frisatsun

Friday was Vania's last day in the office- so I was happy that she joined Moises and I for a lunch of tlacoyos at the friday lunch market. I got chamoy mango neives for desert. The chamoy part is they dump this mix of sugar, salt, and chili powder in the neives. Mexicans love the chamoy flavor. They rim thier beer with with, they put it on fruits, they put in candy. It would be wierd to get any kind citrusy neives without chamoy. It does grow on you actually.

That night there was a party for David's wife who is leaving the country. I got the email wrong and hung outside David's apartment the rain, getting soaked, until I realized that had I bothered to look up the adress, it was NOT David's apartment, but a private office about a twenty minute walk away in Condessa. I was fuming- at myself for once again, not getting enough information before setting out, at the fucking rain which was pouring and soaking my shoes and pants, and at missing the pregaming at a coworkers house since I missed them leaving the office.

The party was nice. A small affair on a covered roof terrace. Really great tacos de canasta (fried small tacos), and an open bar with some of the best mescal I've ever had. I met my coworkers, had a few shots of mescal, ate a few tacos, and hung out and chatted with everyone until the girls (Moises took off earlier) decided to go out to a bar and invited me along.

We drove to Clandestino, a really cool mescal bar a short drive away in Condesa. I got one shot there and worked on it for awhile, since the previous mescals got the room very hazy at that point. I really want to go back since they had a great menu of mescals, all poured from giant glass containers stacked up the walls. I bumped into Roberto, another ex-employee who is apparently a lot more social than he let on in the office.

I excused myself around 2 am and walked home, still a bit tipsy. It was, actually, a really fun night.

Saturday was mostly a recovery day, although I would have been a lot worse off if it had been beer that I was drinking. I set out to try to find a sweater and hiked over to a Liverpool which is basically like a Dillards in the US. It's a department store which contains very distinctive departments. Each clothing brand has its own little section. There's a Gap section. There's a Regent's Street section. There's a Ralph Lauren section. I couldn't bring myself to spend $40 on a sweater that I was only halfheartedly interested in.

In Mexico, it seems like there are only high end labels at US prices and clothes you buy from people under tarps on the street. You either pay a ton of money for imports, or you get chafa (Mexican for "crap"). There is Wal-Mart, sure, but there is no Ross or TJ Maxx equivilant.  Even Sears is high end here, and they sell a very fashion forward line (apparently). I was kind of surprised to see Halloween decorations and christrmas trees on display for sale. It jarring to be confronted with Americana when you're not expecting it.

Sunday, K and I got up early to go into Cuernavaca. Cuernavaca is a city on the other side of the mountains ringing the DF. It's at a lower elevation, and is rewarded with balmier weather and sunshine. It took us an hour to get there, but the weather was about ten to fifteen degrees warmer than the DF. Really humid, much more tropical vegitation. 50 years ago, it was the Hollywood Hills of Mexico City, although its surburbs have swollen as people fled the city in the 1980s and 1990s.

We stopped first at a church by Felix Candela, where mass was just beginning. The church is a thin shell hyperbolic paraboloid, and looks like a giant pale green pringle that's been stretched out. It's actually quite graceful. The nice thing about visiting, which I never understood from the photos, is that the trees which form a canopy over most of the seating obscure the soaring canopy of the open air chapel, so you never really know where the building begins or ends. It's actually quite serene and the view of the city below through the low arch forms a beautiful background to the altar.

On the way back to Cuernavaca, we also passed his famous sculpture. I think he must have master planned the entire neighborhood.

We parked in the historic center and went the Museo Robert Brady. This is like a stylebook for haciendas or hacienda themed weddings. Brady was an American artist, born in Iowa, who was good buddies with Peggy Guggenheim and was born into enough wealth that he spent his life traveling around the world, collecting curios, crafts, and artwork, and filling his hacienda in Cuernavaca with them. He was not an untalented painter either. He had a few works by Frida and Diego on display as well. It was worth visiting just for the explosion of interesting stuff everywhere. It was dripping with texture and extravagent effect. His bathroom was done in a kind of oriental style filled with doors and frames and light.

Next stop was the cathedral, an incredibly imposing and severe building by the Franciscans, marked with thier symbol of a skull and crossbones over the door. Inside, the dim light from the few small yellow stained glass windows illuminated painted scenes from the persecution and martyrdom of Franciscan missionaries in Imperial Japan.

We had coffee by the zocalo, which had been taken over by a BMX cycling event and throngs of crowds, before heading over the palace of Cortes. This was actually, the home of Cortes, who built it from the stones of the city pyramid which he razed and used as a base for his palace.

The only thing really worth seeing was the mural by Deigo Rivera commissioned by the US Ambassador Dwight Morrow which depicted the brutality of Mexican history from Conquest to Revolution. It's a really facinating mural, and I was particulary intrigued by Diego's depiction of religion.

Over the door where you enter the terrace, he had painted Aztecs cutting the heart out of a European on an altar over blood-stained steps. Following the arrow of time to the door closest to the revolution, over this door, he had painted, on top of the same steps, but in front of a church, three men being burned alive by two members of the Inquisition in an auto-de-fe. Lots of other subtle digs at religion. The cruel overseer whips indigineous cane harvesters while in the background, a European lounges in a hammock, and just barely visible behind him, a depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Cruel looking monks collecting jewellry and valuables from poor looking indigenous people. The first mass with a particuarlly hard looking priest officiating and the native population literally at spearpoint beyond.

Anyway, we pressed on to the last stop, the Taller (studio/workshop) de Siquieros. It's not really his workshop, its more of an art center with a massive central gallery, a few rooms of his large works, offices, and few workshops. It functions largely as a gallery.

This building was completed late last year by a younger woman architect and is most amazing for its use of a triangulated screen block for its facade. It's a pretty cool building. I took a lot of photos and generally made the staff tell me to leave areas I wasn't supposed to be in, taking photos.

Got caught in the rain driving back, and grabbed some burgers and fries at "Hamborgesas memorables" for dinner once we were back in our neigborhood. A good sunday.