The Tianguis in Jardín Balbuena

Need a bra? Tianguis. Need sewing needles? Tianguis. Need your sugar high? Tianguis. Need groceries? Tianguis. Need breakfast? Tianguis.

Soy totalmente del tianguis.

Mondays and Thursdays are tianguis (GPG: TYAN-geese) days, and I'm not a religious tianguis-goer since most everything can be found cheaper at Mercado Jamaica, but it is a hell of a lot closer, a mere 3 minutes' walk from my bed, compared to the 15-minute schlep to Jamaica. Whatever, the tianguis remains awesome, because you get some sunshine, they sell clothes hella cheap (I mean 15 peso cheap, in the case of my work pants...) and blankets and shoes and other such second-hand essentials, these things being the exception to the everything-cheaper-at-Jamaica rule. Anyway, the tianguis has a distinct aesthetic advantage, being as it is a trippy tunnel of color with natural light and thick crowds of people (and of course, with Darach in mind, I must mention the magnificent sound collage of barkers barking, ladies chit-chatting, parents scolding children, children screaming and running around, dogs panting and yapping, comales (GPG: co-MAHL-es = basically a griddle or skillet) spitting and steaming, and tamale- or agua fresca-sellers wheeling their carts around, ice clattering in its jars.

There are several specific details worth mentioning:

1. Mexican candy is amazing. Like, really amazing. Because they sell it out of little colorful plastic buckets or baskets bulk-style, or maybe because it comes in every color texture and flavor you can imagine (though I will be the first to admit that the Mexican obsession with mixing fruit and chile will never cease to turn my stomach [especially after my barfy disaster with a chile-powder coated tamarind ball in La Reforma, Sinaloa two years ago], though regardless of my opinion it is an institution and not going anywhere). Or maybe because it's so cheap, obviously resulting in my future case of major diabetes (damn sweet tooth...). I just can't shake the feeling of happiness that scoops of rainbow-colored, multi-flavored candy brings to the deepest reaches of my soul.

2. Clothing. From old-lady bras to majorly fashionable shirts, hyphy funky-colored Nikes, hippie woven or leather bracelets, socks with cartoon characters, and huge piles of secondhand clothes with barkers screaming Bara bara bara bara baraaaaaaaa! (Cheap! => short for "barato" => GPG: bah-RAH-toe). So many damn colors, styles, patterns, fabrics, textures, and brand-fakery, you could never lose interest.

3. Pirated everything. Need I say more?

4. Food, glorious food! From basic foodstuffs, sacks of corn, sunflower seeds, flax, little bags of blue and white tortillas, tlacoyos and sopes (GPG: SOH-pays => fat tortillas with a tiny little rim of dough around the edge, for piling up with deliciousness), to arrays of leaf-on radishes, stacks of nopalitos (spines removed, of course), piles of pears, heaps of guanábana all spiky and green, hiding white sweet sticky pulp and big buttonlike seeds inside (often seen with plastic cups of pre-extracted pulp in little pyramids in front of the displays), ruffly bales of squash flowers, and fingery piles of carrots... mmm, oh and let's not forget the pollerías, the chicken stands, where they sell the emblematic yellow chickens of Mexico. Incidentally, the chickens are yellow because in the last stage of their lives they are fed the flowers of cempazuchil, the Mexican marigold, which imparts that sunny hue to their skin.

5. Finally and probably most importantly there's the element of the immediately edible: the food stands. Lots of vitamin T of course: tacos, tlacoyos, tlayudas, tortas and the like. Special food includes cemitas poblanas, which are effectively giant circular sandwiches on amazing sesame-dusted rolls with piles of Oaxacan string cheese, and a lovely little herb called pápalo (GPG: PAH-palo) (Porophyllum ruderale) which tastes, yes, like plant, but with kind of its own zing. Then there's the pre-cut fruit of every color you like, and the carnitas, the barbacoa, the seafood... okay, I'm going to bed before I drown in my own saliva.