Originally an email sent 4/11/07
The deal-breaker I spoke of at the end of the last email was gaining the knowledge from Alessandro (our tour guide) that this Mexican masked wrestling event is pay per view and cameras are an absolute no-no. I almost start crying right there in the cantina (the one with Pancho Villa's bullet), seriously, this is unfair. I proceed to throw a small fit and in my altered state, mumble something about becoming Pablo's wife in Mexican prison coming a close second to sneaking my camera in and getting some killer photos. I ask Alessandro if anyone from his tour has ever got in trouble and he says something about tight security and it being a small venue, adding his two cents that it's probably not a great idea.
I think to myself that if I am going to go to Mexican prison, why not over this? I decide then and there to not check my camera at the door as my tour guide highly suggests. I down a shot of Mezcal and attach my camera strap to my belt buckle, I then let the camera fall down to where no machismo laden Mexican security guard would search. I plan my attack on the walk from the cantina to the venue (I hesitate to call it an arena because it was not that big, think one step up from the crappiest venue you can get in Fight Night the video game). The way I see it, I have three hurdles to overcome; getting the camera in, taking the pictures and lastly, getting out with my camera and liberty intact.
We walk up to the arena and I am in awe. People everywhere, vendors selling masks (SCORE!), people selling beer and food, drunken middle aged men stumbling over themselves, is this heaven? This is just like I imagine a WWE event would be outside some hick town in the deep south... only MEXICAN. I am so awestruck I almost forget about the contraband in my nether-region. Alessandro gives us the OK and we start heading towards the entrance. People are checking their cameras... I start sweating. I watch some of the people in our group go first, the security guards give them a pretty through pat-down, legs and all but are respectful about the no-no areas (even with girls). I breath a sigh of relief as I am allowed entry after a half-assed pat down. I love this. Phase one: success. We enter and find our seats, which are the absolute worst seats in the house. They provide an obscured view of the top of the ring when anyone does any above the second turnbuckle. I, of course, with my gregarious personality am placed in the buffer seat separating the tourists from the locals sitting next to a lovely family (I'm directly near the kids). I want to get high flying awesomeness caught on camera and doing so with this vista will be damn near impossible, I'm going to have to get a better vantage point. Phase two is not looking so hot. The first match of the night has already commenced, I guess the cantina tour took longer then expected.
I start scoping out the security inside... this is bananas, there are guards all over the place. For what? this is a weekly event here in D.F, I still don't get it but whatever. I undo my belt sitting in the darkened back row and think about how wrong it must look if anyone is watching, me fumbling with my belt buckle to try to get my camera out sitting next to a family with little kids... sigh, you would think I'd be smart enough to go to the bathroom but I am not. luckily, it was uneventful and I got my camera out. Now I have the problem of how to take pictures, obviously no flash can be used, but it is so dark where I am sitting that the light from the display illuminates my face... this is no good. I turn the display off and manage to snag a few junky photos. All of a sudden the security guard storms over and asks me what I am doing, I say taking pictures and he starts telling me I can't do that. I feign gringo-ignorance (always a good first defense in a foreign land). He goes away. Someone hands me a beer and a bag of microwave popcorn (which they sell there, how cool is that?). Life is good, I still have my camera, my freedom and some of my dignity (arguably).
The crowd starts chanting something unintelligible as this "gay" wrester in a pink skirt and a pink mohawk comes out, his name is Maximo and the crowd goes nuts when he gets hit. Still they cheer for him as he keeps getting up after each successive beat-down. I found this more than a little disturbing but it wasn't the place to get up and start arguing for sexual equality. I just have to get photos of Maximo and pull my camera out again, I get a few shots and then the security guard comes over again. He starts yelling at me more sternly than before and I pretend I don't understand what he is talking about. I then get up and make like I am going to give my camera to the camera check lady. I leave that area, it's too hot to go back to now. I figure the only way to get some pictures is to befriend one of the pro-photographers there. I use this term loosely as I approach the only guy who isn't ringside. I start chatting him up. What's your name, where you from, I'm from NY, I'm a teacher, blah blah blah. We become cool, I look at his camera and say "wow thats nice" (it was a early model Kodak digital cam, read: crap, and I was buttering him up for the kill). He loves me. He gives me his card. Eduardo Jimenez C. (AKA the Dark Mictlan) Editorial Director for the premier "revista virtual de lucha libre" El Pancracio. Awesome, I go back to my seat armed with my new nifty yellow business card. I start taking pictures like a boss. Security arrives seconds after. I hold up my finger to my mouth in an obnoxious display of Americanism (I actually didn't do this but how funny would that have been, I did think about it though) and take my card out and declare "I'm with this guy." Mr. Security guard looks at the card and leaves in defeat. Phase 2: partial success. Partial because after this is all said and done the final match is over.
