Frida and Diego lived here

I wonder if it would strike Frida Kahlo as odd that she has become such an iconic and popular figure?  Overshadowed during her lifetime by her larger (literally!) and much more famous husband Diego Rivera, it wasn't until a 1983 biography by Hayden Herrera was published that she became well known outside of Mexico. Today, her brooding face with its signature bold eyebrows stares out at us from tote bags, coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets. She has become a mixed-up symbol of feminism, Mexican nationalism, sexuality and a kind of voluptuous suffering, all suffused with a kind of retro-glamor beauty that commands attention like a rock star.

Dancing with coyotes

Right in the heart of Coyoacan, two playful bronze coyotes crown a fountain in the Jardin Centenario. Coyoacan's name comes from the Nahuatl language and may mean "place of the coyotes" - but no one's quite sure. The park is at the heart of this historic and beautiful neighborhood, once a village but now absorbed into the urban sprawl of Mexico City.

Coyoacan's shady streets lined with historic buildings, its plazas with street cafes and shops,  naturally attracted artists, actors and writers. Diego Rivera, the famed muralist, and his artist wife Frida Kahlo lived in Coyoacan, as did Mexican movie star Dolores del Rio and filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Much like other similar charming artsy neighborhoods throughout the world, it has become a tourist attraction, and the streets are crowded on weekends and holidays, the sidewalks jammed with vendors and sightseers.

Street music

She stands on the corner of Calle Lopez and Ayuntamiento in the Central Historic District of Mexico City, wearing her khaki uniform and hat, and she balances the hefty Harmonipan barrel organ on its collapsible stick. Then she cranks the handle and the sounds pour forth. Piping, piercing, eerily wavering and yet also breathy with air pumped from its bellows, this is street music that hearkens back to the nineteenth century.

A moment of serenity

 We are traveling back to LA today, and as you can imagine it is hectic. Here's a moment of serenity, from a visit yesterday to the National Cathedral in Mexico City. Click to "embiggen."

NOTE: I inadvertently deleted this post, but have reconstructed it. Unfortunately, what I can't recreate were the kind comments from BBBB and Mrs. G.

Bird men

A steel pole stands in Chapultepec Park, on a grassy area just by the entrance to the National Museum of Anthropology. The paved walkway beyond throngs with strollers and food vendors, and people sit on benches and on the broad raised curb of the fountain.

Cinco de Mayo in Mexico City

Cinco de Mayo doesn't mean much in Mexico. It's a Mexican-American holiday, celebrating the Mexican army's defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The French supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War, so when the French were defeated, Mexicans living in the western United States were delighted.

Here in Mexico, people celebrate September 16 as Mexican Independence Day, the day in 1810 that Mexico began to war to throw over Spanish colonial rule.

No matter the date, though, at the Monumento a la Revolucion Mexicana, that Art Deco massif in downtown Mexico City people are celebrating - on Cinco de Mayo as on any other night.

Originally planned in 1910 as a palatial new legislative building, but abandoned as a steel skeleton in 1912, the monument has experienced repeated rebirth. First in 1936 when it was redesigned as a bombastic public monument to revolutionary ideals, but again in 2010, when the nation rescued it from 1970s era deterioration.

These days, it's always busy, with strolling families and sightseers riding the elevators to the viewing deck. Right around the corner from our hotel, we can hear the sound of marching bands drilling in the wide plaza.

But tonight the best attraction is the centennial fountain - playing its light and water show continuously from dusk to 10 pm.

What better way to celebrate than with hordes of happy, delighted, shrieking kids splashing around in spray of water and colored light?

Street sights

The sights and sounds of Mexico City come at you fast. Here's some of what we encountered on a Saturday in Mexico City.  A street musician at a cafe.

Fruit displayed at the Mercado San Juan.

A shrine in the workshop of an auto garage.

Chapulines - grasshoppers - for sale at food cart.

The fish market at the Mercado San Juan.

The garden at the Frida Kahlo Museum.

Blue corn quesadillas being made on the sidewalk at the Calle de Lopez. Click all photos to "embiggen."

City in the sky

View from the car to the hotel

The plane shuddered as we descended through the cloud cover, and then we could see the city spread below us, beneath a yellow hazed sky, vast and dreary. Then we banked and into view beyond the tipped wing, I could see the broad green swath of a tree-lined avenue cut through the tan and ochre stucco mix of buildings. A traffic circle like a bead on a string. A massive stone edifice, crowned with a dome, rising among the trees. I hoped to remember this landmark and check the map. But then it slipped from sight beneath the wing as we continued the descent.

We landed on the tarmac wallowing and slipping wildly enough for one voice to cry out softly, and then it was a relief to feel the wheels grip down.  Welcome to Mexico City, said the captain.

Hotel lobby

 Our hotel is a tired but elegant throwback to the '70s, sleek teak and dramatic sculptures, and the guest rooms are both garish and cheap, like a candy-colored Ramada Inn, but charming in an odd retro way. We had a beer in the lobby bar, served by a bent and courtly old bartender, before venturing out to hear a concert at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

We hustled to get into the concert hall by curtain, so it wasn't until a breather at intermission that I could appreciate the Palacio, an Oz-like Art Deco pile dedicated to the arts. Bold striped marble, murals, and bronze fittings, domed above, stepping on the floor or stair made you wonder if your foot would break the gleaming surfaces of an illusion.

Parque Alameda Central

At night outside, we strolled back to the hotel along the verge of the Parque Alameda Central, the oldest park in the Americas, where couples sat together on wrought iron benches on the wide sidewalk. In the street, taxis and cars surged by, sometimes a squad of police strobe-ing blue and red, sometimes a stakebed truck filled with empty yellow trashbins piled like hay bales.

Papier mache skeleton

 At a bicycle rental station, we encountered a macabre yet jolly figure, the perpetual customer.

Home to the hotel, relax with a Victoria beer and a dish of peanuts salty and touched with lime. A musica romantica trio plays "Besame Mucho," requinto guitar bright magic above the drum machine's hitching bolero, as the middle-aged ladies and gentlemen at a nearby table sway and sing along.

It's our first night here.

Hola, D.F.

The dahlia is the official flower of Mexico

We are flying into Mexico City tomorrow. Also known as D.F., Distrito Federal, the city is the capital of Mexico.

I have only been inside the country of Mexico once, when I was about eight years old, and my family was visiting Texas. We traveled to El Paso (I think) and went across the border for maybe two hours. I think maybe we bought a tortilla press.

Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world - both in terms of geographical area and population. It is also an old city, founded by the Aztec people around 1325 a.d;, but it was built on the site of a much older city founded by a long-lost indigenous people.

It is 12,000 feet above sea level, which makes it higher than the highest city I've ever visited, Denver, which is just 5,000 feet. Wonder what it's like to breathe that rarefied air?

Tomorrow, as luck would have it, our U.S. President Barack Obama is visiting Mexico City, and we've already been alerted to the possible airport and traffic disruptions that might affect us.  Well, it's not that different than when he comes to West L.A. and ties up the 405 while attending a fundraiser in Holmby Hills!

And, honestly, I guess I'd be more pissed off if it were Mitt Romney slowing down my taxicab.