Trilingualism in Los Angeles

El Barrio

Briefly away from Mexico City, let’s continue with our tour of uptown New York. Harlem has, of course, a fabled history as the most important black neighborhood in the United States, although these days Manhattan real-estate prices are so high that some blacks are being edged out by whites. But that is in the central and west sides of town. The east side of Harlem became known as El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem, in the 1960s due to a huge influx of Puerto Rican residents. These days, the area is pan-Hispanic.

I happened to take a walk there the day before an unofficial New York holiday called Puerto Rican Day. Up and down Third Avenue, as a sort of warm-up to the big day, they held a street festival celebrating Puerto Rico. The characters pictured above are a tropical equivalent of the Three Stooges.

La dieta puertorriqueña, aka a heart attack waiting to happen.

The above is an outtake from the film Babe: A Pig in the City.

Fifteen or twenty years ago there were hardly any Mexicans in New York, but now it’s become más mexicana que nunca.

This is where you can get your fix of Jarritos, jabón Ariel or cacahuates japoneses. The furtive body language of the man pictured above indicates some ambiguity as to whether he is a shopper or a shoplifter.

Quote for the day

There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican.

               — Raymond Chandler

Uptown

The legend across the top of this web site, Mostly Mexico City, indicates that once in a while I might find myself elsewhere that is worthy of a posting. I am in New York, staying on 126^th Street in Harlem with an old school friend, Pip Biancamano. Pip lives around the corner from a legendary bar called the Lenox Lounge, which has been my de facto office while staying there. (You can check out the bar’s web site at www.lenoxlounge.com.)

When I got to New York, there was a heat wave. One day it went up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit – about 40 Celsius. Under the circumstances, I wasn’t the only one to whom it occurred to turn the bar into his de facto office.

One of my “colleagues” was Jimmy, pictured above. He claims to survive on a government pension which he receives due to his alcoholism, yet he spends all of his disability income on booze. He told me the story of his life – the drinking, the fighting, the years in the restaurant business, the Vietnamese prostitute with whom he quaffs champagne.

Fernando, a bartender at the Lenox Lounge from St. Mary, Jamaica, also has some stories that might have been tall tales. He claims, for example, that he can polish off an entire bottle of tequila while he is on duty. “When I work, I move around so much that I don’t even feel it,” he explained. “It’s only when I sit down that I notice that I’m drunk.”

This is the window display of the Mona Hair Center, on 125th Street around the corner from the Lenox Lounge. Its sign promises “100 % Human Hair,” although one would be justified in skepticism about whether the fuchsia and rainbow-hued numbers had their origins in anything living and/or breathing. This store suggests a mere hint of the tonsorial possibilities available in Harlem.

Labels: Harlem, Mexico City

News on the Rialto

Once some organs start talking, they never quiet down. Or so it would seem: Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues has been running in Mexico City since 2000. There are 12 shows a week, and it will soon be performed for the 5000^th time here. How to explain such an extraordinarily long run? Perhaps because in these parts, those parts had been silenced for so that it’s astonishing to hear them roar. And maybe some local audiences are simply better listeners than anyone would have imagined.

Labels: Mexico City, theatre