Upfront, the message of this post is: I would highly recommend Mexico City. If you’d just like to visit great cities of the world, it is up there with New York, Paris, Bangkok, and others I’m quite fond of. It’s cheap, safe where you’re likely to be staying, and, if you’re in North America or Europe, very accessible. It’s bounteous, cultured, pretty, delicious, and can be as easygoing or frenzied as you’d like it to be.
I’ve spent twelve days here and I need much more time. Most likely I’m going to, at the very least, sublet an apartment for October or November, if not make this a home base.
Prettiness
This is an extremely pretty place, in different ways, in different places.
Most visitors will stay in Condesa or Roma, the most tourist-friendly neighborhoods, and that is a good decision: these are both green, spacious, and studded with Spanish colonial architecture, with lots of excellent restaurants frequented by locals and visitors alike. Although they’re definitely tourist-frequented, they’re not, like, Times Square, or something shitty like that—although you might recognize interior design motifs from LA and New York, they blend nicely with (what I read as) more local culture.
However, there’s plenty that’s pretty outside of these areas. In Xalpa, a tiny hilly neighborhood way on the outskirts, for example, though the architecture is largely of the rebar-and-brick variety that springs up everywhere, there is a ton of ornamentation: hand-painted signage, murals, houses painted in pink and purple and turquoise and orange. Me and a friend clambered up long staircases, hung out with neighborhood cats, and gazed out upon the impressive sprawl of the whole thing.
There are plenty of areas that aren’t pretty, where you’re not likely to visit: ramshackle markets besides highways where there’s trash scattered under the underpasses. Boomtown places. If you’re interested in getting a wider perspective on the place, I’d recommend taking an Uber through some of these zones. Still, overall, the aesthetic standards are remarkably high here.
Largeness
It’s larger than New York or LA. That is quite large. This didn’t fully register for me, physically, until I took the subway ride out to Xalpa, the aforementioned neighborhood I liked. The whole ride I gawked at the passing buildings and people, the city which simply refused to end. This gave me an intense emotional experience of lostness and freedom: look at little me, hurtling through this giant place which does not know me. Thrilling and disorienting.
And, like New York and LA, there is more here than a single person is likely to absorb over the course of a life. Consider the following: one line of the public transit system is cable cars. Like gondolas at a ski lodge, but designed for high-volume commuting. You pay 7 pesos ($0.33 USD) to float through the air and gaze down upon rooftops and hear kids and dogs yelling from the street. A wonderful experience. You would think this would be generally known. But I’ve told a dozen residents this week that I loved the cable cars and they didn’t even know what I was talking about. This doesn’t even make the list of an average denizen’s favorite things.
Accessibility and Other Practicalities
One reason I’m bewildered that more people don’t visit is that it’s dead easy. You can be here for six months without a visa (!) and you fill out one brief form to get in, which is glanced at briefly before you leave the airport.
If you don’t speak Spanish, you’ll be very limited outside tourist areas, but not particularly limited within them; in general, the English ranges from serviceable to totally fluent. Also, it’s easy to get around. The metro is cheap and reliable. Ubers are also cheap and reliable.
This is obviously a tremendous place to work remotely, especially if you need to adhere to North American time zones. The internet isn’t flawless overall, but it’s better than you might think.
Safety
Being here makes me angry about low-resolution stereotypes of Mexico. Previously, upon mentioning that I was planning to visit Mexico City to American acquaintances, I’d heard concerned murmurs from people who seem to believe that this country is a nightmare of gunplay and cartels. This is totally incorrect; it’s a gigantic place with varied safety levels, like, say, America, and it’s extremely easy to evade unsafe places. (Sure, it’s true that in America there’s nowhere to get carjacked, but here, you’d have to make a specific effort to go to the places where carjacking happens.)
In the city center, wandering around at 3 AM on well-lit streets, especially with company, feels safer than wandering in New York, and certainly safer than, say, St. Louis. You do hear reports of petty theft, but that is to be expected—just be spacially aware if you plan to brandish valuables in a densely populated area.
Eating
You probably think of tacos. And, fair enough. The tacos are quite, quite good, and inexpensive. But they’re not better than the best I’ve had in California or Texas, which is to say, they top out near the maximum level of satisfaction that casual food can achieve.
I’m not telling you this so you don’t have tacos. Have tacos. I’m telling you this so that you branch out. Overall, the food I’ve tried, from tlacoyos in the park to steak tartare from a high-end fine dining place, has been consistently excellent. This is what I look for in a food city, a lofty average, and the average here is above that of New York, and could compete with LA. This is a place that cares about food, period, whether it’s tortellini, churros, fried chicken sandwiches, Mexican sushi, or braised octopus in fussy sauce. I haven’t had a bad meal.
One notable thing: you will often find, upon ordering non-Mexican dishes, that they’ve been slightly updated in a more local direction. Earlier today, I ordered a salmon bagel, and the cheese was a little more piquant than the average North American cream cheese, and it was served with a delicious green chili oil. I can’t emphasize enough how much I agree with the general thrust of these decisions.
Nightlife and Culture
I’ve lost my taste for the nightlife, largely, with age. And yet, a night I spent here carousing was enjoyable, due to the quality of the venues visited. Specifically, I went from Polpo, a tremendous small plate restaurant, to Los Salvajes, an intimate artsy speakeasy with a small dance floor and cheap-but-good mezcal, to Cafe Paraiso, a sweaty club with reggaeton music and good-looking Club People of the type recognizable worldwide. Every venue had different positive qualities.
The general rule: on a night out here, you can very easily skip between downtempo wine drinking opportunities and more uptempo settings, within a compact area. I really appreciate this allowance, since I personally never quite know what the temperature of an evening will be until I’m inside it.
Also, people seem to be quite congenial. On my first night here, I was alone at a taqueria until I was forcefully invited to a table of locals, who tried really hard to engage me in conversation with their nonexistent English. At the speakeasy previously mentioned, I was gazing off into space with an autistic look in my eyes, and someone said “you look sad,” and introduced me to her friends. If you’re socially open here it’s really easy to stumble into a conversation.
There’s lots of museums here I guess. I haven’t had time to go see them. There are dozens of boxing gyms, Mexico being a country with a tremendous boxing heritage; when I live here next, I plan to receive instruction from a scary retired pro, of which there are many. Also, having decided to make weird decisions at this point in my life, I went to a six hour yoga thing that openly advertised psilocybin microdosing as a donnée, and I had a good time.
Lungs, Digestion, Weather
No place can be perfect. I have two complaints.
You’ve heard a lot about food poisoning in Mexico. Probably what you’ve heard is somewhat exaggerated. However, it’s not a total myth. Without getting too into detail, my digestion wasn’t happy here initially. Nothing awful and uncontrollable has happened, but it’s been far from perfect. That said, the situation improved significantly once I bought the most expensive (not that expensive) probiotics from a local pharmacy and started taking double the recommended dose.
My other complaint is the air: this city is at high elevation, and is quite smoggy in many places. It’s not as bad as Bangkok or Delhi, but it’s not Joshua Tree. So you will find your cardiovascular abilities somewhat downgraded here, and your throat may creak a bit. I haven’t found this too bad, I’m really just looking for more things to complain about so you don’t wonder whether this post is sponsored by the tourism board.
It’s the rainy season here, the worst season weather-wise, allegedly. There is ~1 brief rainstorm per day and otherwise, the conditions are perfect: breezy, cool, sunny. Nobody carries an umbrella even. Come here whenever.
Not the first time I hear very good things about Mexico City. Should visit!
Well, there you go trashing St. Louis - again!
I know, murder capital of the USA
LOL