hardly one to criticize. I was fascinated by the whole thing.

Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

With the game over, a tie is declared between the two sportsmen.

Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

The scene ends with this:

Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Posted by crispy at 02:13 AM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2007

Guanajuato

Guanajuato, Guanajuato

Shawn and I went to Guanajuato, the capital of the state of Guanajuato this past weekend with Charles and Carmen.

Guanajuato is known for two things that seem to overshadow many of its other interesting aspects. Still, the facts that the city's most famous citizens are mummies and that the majority of the streets crisscrossing the town run below ground in tunnels is rather interesting, so I should probably talk about those things a bit first.

The so-called mummies are really petrified corpses, but they have been called mummies for so long that the distinction has become unimportant. One can go to a museum to view the city's collection of these petrified corpses, so preserved because of the dry climate and soil characteristics in the area. This unusual phenomenon would remain unknown however, were it not for an unusual policy at the graveyard that allowed for the bodies to be exhumed from their resting places. It used to be the case that local laws required families of the dead to pay a grave tax. They could pay it just once or yearly, with the installment plan being popular among the less wealthy families. If a family failed to pay their annual installment for three years running, the law allowed for the removal of the bodies from their graves, when they would become property of the municipality to do with as they pleased. The municipality seemed pleased to display them as a kind of freak show for the public, and now, even though the law has been changed and the removal of bodies from graves for failure to pay a grave tax is no longer practiced, the corpses removed during that period remain available for your viewing pleasure.

Taking pictures of the exhibits is prohibited, so I don't have any photos of them to post here. Still, if you're interested, you can view a few photos of the mummies of Guanajuato elsewhere.

Tunnel Entrance, Guanajuato

The other thing that comes up whenever Guanajuato is mentioned is the system of tunnels that run under the city. The city was built over the Guanajuato River, which continued to flow beneath it through a system of tunnels. In the middle of the last century, a dam was built to halt the flow of the river and provide the town with a reservoir, allowing the tunnels to be paved in with cobblestones and used for traffic. According to Charles, only two major roads running through the city are above ground. The rest are all running through the tunnels. They are quite amazing, and just like a developing city continues to build roads, the city of Guanajuato continues to dig new tunnels to serve the cars driving through it.

Plaza de la Paz and the Basílica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, Guanajuato

When people talk about Guanajuato, it is the discussion of these two subterranean oddities that dominate the conversation, but it is the stuff above ground that makes a visit to Guanajuato special. Not only are there a fair number of well-groomed parks and plazas, but there is a considerable amount of street life going on.

Street Scene, Guanajuato

Cafés, bars and shops line the streets of the city, which are filled with pedestrian traffic. This is unusual in colonial towns, because the city centers are usually filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic squeezing through the old, narrow streets. Because most of the traffic through Guanajuato runs beneath the city, the roads above ground can be used by people walking about town.

Street Scene, Guanajuato

During the day, street performers entertain tourists for donations.

Street Performance, Guanajuato

At night, traveling bands of musicians known as estudiantinas lead revelers through the streets in what is called a callejoneada. The same thing is done in Zacatecas, but there the bands play banda and the musicians don't wear 17th-century costumes like they do in Guanajuato.

People on Steps of Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato

The city also has a fine old theater for more formal productions, the Teatro Juárez, built in 1875.

Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato

We debated with Carmen and Charles whether the Teatro Degollado (in Guadalajara) or the Teatro Juárez is cooler, and we decided that the one in our town is best. I suspect guanajuatenses might disagree.

Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato

Another of the city's attractions is a very narrow street, which comes with its own legend. The Callejón del Beso or 'Alley of the Kiss' is supposedly where a father killed his own daughter upon discovering her kissing a miner across the balcony. You see, the balconies are just 68 centimeters apart.

Callejón del Beso, Guanajuato

Supposedly, if you kiss your partner on the third step, you are assured seven years of good luck. Leave it to Mexicans to put such a positive twist on such an unhappy ending.

Carmen and Charles at the top of the Callejón del Beso, Guanajuato

The Callejón del Beso illustrates well one of the more challenging aspects of Guanajuato for tourists exploring on foot: because the city is built up the sides of hills, there are always stairs between where you are and the place you are trying to reach.

Attractions Up Stairs, Guanajuato

While I found this a bit annoying and exhausting, it does reward those that perservere with some nice views of the colorful houses lining the valleys.

Hillside Houses, Guanajuato

Guanajuato has a lot of political history as well. When Miguel Hidalgo started the war for independence in 1810, he was in the state of Guanajuato. After his capture, execution and subsequent beheading, the Spanish put his severed head in a cage (as they did with the heads of his co-conspirators, Ignacio Allende, José Mariano Jiménez and Juan Aldama) and hung it from the corner of the granary in the state's capital, Guanajuato. That building is the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, which has since been converted into a regional museum.

Detail of Mural by José Chávez Morado in the Alhóndiga, Guanajuato

The stairs of the museum are graced with a mural by José Chávez Morado, whose style in this work greatly resembles that of Jaliscan artist José Clemente Orozco.

Detail of Mural by José Chávez Morado in the Alhóndiga, Guanajuato

Guanajuato has some pretty good food too. At night, in the strip running just below the Plaza de la Paz, we had some delicious gorditas de nata. These are like the most delicious pancakes you could ever hope to eat - they're sweet, fluffy and piping hot as they're fried on the griddle right in front of you when you order them. (Supposedly we can get them here in Guadalajara somewhere, but it's rumored that the ones from Guanajuato are superior.)

I was also able to try out a regional specialty called enchiladas mineras, or 'miners' enchiladas,' which are vegetarian because supposedly miners are too poor to afford meat. Too bad for the miners, I guess, but great for me, because these babies are delicious. (Ours were prepared with corn oil, not the "butter of pig" listed on the previous link.) They consist of cheese and onion enchiladas covered by fried carrots and potatoes. In Mexico, these are considered comida típica of the state of Guanajuato, although you also find the same dish, made in the same fashion, in Argentina. In Morelia, in the state of Michoacán, we enjoyed a type of enchilada that seems like a somewhat distant relative, known as the enchilada placera. I would have a hard time deciding which of the two I favor. Hopefully I will never have to.

Our finest dining experience took place on Sunday night, when Charles decided to track down a really nice restaurant with a great view of the city. After asking a few cab drivers, he was directed up a series of twisting narrow roadways to the Refugio Casa Colorada, a hotel with six nice rooms and a lovely restaurant perched atop one of the hills surrounding the city. It used to be a residence for Luis Echeverría (president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976) and his wife, but it was turned into a hotel in 1975. For Shawn and me, it was a nice change of pace from the same old dishes we've come to expect. Shawn had a salad and cream of pistachio soup, while I enjoyed a cream of guajillo chile with camembert and a canelloni stuffed with spinach in a light cream sauce. After dinner, one of the chefs came out of the kitchen, and Charles called him over to pay his respects. The chef was very nice, and took us on a tour of all but one of the rooms.

View of Guanajuato from the dining room of the Refugio Casa Colorada

We also did a number of other things: visited a former hacienda where torture devices and corpses of people buried alive by the Spanish were unearthed, went to visit the monument to El Pípila, and saw the Templo de San Cayetano de Valencia, which was adorned with very elaborate detail work plated in pure gold as a gift from the owner of the nearby Valencia mine.

Gold, Gold, Gold at the Templo de San Cayetano de Valencia, Guanajuato

Charles told us that the owner of the mine had a carpet made of pure gold that reached from his front door to the church so that his daughter could walk to the altar over it on her wedding day. The gold from that carpet was then used to create the three large ornamented structures like the one shown above that adorn the altar.

Visiting Guanajuato, I felt like I saw perhaps the widest stroke of Mexican history that I've seen at any one time in any of the colonial towns I've visited, from the history of the indigenous people of Guanajuato who gave the place its name (originally spelled 'Quanax-Huato' meaning 'Place of the Frogs') to the home of a relatively recent president. Tourists can find a lot of things to keep them busy in town, but there are two things they won't find. First, they won't find an elevator. I don't think I've ever climbed so many stairs in my whole life as I did during my two days in Guanajuato. Nor will they find a whorehouse. According to a cab driver we had, that's not permitted in the city of Guanajuato because it's a city for tourists. "You have to go to Leon for that," he told us.

Visitors planning a trip to Guanajuato may want to look at the Virtual Tourist guide to Guanajuato and the resources at guanajuatocapital.com.

Posted by crispy at 09:42 AM | Comments (3)

April 22, 2007

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Part Six

The Congress Avenue bridge, Austin

One of Austin's famous contemporary tourist attractions is the Mexican free-tailed bats that roost in the Congress Avenue Bridge. Spring and summer find 750,000 to 1,500,000 bats living in the heat expansion joints of the bridge, and each night, they all come out to feed on flying bugs. Starting as soon as the sun sets and continuing for the next few hours hours, they all come out and fly away in a column that stretches out for about ten miles before they break up and hunt individually. Altogether, they eat some 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects nightly.

Our camera could not take pictures in the low-light at a fast enough speed to catch the bats in motion without being blurry, but here is a shot that Shawn took while we were on one of the popular 'bat cruises' that cruise along around and under the bridge.

Bats departing for nightly feeding, Austin

While it is cool to see a huge number of animals in their natural (or perhaps acquired is a better word) habitat, a quick word of warning if you choose to take a bat cruise: wear a hat. Although the boat tries to stay out from directly beneath the bats' flight path, the bats are unpredictable in where they will go, and if you end up under the column, you're likely to be lightly showered in feces. It's not so much that anyone could even see it on you (the bats are, after all, very tiny), but it's enough to know that it's in your hair.

Posted by crispy at 05:45 PM | Comments (2)

April 15, 2007

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Part Five

Romance (1931-32), Thomas Hart Benton

I try to keep things related to Mexico, but the connection here is tenuous, I must admit. The place has some works by Mexican artists, but it would be a shame to visit just for those.

The truth is, because we were so impressed by the Blanton Museum of Art on the campus at University of Texas at Austin, I want to be sure to give it a plug. It has a very good collection of art from the Americas, although it also has a decent collection of European art. The interesting thing there is that they have some rather peculiar works in that collection.

Saint Agatha's Breasts

It's all housed in a beautiful, brand-spanking-new building. I'm tell you, it's well worth the USD $5 suggested donation.

