top 10 best and worst things about Mexico City

This is a revised list from a post I wrote when I was 5 weeks in. I've been here now for over four months.

Top 10 worst things about Mexico City

1. The sidewalks really suck here, awful paving conditions, when you’re lucky enough to get paving. And the drivers are real pincha pendejos. Pedestrians have rights only when they form large enough groups tondo serious damage to the car.
2. Being a perpetual gringo means you’re always offered the gringo price and the gringo experience.
3. The air pollution is horrible. My nose has not stopped running since I got here. Often you can smell the smoke in the air.
4. Public transit. Taking the metro wears you down, you crave to see the sky again, and it’s always hot and stuffy and often reeks of bodies and urine. The metrobus only has legible signs from the platform, so you never know where you are, or where you are going. Also, during rush hour, the metro buses are so packed, they make the metro feel spacious by comparison.
5. My GI tract is still getting adjusted. I'm generally better off sticking to the street food stalls to which I've already accustomed my intestinal flora.
6. The entrenched classism/desperate poverty
7. I miss my friends and family here. It’s an amazing city, but I’m only really seeing it with one eye when I see it by myself.
8. The language barrier. My Spanish is improving, but there’s slang and a LOT of word play and other connotations and subtleties that I’m just not going to pick up because it relies on a deeper, longer understanding of the local culture and language. 
9. Service is generally bad everywhere you go. It doesn't matter if you're in an upscale department store or a dingy Woolworths. People just have better things to do than waste time on satisfying your needs.
10. In the summer months, it rains every day. Cada. Pinche. Dia. There is no joy like walking in sopping wet socks squishing around in sopping wet shoes. At least there's sun during the early afternoon.

Top 10 best things about Mexico City

1. The food is wonderful. Everything you eat is delicious and fresh.
2. The really low cost of living. I can get a two dish lunch with rice and beans and tortillas for about $3. Non-taxi transportation is dirt cheap. Things are cheap, the markets are cheap.
3. There’s a huge number of things to see here- an insane number of museums, works of architecture spanning from pre-columbian ruins to contemporary works.
4. The weather is generally great- cool in the mornings, warm afternoon, cool at night, a good mix of sun, rain, and cloudy days. Except summer late afternoons suck.
5. The city really feels inhabited and alive, I love the way people actually use public space here, and the way they interact with each other which creates a city out of a collection of buildings and parks and streets.
6. Markets! Everything from tourist markets to used clothing markets to fruit and vegetable markets and pirated DVDs and music and the food stalls, and usually everything mixed all together, since most people in Mexico City still prefer to shop at their local markets over supermarkets.
7. Public transit makes the best of list as well since you can get to most places in this massive city in a relatively fast and insanely cheap manner. There’s a variety of options from buses to trains to combis.
8. The city has such an intensity of space and variety of spaces on top of each other, I’m constantly thrown off balance by the shocking transitions between filth and sterility, desperate poverty and slick opulence, chaos and serenity, usually separated by distances measured in meters. Its a good thing because it keeps me on my toes, fully engaged, empathic to the city.
9. It's generally possible to get everything you need for a household within walking distance. If its not available at the local market, street front stores, supermarket, or from street vendors, you can get it by hopping on a convenient bus or metro.
10. Mexicans are genuinely warm and friendly people, incredibly hospitable. They really do mean it when they say Mi casa es su casa.