Comida corrida

You've been working at home all day. It's about three in the afternoon, Mexican lunch hour. Do you want to start to disinfect lettuce for a salad, to cook a meal? I didn't think so.

Go out and get some fresh air. Around the corner are various luncheonettes where you can sit at a sidewalk table (or inside if you're sensitive to the afternoon breeze) and eat a multicourse meal. Have a refreshing glass of agua de jamaica -- water flavored with dried hibiscus petals and a little sugar.

First, there's the soup course. How about chicken broth with fresh vegetables? You can doctor it with that lime and some fresh salsa.

Then there's rice, made with tomato and garlic. This is the equivalent to the pasta course in Italy.

On to the plato fuerte -- the main dish. One of today's specials is chicken with green tomatoes, served with black beans.

The best part is the fresh tortillas that accompany everything.

If you're like me, you want to sit next to the grill, so you can get them while they're hot.

It's hard to get worked up over the dessert course -- usually it's jello or flan out of a package, as shown here. Still, it's nice to have a little sweet at the end of the meal.

There are at least a couple of choices for each course, and several for the plato fuerte. This was my lunch the other day at El Rico Sazón, on Calle Puebla between Veracruz and Tampico in Colonia Roma Norte. It cost 40 pesos -- a little more than three dollars, or two euros, at the current exchange rate. Of course 40 pesos is close to a full day's minimum wage here, but that's a perennial hard-luck story.

Worst kept secrets

In Mexico City, they get the "alcoholics" part well enough, but what happened to the "anonymous"?

Hairy tale

Once upon a time, men in the Colonia Condesa cut their hair every week. As soon as they could sense the hairs on the back of their necks touching their shirt collars, they felt raggedy and went straight to the barber shop. David and Miguel, who cut hair on Avenida Vicente Suárez, in between the cantina El Centenario and the restaurant El Japonéz, remember that they would sometimes go to work on December 31st and have so many customers that they wouldn't arrive home until the new year. Permanent staffers included a manicurist and a man to shine shoes.

These days the guys in the neighborhood are a lot shaggier -- the shop closed early on New Year's Eve --but there is still enough work for the two barbers, who have toiled in the the same spot for fifty-seven years.

They love them, yeah, yeah, yeah

There is a radio station in Mexico City that plays the Beatles two hours a day. Their music -- along with that of the Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Barry White and Ray Conniff -- is endlessly recycled here, as evidenced not only on radio stations, but in jukeboxes, and all over the sidewalks where pirated CDs are sold. (To be fair, so is the music of many Mexican idols, such as Pedro Infante, Trio Los Panchos and Agustín Lara.)

But there is a special fascination with the Beatles that I cannot quite explain. Here, a display at a flea market that takes place each Saturday and Sunday at the Jardín Dr. Ignacio Chávez, on Avenida Cuauhtemoc between Calles Dr. Liceaga and Dr. Navarro. Act fast -- these items may have already been snapped up by a diehard fan.

If they're gone, there will be plenty of other stuff, just in time for Three Kings Day, on the 6th of January, the day that Mexicans traditionally exchange presents.

Happy new year, everyone.

Toy taxis

The cab driver had a series of miniature toys on his dashboard. I asked if he had stolen them from his children. "No," he said, "I collect them. I've been doing this for about five years. I have about a thousand of them." He switches the display in his cab periodically. For example, for the Christmas season, he replaced Simpsons figurines with the Three Kings.

Mexico stopped producing the old-fashioned Volkswagen Beetle in 2003 -- the last country to do so. For years, the Beetle was the standard city taxi cab, with the front passenger seat removed for easy access in and out of the vehicle. Every few years they would change color, and the cabbie had models of each evolution. Today, the typical taxi is a four-door sedan, and only a few of the Beetles are left on the streets.