When last we spoke, I was going on six weeks of having lost my job and was ~500 pages deep into writing my first novel. I wrote about visiting family in Memphis, TN, about road trips to Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC, and about hikes taken along the Blue Ridge National Parkway, NC. Though less than a year has passed since that post, it seems like yesterday and ages ago at the same time.
Continue reading “A Rare Gringo Sighting”
See those pictures above? They are of Mexico City, a teeming mass of humanity and my favorite city in the world.
2018 is coming to a close as I write this. I thought I would conclude the year – and this series – with a post that circles back to where it all began. This blog was created not long after I moved to Mexico City in 2012, a two-year experiment with numerous highs and lows, though certainly more of the former than the latter. My first photo locale feature, three years later, featured the city’s Chapultepec Castle. Twelve months after that, a follow-up post highlighted the visual wonders of the city’s Centro Histórico.
But there is much to be seen in a city this size that doesn’t fit easily into any single category. Like this blog, there is a veritable potpourri of eye candy throughout CDMX, ranging from dilapidated buildings to elegant roofcombs to market foodstuffs to haphazard graffiti to the Chilangos themselves, 22 million living, breathing human beings who give Mexico City its heart and soul. Enjoy this random Mexico City potpourri, Loyal Reader…and thanks!
Continue reading “Photo Locale of the Month – December 2018”
The time has come to say goodbye.
It has been over six years since I started this blog. It has been a fun ride, blogging about Mexico City, Tennessee, travel in general, various top ten lists, and life’s strange journey. Posts have run the gamut, from Kilimanjaro climbing adventures to “Where am I?” guessing games to humorous musings on our last presidential election to emotional tell-alls in the weeks leading up to my mom’s passing in 2016.
But the all-things-Scott experience that is GringoPotpourri has run its course, and it seems that I have no more stories to tell. Okay, so that’s not entirely accurate. I have a million stories to tell, but this blog no longer provides the format that I need to tell my stories the way they need to be told.
There hasn’t been too much winter chill in the air lately in East Tennessee, where daytime temps have been hovering around the 50-degree mark, only just turning colder a few days ago. Still, Christmas is less than three weeks away, and holiday decorations are up in force.
Though not a religious person, I still enjoy the spirit of the season, particularly the lights, the holly, and the trees. Combined, these decorations suggest a communal spirit of giving, and a general air of hope, something of which the world has been in short supply lately.
Here is a sampling of holiday decorations witnessed by yours truly during his travels around the globe. I shall start with cities that I once lived in, then move on from there.
Mother Nature has been angry lately. Flooding in Nepal, Bangladesh, and East India. Hurricanes Harvey, Katia, Irma, José, and Maria. Wildfires in California, Montana, Wyoming, and the Pacific Northwest. And no fewer than three earthquakes – one as recent as this morning – to strike Mexico in just 16 days.
It is Mexico, my one-time home for almost two wonderful years, about which I am especially worried.
Q: What do an entrepreneur, a human resources executive, a high school English teacher, a middle school history and science teacher, and a graduate student have in common?
A: They live in Mexico City, and they are my friends.
My long-awaited (for me, at least) return to “CDMX” was a resounding success. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to see, nor was I able to hit up every one of my former stomping grounds, but on the whole, I was able to stroll through some of my favorite neighborhoods and spend time with old friends – even if it was just for a quick drink.
Would you like to meet them? (Apologies in advance to mis amigos for posting these pics – although I don’t think the content is anything too compromising.)
I spent part of last Saturday afternoon walking around downtown Knoxville. It was a perfect summer day, with non-threatening clouds and a gentle breeze. As I headed from Gay Street towards Market Square, one block away, I passed an alley that travels between the two…and did a double take.
Graffiti, alive with color, adorned both sides of this urban alley, and a dozen or so tourists were snapping pictures. When in Rome, the saying goes…and so I did.
My blog journey through Mexico City has taken you through a hodgepodge of neighborhoods nice (Coyoacán, San Ángel, Polanco), not so nice (Tepito, Tlatelolco, Doctores), and “in transition” (Iztapalapa, Santa María la Ribera). The route connecting these barrios “bravos” y “mágicos” would, thus far, be something of a zig-zag…but rest assured that I still have a few more old DF haunts to share with you, Loyal Reader.
La Condesa, west of the Centro Histórico in Cuauhtémoc borough, is – and has long been – the stomping ground of Mexico City’s bourgeoisie. Impossibly-tall, stiletto-heeled Chilangas enter and exit luxury condos, cell phones in one hand and Fendi purses in the other. Professional dog walkers handle seven, eight, even nine dogs at a time, and make it look easy. Tree-lined streets branch off grand thoroughfares and lead to shady parks. Art Deco architecture competes with glassy high rises for attention and real estate value.
Continue reading “Portrait of a Neighborhood: Condesa and Roma”
Mexico City is an interesting place. From above, its layout is very grid-like, particularly in the central corridor and proper Distrito Federal. But the whole is city is a veritable potpourri (I love that word!) of rich and poor. Wealthy San Pedro de los Pinos abuts poor Tacubaya. Upper middle class Narvarte backs up to working class Doctores. Charming, arsty Coyoacán borders dodgy Tasqueña. Etc.
Polanco is one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods. Like San Pedro de los Pinos and other upscale colonias, it borders poorer corners of DF – in this case, Tacuba and Toreo. Parts of Polanco’s northern fringe, Nuevo Polanco, are comprised of endless construction zones that, as such, make the area appear, visually speaking at least, as less safe and less charming. Still, Polanco is a classy neighborhood, one of my favorites in all of Mexico City.
GringoPotpourri 