If you are in Austin and you like art, I highly recommend it. To visit, park in the Brazos Garage on the University of Texas at Austin campus and walk next door. (A money saving tip: if you take your parking ticket to the reception desk in the museum, you can pay just USD $3 for the parking and skip stopping at the cashier box on the way out.) Were we not short on time, breezing through the European collection, we would have spent about 4-5 hours total in the museum.

Waitresses from the Sparhawk (1924-25), Yasuo Kuniyoshi

They are currently in the process of constructing administrative offices, a café and a better gift shop next door.

Black and White No.2 (1960), Franz Kline

Even if you can't make it to Austin, you should check out their website, as they have a number of pieces from their collection online.

Obviously, they let you take photos (without a flash), but only of pieces in their permanent collection.

Posted by crispy at 02:41 PM | Comments (3)

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Part Four

Main Square, La Grange, Texas

The town of La Grange, Texas was immortalized by ZZ Top in their song of the same name, which talked about the in/famous whorehouse known as The Chicken Ranch.

Being a fan of both hookers and ZZ Top, I was considering planning a day trip to La Grange while we were in Texas, because it is only about an hour and a half from my sister's house. When I found out that the Mexican restaurant in town is Guadalajara Mexican Restaurant, that sealed the deal. Shawn and Carol were both kind enough to accompany me.

Here are a few photos taken in La Grange for your viewing pleasure. We didn't try to track down the location of the former Chicken Ranch, but we did chow down and walk about the main square.

Street, La Grange, Texas

Beef Marketing Material, La Grange, Texas

Guadalajara Restaurant, La Grange, Texas

I also bought some delicious Topo Chico sodas, since you can't get them in Mexico.

Posted by crispy at 01:10 AM | Comments (1)

April 12, 2007

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Part Three

Topo Chico Beverages From La Grange

Many of you know how I love Topo Chico products, and have read how it has been impossible for me to find them in Guadalajara (despite the assurances of many a Mexican that one can buy them there). It is one of the sad aspects of the relentless Americanization of Mexico that one can find Coca-Cola® products everywhere, but finding domestic sodas can be tricky. That seems to be by consumer choice; most Mexicans feel that domestic products are inferior to American brands.

When stopping to get a soda on our day trip to La Grange, we went to the convenience store next to Guadalajara Mexican Restaurant (403 North Jefferson Street, 979-968-5935). They had a cooler full of Topo Sabores (pictured above), which you can't even buy in Mexico. The kid behind the counter overheard me telling my sister Carol about the oddity that one can only buy Topo Sabores in the United States, and he assured me that they were in fact available for purchase within Mexico. But as I said, I'm used to Mexicans telling me how easy it is to find particular things there. I asked him where he'd seen them and he said Guanajuato and Guadalajara. When pressed on where in Guadalajara he'd seen them, he told me, "Near the center. San Juan de los Lagos." I verified that he didn't mean "San Juan de Dios," the big mercado in the center of Guadalajara, and he said no, "San Juan de los Lagos, in downtown Guadalajara." I had never heard of such a colonia, but since I'm not a walking directory of the neighborhoods within the city, I figured I'd look it up when we got back.

Upon returning to Carol's house, I looked up the Topo Chico web site to see if I had been mistaken after all. Maybe in my relentless skepticism, I'd misunderstood the web site before. No, it turns out. I had not. The web site indicates that the Topo Sabores are sold in the US only. One can get sangria and grapefruit flavors in Mexico (as well as plain mineral water), but not the range of flavors shown above.

And San Juan de los Lagos isn't a neighborhood in downtown Guadalajara. It's about 75 miles north of the city.

Posted by crispy at 07:16 AM | Comments (5)

April 08, 2007

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Part Two

Sign on Club, Deep Ellum

I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities... but I forgot what it is... I have it written down at home somewhere.
- True Stories

Just because you attribute a characteristic to a thing or a place, it doesn't make it so. The sign above Oki Dog saying that it is "World Famous" doesn't elevate it from the relatively obscure infamy it knows in Los Angeles. Calling a sheep's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Merely proclaiming the "Mission Accomplished" doesn't mean it has been.

Proclaiming that the United States is the land of the free doesn't keep Americans' personal liberties from slowly fading away, snatched by the government, willingly surrendered out of fear, or atrophying from neglect. On the contrary, life in the land of liberty is regulated and restricted much more than it is in Mexico, where people are permitted much more flexibility in what they do and how they do it. That doesn't necessarily make life in Mexico worry-free; in fact, it often makes life more frustrating. In the United States, people have a much greater sense of personal responsibility, instilled by history and civics classes and continually reinforced by the ever-present threat of lawsuits. In Mexico, you try to get away with whatever you can, and there's no need to feel bad about it unless you get caught. It's not really very noble.

Yet at times, the concept of personal responsibility gets pushed too far in the United States. Whenever I return here after being in Mexico, I am always surprised by how unnecessarily nasty people can be toward others. Shawn always cites the example of a business that he went to in Los Angeles once when we lived there that had a sign on the wall over their cash register that said:

WE DON'T PLAY THE CHECKING GAME! CASH ONLY!

"Checking game?" Why not just say, "sorry, no checks?" Why the need to make out like anyone wanting to pay by check is playing some shady con game? In the above sign, isn't it enough just to say "NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS?" Does it really need to admonish people with the whole, "You pee, you pay!" bit? And why is it such a big deal to let people use the bathroom?

I have heard the rationale that homeless people come in and use the facilities for more than just emptying their bladders (shaving, washing up, etc.). Obviously, that gives a bathroom a rather sketchy feel, but maybe if business owners were a little more upset about the fact that such people are homeless in the first place, it might be a little more productive. Yet in the United States, it seems the modus operandi is to criminalize the poor.

Sign on Club, Deep Ellum

In the above sign, they tell customers not to allow people to wash their windows for change. Why not? Is it really such a problem to have someone ask you if they can wash your windows for change? If you don't want you windows washed or you think it's not worth the spare change, tell them no. The sign also indicates that in Deep Ellum (and perhaps all of Dallas? All of Texas?), it's illegal to ask people for money. This offends Shawn greatly, as he thinks this is an unconstitutional denial of free speech. I tend to agree, but furthermore, I don't understand why it's illegal to ask anyone for anything. The government insists on it's share of my cash in the form of taxes and they don't even ask. They threaten me with legal action like seizing my assets or sending me to prison if I don't pay up. Those same people are going to turn around and make it illegal for other people to ask me politely if I will give them some money?

Help us help you to be safe and sound in Deep Ellum.

Why is more sound for people to urinate on the street or behind a tree in a park instead of doing it in a receptacle actually designed for the elimination of urine? How do people asking me for spare change threaten my safety?

I grant you, I've run into some aggressive panhandlers that won't take no for an answer and some have said that cash I've donated to them isn't enough. That sucks. People that believe that is wrong are correct to feel that way; anyone asking you for money should be appreciative of any help you give them. However, I don't understand why this rudeness gets American citizens so upset while the rudeness of "you pee, you pay!" doesn't seem to bother them.

In Mexico, you don't tend to see signs like that. Instead of restricting freedoms and criminalizing the poor, they take the free market approach. Instead they will often make it so that you can only get into the bathroom by paying something like MXN $3 (a little less than USD $0.30). This pays for the overhead: toilet paper, paper towels and regular maintenance. People that don't have the cash don't get in, but at least they're not being treated like scofflaws just because they have the unfortunate luck of being simultaneously poor and in need of a bathroom.

Posted by crispy at 09:12 AM | Comments (1)

April 07, 2007

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Part One

Shawn and I are on the road, visiting my sister Carol who has moved to Austin, Texas.

Brett With Hidalgo Mural, Dallas

Before coming here, we spent a few days in Dallas/Fort Worth, being shown around by our good friend Brett (a frequent commenter on this blog) because he grew up there. I have not been to Texas for 20 some years, but seen through the eyes of a gringo who has lived in Mexico for a little over a year, it's very interesting.

First, a word about Tex-Mex food, or rather, Mexican food in Texas.

El Fénix Restaurante, Dallas

One night, we ate at the original El Fénix restaurant in Dallas, and I must say I was surprised. Okay, while it's not exactly what I've come to think of as traditional Mexican food (they offer many north-of-the-border items like fajita-style nachos and sopapillas), their menu also had some telltale signs that honest-to-goodness Mexicans were involved with the food at some point. For example, they offer their queso fundido with chorizo or with mushrooms, like you would find it at many a location farther south. They also have chilaquiles, a dish that is ubiquitous in Mexico, but hard to find up here in the United States. I have had better Mexican food in Mexico. There is no doubt about that. Yet I was surprised at the degree to which the Mexican food in Texas resembled the food I've come to think of as traditional Mexican food.

One often hears the comment that Mexican food in the United States is more Tex-Mex than traditional Mexican food. Yet a lot of the Tex-Mex I've had in this state has not been like the Mexican food I've had in other parts of the country. For example, I would not say that Mexican food in California is like Tex-Mex, because the Tex-Mex I've had resembles traditional Mexican food more than it does Mexican food in California. Of course, I've not had the food throughout the entire state of Texas, but I have to say that my first impression is that the Mexican food here in Texas has gotten kind of a bum rap, since the crappiness of the bland food passed off as Mexican in other parts of the country is so often explained as being more Texan than Mexican. In general, the Mexican food I've had here has been much better than it is in other parts of the country.

It is a lot hotter on average, though.

Hernández Finer Foods, Dallas

Posted by crispy at 11:34 PM | Comments (5)

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 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)

January 03, 2007

Mexico City: Photos

Statue Outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

We have returned home to Guadalajara, but I'm going to run a few entries of photos Shawn took during our recent trip. First off are some of our favorite things about Mexico City.

Mexico City has lots of statues all about the city. One of the most famous is the Angel of Independence which graces Avenida Reforma.

Angel of Independence, Mexico City

Statue of Diana, Mexico City

Monument to Benito Juárez, Mexico City

Another cool thing about Mexico City is that is has large civic gardens all over the place, many more than we have here in Guadalajara, where it seems people are afraid of trees.

Public Garden, Mexico City

A popular museum in Mexico City is the Museo de Antropologiía. I'm not that big on anthropology myself, but I must admit that some of their recreations are really cool.

