Mexico City Morning

We walked to the main drag of Mexico City, Paseo de la Reforma, this morning and were astonished to find that tens of thousands of bicyclists, rollerbladers and joggers had taken over the street while pedestrians walked alongside on wide sidewalks. We had stumbled onto Muévete en Bici, a car-free event on 55 kilometers of downtown Mexico City streets every Sunday from 8AM to 2PM. The separation of pedestrians (slow) and bicyclists/joggers (fast) made the whole event work in a way that San Francisco's occasional Sunday Streets do not.

Our destination was the Museo de Arte Moderno in Chapultapec Park...

...which was one of the most beautifully designed, medium-sized art museums I have ever encountered.

There was a special exhibit devoted to Remedios Varo, the Spanish surrealist who fled Nazi Europe for Mexico City where she worked until her death in 1963.

More impressive was their permanent collection of Mexican artists from the first half of the 20th century, including the great Juan O'Gorman's 1949 La Ciudad de México...

...and David Alfaro Siqueiros's 1947 El diablo en la uiglesia (The devil in the church)...

...along with José Clemente Orozco's frighteningly pertinent 1947 El tirano (The tyrant).

There was even a sweet 1953 Naturaleza muerta by Frida Kahlo to complement her 1939 keystone masterpiece in the collection, Las dos Fridas.

The painting traveled to SFMOMA in 2008 (which I wrote about here), but it was in a crowded, poorly designed Kahlo retrospective. At the Museo de Arte Moderno, the painting is given its own dark room which is hidden in plain sight so it remains uncrowded. There was a comfy bench to rest on in front of the painting, and some people sitting on the floor. Everyone was quiet as if we were all communing with a holy shrine. It was one of the great art museum experiences of my life.

Across the Paseo de la Reforma was the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo devoted to contemporary Mexican art.

The wild, wonderful architecture was more interesting than most of the exhibits. However, like the Museo de Arte Moderno, admission is free all day for everyone on Sundays, yet another example of how much more progressive Mexico is feeling these days in relation to the regressive United States.

We have been staying in the touristy, upscale Zona Rosa section of town but finally found a great, autentico Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood filled with locals. What made it even better was that the majority of workers and customers were gay, but we also saw cops, friends and lovers of every persuasion eating and drinking there.

I'm not going to name the place because United States hipster expats have been invading the city for the last decade and I don't want to add to the despoliation. Let's just say it's close to the Insurgentes metro station.

Austin finished the day's adventure at CHU-CHO, a dessert parlor that has put chocolate, ice cream, and churros together. As their signage states, "Un churro cada dia le da alegria" (a churro a day brings happiness).