Hurbanistorias

Mi Rancho

Well. Here I am, center of the Universe, Mexico City, Mexico. Land of deaf-dumb subway singers, endless environmental disasters, lost lonely people from anywhere else, hundreds of years of history, swank hipster hangouts, yuppie rent-a-bike, one of the richest men in the world, starving drunks, singsong accents, and uncountable other oddities. It's the land of constant stimulus.

I live in a neighborhood called Jardín Balbuena, actually a very pleasant place to exist in the bourough ("delegación") Venustiano Carranza (see map), a block away from the metro station Mixiuhca, across the four-lane Eje 3 Sur from Jardín Balbuena, a big park where they put a big tianguis every Monday and Thursday, where you can find anything from forks to blankets and curtains, 15 peso pants, used digital cameras (and good ones!) to produce, tlacoyos and raw chicken (whole or in pieces!). I'm also within walking distance from the Olympic Velodrome they put up in '68. It's a funny neighborhood because though rent's relatively cheap, we're just a couple blocks from some really nice houses. Must be the screaming of landing airplanes...

My roommates are graphic designers. I actually only know one (the one with his name on the lease), because the other one's been in Guadalajara for the last few weeks apparently. I don't even know that one's name. Well anyway, the one I do know is called Marcos, a very San Francisco boy with rectangular glasses and a sort of reserved demeanour (till you get half a bottle of wine in him anyway). He keeps the place very clean and hangs out with me when I get back from work all grizzled and tired. Smiles a lot.

La Chamba

Oh yes, work. The thing that permits me to stay here... I found a job doing the most obvious thing possible: teaching Ingrish. I'm teaching at a private company in the neighborhood of Lomas de Chapultepec (=> Cha-pool-teh-PEC), which is kind of like Pacific Heights on a Dubai acid trip, all colonial and modern mansions with jararandas in bloom, shiny cars, and glass-and-steel high rises hovering around. Writhing masses of three-piece suits. But the place I'm working at is by and large okay; my co-workers are funny and interesting, the pay is all right, and I feel like I'm doing something useful.

The Metro is my friend. I clock into work just before 1pm every day except Saturday (when I start at 9am) and Sunday (which is obviously God's day of rest so I don't go to work), so I have to go running out of the house around 12:45. Fall down the stairs, two stories down to the door of my building, sprint across the parking lot/playground (go figure) open the front gate and hundred-yard-dash to the Metro stairs, past the fruit stand with the middle-aged guy who greets me every time ("buenas tardes güera!"), the torta stands, and down into the belly of the Metro, that swallows me up as I slip my ticket into the slim silent mouth of the turnstile, disappear into the gum-on-the-ceiling tunnel that leads me to the other platform, the Tacubaya direction platform, where an orange train will sweep me away to the next stage of my trip. Every morning an adventure, the same vendor selling Danzón CDs (I already bought one, but still I always want to dance when he busts out his Benny Moré and Pérez Prado...). Seven stations later I'm in Tacubaya, scuttling around the twists and turns, following the orange arrows to transfer to Line 7 toward El Rosario. Two stations later there I am in Auditorio, probably the deepest station in the damn Metro system, and I'm bounding up shit-tons of stairs, embarrassingly tired as I reach the top, panting like a dog in the summer, and crawl out into the world and onto my Palmas bus, which ten minutes later has me spilling out onto the sidewalk next to the Iglesia Covadonga and the taquero who greets me every day as he unloads his delicious fare from his truck. "No vas a comer tacos hoy, güera?" "No señor, hoy no puedo, voy con prisa, pero mañana seguro." Crossing Palmas is the last dangerous task of the afternoon (provided I have no kids classes scheduled for the day...) and then I wave through the glass door and Rogelio lets me in with the buzzer-button, usually greeting me with some sassy comment or other.

All images come from the Internets. The station symbols are from the Metro website: http://www.metro.df.gob.mx/ and the map is from Wikipedia (the brains of society...)

IN TRANSIT: now with statistical analysis!