Museo de Antropología, Mexico City

Museo de Antropología, Mexico City

Now this is more my speed, the Palacio de Bellas Artes that houses a rotating exhibit or two and famous murals of the Mexican muralists.

Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

This building has some beautiful art deco elements inside.

Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

José Clemente Orozco, Katarsis

David Siquieros, Nueva democracia

Diego Rivera, El carnaval de la vida mexicana

Not exactly a museum, but rather the Palacio Postal, the central post office in Mexico City. It's obviously from the era when the sky was the limit in Mexico.

Palacio Postal, Mexico City

This Sanborns is in a really old building covered with fancy tiles on the outside. People say it's a must see, but frankly, just seeing that it's this old buiding with a Sanborns inside is sufficient. I include it here for all those people that would otherwise ask if it were absent, "Didn't you go to the Casa de los Azulejos?!"

Sanborns, Casa de los Azulejos

Zócalo, Mexico City

Subway Station, Mexico City

Finally, a view from Bellini, the revolving restaurant on the 45th story of the World Trade Center.

View From Bellini, Mexico City

Posted by crispy at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)

December 25, 2006

Starstruck!

We used to live in Los Angeles. Anyone who lives there for a certain period of time experiences the phenomenon where they'll look up and see someone they recognize, only to subsequently realize it's not someone they know personally, but some celebrity that they know from television, movies, newspapers or tabloids. It's a strange phenomenon, but after a while you get used to it.

Then you move away and it just doesn't happen in other places. You get used to being in Zanesville, Ohio and not running into Kelsey Grammer with your shopping cart as you round an aisle in the grocery store. Life goes back to normal and famous people stay where they belong, on those screens and pages.

Shawn and I were out having dinner in Condesa and I wanted to go by Cinnabar, a hotspot in Condesa that is reported to have good cocktails. We're walking down Nuevo León toward the bar and chatting about our impressions of the neighborhood when no one other than Uriel del Toro walks by us in the other direction. URIEL DEL FREAKING TORO. The drop-dead, gorgeous, absolutely perfect Mexican fashion model that also has a show on Telehit, the Mexican music channel.

If you know me, you probably know what a thing I have for this guy. And unless you're a lesbian, straight man or dead, who wouldn't?

Uriel del Toro, on Telehit

After he walked by, I was utterly speechless. Hell, I was utterly breathless. Shawn turned to me and started to mention how that guy was really hot. Finally, I was able to mouth "DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT WAS?!" and Shawn wasn't sure. I had to try about three sentences, but at last I was able to get his name out, and Shawn didn't recognize that, so I had to tell him it was the guy I'm crazy about on that video show. Then he recognized who it was.

That will probably be the incident I remember most about this trip: seeing my favorite Mexican sex symbol in the flesh, not more than two feet from me.

You can say all you want about the evils of big city living, and I've been grouching about Mexico City the whole time we've been here. Yet there is a certain magic to moments like those, that only happen in big, glamorous, sexy cities like this one.

¡Viva México!

Posted by crispy at 12:34 PM | Comments (8)

December 22, 2006

Condesa (df): 2

Condesa df Entrance, Condesa

Here are some photographs of the Condesa neighborhood.

Parque España, Condesa

The Condesa df hotel overlooks Parque España somewhat. They have "city view" and "park view" rooms, but really, only the rooms in the corner of the hotel, the most expensive, overlook the park, and only the ones on the third floor have any hope of overlooking the city. All the rooms really have a view of the buildings across the street because it's a short little 4-story affair.

Condesa df Exterior, Condesa

Street Signs, Condesa

The street signs at the corner just outside our hotel. This reinforces my persistent claim that once you've been to Guadalajara, there's something about it that will always stay with you.

Sidewalk Café, Condesa

Lots of Mexico City has a European feel, and this is one reason. There are many cafés and restaurants that have sidewalk seating. And why not? The weather is beautiful.

Some photos of housing in Colonia Condesa.

Private Residence, Condesa

Private Residence, Condesa

Private Residence, Condesa

Private Residence, Condesa

Private Residence, Condesa

I just can't help it.

"Hey lady! Nice jugs!"

Fountain, Condesa

Last night we took in a midnight snack at the Barracuda Diner (Nuevo León 4-A), and it was really interesting. When we walked in, it was like Cleavon Little walking into the saloon in Blazing Saddles, with everyone in the place staring at us. Later I figured out this was because it's a very neighborhood-oriented joint, despite the fact that it's very strangely specialized. It's a diner, set up to be like a 50s diner in the United States, but they serve coctails alongside the shakes, chili dogs and chilaquiles. They have framed advertisements from 50s magazines, but they're 50s Mexican magazines, mind you, so they have slogans like: "¡Es nuevo...Es un Nash!" The waitresses are dressed up in typical waitress uniforms, which look incredibly frumpy down here in Mexico. I guess they look kind of frumpy anywhere, but because they're so out of place here, they look particularly unflattering.

There was a waiter there that looked just like Phil Silvers. No joke. I couldn't keep my eyes off him, because I kept expecting him to do something hilarious.

I also want to take the time to mention Barney's (Montes de Oca 43), a great bar in Condesa. It's got a hip, interesting mix of people as well as decent music. It's small, dark and red inside, and if you order drinks, you have to order some kind of food also. Luckily they have little antojitos like a cheese plate, olives and french fries. The look, for those of you that can identify, is sort of like a darker version of the old Skylark without the rockabilly and the old movie posters. They go for kind of a decadent swank look and feel, and it's obviously popular with folks because we could barely get a table there when we arrived at around midnight. They close at 2 am.

Posted by crispy at 08:49 AM | Comments (1)

December 21, 2006

Poopy Stylists

Pupy Stylists, Mexico City

Because the letter U is pronounced like the OO in "room," one would pronounce "Pupy" as "POO-py," making the English translation of the name of this beauty salon, "Poopy Stylists."

You can't make up stuff that good.

Posted by crispy at 04:08 PM | Comments (1)

Xochimilco

Chris and Shawn, Xochimilco

It means "the place of flowers" and is basically the last remaining part of a huge lake that was filled in with dirt to create chinampas, manmade islands used to grow crops without having to use irrigation. Now the series of canals that remain are traversed by boats filled with tourists and locals who have gathered together to enjoy a fiesta, music, food and dancing out on the water. It's a very tranquil oasis for those wanting to escape the chaos of the city, and a rather nice life for the Xochimilcas that make their living as guides, gardeners and artisans.

Boat Dance, Xochimilco

You can read plenty on Xochimilco that I won't duplicate here. Instead, here are a few items that you might want to know.

• Prices published as late as 2005 show an hour ride costing 140 pesos. We were charged 300. Did they more than double their prices or did we pay the gringo tax? We're not sure. There may be an official price board (often tourist attractions in Mexico will have these, and I think it may be a legal requirement), so if you're going, you might want to look into that before boarding.
• While the metro can be taken to get there, it seems that the trip would take a couple of hours, maybe more, to get from downtown Mexico City to the embarcadero. We took a tourist taxi from the Condesa df, and it cost us MXN $300. Often, it seems these taxis from hotels are a rip off. This trip seemed well worth the price, and we were dropped off right at the embarcadero.
• The driver advised us that there is a type of pork that they serve at the embarcadero that is out of this world. We're vegetarians, as you surely know by now, so we can't report on that.
• Getting a cab back from Xochimilco can be a hassle. Santiago (after driving us down there) talked to a friend there about getting us a "secure" cab back to the city, and he said he'd take care of it for us. It turns out that our very nice guide took care of this for us, waiting with us in the embarcadero parking lot until we left. If you're going, you might want to tip your guide on the boat and ask if they could help you arrange safe return transportation.
• You can buy sodas, beer, food and songs from various types of musicians while on the water. Two sodas and a water cost us MXN $60, and a song from a band of floating mariachi cost us MXN $70. I can't tell you about the food.
• There's a soft sales pitch. Like tour guides and buses that make a stop at a factory so that tourists can buy mementos and the guides can get kickbacks, we stopped at a little greenhouse during the trip, and near the end, our guide pulled out a big case full of jewelry of his design. They were not too pushy about it, and honestly, the jewelry was really cool. But you may want to be prepared for these "opportunities," since guidebooks tell you to take only the bare minimum of cash with you when out and about in Mexico City.

Shawn and I were not aware from having seen countless photos and travel shows about Xochimilco that there are lots of houses right next to the canals. You'll also see lots of greenhouses and a few places selling things like ice and drinks.

Lakeside House, Xochimilco

Our guides were both Xochimilcas, which means nowadays that they live in Xochimilco. The jewelry designer (on the left below) is Mayan, so there was a little joking about how he's not really of the indigenous group of Xochimilcas, even though he's called that.

Our Guides, Xochimilco

After a delightful and relaxing afternoon at Xochimilco, we were yet again reminded that life in Mexico is often stranger than fiction. After our guide had spent a fair bit of effort trying to arrange a cab for us back to the city (he made several calls that went unanswered, and the one driver in the parking lot was hesitant to take us), we finally crammed ourselves into the little VW bug taxi and took off for downtown. The seats were boxes of springs with thin coverings over them and sitting in the back seat, I had to sit on my leg. The driver asked us if we liked Creedence as he was flipping through the discs in his glove box, and we responded that we did. He then proceded to pull out the disc under that and put it in his CD player. Okay, it was banda and not my favorite of the Mexican musical genres, but it was his cab and as long as we made it back to the hotel in one piece, I didn't care about the music.

When the traffic got a little thick, he switched off the music. Shawn asked if he wanted a different CD, and he explained that he needed to concentrate because of the traffic. At certain points, he was, as Shawn described it, "driving like a grandmother." (Not you, Mimsie. He means a slow-driving grandmother.) When we got into the city, he became noticeably more anxious, timidly changing lanes and at one point being forced off the main road by a truck. Shawn quickly had to pull out his handy map and serve as navigator to the driver through Mexico City, and Shawn's not exactly an expert with the roads of Mexico City. Still, he did a stellar job, as did the driver, and an hour after we left Xochimilco, we pulled up at the Condesa df.

Knowing that he was used to driving only around Xochimilco and had been aprehensive about taking us through the city, Shawn congratulated him on doing a great job in getting us there. The driver laughed and then told us that yes, he was a little nervous, because he only has one eye. He then lifted his sunglasses to show Shawn his blank, dead, bluish-purple eye.

