My other city

Some readers know I am from New York but have called Mexico City my home since 1990. The other important axis of my geography is New Orleans. It is the place to which I left home when I was 17 years old -- the first place I actually chose to live in. The least American of U.S. cities, it is often compared to a Caribbean island, a Mediterranean locale, or the northernmost African outpost. Comparisons are odious and New Orleans is unique. Last month I rented an apartment there and for the moment am dividing my time between it and Mexico City.

Perhaps it speaks ill of me that I believe one of the two hallmarks of a civilized city is the possibility of getting a drink until very late at night. In New Orleans there are bars that are open twenty-four hours a day. It is also legal to carry your drink in the street from one bar to another, so long as it is in a plastic "go cup" (glass or tin cans get you into beaucoup trouble).

(For the record, my other hallmark of a civilized city is a well-functioning public transportation system. Let's not even talk about the disastrous one in New Orleans -- yet. Suffice it to say that Mexico City's is like Paris or London in comparison.)

Corner bars like the Mayfair at 1505 Amelia Street, around the bend from the Columns Hotel, give the city a great part of its identity. Christmas decorations are lit all year round. Drinks are inexpensive and they have an excellent juke box. I cannot guarantee that the minute you walk through the door you will be treated as if you were a regular, but Miss Gertie, the owner, certainly made me feel like family the afternoon this photo was taken.

Thursday night fever

If as many people -- myself included -- who profess to have frequented the restaurant Covadonga five or ten years ago, before it became fashionable, were actually telling the truth, it never would have gone out of style. But in fact, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was precisely the sort of place, enormous and empty, that you could go to if you had reasons to make sure you didn't run into anyone that you knew.

That has all changed in the last few years. Covadonga -- an old-school Spanish restaurant with a cantina on the ground floor and a white-tablecloth dining room upstairs -- was consecrated by artists and gallery owners, writers, editors, journalists, and media personalities of dubious talents, and the sort of hangers-on who like to be seen in their company (or to at least bask in their tepid glow). On Thursday nights, when for those groups attendance is mandatory, it is so crowded that it is like having a drink on the metro during rush hour.

If you go to Covadonga for lunch, when there are not so many people there, not only is the service much better, but it is actually a more pleasing experience, with the sun streaming in from enormous picture windows, rather than the hideous fluorescent light with which it is illuminated in the evenings. It is on calle Puebla between calles Orizaba and Cordova in the Colonia Roma.

'Piano' Man

A recent convert to the discreet charms of Mexico City is the composer Michael Nyman,  who bought an Art Deco home in the Colonia Roma. He divides his time between here and his native London, a city he professes to be sick of. Despite limited knowledge of Spanish, he has already arranged to do concerts, write film scores and the accompaniment to performance pieces in Mexico. Nyman wrote the music to various Peter Greenaway films, but his most well-known score is for the film The Piano, with Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel. (The CD of that movie sold about four million copies.) Here is the maestro, resting at an antique store on Calle Campeche, from which he has decorated much of his home.

Our angel

Unlike many great metropolises, Mexico City, lacking much recognizable iconography, resists visual definition. The Angel of Independence, on Paseo de la Reforma, is its most famous landmark. Built in 1910 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Independence, it is notably similar to the Victory Column in Berlin, which was built in 1866. The pillar is thirty-six meters high. The Winged Victory, which weighs seven tons, is of bronze and covered with twenty-four karat gold.

These days, in the evenings, the Angel is a popular spot for trysting young Mexico City lovers, and tourists stop by day and night to have their pictures taken. Raucous crowds gather here each time a Mexico City soccer team wins an important match. However, such celebrations are apparently purely nationalistic. In February 2002, after a triumphant eighteen-year-old Spanish matador called El Juli went to the Angel with a crowd to celebrate his victory, he was arrested, taken to the police station, and coerced to return to la madre tierra.

Like new

To put the cut back in your strut and the glide back in your stride, there is nothing like a shoe shine. However, in most cities in the so-called developed world, it is pretty hard to find a shine at all. When you do, you are usually agreeing to pay a fee that implies a down payment on the college education of the shoe shine man's children.

Shoe shine stands, like the one pictured above, are all over the streets of Mexico City. It is still considered an honest form of work for someone like Julio Cesar, who spreads the grease on the corner of Coahuila and Insurgentes, outside the branch of Banamex. At the current exchange rate, the price -- 15 pesos -- is little more than a dollar.

I know that there are questions of dignity and political correctness and inequality here -- Julio Cesar, and most Mexicans, have few opportunities in life, and there is something wrong about a society where so many citizens can aspire to little more than shining shoes. Still, I cannot lie: After he finished work on these very old gunboats and had made them look like new, I was a happy man.