I walk a couple hundred yards to the main road, the mighty Carreterra Cuautitlán-Teoloyúcan. Here pass all the camiones (buses), micros (short-buses) and combis (volkswagen vans), which go to many useful places, but mostly to Cuautitlán and Teoloyucan... however, there are also quite a few that take the high road to the autopista (freeway) and go to other useful places, like the CITY. So if I'm going to school, I look for the Cuauti-bound micros, which I know are Cuauti-bound because there's a little placard in the window that says CUAUTI, and usually other useful details like XHALA FESC-4 , which is my school: Xhala is the town, and FESC is the school, and 4 refers to it being Campus 4. There are several other campuses of the FESC scattered around the area. I haven't been to any of them; I doubt their as cool as Campo Cuatro. Anyway, so the transit guy is waving on cars, hollering, whistling and taking notes. He sees me, waves, and stops all traffic so I can pass, like he does every single day, and we greet each other, just like every single day, and he asks me where I'm going. I tell him I'm off to Metro Toreo. So I look for the camion with the placard that says M TOREO. I will mention that this is confusing, because the station is actually called Cuatro Caminos. This comes with a funny story. Pamela is from a town about an hour out of the city, but about two hours from school. Anyway, I met up with her, Jacobo and a couple other friends the other day because there was a forestry expo in the city we wanted to go to (it fits to mention that in Mexico, it's the agricolitos that are entrusted with the nation's forests-- I guess it's a bit like how the Forest Service is a part of the USDA). I'd already figured out the Toreo-Cuatro Caminos equivalency because I had taken this bus before, found myself at Cuatro Caminos, and upon scouring the Metro map realized that there was no station called Toreo. Clearly, when the bus says TOREO, it means Cuatro Caminos. So I was cool with that already. But we get there and Pamela and I are waiting on Jacobo. I call him and he says, “Okay, so somehow I wound up at Cuatro Caminos, and I'm trying to figure out how to get to Toreo...” and I say, “Dude, no sweat, you're already here! Come find us at the turnstyle!” I tell the girls, he's already in Cuatro Caminos, he'll be here in a couple minutes. Pamela gives me a funny look and goes, “Where's Cuatro Caminos?”. The buses all say TOREO, but on the maps and in the station it only says Cuatro Caminos: there is no means of translation except personal experience. That's how confusing the damn transit is here. I love it, it's so unnecesarily complex...

Anyway so I get on the bus and I say, “Good morning! I'm going to Toreo.” And if the driver says 15 pesos, I give him a funny look and say, isn't there a student discount? And he thinks for a second and says, “12 pesos,” or “13 pesos”, depending on his mood. They're all men, sorry ladies. So I've saved nearly 20 cents. The guy gives me my change (on the camiones, micros and combis they give you change, and also on the peseros in the city. The only type of transit that won't make change are the new RTP buses in the city, but at 2 pesos per ride, who can complain?).

There are a few important characteristics of these big suburban buses that one ought to recognise:
1.They fuck up your handwriting because the roads suck
2.Jesus decals, 100 percent of the time
3.Playboy bunny details, approximately 56 percent of the time
4.Loud radio 95% of the time
1.Cheesy pop, 10% of total loud radio
2.Disco, 5%
3.Salsa, 15%
4.Norteña, 65%
5.Other, 5%
5.People get on board and try to sell you stuff (about a quarter of the time its to benefit their AA branch or drug-recovery institution)
1.Candy and peanuts 45%
2.Potato chips with Tapatio-type salsa 8%
3.Gelatin/Flan 14%
4.Motivational books 3%
5.Religion 30%

“Te han asaltado?” is a question I'm asked with relative frequency. I am aware of such events having befallen my friends and acquaintances. In Oswaldo's case (don't you love his name?!) he was walking home from the bus stop after dark. They took his wallet and cell phone and he was kind of shaken up. In the case of Itzel, Lili and Gloria, their bus was indeed jacked. This leads to the point, which is that in fact the big janky buses do from time to time get assaulted. They say the key is to keep your backpack out of sight and keep a 20-peso note in your pocket to hand off to whoever is doing the assaulting. At night the combis are perfectly safe (because it's super hard to rob people if you can't even stand up all the way, and furthermore it's not worth your trouble to rob 1-8 people. They say the Metro is super safe at night too, because there's security cameras and stuff. I'm not totally sure that security cameras really make anything safer, but whatever.

One last anecdote before I go to class: I got on a micro bound for Metro Politécnico one aftern oon, and as the sun was setting we stopped at a gas station to pick up a whole bunch of passengers. The sky was all colors and drama, and I was standing up in the back of the bus, when the rear doors open and somebody starts to get on. I turn around to take a look and it is Jesus Christ, stepping onto the bus in his long robes, angelic pained expression and uplifted hand. After a half-second freakout I realize that it's a life-size wooden statue being shoved onto the bus by a skinny kid of maybe 16. I am still totally confused but completely happy to spend the rest of my bus ride standing next to Jesus, suffering the same pothole-ridden roads and abuses of inertia as everyone else. I tried to take some pictures but it was impossible to do so subtly and they turned out awful. But that's my bus story. Cómo ves...