Mexico City

Pictures and impressions from Ciudad de México.

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I visited Mexico City with my work colleages. It’s the largest city in North America, in terms of area, urban population, and metro population. A little more populous than NYC.

Día de los Muertos

We were there for the Day of the Dead.

There were dozens of amazing alebrijes within a few minutes walk of our hotel. I loved the variety of styles.

This one was definitely making a statement: notice how these “two creatures” actually share a body.

Los Luchadores

We watched a Luchadores match. Luchadores is a form of cooperative acrobatics in which athletes perform feats like flips onto their back, body slams, whole body chest kicks, and “nut shots”, lightly disguised as a competitive team sport.

I managed to take a picture at an unusually boring time, but if you search for luchadores match you’ll get a better sense of their over-the-top action.

Sidewalks

The sidewalks were… not always flat. I walked over/past:

• Sudden steep slopes
• Random steps
• Many holes
• One child-sized hole that dropped straight down to the sewer

I’m not sure how someone in a wheelchair would get around.

Traffic

Traffic in the city was a nightmare. Constant honking for hours. We were going to visit the Frida Kahlo museum but the 25 min drive suddenly turned into an 65 minute drive and we decided it wasn’t worth spending longer traveling than visiting. We witnessed:

• A car literally bumping against the car in front of it, like an aggressive form of tailgating.
• A car running a red light and then driving against stopped traffic to find a place to slip through the gridlock.

They had a kind of intersection I’ve never seen before. It was shaped like a roundabout, but each of the four streets had a traffic light. When the light turned green, cars from that street had the circle to themselves, flowing on both the left and right. Except that sometimes they would stop in the circle, in a way that I never quite understood.

Activism

There was an installation about a fire at an orphanage in which 49 children died.

And one in a (beautiful) park, a thanks from Armenian reguges for sheltering them during the genocide.

The City

Compared to NYC, Mexico City was:

• Smoggier.
• Greener. Most streets had tree cover, which I imagine is really nice in the hot summers.
• Less trashy. I didn’t see a single trash bag on the street, and less trash blowing around on the streets. I’m really curious how they handled trash collection.
• Even noisier. Largely from the constant honking.

The water there isn’t great to drink: two of the four people I mentioned I was going to Mexico City to immediately told me about how they got Montezuma’s Revenge there. So the whole city drinks bottled water.

There was a bit of a wire situation. The wires reached a level of chaos where they started to look natural and blend in with the trees, which I found beautiful in a way. (This picture is one of the neater parts, not quite showcasing that organic beauty.)

This was all in the touristy Reforma neighborhood. The one other neighborhood we visited had a completely different vibe – quiet, green, romantic: