Just a few observations from around town. One part good, one part bad, and one part ugly: mix 'em up to make the Mexico City cocktail.
Fresh sliced mango with chile and lime, purchased from a street vendor on Insurgentes. A great breakfast when on the run, the kind of thing that makes everything seem cheery and bright in Mexico City, until I see the pickup truck full of cops with M-16 assault rifles pass by.
The hermeroteca at the National Autonomous University has a fantastic collection of newspapers going back a century, but it closed without warning on Monday for summer vacation. It's a huge setback for my research plans.
The metro is inexplicably clean, cheap, and efficient. It makes you wonder why everything else in Mexico isn't the same.
Excellent chorizo and potato tacos for under 4 pesos. No complaints there. (11 pesos to the dollar, and rising)
Internet cafes with new machines and fast connections for 15 pesos an hour, plus calls to the States for 2 pesos/minute. Three years ago the prices were double that. The best deal is the one in the Zona Rosa where the table dancers come to call home to Slovakia.
The "gringo prices." Gringos do get ripped off sometimes, so even when you negotiate the price of something in decent Spanish, you've still got the sneaking suspicion that you've been had. But hey, Mexicans get a raw deal in the States, so I guess it's only fair.
Feel like playing a mix of Los Tigres del Norte, Nirvana, Vicente Fernandez and the Beatles while you shoot pool? Just about any jukebox in central D.F. carries all of those bands. Gotta love globalization, folks, or else you'll be pissed off all the time down here.
Coyoacan, the West Coast of Mexico City. Cuban fresh ground coffee, the Ghandi bookstore, playhouses, and almost as many Frida Kahlo posters as you'll find in San Francisco.
I'm always stunned by the occasional horse-drawn cart you'll see passing a steel-and-glass skyscraper.
You can have a truly excellent meal for under US$20, but you might lose your appetite when you realize that money could keep a poor Mexican family fed for a week.
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