In terms of scope, diversity, and improvisatory growth, you could almost consider Mexico City the Los Angeles of the south. The analogy works as far down to (and probably best at) the level of neighborhoods. La Condesa, where we’re staying, is Hollywood; both afford their residents ample opportunities for outdoor dining and ample quantities of dog-walking couples of all sexes. The older, more tightly-packed El Centro, where we roamed around today looking for used books (Carlos Fuentes, Mario Bellatin, Haruki Murakami en español), is downtown. My own neighborhood in L.A., Koreatown, would be the Zona Rosa — or at least the edges of it, where you find all the Koreans and street food. Las Lomas would be Beverly Hills, because I’ve seen it compared to Beverly Hills in articles.
If YHWH commanded me to live in any city I’ve been to except Los Angeles, even just my brief experience so far has convinced me that I would live in Mexico City. I feel confident in this claim, since I’ve already experienced a couple of the place’s major downsides. Despite assurances from locals that the water problems inherent in a city this huge and dry don’t often get in the way, we’ve had two water outages in three days. The second time, I quickly grew terrified that I wouldn’t get a morning shower, which is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone. A mezcal tonic helped resolve this situation.
You feel the other obvious mark in the negative column — and this one everyone who writes about Mexico City, even its defenders, bemoans — when the subway gets crowded. I actually like riding the metro here, mostly due to the frequency of the trains and the whole system’s slightly faded sixties-Utopian aesthetic. (If I trace my interest in Mexico City back to the very beginning, I land on Total Recall, much of which Paul Verhoeven shot in a couple metro stations around here. I couldn’t get over how those backgrounds looked so futuristic, yet so old.) The crunch of humanity as rush hour nears seems tolerable — human adaptability is a wonderful thing — but ask me again the next time it rains too much, all the trains grind to a halt, and all the tunnels drop into darkness for fifteen or twenty minutes.
I told someone here that I like living in Los Angeles because of the whole world-in-microcosm thing, how you can go from country to country without ever leaving city limits. She nodded and replied, ¨Sí, como EPCOT!¨
Through rigorous testing, we have developed and refined this traveling method:
- Eat breakfast
- Walk around the city all morning
- Eat street food
- Walk around the city all afternoon
- Sleep, maybe
- Drink coffee all evening (and walk around the city)
Feel free to apply this method in the rest of the world’s great metropolises.
Each and every night, I keep my ears open for the forlorn whistle of the camote man. No dice yet. I don’t think he gets around to Condesa much.
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