As we were walking later on to a local restaurant and battling the traffic ourselves, Shawn said "I hope our driver made it back okay." For all we know, he could be driving around still in downtown, stuck in some glorieta. At least he has Creedence to keep him company.

Posted by crispy at 09:50 AM | Comments (2)

December 20, 2006

Condesa (df): 1

We arrived at the Condesa df on Monday afternoon, and despite problems we had with the Internet access at first, it's a fantastic hotel in a much more interesting neighborhood.

It's always hard to leave a W hotel and not make negative comparisons at the new place. For example, our room at Condesa df costs more, but is 1/4 the size of our room at the W. The view isn't as cool. At the W, they give you plenty of bath towels (5) and at this place, you get the bare minimum (2). There is no concierge here, just the front desk staff. To get an iron and ironing board, one has to call down to the front desk and ask for one to be brought up (and when it is, it's built for someone 5'2" tall). But it's not entirely fair to make such criticisms because the W is a huge chain with plenty of employees to make sure things go smoothly, and even then, they sometimes don't.

The Condesa df, on the other hand, has but 40 rooms. While the W is plush and pretty nicely put together, the design in Condesa df done by India Mahdavi makes one say, "Wow!" They have a particular print pattern that they use, and a few very specific colors, throughout the whole hotel. The W retains a little business stuffiness, while the Condesa df is more playful, like André Balazs' Standard hotels. You get that feeling from the staff too. On occasion, the staff at the W, while always professional, seems a bit cold. At Condesa df, you get the feeling that the younger staff, while not always 100% professional, is having a good time and they want you to have a good time too.

But let's not waste any more time on making comparisons. There are plenty of funky things to note about the Condesa df.

The keys have a strange fob on them, like a stainless steel bolt. When you're in the room, you have to insert it into a hole in the wall so that it enables the power in the room. When you leave, you have to pull it out to get the keys, which subsequently shuts off the power in your room. Obviously that has pros and cons.

Guest Services Directory, Condesa df

The guest services directory is put toghether of folded pages of paper with their specific print pattern, but it also has sleeves for various things that are removable from the directory. For example, there's a Codigo-branded map of the local area. It also includes a little sleeve of postcards, which are all glossy color photo cards of local neigborhood scenes like fruit on display at a nearby abarrotes.'

Postcards, Condesa df

Signature Pattern, Condesa df

The bathroom is hidden away behind a wooden veneer wall panel, giving it a Bruce Wayne estate feeling.

Hideaway Bathroom, Condesa df

They have an iPod in each room, loaded with a great mix of music (Tainted Love by Gloria Jones, Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen, Dear Prudence by The Five Steps, Frontin' by Jamie Cullum, These Days by Nico, Walk on By by Dionne Warwick, A Forest by Nouvelle Vague, Elle et moi by Max Berlin, Summertime by Montréal, I Can't Wait Until I See My Lover by Dusty Springfield, Climb Up the Walls 07 Remix by Radiohead, The Truth by Handsome Boy Modeling School, Alzheimers by Joy Zipper). It plays through the plasma television speakers. They also have DVD players in each room and films on DVD that you can borrow from the front desk.

They have a sushi bar (and a regular cocktail bar) on the fourth floor (roof terrace).

They have a closed-circuit channel with a looping independent video art piece (like the Standard).

Their guacamole has pomegranate seeds and comes with homemade plantain, potato and yam chips.

There is a 1950s Chevrolet parked (permanently) in front of the hotel.

It's in Condesa, which is a very hip (in some cases so hip they're too popular), but there's more on that to come.

Posted by crispy at 12:30 AM | Comments (1)

November 21, 2006

La época de oro photos: part two

L to R: Maria, Melanie, Ignacio, Alana
(Ladies of the English-Speaking Ligation)

More, more, more.

Martha and Eligio, Shawn's Co-Workers

Shawn With Patti, Co-Worker

Pili, Another of Shawn's Co-Workers

Shawn's Former Student, Adrian, and His Wife, Karla

Exchange Student, Devin

Male Go-Go Dancer, Elvis (From Venezuela)

Elvis, Not Yet Having Left the Building

[on the right is a cool lesbian DJ, but we're unsure of the other two; names TBA]

Our Bouncer, Rigo

Posted by crispy at 08:20 PM | Comments (3)

November 09, 2006

La época de oro photos: part one

Andreas and Salvador

As promised, a few photos from our recent party.

José Luis, Andreas and Larry Foster

Alberto, Shawn and Roxana

These folks (above) are our neighbors from across the hall. Those poor people.

Hector (Shawn's trainer), Alejandra and Rubi

Fernando and Brenna

Posted by crispy at 03:56 PM | Comments (3)

October 15, 2006

Zacatecas, Zacatecas

Zacatecas, Panorama From Hotel Argento Inn Balcony [larger image]

No, it's not the new Mexican musical staring Bette Midler. It's the city (and state) that we went to this past weekend because Shawn had three days of vacation and we thought we should take that opportunity to explore our new country a bit.

Street Scene, Zacatecas

We traveled by bus (ETN, "la línea más cómoda") between Guadalajara and Zacatecas, going through Aguascalientes (again, both the city and the state. We like ETN because they have only 24 seats on the bus, which translates to more room per seat. This is generally referred to in Mexico as 'executive class.' They also give you a bag with a ham and cheese sandwich and the soda of your choice (as long as it's made by Coca-Cola®) as you board the bus. Luckily it's not so hard to peel the ham off the sandwich, because they don't offer vegetarian or kosher alternatives. Like most first class (and the higher, executive class) bus lines, they showed movies during the trip. All but one was dubbed into Spanish, and it was subtitled.

We only stopped in Aguascalientes for about 20 minutes, so information on that capital will have to come from another trip. It's interesting to note that it is known for wine and brandy production, although it's not like there's a lot produced there nowadays. It seemed to have a much bigger bus station than Zacatecas, though.

We arrived at the central camionera at sunset, and hopped in a cab to wind our way through the pink and gold maze of city streets to get to the Hotel Argento Inn where we were staying (pictured on the right in the photo above). We had a friend call to make reservations for us, because it was a complicated call. All the rooms in hotels around the city seemed to be booked up for some reason we couldn't figure out, and whether or not we would take a room in a hotel depended on the combined answers to a series of questions: Did they have rooms available? Did they have rooms with windows facing outside (compared to having windows that only face an inside courtyard, which usually results in the room being very dark and gloomy),? Were they located in or near the historic center? Did they cost less than $1500 MXN per night? Did they have one bed? Double beds? Private bathrooms? An iron an ironing board? The task of calling around to several hotels and struggling to get answers to these questions (and understanding those answers) was daunting to me, so I asked for help. I'm not proud of that, but I did. Unexpected surprises with hotels in Mexico can be quite disturbing, and I didn't feel like suffering (and making Shawn suffer) them gladly just to guard my pride.

Street Scene, Zacatecas

Zacatecas is known for having a lot of its colonial architecture still intact. It is, along with places like Cuernavaca, Puebla and San Miguel de Allende, one of the "colonial jewels" of Mexico. Like most of Mexico, you will find some crumbling about the edges in Zacatecas, but there was less than I expected. It isn't that all the old colonial stuff has been restored to its original beauty, but it seems to have been kept clean and the ravages one notices are of time, not the hand of man.

Guadalajara is considered one of the "jewels" as well, and it certainly does have lots of colonial gems that are still in good shape and worth visiting. However, Guadalajara, being a bigger city and having developed to serve the business economy, doesn't rely on the colonial and historic elements about town as much as Zacatecas does. In fact, much of the old colonial stuff here was torn down long ago to make way for more modern facilities. In turn, many of those have been torn down even more recently to make way for even more modern facilities.

The net effect of this is that in Guadalajara, the colonial and historic sites seem to pop up here and there within the city (granted, the centro histórico has a large concentration of colonial stuff), and one does not get a sense of being back in colonial Mexico as much as one does in the smaller cities such as Zacatecas. No modern buildings exist beside the old posadas, government buildings and cathedrals in Zacatecas. Those are all located outside the city center (which is the centro histórico), and even then, they are not of the steel-and-glass type, but rather just one or two story cement blocks common to more rural Mexico.

Street Scene, Zacatecas

That being said, the colonial stuff in Zacatecas is fantastic. There's the cathedral:

Cathedral, Zacatecas

As you can see, it is very ornate, and the detail is breathtaking. Across the street from the cathedral is a little plaque that identifies the various saints perched about the front.

Cathedral, Zacatecas

The town is buit among a set of large hills, so if you go there, be prepared to do some incline walking.

Uphill/Downhill Stroll, Zacatecas

There is a large mountain known as La Bufa hemming the city in to one side, and at the summit, they have a few shops, telescopes, a temple where a statue of the everpresent Virgin is housed and some statues commemorating the revolutionary battles that took place in and around Zacatecas. If you are strong of nerve and stomach, you can take the teleférico to the top, a cable car that runs every 15 minutes.

Teleférico to La Bufa, Zacatecas

Some of the very old buildings in town have collapsed in spots, but they have had their usable bits turned into useful spaces. That is the case with the Museo Rafael Colonel, which houses a lot of contemporary art and an enormous collection of masks.

Grounds of the Rafael Coronel Museum, Zacatecas

The most impressive thing to me about Zacatecas is its wealth of art museums. You can read all about the silver mine and the significance of the town during the revolutionary war all over the Internet, but those things do not interest me so much. I may have mentioned on these pages that I'm less of an antiquities guy and more of a fine arts guy when it comes to museums, and that came into play during our visit to Zacatecas. We elected to go to various art museums instead of the traditional historic hotspots, and we were not disappointed.

We visited the Museo Rafael Coronel, the Museo Pedro Coronel (they are brothers) and the Museo Manuel Felguérez. All of these are modern artists from Zacatecas, and their works are included along with those of other famous modern artists in their museums.

I liked the works of Rafael Coronel at his museum. The number of Miró pieces at the Pedro Coronel museum was astounding (just one set of pieces numbered 36), and they also have a Dali and a few Picassos. The best part of the Felguérez museum was the entire collection of the 12 murals painted for the Mexico pavillion at the 1970 World's Fair in Osaka.

