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Mexicool
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Leaving Café 111, I walked by an old car parked on Avenida Veracruz. As I got closer, I noticed the driver was cardboard and a wind-up key was sticking out of the fender. When I wound it up, the headlights came on and a crooner’s voice started singing, “Veeerraaaacruuuuuuuz.” The giant toy turned out to be the work of Betsabée Romero, an artist who also sculpts tires with amazing finesse, turning them into flowery patterns of rubber lace.
Every part of the DF has surprises in store for the curious visitor. Behind the administrative and touristy facade of the Centro Histórico percolate hot art galleries and hangouts. I particularly liked the Condesa neighbourhood around Café 111, where tree-lined avenues alternate between stately old homes and minimalist high-rises, streetside taqueterias and avant-garde shops.
After passing a Swiss pastry shop and a tae kwon do centre, I realized that I’d crossed from La Condesa into the more chaotic Roma district, where in an ultramodern apartment I met Damian Romero, DJ and head of Mutek MX, the Chilango cousin to a Montreal electronic music festival. According to him, La Condesa has become way too conventional. Roma, more “real” and edgier, is the place to be now, he told me as he juggled his laptop, PDA and cellphone like any modern hipster.
To prove his point, he took me to Kong, a shop created by four fun-loving graphic designers, including Jorge “Doctor” Alderete. Broad-shouldered and bearing a statement-making goatee, Jorge was glad to show me their current exhibit of specially commissioned posters by
international graphic artists. In a display shaped like the mouth of a giant cartoon gorilla, he pointed to a range of funny homemade T-shirts. He was especially proud of their designer toys, like a series of quasi-religious icons of Lucha Libre wrestlers. The whole place showed a tongue-in-cheek, devilishly irreverent attitude that captured the mood of the district.
A few hours later, I struck up a conversation with Monica and Erica, two women who sat across from me at the long and busy bar of El Contramar. Forget about Roma, they said as I ate my way through a plate of fabulous tacos de pulpo. Their place to be is Polanco. With giggly enthusiasm, they described the posh shops and restaurants along Avenida Presidente Masaryk, each one being “mas cool” than the other. And as Monica, gazing into my eyes, made me take a sip of excellent añejo tequila from her glass, I too temporarily believed – without visiting, mind you – that Polanco was mas cool than any other part of town.
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