Guilty pleasure

In 1990 when I came to live in Mexico City I was taken aback by the existence of a café called Snob. In the first place, because "snob" is a word in English. (As a recent arrival I was not yet aware of establishments here with names like Dryclean USA, Bar Oxford and Baby Creysi.)

Secondly, I could not ignore the pejorative connotations of the word. The term "snob" became generalized with the publication in 1848 of William Makepeace Thackeray's Book of Snobs. According to the drily comic novelist, a snob was a nobody of generally unbearable temperament who, in the most vulgar possible manner, imitated the well-to-do and insisted on his superiority to people from the lower classes. It was hardly a word with which one would want to be identified.

But there, among the shops on the ground floor of a California Colonial apartment complex called the Paisaje Polanco, was a café that proudly invited its clientele to identify itself with that term. And it seemed there was no shortage of señoras of a certain age who were happy to include themselves among the snobs of the neighborhood. All this while drinking coffee and eating excellent, European style pastries, such as apple strudel, chocolate mousse and a delectable dark-chocolate cake. Sitting among them over an espresso turned into a guilty pleasure.

The world has changed a lot in the last twenty years. Mexico City now has more cafés than anyone could possibly aspire to visit. I hadn't been to Snob in many years, and perusing the menu on a recent visit I found out that the place has turned into merely the flagship of a mini empire, with six restaurants, a catering service and even a web site.

Some things remain the same. I sat and had a coffee and at a nearby table were the same kind of señoras that used to visit two decades earlier -- maybe they indeed were the same, preserved in wax. And the experience of a stolen hour on a sunny afternoon, watching the other snobs of the neighborhood walk by in the Pasaje Polanco, was as delicious as ever.

Calle Chilpancingo

When I arrived in Mexico, some of the friends I made (particularly those who were brought up in well-to-do homes), were horrified when I told them about the food I eagerly sampled. They would have never eaten, for example, from the various stalls on Calle Chilpancingo between Tlaxcala and Baja California, which collectively form a  monument to how much grease and how many microbes you are willing to ingest. They wouldn't allow me to take a picture, but the third stall from the corner of Tlaxcala -- where the woman with the white shirt is passing by -- is my favorite, with fantastic tacos de guisado. The tortillas are heated on a grill and then filled with delicacies kept warm on a steam table, such as chorizo with potatoes, pork skin in green sauce, strips of chile peppers in cream, and morcilla, a kind of sausage whose origins are probably best left unconsidered.

You can also get carnitas that have been cooked in huge vats of sizzling fat, and tacos made from the head of a pig (eyes, tongue, cheeks), the meat steaming under sheets of plastic.

There are also less threatening, although only slightly less fattening options: tortas (Mexico's answer to the sandwich), flautas (tacos that have been rolled up and deep fried),  tacos made from beef or even chicken breast.

After all the years I have lived here, I believe I have built up a tolerance to the amoebas that might be festering in some of this food. However, a few years ago my cholesterol levels began to climb, and the doctor suggested I take better care of my diet. So I eat less frequently on Calle Chilpancingo, and indeed, on the street at all. One of my favorite Mexican expressions is, no me pueden quitar lo bailado. It sounds better in Spanish, but means, they can't take away the dances I've already danced.

Family business

Can you imagine the kind of argument it took to split up this business? Oy! Or as they say here, uuy!

La Romita

In 1950, when Luis Buñuel shot his classic film about street children, Los olvidados, his principal location was a tiny plaza in the northeast corner of the Colonia Roma known as La Romita. The area's reputation as a tough little barrio preceded the shooting. According to folklore, criminals would go into the Templo de Santa Maria de la Natividad, the church of La Romita's plaza, and pray that "the lord of the hanged" would save them from prosecution.

In the 1960s, the chaplain of the house of worship had its doorway changed, claiming that the existing one looked like the portal to a cheap cantina. Next to the church is a cultural center. Although the plaza and its surrounding streets have resisted the gentrification of much of the Colonia Roma, it is a much safer area than its reputation would suggest.

Mural around the corner from the plaza.

PDA

Those of us who come from cultures that are more diffident than demonstrative are surprised when we find that many residents of Mexico City are amorous exhibitionists.

Any public place is fair game -- a square, the metro, a park, a bench. Their backs against a tree, a stone wall, a plate glass window. There may be many reasons for this but I have no doubts that the main motivator for public displays of affection -- the main motivator for so much of Mexican society, really -- is poverty.

These are people who live with their families so they have no privacy at home. They are out in the open because they have nowhere else to go. You may feel like shouting "Get a room," but if you do, it would be advisable to give them a couple of hundred pesos so they can pay for it.

Still, these demonstrations of PDA are one of the elements that make this such a sexy city. El D.F. may not be in-your-face sexy like, for example, Rio de Janeiro, and the citizens may not be as similar to Vogue models as, say, those who live in New York or Milan. But chilangos cannot keep their hands off each other and that can be pretty hot.

I would like to say that I purposely took these pictures out of focus or with the subjects facing away from the lens because I was conscientiously discreet. I am afraid I that would be a lie, though. I'm just a lousy photographer.