The parks in Zacatecas are very lush and they keep them in great shape, like their old buildings.

Park, Zacatecas

Of course, those of you who know me well know that when I travel I'm most interested in funky and fine foodstuffs, restaurants and general lifestyle things that are not so much on the tourist's "Must See" list. In Zacatecas, I found plenty of things that I thought you all would find interesting, disgusting, or both.

Cow Stomach Tacos, Zacatecas

Yes, tripe tacos. Seeing this made Shawn remark about Carlos Mecía's bit about why they don't have Latinos on shows where people have to eat wacky stuff, like "Survivor": because they eat disturbing things on a daily basis. It would be no challenge whatsoever for them.

(I'd like to point out here, although I don't have a lot of photos showing it, whoever paints the signage in Zacatecas for all these businesses is a master. There are various styles of lettering all over the place and they're all machine perfect.)

Jicamoy, Zacatecas

This isn't so gross as just strange. It's a stand that sells jicama, that big root vegetable that is kind of like a bigger, sweeter water chestnut. They're popular all over Mexico, peeled, stuck on a stick, and dusted with chile. This place, Jicamoy, offers something like 15 flavor variations of the jicama-on-a-stick concept.

Jicamoy, Zacatecas

Then you have these places that have a simple menu and simple atmosphere.

Restaurant, Zacatecas [View Enlargement of Wall Photos]

Here you see the famous Mexican actor and singer, Pedro Infante pictured on one of the motorcycles. At the top in the center of this photo, you can see the hole in the wall that opens to the outside, covered with a tarp.

Restaurant, Zacatecas

My favorite spot to eat in Zacatecas turned out to be a Greek cafeteria. Here "cafeteria" is used in the Mexican sense of the word, which translates into the American lexicon as something more like a diner with a very extensive selection. It is the Café y Nevería Acrópolis, located right next to the cathedral.

Shawn at the Café y Nevería Acrópolis, Zacatecas

Don't let the name and the ownership fool you. This place is 100% Mexican, and pretty old school Mexican at that. They have all kinds of platos you can enjoy alongside shakes, raspados (kind of like a real fruit slushy at the Acrópolis - like a snow cone in some other places) and ice cream floats. It's the first time I've seen an ice cream float on a menu in Mexico, and the first time I've seen something I've heard about elsewhere: the excessive torta barrio.

We enjoyed ours in the ahogada ('drowned') style, so the whole thing consisted of a chile relleno made the right way with chile poblano, diced tomato, onion and crema, all on a bolillo (and not the birote common to Jalisco), then smothered in a spicy tomato sauce. DELICIOUS!

Also cool about the place is the fact that they display artwork drawn by famous local artist/customers on their walls, and they have a display of plates embellished with artwork made out of leftover Turkish coffee grounds.

The Café y Nevería Acrópolis also sells their coffee by the kilo, as well as some other, um, things.

Muchas Nalgas at Café y Nevería Acrópolis, Zacatecas

Some other visual things caught our eye in Zacatecas, like these school girls on their way to an event being held in front of the Palacio del Gobierno.

School Girls in Transit, Zacatecas

Run little girl, RUN!

School Girls in Transit, Zacatecas

This house was built with unusual bricks. I bet when they built it, the neighbors were shocked and appalled.

Bricks, Zacatecas

In Mexico, people still send telegrams, although with the growing popularity of email, business is falling off.

Telegrams, Zacatecas

'Street of the Sad Indian.' Given what white folks did to the natives in the Americas, there are a lot more than one, I'm sure. Which one qualifies as 'THE' sad one, I don't know. Iron Eyes Cody perhaps?

Esquina Indio Triste y Hidalgo, Zacatecas

One parting glance of Zacatecas that Shawn took from the bus station before we left, thus ending our Zacatecan odyssey.

View of Zacatecas from the Central Camionera, Zacatecas

Posted by crispy at 06:18 PM | Comments (5)

September 16, 2006

Wacky Mexican Television Revisited

Playing Jenga® on Muévete

This is a Saturday morning show called Muévete. It's for kids, mostly.

It reminds me of the children's programming in Brazil as represented on The Simpsons. They have scantily-clad hosts that bounce around, banda ensembles, and perky songs about not smoking cigarettes complete with a dance line, again, scantily-clad.

Playing Jenga® on Muévete

The audience seems like a big party, with everyone dancing around and singing. They hold up big signs that talk about how they love the hosts of the show and young girls (scantily-clad) blow kisses to the camera.. At one point, they bring out a special guest, usually someone slightly famous from Mexican TV, and...what else? They play Jenga®!

Playing Jenga® on Muévete

The band plays this trippy abstract "tension" jam, like when the protagonist is walking through a dark house and you know the murderer is waiting for him in there somewhere. But because the Jenga® game can go on and on and on, it's like the house is the château de Versailles and the inevitable victim is practicing walking meditation.

Playing Jenga® on Muévete

Given that it's a couple of people playing Jenga® for half an hour on tv, it cracks us up that they run a title at the bottom of the screen that reads: ¡El momento más tenso de televisión!

Posted by crispy at 11:05 AM | Comments (3)

August 08, 2006

The Road to Bogotá: Part Four

[part three]

We had only five of our original seven planned days in Bogotá, thanks to our flight being cancelled two days in a row. Instead of giving a day-by-day account of the rest of the trip, let me just comment on some of the more notable things we encountered.

Bogotá is delightfully cool, especially after the end of the pre-rainy season month of May here in Guadalajara. We had endured a long stretch of considerably hot weather, taunted by the promise of those refreshing and reviving rains, but as of the end of May, we'd not seen much of them. However, upon our arrival in Bogotá, we were welcomed by a slight drizzle on a nice cool night. Delicious!

The forecast said that we were to get serious rain the whole time we were there, but that didn't turn out to be the case. While it did rain now and again during our stay, we had a lot of relatively dry weather. It was pretty overcast the whole time, but we were told that the week before, it had been sunny and hot the whole week. The point of all this being, Bogotá has weather changes. That and the fact that it's beautiful to look up from the city streets and see the lush green mountains about the city, shrouded in clouds.

Bogotá

Bogotá

Bogotá

The fact that the city was not drenched in rain the entire time we were there allowed us to check out some of the city, which is exactly what we went for. On our second night in town, we went to a bar that charged a fairly hefty cover. When we got inside, we found out why: the cover bought you unlimited drinks from the bar for the entire evening. When this concept completely bewildered us, the bartender explaining it to us in Spanish thought we did not understand what he was saying. He sent over another bartender that spoke English, so that he could explain it to us. This bartender turned out to be one of the friendliest people we've ever met, a young Bogotano named Alvaro who is so proud of his city that whenever he has vacation time, he spends it in town going to the different attractions and excellent offerings that the city provides for entertainment.

He hung out with us for the rest of our trip as our friend and tour guide, and this absolutely made the trip an excellent experience for us. Without him, we would not have enjoyed our time in Bogotá at all like we did, and his being such an excellent human being helped to make up for my bad shoe cleaning experience and our discovery that Bogotanos are generally not as friendly as we'd expected them to be, after living in Guadalajara and having heard that Colombians are some of the nicest people on the planet. Alvaro certainly fit that description, making it so that we could say that at least some Colombians are the nicest people on the planet.

Alvaro playing before a statue of Giordano Bruno

Alvaro at the Museo de Oro

I believe I should say a word or two about the Museo de Oro. I will not say much because you can read all about it all over the place. It's a museum that showcases artifacts found in various regions of Colombia made and used by various cultures. The presentation is excellent, the artifacts themselves impressive, and the experience one that is called a "must-see" in every reference on Colombia that exists.

Exhibit, Museo de Oro

I think that is probably true, but my interest in museums tends toward those displaying fine arts, and usually even then, only more modern works. I do occasionally like to look at Indian (from Asia) artifacts, but for the most part, artifacts are not my cup of tea. Were I someone else, I might rave about the Museo de Oro, but it wasn't my favorite part of the trip, and it certainly didn't compare to the works we saw at either the Donación Botero nor the Museo de Arte Moderno (known as the MAMBO, tee hee!).

I recommend both of these places wholeheartedly. If you don't like modern art, you might not like the Museo de Arte Moderno, but I can't imagine anyone not enjoying the works at the Donación Botero, which include an overwhelming number of works by Botero, as well as spectacular pieces by Renoir, Dalí, Chagall, Picasso, Miró, and Bacon. You can't use a flash, but you can take pictures in the Donación Botero. Here are some of our photos, but without the flash, most turned out blurry.

Casa de Moneda, Bogotá

Casa de Moneda, Bogotá

Casa de Moneda, Bogotá

Donación Botero, Bogotá

Donación Botero, Bogotá

Donación Botero, Bogotá

Donación Botero, Bogotá

Moonlight II, 1997
Alex Katz, New York, 1927
Oil on Canvas

Moonlight II, 1997
Alex Katz, New York, 1927
Oil on Canvas

Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá

There were many more attractions to see around Bogotá, like the salt cathedral and the view from Monserrate, but due to a combination of time limitations, motivation and rainy weather, we didn't see any of these. I know this may disappoint some readers, but for us, there were more basic cultural things we wanted to discover, like the food of Bogotá. That is what we'll talk about in the next installment.

Posted by crispy at 01:38 PM | Comments (4)

June 21, 2006

The Road to Bogotá: Part Two

[part one]

If at first you don't succeed, go to the Casa Azul and putter around Coyoacán for the afternoon, then try to catch another late night flight to Bogotá.

Exterior, la Casa Azul, Coyoacán

We had nearly 24 hours to kill when we learned that our flight was cancelled, so we made plans for the following day to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum, housed in her family home in Coyoacán, also known as the Casa Azul.

We took a cab from the Camino Real that they 'arranged' for us, which ended up taking about 40 minutes and cost us about $25 USD. This was a 'tourist taxi,' which basically means it's a service that rips off tourists. The driver was nice enough, and the cab was very comfortable. We'd heard horror stories about getting kidnapped by illigitimate taxi drivers in Mexico City, so we wanted to be safe rather than sorry. The tourist taxi was guaranteed to be 'secure.'