I hurry ringside to try to snap some pictures of the Russian champion only to get yelled at by another security guard who is directly guarding the champ. I decide I have pushed my luck far enough for tonight, slide my camera into my pocket and return to find the gringos and head to another cantina. All in all, the anticipation was a little better than the actual event (especially after four run-ins with security) and the pictures I got are nothing to write home about. If you see me in the near future, make sure you ask to see my yellow wrestling business card, it's still in my wallet...
Peace, love and tolerance (especially for Maximo, I felt bad for that guy)
James
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Cantina Days Lucha Libre Nights part 1 -
Originally an email sent on 4/10/07
Hello various gringos and others,
Where to begin, it has been a very event filled couple of days. I don't want to spend too much time writing emails so I think I am going to save some stories for when I get back to NY. I do, however, want to share my experience of the Lucha Libres. This was something I was very very excited for. I don't know about you, but when I think of Mexico, I think of masked wrestling. Ok, to be honest there are some things I think of before masked wrestling but it does rank high on my Mexico word association list. So I am in walking around the city the first night and I see signs for a tequila and mezcal tasting tour followed by a night of wrestling (I will hereby refer to masked Mexican wrestling simply as "wrestling" although when I get back to the states, I will revert back to the more preferable "Mexican masked wrestling.") I thought to myself what a fine idea lets sign up. So I get a few of my new mates (hanging around many English people, my lexicon now includes mates, dodgy, wanker, fit, bellend and some other fine contributions by the originators of our language) and we sign up for the "cantina tour." A little history; cantinas are/were traditionally bars where men gather to shoot the proverbial expletive and get rip-roaring drunk without the accompaniment of women. They gained a reputation as dangerous places (cant see why can you? loads of women deprived drunk Mexicans with guns?). Nowadays, the Cantinas often put "bar" on the signs to try to break the image but are still not regarded highly by all citizens. The history of Mexico was often shaped by events that occured in Cantinas, most notably, during the Mexican Revolution. Anyway, we tour around the second day, heading to the churches and ruins that I breifly spoke of in the previous email. Then, we gather at the hostel and wait for the tour to start. It starts DOWNPOURING in a major way. I, being the excellent planner I am, didn't bring any type of raincoat or umbrella. No problem, I hear from other people at the hostel that they went looking for umbrellas but couldn't find any. I find this disagreeable and I tell them they just didn't look hard enough. So i brave the elements and run outside in my 2 size too small/13 year old NBA jersey, shorts and sandals. I get to the corner and start chatting it up with a guy who is selling candy and other assorted things. I ask where I can find an umbrella. He says he doesn't know, then he remembers his wife has an umbrella she isn't using and I can buy it. I say "sold" how much. Now, usually this is a time to bargain, but since I was in a hurry, getting rained on, and had already accepted the goods site unseen. I saw no reason to try to backtrack. The friendly salesperson goes behind his stuff and pulls out a floral and very pink umbrella. No, it wasn't shaped like a drink umbrella but certainly had the color scheme going for it. I laugh to myself, hand the money over and triumphantly return to the hostel. Picture this, a tall gringo, half soaked and running through the streets of Mexico city under what might be the most feminine umbrella you have ever seen. A word about latin culture for those who don't know. The men have this thing called machismo. We all know what that is as all men have it at times (most men anyway), well traditionally, Latin men have it in spades and watching an otherwise manly looking gringo under this umbrella elicited more than a few awkward glances and smiles because any self-respecting Latino wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near this umbrella. But, I am certainly not Latino so no problems there. So after getting ridiculed by my euro-friends at the hostel, we start the tour. We get information about cantinas on the way to the first one. Its a walking tour for obvious reasons, our guide, Alessandro, is a really good guy and took care in showing us a wide cross section of cantinas. The first we visited had the swinging wooden doors in the front (like the old western movies) and from that moment I knew it was going to be a good night. We tasted Mezcal, which is a Mexican traditional drink similar to tequila. We visited four cantinas and had different Mezcal and cervezas at each one. The highlights included visiting an old cantina that is collectively owned by the workers, a cantina where toreros (bullfighters) used to frequent but that has fallen on hard times, and the "fancy" cantina that had preserved the bullet of Pancho Villa in its ceiling when he came in guns blazing to prove a point to the rich people who go there. This was extra cool, I have a picture of the bullet, but it was the last cantina before the wrestling started and honestly, by that time the Mezcal and cervezas were making focusing my camera difficult. What happened next could have been the deal breaker for my wrestling experience but I will write about that in part two which will focus solely on wrestling (it deserves its own email, not to be shared with cantina stories) Ill write again soon, I just don't want to waste this beautiful day here in Oaxaca.
