El Sastre en Gelati 8
I am enjoying my present life in colonia San Miguel Chapultepec, in Mexico City. (I have mentioned elsewhere the abundance of trees [1], and the street-sounds [2].)
This colonia (founded 1913) has been described as:
"The Greenwich Village of Mexico City ..... equal parts urban artsy and quiet residential. Residents are a truly eclectic mix of middle-class singles and families, with a healthy dose of international expats."[3]
It abuts the enormous Bosque de Chapultepec whose 866 hectares make it the largest urban forest-park in Latin America.
The fine older houses, single-storied with roof-gardens and courtyards, were built between 1940 and 1980. In the last 20 years, one by one, many of these have decayed or been pulled down to be replaced by anonymous blocks of flats rising to 4 or 5 stories.
The colonia is curiously rich in Art Galleries, housing the first (1940) gallery dedicated solely to Mexican Art [3]. Also the large modern Kurimanzutto gallery, besides a dozen others. There are also a considerable number of 'Architecturally Important' buildings, including Luis Barragán’s Casa Gilardi.
It is also rich in small restaurants that cater for the dining needs of a community of office-workers that probably live at some distance. We sometime go for our mid-afternoon lunch to Casa La Martina, 100 meters NE up our Calle Juan Cano (three courses for MX$165 (£6.6)).(Only in La Martina have I seen a passer-by on the pavement lean in the open window to embrace someone sitting at the window-table. Nor elsewhere have I seen a man rise from his seat so that he could reach across the table to kiss his companion.) Or we go 50 paces SW down Cano and round the corner to Gelati 26, where the two of us dined for MX$ 440 (£17.76). But in that 50 paces we pass another small restaurant, a café, a rather fun Vermouth Bar (Vermut Déco), a tiny shop selling quality second-hand clothes, and an even tinier shop advertising Mexican wines.
However, the building that provoked me to write this piece is further down Gelati toward its junction with the 5-lane Circuito Interior Jose Vasconcelos.
Across the road there is the great Hospital Angeles Mocel. But we press on down Gelati, heading SE, past a cheerful man with a little barrow (carrito) selling jelly-babies and sweets made of ground peanuts, or compacted amaranto seeds; past the old man, who regularly sleeps in the door-way of the medical firm Laboratorio Médico del Chopo as soon as it locks its doors for the night, past the larger carretilla at the corner, stocked with a myriad tiny pot-plants, succulents and flowers. These little stalls have wheels, but I do not think they have ever moved in my 12 years.
In the last block before the junction, the buildings opposite us, on the 'odds' side of the road, are all decrepit and closed, except for one small restaurant.
On our side (the 'even' numbers), the buildings are in good condition and the businesses are going concerns. We arrive at Gelati 8, one of the oldest of the single-storied, 1940-vintage, house with yellow-ochre rough-cast and smooth, copper-brown, facings. It is double-fronted around a large central iron door. I am told there may be several dwellings or businesses inside that door; certainly there are two. And I have once glimpsed an extensive courtyard. On each side of the door there is a large window reaching from floor to near the high ceiling of the room inside, but bricked-in for half its height forming what might be called an implausibly thin balcony; business is transacted over the rim of this brick-walled balcony, with the proprietress looking down on you.
