Name that truck

Mexicans who drive trucks -- particularly garbage trucks and moving vans -- tend not to believe in anonymity. Windshields are more important for establishing identity than as tools for wending through traffic. If this truck is named La Negrita, Edición Especial, can we assume there is a more ordinary edition of La Negrita out there?

Black Diamond, Negrita Especial -- anyone notice a theme?

Move over Egyptian pharoahs, Chinese emperors, the Bonapartes, the Tudors, the Rothschilds, the Romanoffs, and even the Ewings of Dallas. Here come Los Ramirez. This vehicle apparently belongs to Joseph, the prince consort and heir apparent of the dinastía.

What can we say about the Ramírez dynasty's political leanings? Their garbage trucks bear the emblem of the Mexico City government, in the delegación Cuauhtémoc.

Am I the only one uncomfortable with this other legend?

Book world

Mexico City hasn't been a bad place for second-hand books in English. One of my first posts on this blog was about what you can find in the English-language sections of the bookstores on Calle Donceles in the Centro Histórico. Other used bookstores, on Álvaro Obregón in Colonia Roma, and Miguel Ángel de Quevedo in Coyoacán, also have decent selections.

But Under the Volcano Books, which recently celebrated its first birthday at a new location -- upstairs in the American Legion building on Calle Celaya #25, in Colonia Condesa -- blows the others out of the water. It is as far as I know the first and only Mexico City used bookstore to sell only books in English, and the owner, Grant Cogswell, has stocked it full of the kind of books that I want to read (primarily U.S. and U.K. literature from the mid-20th century to the present). Cogswell is pictured above with a customer who might remind you of the Louis Armstrong song Blue Going Grey Over You.

Some of the those serious titles I was telling you about.

Next Tuesday, February 19th, at 7 pm, an American original named David Allan Cates -- award-winning novelist, public-health handmaiden, fishing guide and cattle rancher -- will ride in from Montana to read from his work at the store. I'll be there.

In the lobby of the building there is a reasonably-priced bar, where a jazz combo will play before and after Cates's reading. They purport to serve the best hamburgers in el D.F.

Mr. Write

Some of you may have noticed that I have been posting irregularly the past few months. Just for the record, this is because I have been finally finishing the draft of a book I have been working on for years. Please bear with me -- soon I will be back to posting on a more frequent basis.

If this is man's best friend, I'd hate to see how he treats his enemies

Photo by Knowledge Overflow

The story about dogs in Mexico City is considerably more horrifying than I imagined. Journalist Eric Nusbaum sent me the link to a story he wrote about the rescue of a handful of street dogs in the city and, by extension, the pathological treatment of dogs at the hands of their owners around here. You really ought to need a license to have a pet in these parts.

More amores perros?

A couple of days ago my cousin Rosalie in Los Angeles, looking out for my safety, sent me a link to a news story about four people who had apparently been mauled to death by a pack of wild dogs in Mexico City. The attacks occurred in the Cerro de la Estrella, a sprawling park in Iztapalapa, about 17 miles from my apartment. Here is a link to the latest in the story from the L.A. Times, written by the estimable Daniel Hernández.

If you got to the second-to-last paragraph you will have noticed that it is estimated that there are more than a million stray dogs in the city. The AP says that in the Federal District -- the central part of Mexico City -- there are as many as three million dogs, which would be approximately one for every three people. Not including the strays.

Now every time I post about dogs here I get hell from dog owners. But I'm just wondering. Am I the only one out here who believes that it would be great if you had to pass some kind of test before they let you buy a dog? To make sure that you would take care of it?