The ride to Coyoacán was our first real chance to get the feel of Mexico City. It was nice and cool, being overcast and considerably higher than Guadalajara (about 2,200 feet). We were shocked to see how green and lush Mexico City was. We expected wall-to-wall urban landscape, but that was not the case. We passed park after park and went along many roads shaded by trees. In Guadalajara, it seems that people are terrified of trees, as people take any opportunity they can find - being near power lines, growing too tall, taking up space - to cut down the few that exist. Such didn't seem to be the case in Mexico City, which seemed like the Amazon in contrast.

I expected the Casa Azul to be pretty far out of town and in a dusty little pueblo, but Coyoacán is anything but that. It's a very nicely groomed, smart section of what seems like another part of Mexico City, like Tlaquepaque seems to be another part of Guadalajara.

Exterior, la Casa Azul, Coyoacán

While it does contain a few of works by Kahlo, the Museo Frida Kahlo focuses more on the life of the artist. There is a huge display case containing various medicines she took and a couple of self-decorated torso casts from a few of her numerous surgeries. There are a few interesting works by others too, and a little museum store where we bought postcards that we dared to send out through the infamous Mexican mail system. To date, nobody has mentioned receiving one. It's been almost three weeks.

The Casa Azul is very interesting, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Frida Kahlo. Those wishing to see a lot of her work will likely be disappointed, but the fact that one can see unusal 'works' of hers (like the painted casts, the decoration of the kitchen, pages from her journal) is quite a treat. More interesting is being in the house where she worked and lived, and getting a sense of the history that took place there.

We left the museum to find some lunch. Normally, we have a decent guide book to get some direction in such matters, but because we were not at all expecting to spend the day in Mexico City, we had nothing but a barely adequate map of Coyoacán in a Mexico City tourism pamphlet given to us by the concierge at the Camino Real. We figured that if we headed toward the center of the neighborhood, we'd probably find something. We were not disappointed.

We came upon a nice park that had an information booth, where we asked for restaurant suggestions, being that we're vegetarians. I thought the woman there would suggest going to some sit down place that would have the usual: quesadillas, cheese enchiladas, enfrijoladas, chilaquiles, etc. Instead, she told us to go to Vege Taco, a place that serves nothing but vegetarian food.

For us, this was an amazing delight. So often people tell us, "You HAVE to try the pica..., oh, that's right. You're vegetarians." There are so many dishes down here that gringo meat eaters tell us are simply the best dishes in the world, and for the first time in my vegetarian life, I am ignorant of what something tastes like. That is, I'd tried pretty much everything meatwise in the United States that is common there. If someone eats a hot dog, for example, I know all too well what that tastes like. Yet there are several things here, often times sauces that are vegetarian in and of themselves, but end up always being served on meat, where I can't even imagine their flavors. Like the traditional sauce, pipian. It's always used to stew chicken or pork, so I never get to order it at restaurants here.

But at Vege Taco, I could get all kinds of things like that. Unfortunately, we had to choose just one dish each. Shawn got flautas, and I, being really into learning new things about our home state of Jalisco, ordered faux cabrito (young goat), Jaliscan style.

I won't knock anyone that digs goat, but I don't know that I would have really been all that jazzed about eating goat had I come down here as a meat eater. Okay, that's probably not true. I'd end up trying it one night while drunk and thinking it was okay. However, the nice thing is, even for people that eat meat, if you have a hard time stomaching even just the idea of goat, you could try the vegetarian version (made with seitan) and understand how it's prepared without having to eat goat. There were a lot of vegetarian versions of traditional Mexican fare that might give your average gringo pause, and I'm sure that a lot of meat eaters would be hesitant to eat at Vege Taco. However, all the people there (and it was pretty crowded), were chowing down without hesitation.

This is my fake young goat, in the Jaliscan style:


"Cabrito" Estilo Jalisco, Vege Taco, Coyoacán

Here's Shawn's flautas:


Flautas de "Barbacoa" Vegetarianas, Vege Taco, Coyoacán

I wanted to stay and keep ordering things from the menu, but a full stomach and the hour dictated that we return to the hotel, pick up our bags and return to the airport for our flight to Bogotá. We hailed a cab and paid about $18 USD on the return trip from Coyoacán, and on the way, I had a nice chat with the cab driver. He asked us all the standard questions, and I gave him all the standard (for us) answers. We talked about politics, the fact that we much prefer the relaxed rato de vida of Mexico, and that, despite the fact that all the Mexicans we knew that were from places other than Mexico City say that chilangos (a term for people from Mexico City, and supposedly pejorative) are rude and self-centered, we had not found that to be the case. He explained that it all depends on where you go in Mexico City. He claims that in some neighborhoods in Mexico City (he named a couple that unfortunately, I have since forgotten), people are very rude, but in many parts of Mexico City, people are very friendly.

We must not have gone to any of the rude places, because we found everyone to be quite friendly, polite, and when the need arose, helpful. Like when we got to the airport and got in line to check our luggage, the men going through and running chemical tests on the insides of our luggage were quite friendly. We spoke Spanish with them initially, but then one of them said that his co-worker wanted to practice his English with us, but was too shy to ask. We then switched over to English and had a nice talk with them while they processed our luggage with this funky device that checked for explosive residue on a piece of plastic (?) tape that was wiped along the interior of each of our bags. After passing the test ("TNT: OK!"), we stepped up to the counter where the same guy that had told us the previous night that our flight had been cancelled a month before was waiting with a pleasant smile. He was exceptionally friendly as he told us, "I have bad news for you. Your flight has been cancelled."

He was very friendly as he tried to calm us down, and he was exceptionally nice in putting us up at the Sheraton María Ísabel right across from the Ángel de Independencia on Avenida Reforma. Everyone in line behind us was also on this cancelled flight, yet instead of making a general announcement, they let everyone go through the security check of luggage, and then told them individually that the flight had been cancelled. I can think of no reason to do this besides really enjoying making people wait in line needlessly, but you get that kind of irrational stuff in Mexico all the time. Eventually, they herded us outside, to wait for a van that would take us to the hotel.

As we stood and waited, Shawn asked a young man who was also waiting if he spoke English. I thought this was strange at the time, but Shawn explained later that he presumed that the guy was English because he was paler than we were. It turns out that he did speak English, but he was a law student from Monterrey, and was heading down to Buenos Aires (our flight continued from Bogotá to Argentina) to study dance for three months during the summer break. He was quite cute, and we were delighting in the conversation, but then he started in on the whole thing about how he hates Mexico City and thinks both the metropolis and the people are ugly there. After that, I couldn't help but think of him as a little too prissy for my tastes, but luckily about that time, the van pulled up and we all got in.

The driver (David Montaño, cell 044/55/8560-9261, 044/55/2965-1437; office 55/2643-2406), who drives tourists around Mexico City for a living, was absolutely delightful. He asked me the usual questions, and upon my telling him how we were not really all too disappointed to be spending another night in Mexico City (since before we'd only been to the border towns and Guadalajara), started telling me all about other beautiful places in Mexico that needed to be checked out. I found us to have similar tastes in how we visit other cities. He recommended Acapulco, but when I said that I didn't really go for resort towns, he wagged his finger and said, "No, no, no." He suggested going for at least three weeks, finding a cheap apartment or condo that rents by the month and just living there, maybe checking out a couple of the big hotspots if you're into seeing what they're all about, but otherwise, just living there among the locals and asking around among them for recommendations on where to eat, what to see and how to pass the time. His loving description of excellent food, beautiful muchachas and thoroughly enjoyable time spent there sold me.

As we drove along, he pointed out a lot of sights in Mexico City, although it was hard to see many of them because it was dark out. Even the Ángel de Independencia wasn't visible, being under scaffolding for cleaning. Still, he gave us a rundown on the basics of our local layout, talking about the two Mexico Cities: the old and the modern. When at last we pulled up at the hotel, I was a little sad to have arrived. I would have liked to have hired him to drive around a bit more and show us some of the late night hotspots, but we had to check in with the others to be sure that Aerolíneas Argentinas would pay for it. After we got to the room, despite planning at the airport to go out and party down in the city, we were beat and just crawled into bed. The double-paned glass kept out any city noise, and those soft Sheraton beds were so comfortable that we passed out within minutes.

Here are some photos of the view from our room on the 20th floor.

Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel

Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel

Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel

[part three]

Posted by crispy at 01:53 AM | Comments (6)

May 26, 2006

Mona's Does It Again

Guest Room Curtains

With someone coming to visit us from the states, we figured it was time to get another set of curtains from Mona's (Juárez 205, Tlaquepaque, 33/3635-6681) for the guest room.

I can't say enough about Mona's. They have an incredible selection of fabrics, they do some of the best work I've ever seen any place do with anything, and they will work with you to get exactly what you want. Just like the bookcases discussed in the previous entry, every aspect of these curtains was selected by us.

They don't just do curtains either. Anything that takes fabric and can be sewn together they'll do, as long as you have the proper measurements. You can find pre-fab stuff considerably cheaper, but for custom work that comes out as beautifully as their work at Mona's does, the price is great.

If you live in, move to, or even visit Guadalajara, you are an idiot if you need this kind of work done and you don't go to Mona's. Okay? I am not getting paid to say that, nor did I get any kind of discount from them. They're just that good.

Guest Room Curtains

I need to re-pin the hooks, as they're a little high up on the curtains. After getting them installed, I wished the print was a little bigger. With that much of that busy a pattern, I'm afraid it's a little nauseating, but it is in keeping with our nice retro look. Perhaps once we get other stuff in the room it won't seem so busy.

Guest Room Curtains

We also got a nice hand-woven runner for our dining room table:

Dining Table Runner

...and some placemats that go to cover the end tables we bought from Mueblería de Jesús:

End Table Cover

Posted by crispy at 05:43 PM | Comments (2)

Mueblería de Jesús

For great custom made bookcases and some pre-designed end tables/night stands, we went to Mueblería de Jesús (Hidalgo 857, esquina Jesús 33/3826-2202). They do very nice, reasonably priced work. Keep reading to see the photos.

Four Bookcases, Connected

The folks at Mueblería de Jesús are very friendly, and they will work with you to get just what you want. We measured our wall and had them build four identical bookcases to fill the space. We selected every single aspect of these: the color, the fact that there's a back on them, the fact that they connect, the depth of the shelves, the number of shelves, how much they can adjust up and down, the thickness of the wood facing the front, etc.

The night stands we selected were very similar to the end tables we bought (shown below), but we chose a lighter color and a style with three drawers instead of a drawer and a door.

