It's my first day in Mexico City, and I'm already behind schedule. I'm in the backseat of a green and white Volkswagen Beetle taxicab, speeding down the Avenida Insurgentes, and Jose, my cabdriver, is sobbing. His second wife just left him, he tells me. But after a brief spell of melancholy, Jose composes himself and whisks me along on a cheery tour of his sprawling hometown. Like the city he plies in his cab each day, Jose is a survivor.
Mexico City has withstood layer upon layer of change since the Spanish arrived in 1519. The conquistadores razed the pyramids, canals, and palaces of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan and used the stone remains to build their ornate colonial capital. Over the centuries, different governments, immigrants, and fashions have added successive layers of architectural styles: Romanesque churches, neoclassical European structures, art nouveau, art deco, and gleaming glass towers. More recently, the city has claimed a reputation as a cutting-edge capital of cool. I'm here to explore some of the emerging neighborhoods that are making the venerable city a hot destination for globe-trotting hipsters.
The evening after my arrival, I have a clear view of the city's skyline from the rooftop of the chic Habita hotel, one of Mexico City's first Ian SchragerÐstyle boutique hostelries. Located on the Avenida Masaryk in Polanco -- a swanky neighborhood with streets named after poets and philosophers -- the 36-room Habita is wrapped in frosted glass and features a rooftop bar and pool where young fresas (yuppie types) aggressively check one another out. Planting myself at a table by the pool, I listen to the same trip-hop and techno I hear in New York, stare at arty digital projections on an outdoor wall, and marvel at how far Mexico City has come. More new boutique hotels are set to open here in the next couple of years, including a W just down the street.
While Polanco has long been the nexus of nightlife, two other neighborhoods -- Condesa and Colonia Roma -- have increasingly attracted the city's younger set. Often compared to New York's SoHo because of its art galleries, trendy boutiques, and design-conscious restaurants, Condesa is the more gentrified of the two. Developed partly by Jewish immigrants, the collection of wonderfully preserved art deco buildings here is rivaled only by Miami Beach. Unlike South Florida's capital of hip, however, Condesa remains free of tourist hordes.
I head to Condesa one morning to meet my friend Silvia, a Spanish expatriate who came to Mexico on vacation in the mid-1990s, fell in love with a Mexican, and never left. We order brunch at an outdoor cafe, then walk along the tree-lined Avenida Amsterdam, marveling at the architecture. I save Colonia Roma, Condesa's slightly older neighbor, for the next day.
Developed at the beginning of the last century, Colonia Roma's art nouveau and classical buildings have a distinctly European feel. As I walk past the ornamental facades and balconies, I feel like I'm in Paris or Barcelona. Cafes, antiques shops, and art galleries are filling up the buildings that were abandoned after the 1985 earthquake. I walk through the leafy-green Plaza Rio de Janeiro, past a knot of skateboarders, and stare at the Casa de las Brujas ("Witches' House"), a gray brick building built in 1908 with a witch hat and mansard roof. This could be Brussels, I think. I stop by the OMR gallery and take in an exhibit of Mexican sculpture. I feel a little off balance and think maybe I'm dizzy from the altitude; in fact, as a security guard confirms, the building itself is on a slant and, like many of the city's older, heavy buildings built on what used to be a lake, sinking into the ground. I ask the secretary in the gallery's office how she can work in this lopsided environment. "You get used to it," she says with a straight face worthy of this determined city. After about 700 tumultuous years, Mexico City is getting used to growth and prosperity.
SCOPING CONDESA Mexico City's answer to SoHo is a great neighborhood to explore. Restaurants and outdoor cafes are concentrated mainly in and around the intersection of Avenida Michoacan and Avenida Tamaulipas. Bars and nightclubs are clustered on the Avenida Nuevo Leon and surrounding streets.it.
BEYOND TACOS For Mexican food that transcends the clichEs, check out celebrity chef and cookbook writer Patricia Quintana's new restaurant Izote (55-5280-1671; patriciaquintana.com) in Polanca. From fresh ceviche to steamed baby goat, it'll make you forget the word burrito.
