Who was that masked man?

Photo by Anthony Wright

The CDC says that surgical masks are absolutely useless in preventing swine flu, unless you are working in a health-care environment. The drug stores that have any left are selling them at seven pesos a pop. Many have run out, and I saw a guy outside of the Farmacia Paris (which had posted a sign that said "Ya no hay cubrebocas") selling them for ten pesos each.

Yet everyone and his brother has one in Mexico City. The Minister of Health, José Angel Córdova, has all but made them obligatory. Some people move them to the side while they puff on cigarettes, while others pull them down while they eat street tacos. Everyone and his brother talks through them on their cell phones. At a cantina last Monday, the customers were wearing them around their necks jauntily as if they were scarves.

I imagine that someone in a very high place here has a cousin in the surgical mask business.

Oasis in Santa Fe

Readers of First Stop in the New World know that the Santa Fe section of the city is, to say the least, a controversial area. Formerly a garbage dump, in the early 1990s it began its renovation as a postindustrial zone where multinationals have their corporate headquarters. Among others, Hewlett Packard, General Electric, Goodyear, Sun Systems, Kraft, Pepsi, Federal Express, Philip Morris, Unisys and IBM have offices in Santa Fe.

People doing business with those companies need a place to stay while in town, and recently, the Hábita Group, which has several boutique hotels in Mexico, opened the 40-room Distrito Capital in the area. My friend Rafael Micha, one of the owners, gave me a tour the other day.

The lobby includes the sculpture pictured above by Thomas Glassford, a Texas artist who has lived in Mexico for more years than he would probably care to count.

There is a groovy bar and restaurant on the terrace level of the hotel, with a menu by Enrique Olvera, one of the city’s star chefs.

The rooms are showpieces. Spacious and comfortable, they have incredible views, fit for corporate titans who have heard all those terrible things about Mexico City, and might not want to actually sully their experience with a ground-level view. Distrito Capital is by far the hippest hotel in Santa Fe and will doubtless be a great success.

Open wide

When I first moved to Mexico City, I was perplexed by a figure named Jairo Campos. I saw his name on an enormous marquee outside the Hotel Diplomático on Insurgentes Avenue, which announced the show he gave in the hostelry’s bar. Several days later I saw the same name on an equally huge sign on Avenida Álvaro Obregón – only this time, the billboard broadcast his services as a dentist. Could they be the same person? How many people named Jairo Campos could there be in the same city?

I never went to him to get my teeth cleaned, nor did I catch his act at the Diplomático. Yet his legend increased: Friends mentioned that some years ago the good doctor appeared on TV commercials, performing dental chores on less-than-spectacular models.

Recently some friends recommended that I visit the bar of the Hotel Prim at the corner of Calle Versalles and Calle General Prim in the Colonia Juárez. It’s a blurry, amber-colored joint, which looks like a Technicolor movie from the 1960s. The regulars refer to it as la catedral del bohemio de la ciudad de México. During the day, Jairo Campos still puts in crowns and operate on gums, but several nights a week, the Prim’s stage belongs to him.

Plump, with dyed hair and goatee, the dentist has an adoring public, most of whom know the words to all the songs he croons, and sometimes go onstage to sing alongside him. Between numbers, Campos makes remarks that are intermittently coherent, often evoking memories. For instance, before singing Prohibida (Forbidden), he will recall a girlfriend he had in his youth Jijilpan, as well as the changungas and chimbiriches that he ate in Apatzingán.

On some nights at the Prim you can also catch the estimable Polly, more or less a Mexican Liza Minelli. She is a dyed blonde who gives it all she's got and then some, and whose passion mounts with each cocktail she consumes during her act. Sometimes, during her break between shows, she relaxes with members of the public. The other night she sat with two fans with white hair and black suits, who may have had some connection with the funeral parlor across the street.

Bucket shop

For the past 28 years, each weekday afternoon, Julián Sánchez, a portly man in his late 40s with salt-and-pepper hair and a moustache, exhorts passersby to buy food from buckets he has set up at a little table on the corner of Calle Dakota and Calle Yosemite in the Colonia Nápoles. “Come on, boss, what are you having?” he’ll say as he doles out meals. “Aren’t you hungry?”

He hardly needs to shout. At lunch hour there is almost always a cluster of a dozen or more people either eating or lined up to buy the food, which has been prepared by Julián’s wife Rosita. With a stoic expression, she collects the money, her hand covered in a plastic glove. Her severe visage may be due to the fact that she awakens every day at 4 a.m. to prepare the victuals, while Julián refers to his role in the operation as “the orchestra conductor.” (Rosita was ill the day I took this picture. Their daughter Elizabeth assisted.)

There are various elegant restaurants in the Colonia Nápoles, but Rosita’s is hands down the best inexpensively-priced food in the neighborhood. Each day she and Julián offer variety as well as quality – they may have pipián de puerco (a pork stew in a mild chile sauce) with nopal cactus; chicken in green mole; meatballs in chipotle, and breaded chicken cutlets in green sauce. These dishes are sold as fillings for tacos, or on Styrofoam plates with rice and beans. “We don’t have a set menu for every day in the week,” says Julián. “We keep changing it up so the people don’t eat the same things every day.”

Seasons

When I was a boy, I saw the actor Robert Vaughan, who had made his name as Napoleon Solo, one of the spies on a show called The Man from U.N.C.L.E., being interviewed on TV. He said that he had moved to Connecticut from Hollywood because he wanted his children to witness the change of seasons.

Even though I was only a child, his remark struck me as smugly irritating. It was as if he felt there was some moral superiority to places in which, at certain times of the year, the leaves changed, snow fell, etc. What was wrong with places that had a temperate climate? Would it be so awful to live where the weather was nice all year round?

Mexico City has a delicious climate. Nonetheless, its residents constantly complain about the weather. When there is the slightest suggestion of heat in the air – on a sunny day that would make most citizens of the world delightfully happy – they say, Hace un calor de los mil demonios (It’s as hot as a thousand devils). At the first faint breeze, they whip out their scarves and knit hats and say Hace un frío de los mil demonios (It’s as cold as a thousand devils). (I guess the Catholic upbringing makes them hell- and devil-obsessed.)

As temperate as the weather is here, there are marked seasons, although they are not the same as the ones that Robert Vaughan’s children had the privilege of enjoying. From June through September, it will reliably rain every day. With luck, it will be a thundershower that lasts only an hour or so in the afternoon. Occasionally it rains day and night. Once in a while there are huge storms, with hailstones the size of blueberries.

Between October and January, the weather is usually excellent, but there are winds that cause leaves to fall from some trees. Late at night, and particularly early in the morning, it can get quite cold – at least what passes for cold in these parts. It might go down to 45 Fahrenheit (around 7 Celsius).

Spring is my favorite time of year. By late February, and throughout the month of March, jacaranda, bugambilia and colorín all bloom. The temperatures are perfect; warm but not hot. At night you only need a light jacket, if anything at all. These photos were all taken in those months. In April and May, before the rainy season begins, the air dries precipitously and it is the hottest time of year. That’s when you start to hear about those mil demonios.