At four am on random mornings the past week or so the neighbors of Rio de Jainero Plaza have been treated to a piano recital outside their bedroom windows. Not everyone appreciates this phantom of the opera performance, but...
Noche de Museos at El Chopo
I must once again wax poetic about Noche de Museos here in Mexico City. Like lots of similar programs around the world,it’s a monthly event when museums around the city stay open late, offer free or discounted entry, guided...
A Oaxacan Primer at Guzina Oaxaca
I’m sitting at Guzina Oaxaca, a new restaurant in Polanco with an old friend from San Miguel days. Foodie companion and chef extraordinaire Shaw, has a serious love affair with Oaxacan food and is giving me a list of...
Taller Tlamaxcalli’s Toybox
Toys have no nationality, no origin, according to Álvaro Santillán. Children invented toys. That being said, Álvaro seems to have a beginning, a story, a little detail of origin for every item in the Tlamaxcalli toy workshop. the diversity...
A Very Public Break-up at the MODO
You know how that old saying goes “One man’s break-up is another man’s art.” Well maybe that’s not the exact phrasing but it’s appropriate for the MODO‘s new exhibit, part of a traveling break-up show from Croatia. Officially called...
A Synagogue Hidden in the Crowd
From the outside it is a building like any other in Mexico City’s historic center – colonial façade and wrought-iron railings curling around the windows. Across the street is the Loredo Park, named for the Catholic church at...
The Cult of San Charbel and a Few Other Maronite Fun Facts
“Is that Lebanese?” I think to myself. Because I don’t know Latin that well, but it doesn’t sound like Latin to me, then again my liturgy-recognition skills aren’t what they should be either. I’m sitting at Mass at the...
Six Mexico City Museums That Won’t Make You Want to Kill Yourself
I’m personally not a big fan of the anthropology museum or really any place where the rooms go on without end. I get irritated and tired and wanting a drink if I wander around a museum for too long...
The Templo Mayor is not as Lame as you Think
Or at least as lame as I thought. In general ruins are just that — ruins. they don’t hold any kind of real draw after you see four or five or six of “most important pre-Colombian archeological sites in...
Juan Villoro’s Conferencia de la Lluvia
Who would writer Juan Villoro invite to dinner if he could choose anyone? Cervantes, for starters (“Cause he seems like a decent guy”) and Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher (“Not many people know who he is”) and John Lennon (“to...