-Jameso Villa
Hello various gringos and others,
Where to begin, it has been a very event filled couple of days. I don't want to spend too much time writing emails so I think I am going to save some stories for when I get back to NY. I do, however, want to share my experience of the Lucha Libres. This was something I was very very excited for. I don't know about you, but when I think of Mexico, I think of masked wrestling. Ok, to be honest there are some things I think of before masked wrestling but it does rank high on my Mexico word association list. So I am in walking around the city the first night and I see signs for a tequila and mezcal tasting tour followed by a night of wrestling (I will hereby refer to masked Mexican wrestling simply as "wrestling" although when I get back to the states, I will revert back to the more preferable "Mexican masked wrestling.") I thought to myself what a fine idea lets sign up. So I get a few of my new mates (hanging around many English people, my lexicon now includes mates, dodgy, wanker, fit, bellend and some other fine contributions by the originators of our language) and we sign up for the "cantina tour." A little history; cantinas are/were traditionally bars where men gather to shoot the proverbial expletive and get rip-roaring drunk without the accompaniment of women. They gained a reputation as dangerous places (cant see why can you? loads of women deprived drunk Mexicans with guns?). Nowadays, the Cantinas often put "bar" on the signs to try to break the image but are still not regarded highly by all citizens. The history of Mexico was often shaped by events that occured in Cantinas, most notably, during the Mexican Revolution. Anyway, we tour around the second day, heading to the churches and ruins that I breifly spoke of in the previous email. Then, we gather at the hostel and wait for the tour to start. It starts DOWNPOURING in a major way. I, being the excellent planner I am, didn't bring any type of raincoat or umbrella. No problem, I hear from other people at the hostel that they went looking for umbrellas but couldn't find any. I find this disagreeable and I tell them they just didn't look hard enough. So i brave the elements and run outside in my 2 size too small/13 year old NBA jersey, shorts and sandals. I get to the corner and start chatting it up with a guy who is selling candy and other assorted things. I ask where I can find an umbrella. He says he doesn't know, then he remembers his wife has an umbrella she isn't using and I can buy it. I say "sold" how much. Now, usually this is a time to bargain, but since I was in a hurry, getting rained on, and had already accepted the goods site unseen. I saw no reason to try to backtrack. The friendly salesperson goes behind his stuff and pulls out a floral and very pink umbrella. No, it wasn't shaped like a drink umbrella but certainly had the color scheme going for it. I laugh to myself, hand the money over and triumphantly return to the hostel. Picture this, a tall gringo, half soaked and running through the streets of Mexico city under what might be the most feminine umbrella you have ever seen. A word about latin culture for those who don't know. The men have this thing called machismo. We all know what that is as all men have it at times (most men anyway), well traditionally, Latin men have it in spades and watching an otherwise manly looking gringo under this umbrella elicited more than a few awkward glances and smiles because any self-respecting Latino wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near this umbrella. But, I am certainly not Latino so no problems there. So after getting ridiculed by my euro-friends at the hostel, we start the tour. We get information about cantinas on the way to the first one. Its a walking tour for obvious reasons, our guide, Alessandro, is a really good guy and took care in showing us a wide cross section of cantinas. The first we visited had the swinging wooden doors in the front (like the old western movies) and from that moment I knew it was going to be a good night. We tasted Mezcal, which is a Mexican traditional drink similar to tequila. We visited four cantinas and had different Mezcal and cervezas at each one. The highlights included visiting an old cantina that is collectively owned by the workers, a cantina where toreros (bullfighters) used to frequent but that has fallen on hard times, and the "fancy" cantina that had preserved the bullet of Pancho Villa in its ceiling when he came in guns blazing to prove a point to the rich people who go there. This was extra cool, I have a picture of the bullet, but it was the last cantina before the wrestling started and honestly, by that time the Mezcal and cervezas were making focusing my camera difficult. What happened next could have been the deal breaker for my wrestling experience but I will write about that in part two which will focus solely on wrestling (it deserves its own email, not to be shared with cantina stories) Ill write again soon, I just don't want to waste this beautiful day here in Oaxaca.
-Jameso Villa
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