End Table

I'm not incredibly happy with the round ball style of feet on these, but after going through all the discussion of the bookcases, I was a bit exhausted. Maybe they'll grow on me. Or maybe I'll go back and have them make me some different feet. Little brushed stainless posts might be nice...

Posted by crispy at 05:28 PM | Comments (2)

May 02, 2006

Crisppy Played Guitar(rón)

Chris With Mariachi, el centro histórico, Guadalajara

Larry took this photo of me with el mariachi at an upstairs restaurant and bar that we went to after enjoying an evening of free mariachi music in el centro. Every Wednesday evening, a concert band plays in the kiosko, and now we're in the season where they have another act that follows the concert band as part of "Tapatio Wednesdays." The instrument I'm holding in the photograph is a guitarrón (aka chitarrone), which serves as the bass in a mariachi ensemble. I don't really play it; it was lent to me by Fonzie on the left there for the photo.

Posted by crispy at 08:53 AM | Comments (5)

March 27, 2006

Bad Jugs

Detail, Public Safety Announcement About Illicit Tequila Vendors

While I have not yet seen anyone selling homemade tequila on the street, the following PSA would lead one to think that it goes on.

I'm not going to provide a complete translation of this document into English at this time, but let me give you the skinny on what it says. You can also open a popup window with a large-sized copy where the text is legible, although Movable Type does not build image popup windows that scroll, so you might have to save the image file from the popup window to your desktop and open it in another image viewing application to read the entire thing.

Basically, the PSA warns people to not buy tequila from some random person in the street, tells them what all authentic (licensed) tequila must show on the bottle, and then describes different classes of tequila. It warns not only that tequila from street vendors in unmarked jugs could not only damage your health, but also that one is putting their "wealth" or "assets" at risk when they do not buy the real deal.

Bear in mind that this is printed in El ocio, the entertainment supplement that is included in the Friday edition of El Publico, a local newspaper, so it is aimed at Mexicans. Therefore, the line that reads, "Cuida tu patrimonio..." is aimed at them, saying, "Take care of your assets..."

To my knowledge, while it is true that the tequila industry belongs to Mexicans more than it does nationals of other countries, all Mexicans do not receive periodic dividends from any of the distillers. In fact, if Herradura were to sell out tomorrow to Coca-Cola®, I don't think Mexicans could do anything to stop it (even though I suspect they would not because they probably think it would make it más rico). So while it is true that certain Mexicans make money from real tequila, it's lame to imply that tequila is an asset like something the average Mexican can put down on a loan application to increase their net worth.

Most Mexicans I've spoken to about it are a little annoyed that the price of tequila has gone through the roof here in Mexico because very effective advertising and a suprising upward trend in the taste of Americans in their alcohol preferences have increased demand for tequila in the United States. Half of all tequila is produced for export, and of that, 80% goes to the US. That's great for the tequila industry, and in the long run, that's good for Mexico. For most Mexicans, it just means that the price for a bottle of good tequila is much less affordable.

Overall, I find the ad funny, for the icon if nothing else. Yet it's mildly annoying to me that the tequila industry is trying to keep people from buying cheaper, bootleg tequila through an appeal to their patriotism and some false notion that they participate in the profits. For many, the street vendors are probably the only means through which they can afford a bottle (or jug) of the national beverage, or a facsimile thereof.

Posted by crispy at 02:56 PM | Comments (1)

March 21, 2006

Benito Juárez

Benito Pablo Juárez García
President of Mexico 1861–1863 & 1867–1872

Today is the birthday of President Juárez, and it is a national holiday here in Mexico. It should be. He rocked.

He was Zapotec and came from a small village in Oaxaca. His childhood was rough, but he was determined to get an education. He studied at a seminary in Oaxaca, and then after graduation, started his study of law. He became a lawyer, then judge, then the governor of the state of Oaxaca. He lived for a while in New Orleans when the military dictatorship of Santa Anna controlled Mexico. He returned to be Chief Justice and Vice-President under Ignacio Comonfort. After a conservative uprising which he helped to defeat, Juárez was elected president in 1861.

One of his first big acts as president was to declare a moritorium on payment of foreign debts, as the Mexican government was on the brink of bankruptcy. This did not please Mexico's European creditors, and France invaded Mexico in 1862 in retaliation. The defeat of the French by a smaller Mexican force at Puebla on 5 May 1862 is now what is celebrated annually on that day in the United States, and to a significantly lesser degree, in Mexico. In 1863, the French were able to establish a foothold in the country, naming Maximilian of Habsburg as "Emperor of Mexico" in the following year. Juárez and his government had to flee to the north, but they continued to do their work from there.

It's a bummer that Maximilian was actually a relatively cool guy, at least compared with other Europeans that had been sent over to conquer and rule Mexico. He shared liberal and Mexican nationalist sentiments with Juárez, and offered him amnesty and the post of prime minister under the monarchy. Juárez refused the idea of Mexico being governed by a foreign monarchy, and with threats of intervention by the United States to restore home rule to Mexico, France began a pull-out from Mexico in 1866. With the last of Maximilian's troops being defeated the following year, Maximilian was sentenced to death for treason. Some sources say that Juárez offered him a chance to escape, but Maximilian was a man of his principles and preferred to accept his defeat instead of fleeing. Juárez was asked by several people around the world to commute the death sentence, but he refused. Maximilian was executed on 19 June 1867 by firing squad. His last words were: "I forgive everybody. I pray that everybody may also forgive me, and my blood which is about to be shed will bring peace to Mexico. Long live Mexico! Long Live Independence!"

In 1872, Juárez died of a heart attack. He is remembered for his defense of national sovereignty and the passage of important liberal reforms that stripped the Catholic church of their power in state affairs and advanced civil rights and capitalism. This year is the 200th anniversary of his birthday, but starting next year, Mexico will celebrate his birthday on the third Monday of March.

Juárez is pictured on the Mexican 20 peso note, with the monument to him in Mexico City pictured on the reverse.

Posted by crispy at 03:23 PM | Comments (5)

March 19, 2006

Crash

Non-injury Accident at Avenida Cubilete and Calle La Ermita

I told you people here drive like maniacs. Here's the aftermath of an accident that happened here a while ago, in the intersection just outside our apartment. The Volkswagen (left) ran the light when it was red and hit the truck. The two drivers are examining the damage to the passenger side of the truck in this photo.

The idiotic thing is that the guy driving the truck, which worked well enough to drive away later on, just stopped in the middle of this busy intersection in order to deal with the Volkswagon driver, which nearly caused two other accidents when other drivers speeding along the street nearly plowed into him. Notice that he hasn't even turned on his lights or hazard signals.

Posted by crispy at 01:53 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2006

Wacky Mexican Television

It's 1 am on a Tuesday and I'm watching one of Mexico's most revered female authors, Elena Poniatowska, being interviewed on a show called "Show del Insomnio." Yet she's not being interviewed in a studio or any place befitting her stature in the country's literary landscape. She's being driven around what I presume to be Mexico City in a flatbed truck that has been set up like a bedroom, complete with bed, nightstand and a television.

Elena Poniatowska on Show del Insomnio

This is the only aspect of the interview that is so campy; she is discussing other authors, recounting her early days as a journalist, and talking about the advantages of being small.

Elena Poniatowska on Show del Insomnio

Although we get it on channel 80 here in Guadalajara on Megacable, it's a Canal 22 production.

I love this country.

Posted by crispy at 12:13 AM | Comments (5)

February 22, 2006

Wild Parrots

Wild Parrot in Tree

Our friend Larry that you've read about on these pages as someone with great advice and excellent Spanish is also a painter and photographer. He took these photographs of the wild parrots that wander through our neighborhood every day to eat things from the trees.

Wild Parrot in Tree

These are Lilac-Crowned Amazon Parrots, one of the favorite parrots to have in captivity. On any given day, you can walk outside and see a number of them (usually at least ten) in the trees like this.

Wild Parrot in Tree

Their average adult size is 13 inches, and each wing is 7-8 inches long.

You have to be a little careful around them, as they drop the shells from the nuts and sticks from the tree as they eat.

Wild Parrot in Tree

They are not at all spooked by people walking around, even though they are wild birds. After their meal, they fly off somewhere else to do who knows what, but to see a bunch of wild parrots in your trees for even just ten minutes a day is quite a trip.

Posted by crispy at 03:27 PM | Comments (4)

February 20, 2006

Illumination

Living Room Rack, With Fluorescent Lighting

I added fluorescent strip lighting to the metal kitchen rack in the living room and it makes it look a little more stylish or something.

Fluorescent Light Tube on Mounted on Rack

These light fixtures are supposed to be mounted with plastic clips that you screw into the wall. Since I can't screw the clips into the metal of the kitchen rack, I tied the clips on with wire trash bag ties. Classy, I know.

And this towel that I had on the rack so that the things I had drying on the top of the rack would not drip all over Shawn's papers looked kind of cool lit up from beneath, so I took a picture of it too.

Towel Illuminated by Fluorescent Light

It reminds me of the Mr. Roboto video.

Posted by crispy at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2006

A Saturday Walk in February

Close Up of Cascading Flowers

The photos I posted before were not so interesting, but they do show the immediate neighborhood in which we live. I had to walk to Plaza del Sol to get something for Shawn this afternoon, so I thought I'd take along the camera and snap a few of the more picturesque things along the way.

I don't know what kind of flowers these are, the blue and white ones, but they are really beautiful. They are on vines that cascade over the brick wall of this house on a corner. The photograph below shows the wall from across the street.

Flowers Above, From Across the Street

If anyone can identify these flowers, that would be cool. I'd like to get some for our balconies because they are just so pretty.

The plants flowing over walls theme is big here. The shot below is of a bougainvillea around the corner from our apartment.

Bougainvillea on Calle Santa Prisca

And here are some others, of mixed colors also cascading over a wall.

Mixed Bougainvillea on Avenida Tizoc

These are very popular as they grow quickly and flower throughout the year.

Red Bougainvillea on Avenida Tizoc

There are also a fair number of trees in our neighborhood, like these that line the street and offer much-appreciated shade for afternoon walks.

Trees Lining Sidewalk

A lot of the trees are fruit trees, like this one that is either an orange tree, a mandarina tree, or some similar variant.

