dirtier fingernails & cleaner minds

The Angela Peralta Theater in Mazatlan is exhibiting anti-American comics from around the world. If ever there was cause for shame and self-loathing, it’s viewing room after room after room of condemnations of ones country. It’s worse when you agree with the criticisms.

Freda: Negrito is all over Mexico, where references to the big guy in your office (el gordo: fat man) or the Korean girl at the corner store (la china, because all Asians are Chinese) are blunt, but rarely mean spirited. It’s symptomatic of a decidedly less politically correct culture than the hyper-sensitive (sometimes with good reason) United States.

I bought a Negrito from the vending machine at work today. A Negrito it basically a chocolate filled éclair. I told one of my coworkers, “this is an example of what you cannot do in the US.” His response, ”Right, because Obama would get mad.” (via: significantothers)

A Mazatlan street scene.

The Los Angeles Times La Plaza Blog

A between-meal snack in Mazatlan, Mexico: three kinds of oysters with hot sauce & lime ($95 pesos or about $6 US)

The New York Times on the Mexican economy. I like the original headline better: When the US sneezes, Mexico catches a cold.

Freda: It is with no small amount of guilt that I jump up and down watching the peso’s fall. But I can’t help it. The 25 percent drop in Mexico’s currency means, essentially, a 25 percent raise for Tim and I, who live on meager freelancing earnings paid in US dollars (and the occasional Euro). I know this is bad news. It just doesn’t feel like it right now.

Miss Sinaloa and the Seven Narcos

Tim and I are taking turns reading David Lida’s excellent book on Mexico City, First Stop in the New World. It does what any place-loving writer would love to do — capture the bizarre and beautiful in the city that has your heart — but he does it better than most of us could dream of doing.

Tonight, we hope to finally make it to Bar La Ópera, which Lida writes about here. As he mentions, it’s a Mexico City institution, and therefore fairly well touristed. I’m hoping it, like McSorley’s in NYC, is that rare bar that is both a tourist draw and neighborhood dive. We’re excited.

Emiliano Zapata as Barak Obama?

D.C. wheatpaste art goes international.

via Prince of Petworth

Freda: This is my Christmas this year, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. It all depends on how my Elvis “summertime kisses” casserole turns out.

nevver: Holiday, 1955

Freda: I miss Madison Square Park in the snow.

nevver: Flatiron, 1905

Rockabilly kids at Mexico City’s Tianguis Cultural del Chopo, by monophonic.grrrl

We went here today to see Mexico City’s goth/punk/”dark” weekend market, an amazing, buzzing spectacle.

I have never in my life seen such beautiful pompadours.

Here, a LA Times story on the market from 2004.

Mexico City Stitch by Mario De Leo