Still wet behind the ears

The best thing about being the new people in town is nothing tastes stale. Ok, there are some items at the local bakery we won't purchase again unless we're out of scouring pads for the oven, but that's a story from a different menu. No, the just landed need not stray far from the familiar to discover new doorways to open and exciting adventures to pursue.

We celebrate eight weeks of living in Mexico City and I find myself paying closer attention to those moments when the well-heeled veterans of this metropolis shrug off mention of a special street, a celebrated cultural attraction, or a famous family park. We've found gold in those tired hills and until the vein runs dry, we'll continue digging. Perhaps we're just suckers for the $50 Peso sombrero.

That would look really good on me, wouldn't it? The poncho is simply icing on the pastel.

The past two weekends kept us close to the nest, and yet we've been fortunate to discover interesting new doors revealing precious rooms and quaint corners that paint a portrait of this giant city that is as fresh to us as is each new day to our four-month-old daughter.

Last weekend, following the excitement of our excursion to Xochimilco, we ventured no further than my beloved bastion of satellite positioning, the American Embassy. In truth, we drove several blocks beyond the Chancery to stop at the Jardin Del Arte Sullivan, or Sullivan Art Park, or as I will refer to it going forth, Cube Park.

We had dropped off a couple of items for framing the previous Sunday, but missed the opportunity to wander through the Kcho and the Morales. Established in the late 1950s by struggling, young artists unable to display their talents at more traditional venues, the park became a meeting place and stomping ground for burgeoning promise, as well as the not-so-talented in the Mexico City art scene. Today, according to Wikipedia, partner to GPS in my core belief system, Cube Park is filled with less inspired endeavors, such as drug abuse, homelessness, and prostitution. Certainly it depends on your point of view, and one man's trash is another's treasure, but for a few hours every Sunday the art deco, the cubism, the kitsch, and the surreal crowd out the refuse to offer a bounty of loot for the intrepid explorer. One can even buy postcards there.

Most of the works are terribly over-priced. Forgive me. Rather, my bargaining skills in Spanish are horribly under-developed. I was perfectly willing to settle on $3000 Pesos for an oil-on-canvas depicting a baby in the jaws of a wolf emerging from a pineapple balanced on the head of a naked, Mexican farm girl, before my wife stepped in to remind me that for such a price our daughter would be rolling in infant formula for many months. I did not take a photograph of the aforementioned composition, but trust me, it felt like canvas.

Leave it to a three-year-old to separate the garden gnomes from the velvet posters and to make a beeline for the truly sublime.

Cubes. Lots of cubes. Surrounding magnificent pieces of utility, like seesaws and swings. Braque and Picasso surely would have enjoyed a coconut popsicle here, too.

As if our sojourn into modernism last week weren't enough, we drove into the city again yesterday and, not ones to tempt fate, parked flush against the wall of the Embassy of the United States of America. (I love a good Thesaurus, but the pickings are slim here.) Nestled behind the corporate headquarters on the south side of Paseo de la Reforma, and only a short walk from El Ángel de la Independencia, is Zona Rosa, or the Pink Zone, a moniker which undoubtedly wrestled for contention as a replacement for Jardin Del Arte, proffered by more recent, weeknight perambulators of Cube Park. José Luis Cuevas first gave it the name because, in his words, it "was too timid to be red, but too frivolous to be white." And, of course, it's overlooked by an Angel.

Zona Rosa is a perfect example of the type of place viewed with near scorn by the hardened Chilangos. It's for tourists. Starbucks, Burger King, and McDonald's have taken over coveted, corner locations. Arts and crafts, those not made in China, are exponentially more expensive than in other market areas. It's exactly the sort of rough from which we've been pulling our diamonds these past two months. Off we went.

Maybe when we've lived here long enough, after the luster of the unknown has worn dull and the colors don't appear so vivid, we'll find ourselves in conversations with recent arrivals and we, too, will look down our noses at familiar haunts around local corners.

Until such time arrives, however, we'll revel in our naiveté and look with childish wonder down every curious lane.

And we'll remember to ask ourselves, "what's behind that door?"