I was in Monterrey, Mexico all of last week. On Sunday, October 17th, the Nuevo León government held the Festival Bella Vía (website not updated for 2010) in the Macroplaza.
According to the brochure, a tradition started in the Lazio region back in the XVI century in which artists painted on the ground their works of art. So this is what was going on here: artists were copying very well known works of art on the ground using chalk. Very neat. Check out the photos below (click on the thumbnail for the full size picture). See if you can recognize any of them…
Here’s a fun little piece of family history that was recently unearthed by my great-uncle Jacobo:
This is an undated driver’s license that belonged to my great-grandfather Marcos Sandler. He must have received it not too long after moving to Mexico. It is for driving a bogué. According to my mom, that’s the word they used for wagons back in the day. I had never heard it and my search in the all-knowing Royal Academy of the Spanish Language was fruitless. I did find the similar words bogie and boje, which are synonyms whose definition I translate:
A set of two pairs of wheels mounted on adjacent, solid parallel axis, used in both sides of the vehicles of great length destined to circulate over lanes.
Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense in Spanish either. Perhaps an enlightened reader can help? (Eva, ask your dad).
While digging through an old little box accurately labeled “Morralla“, I found a Kokoloko token. Kokoloko was the best bar in downtown Monterrey back in the nineties. They were open for a very long time and went through several remodelings (hanging chairs? phone booths? rooftop bar? Star Wars theme?). They eventually shut down and even though they reopened later in other parts of the city, it was never the same. I used to be there on most Fridays.
Instead of money, you used tokens in order to pay for drinks. You’d get a couple at the door for your $30 pesos cover charge. Today, a Kokoloko token is valued at over $40,000 USD (personal estimate). Here’s the photo of a Kokoloko token, probably the only one on the whole Internet:
I recently purchased a water squirting nickel for something like $3. It’s the best $3 I’ve ever spent: funniest thing ever. I took it to Monterrey on my most recent trip for my cousin Jaco’s Bar Mitzvah and entertained myself (wow, that sounded dirty) endlessly by squirting just about everyone there. The story: look for the telltale signs of a supposedly counterfeited nickel, which I swapped right before showing the defect to the victim.
I only taped a small percentage of the victims that night and posted it as a mind-numbing 1:46 minutes long YouTube video. Trust me, you had to be there, it was hilarious.
I feel like I can finally post this, even though it will ruin the joke in the future, because:
Update 7/8/2009: Answering Eva’s comments on how this compares to skydiving: Skydiving costs 10x more but it’s worth it 10x more. It’s a better, longer, experience. The thing about bungee jumping is that your body changes direction several times so you get a different feeling. But nothing beats the free fall of sky diving, with the strong wind in your face and the unbelievable, wide open view.
To best relive the experience, my aunt Jave (read as in Spanish: Cha-veh) made this year’s Seder even longer but more fun than usual by putting together a small skit that included all plagues. I got to be the Pharaoh and I deserve an Oscar for my performance. See the photos after the break while you play this in the background, viewer discretion advised.
I should have posted this back in late December or early January…
My dad, the cool and considerate parent that he is, was able to score one of only three thousand Limited Edition Bohemia Bock released late last year (not an easy feat). It comes in a beautifully designed champagne-like bottle and is packaged in a box. He got it for me through his college friend Jorge Luis Ramos, who offered to gift me the bottle when my dad told him that he keeps bringing me cases of the beers I like yet can’t be bought in the U.S. whenever he drives into Austin. A big public thank you.