Orange Tree on Avenida Tizoc

The next photo is of a monument, which I presume is to the Pre-Columbian cultures indigenous to Mexico, but I've never stopped to see if there is anything in this park describing the monument. There are so many public artworks and monuments in this city that you end up just taking a lot for granted.

Monument in Glorietta

If you need to get away and have a relaxing day at the spa, we have one of those too, just a few blocks from our place.

Piedraviva Spa on Avenida Tizoc

These are the street signs that are often located in places where they cannot be seen even when you're walking along. In our neighborhood, we have a lot of indigenous names like "Popocatepetl" and these two.

Street Sign, Calle Teotihuacan

Mural, who apparently sponsored the signs, is a good local newspaper.

Street Sign, Avenida Xochitl

The architecture in this neighborhood is not your typical old colonial stuff like in el centro historico. It tends to be a bit more modern. Sometimes you will find a mixture of completely different styles in the same house. This is a garage door for the house in the subsequent picture.

Garage Doors, Chapalita Sur

Big House, Chapalita Sur

Although this is not a true example of dry masonry frequently seen around here (there is a little bit of mortar visible), it shows how walls in olden times were built with big rocks and smaller rocks.

Not Quite Dry Masonry Wall

And this one, well, it's just for Rudholm.

Telcel Office, Chapalita Sur

Posted by crispy at 05:34 PM | Comments (4)

February 17, 2006

The Champagne In His Natural Environment

Shawn In Bedroom

Posted by crispy at 02:49 AM | Comments (4)

February 11, 2006

On the Street Where You (We) Live

Across From Our Apartment

As requested, some photos of our neighborhood. They're not very interesting though. I snapped them on my way to do laundry at the laundromat across the street and didn't want to leave my clothes unattended to go do a more thorough expedition. This shot shows (from left to right) the laundromat, the paper store, the beauty salon and the little store that sells phone cards and candy bars. The shadow of the tree that you see in the street is from the big acacia that shades our balcony.

Looking Down Calle La Ermita

This is to the right of the previous photo, looking down the street that now serves as a detour for a very major street. We get loud traffic at all hours of the day from here.

Looking Up Calle La Ermita, Westward

Our apartment building is on the other side of the road pictured here, off to the left.

A House on Calle La Ermita

This is a house viewed from the street on La Ermita, just to give you some idea of what the places look like right around us.

Posted by crispy at 02:54 PM | Comments (4)

February 10, 2006

It Holds Stuff

Our "Entertainment Center"

I'm not overly delighted with the look of the thing, but hey, it will work, at least for the time being, to prop up our new printer/copier and our television set...when we get one.

The Ever-Sexy Side View

It's two stainless kitchen racks bought from Sam's Club (that's right, I bought something at the source of all evil, but I figured it might help out Ellyn Rucker) and joined together with a little creative adjustment of one of the shelves. We owe Joseph and Larry for that bright idea, which worked out rather well.

It does seem a little dormroomesque, but it's so hard to find something you like when you have no car to go comparison shopping easily. I'm thinking of putting in some Dan Flavin style fluorescent installations behind it and along those side walls. Or maybe I should just go hardcore with the look and put a Kitchen Aid and big stainless bowls on there.

It reminds me of the old priavteI days when we used one of those for our modem rack. Yeah, modems. I said it was the old days.

Posted by crispy at 03:01 PM | Comments (3)

January 24, 2006

Curtain!

Our custom made drapes from Mona's

Today we picked up our overdue curtains from a place in Tlaquepaque called Mona's, who sewed them together from our custom specifications and a fabric we selected.

They have "blackout" on the back so that the sun won't shine through, and pinch-pleats at the top.

Closer View of Curtain

The work on them is incredible. They stuck the hooks in them at the place, but I think we're going to have to repin the hooks because they don't quite go up to the ceiling, instead revealing our tacky curtain rod. The curtain rod needs some work too. At present, the only way we can get the curtain to move all the way open is to have one person pull the cord and another pull the curtain back by hand. That is, it sticks a lot in certain spots.

Fabric Print Detail

Now I can walk around in my underwear without getting cat calls. Yes, cat calls. That has been an all-too-frequent occurence.

Posted by crispy at 12:30 AM | Comments (4)

January 15, 2006

Another Strange Product

Somewhere, there are a pair of panty hose in an attic with your legs getting increasingly whiter and rougher.

Posted by crispy at 10:10 AM | Comments (2)

Request: Bathroom Photos

Let it not be said that I do not listen to the wants and needs of my readers. Yet I warn you, it's not pretty...

Okay, so maybe I lied about it being like the worst bathroom in Scotland. Yet when you're trying to keep people interested in the story of an apartment a million miles away, you have to use a little artistic license. Still, there are aspects about it that force me to close my eyes and think of England whenever I'm showering in there.

First, the general overview. Bear in mind, we've added a few things that are necessary for using the thing. You would not believe how much just having something another color than the pinkish-brown tile staring back at you improves the scene.

Note that the toilet paper has to rest on the toilet itself, because there is no device for holding it in the wall-mounted receptacle. I guess along with the stove and the fridge, that's yet another thing that tennants provide and take with them when they go.

Then this photo shows the lighting situation a little better. This is the state of ALL the lighting in our apartment at the moment.

This is the track for the door to the shower, after REPEATED attempts to clean it.

This is a shot of the "well-worn" tile and the mysterious gummy spot that I'm going to have to remove with some kind of scraper.

This is the prison shower style window that is in the shower itself...

...and the huge rusting metal lever that, in theory, is to open and close it. In fact, it seems permanently stuck open.

I'm sparing you a shot of the toilet seat that is only attached on one side, which won't stay up when you raise it, and I already replaced the showerhead that was rusted and oozing with some orange colored funk. They must have cleaned the toilet bowl between our first viewing the apartment and our arrival, because now all that remains in it is a brown line at the water level that we can't get out. Before, it had a uniform black coating of some substance on everything below the water level.

Posted by crispy at 09:33 AM | Comments (2)

December 27, 2005

Grocery Shopping in Mexico

A stroll through the neighborhood supermarket showed us that not only the Japanese have funky product names. Then there are the products that we can get here that I wish we could have purchased in the United States.

A sugar substitute. Does it really taste like sugar? Well...it's similar:

Even if you're already svelt, you can always be a little more svelty:

Maybe Dave Chappelle has started a bakery in Mexico:

You loved the movie, now enjoy the refreshing tea-based beverage:

And last but not least, some truth in advertising:

These are not funny. In fact, I'm really annoyed that we could never buy these Campbell's Soups in the United States. Maybe because they don't have meat in them:

Corn Soup.

Squash Blossom Soup.

Homestyle Lentil.

Poblano Chile.

And how about this flavor of Tang?

Of course, it doesn't surprise me that you can't find this Ibarra product, since it's not all that easy to find the legendary chocolate para mesa that they produce in thick, unwieldy discs. Still, I thought for those of you that are familiar with that product, I'd include this photo. The bummer is that it isn't really "Mexican" chocolate - the kind with almonds and cinnamon that you get in the disc form - but rather, just chocolate powder like Nestle Quick.

Posted by crispy at 03:50 PM | Comments (3)

November 17, 2005

W San Diego

Shawn On Phone, W San Diego

Bed, W San Diego

Bedside Table and Lamp, W San Diego

Room Entry, W San Diego

Shawn On Phone, W San Diego

Shower, W San Diego

Shower Control, W San Diego

Posted by crispy at 07:25 PM | Comments (2)

November 09, 2005

Photographs: Los Angeles Views

Check out some of the views we've had here in LA.

That Rudholm View, Monterey Park

Daytime View From Balcony, The Hollywood Standard

Nighttime View With Moon From Balcony, The Hollywood Standard

Daytime View From Window, The W Los Angeles

Posted by crispy at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2005

Photographs: The Train Ride

Photographs from the Southwest Chief trip that brought us to Los Angeles. Click "Continue reading..." to view the pictures, but be aware that they will take a considerable amount of time to load.

Our trip took 21 hours. Then we went straight to Canter's for breakfast.

Learn more about passenger trains with this public domain film from The Prelinger Archives.

Exterior of Train Station in Raton, New Mexico

Interior of Train Station in Raton, New Mexico

Waiting Room Chairs, Train Station in Raton, New Mexico

Shawn in Sleeper, Southwest Chief

Chris in Sleeper, Southwest Chief

Exterior of Sleeper Car, Southwest Chief

Welcome Sign, Union Station, Los Angeles

Chris at Canter's, Los Angeles

Posted by crispy at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2005

Wilma Strikes Yucatán

From NOAA Significant Event Images web site.

Posted by crispy at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

Packing

Shawn nears the breaking point as he sorts through twelve years of accumulated stuff.

With the house so cluttered with things to be sorted through, one can barely walk around. We have packed over 30 boxes of books, 3 boxes of DVDs and a few boxes of miscellaneous other items, but much remains to be reckoned with, as the photograph shows. This is a very educational experience for us, although we never seem to learn the lesson: DON'T COLLECT THINGS.

We have already started to think that perhaps in searching for an apartment in Guadalajara, we should not only get a guest bedroom, but also another room to store all this stuff. I almost feel like we should have an open house and let people in to pick over things and take what they want, like in that story by Bukowski where he lets all the neighbors take things they like from his recently deceased father's house.

Leave the whisky.

We have eight days left in our planned packing schedule, and hopefully at the end of those eight days we will have everything moved into a storage unit, packed to take with us, or packed to be freighted to us after we get an address. Then we go to Olney, Illinois (where my folks live) to drop off my car. We hope to return on Halloween, and as we depart on the 3rd of November, we'll have a couple of days to finish anything left, if we need it.

Posted by crispy at 01:57 AM | Comments (1)

October 04, 2005

From Our Guadalajara Scouting Mission

In December of 2004, Shawn and I traveled via bus to Guadalajara to check it out and see if it was right for us.

I have added a rather clunky online album of photographs from that trip to my web site so that you can look at our newfound home as we saw it.

http://www.crispy.com/exhibits/guadalajara/

Posted by crispy at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

The Big Adiós Photos

We had a combination wedding reception for our western friends and going away party on 1 October 2005 at Tamayo in Denver. The food was great, the mariachi was hot, and a grand time was had by all.

To see Shawn's photos from the event, check out our online album.

Posted by crispy at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)