Boys will be boys

On the metro during rush hour the two front cars of each train are segregated by gender. Only women are allowed in them, due to the unfortunate propensity that men in Mexico City have for unsolicited fondling in crowded transportation. Boys will be boys.

Even, apparently, when they are dressed as girls. Last Monday it was reported that David Mondragón Vargas, a 46-year-old systems engineer, wearing a wig and a dress, was arrested on the metro. He had been in the women-only cars, molesting members of the fairer sex. His apprehension was, in part, the result of a complaint from a woman who claimed she had been accosted by him on three separate occasions. Click here to read El Universal’s version of the story, and to see a video of the engineer, who looks a little bit like my late Aunt Toby.

Readers of the sex chapter of my book First Stop in the New World will find out that sexuality in Mexico City is baroque, misleading and confusing, a conclusion perhaps evidenced by this case. In another chapter I mention how few local novelists use Mexico City as a backdrop for their books. Ing. Mondragón Vargas illustrates why: Reality will inevitably trump whatever you could make up about this town.

Clandestine charm

About eight years ago my friend Sergio González Rodríguez “discovered” a tiny, hole-in-the-wall dive called El Bull Pen on Calle Medellín near Calle Yucatán in the Colonia Roma. At the time, it had a certain clandestine charm (that remained elusive to many) – one got the sense that anything was obtainable at the Bull Pen, if you lived long enough to obtain it. (This is not precisely a joke. At least a couple of friends were mugged while leaving the Bull Pen late at night, one of them by a policeman.)

In any case, Sergio published an article about the place in the newspaper Reforma, and the Bull Pen became incredibly (you might say insufferably) popular, particularly among the hippy-ish young. The place expanded to the property next door, live rock bands played at earsplitting volume ... it struck me as way too much of a good thing.

Then it closed down. For what at least seemed like years. This happens often to such places in Mexico City, and it is usually assumed that the owners haven’t paid the requisite bribes, or the person who was accepting the bribes can no longer protect them, or they have made so much money that it no longer matters … variations on a theme. The Bull Pen recently reopened its doors, now back to being a tiny hole-in-the-wall. We’ll see how long it lasts in its present incarnation.

Coco loco

In Mexican Spanish, coco (coconut) is a synonym for head. Someone who has mucho coco is supposedly intelligent. I got out of the metro at the Insurgentes stop the other day, and saw this fellow handing out leaflets. I took the trouble to take his picture, but not to find out what he was shilling.

Oasis in Santa Fe

Readers of First Stop in the New World know that the Santa Fe section of the city is, to say the least, a controversial area. Formerly a garbage dump, in the early 1990s it began its renovation as a postindustrial zone where multinationals have their corporate headquarters. Among others, Hewlett Packard, General Electric, Goodyear, Sun Systems, Kraft, Pepsi, Federal Express, Philip Morris, Unisys and IBM have offices in Santa Fe.

People doing business with those companies need a place to stay while in town, and recently, the Hábita Group, which has several boutique hotels in Mexico, opened the 40-room Distrito Capital in the area. My friend Rafael Micha, one of the owners, gave me a tour the other day.

The lobby includes the sculpture pictured above by Thomas Glassford, a Texas artist who has lived in Mexico for more years than he would probably care to count.

There is a groovy bar and restaurant on the terrace level of the hotel, with a menu by Enrique Olvera, one of the city’s star chefs.

The rooms are showpieces. Spacious and comfortable, they have incredible views, fit for corporate titans who have heard all those terrible things about Mexico City, and might not want to actually sully their experience with a ground-level view. Distrito Capital is by far the hippest hotel in Santa Fe and will doubtless be a great success.

Open wide

When I first moved to Mexico City, I was perplexed by a figure named Jairo Campos. I saw his name on an enormous marquee outside the Hotel Diplomático on Insurgentes Avenue, which announced the show he gave in the hostelry’s bar. Several days later I saw the same name on an equally huge sign on Avenida Álvaro Obregón – only this time, the billboard broadcast his services as a dentist. Could they be the same person? How many people named Jairo Campos could there be in the same city?

I never went to him to get my teeth cleaned, nor did I catch his act at the Diplomático. Yet his legend increased: Friends mentioned that some years ago the good doctor appeared on TV commercials, performing dental chores on less-than-spectacular models.

Recently some friends recommended that I visit the bar of the Hotel Prim at the corner of Calle Versalles and Calle General Prim in the Colonia Juárez. It’s a blurry, amber-colored joint, which looks like a Technicolor movie from the 1960s. The regulars refer to it as la catedral del bohemio de la ciudad de México. During the day, Jairo Campos still puts in crowns and operate on gums, but several nights a week, the Prim’s stage belongs to him.

Plump, with dyed hair and goatee, the dentist has an adoring public, most of whom know the words to all the songs he croons, and sometimes go onstage to sing alongside him. Between numbers, Campos makes remarks that are intermittently coherent, often evoking memories. For instance, before singing Prohibida (Forbidden), he will recall a girlfriend he had in his youth Jijilpan, as well as the changungas and chimbiriches that he ate in Apatzingán.

On some nights at the Prim you can also catch the estimable Polly, more or less a Mexican Liza Minelli. She is a dyed blonde who gives it all she's got and then some, and whose passion mounts with each cocktail she consumes during her act. Sometimes, during her break between shows, she relaxes with members of the public. The other night she sat with two fans with white hair and black suits, who may have had some connection with the funeral parlor across the street.