Intersections

Happy New Year! *

I was trying to think of something eloquent or comprehensive to post for the dawn of the new decade, but my brain is still a little flat-lined. For now, here's wishing you and your loved ones a glorious 2010 and beyond. May love guide us all.

* Previously, my post on a New Year's Eve in Tijuana.

Gulls on the bay

"Been here five days, I just want to go see the sea," I said. So we went. Most of San Diego is Pacific-adjacent; rarely takes more than fifteen minutes to get to the water from anywhere by freeway.

Above, sea gulls chilling along the San Diego Bay, with the old blue swoop of the Coronado Bridge in the background, Christmas Day, 2009. * A couple more photos here and here.

Comparing San Diego's newspapers

There are two major news sources in San Diego again -- something many natives of this big city never thought would be possible after the afternoon Tribune merged into the morning Union in 1992, creating the troubled Union-Tribune of today. Like a lot of formerly glorious family-owned daily papers in the United States, the U-T has been unable to adapt to the new news media landscape. It's shedding staff and dealing with a strange owner, an equity firm.

That's why it's good we have the Voice of San Diego, an online-only paper that is providing the city with a hard-nosed metro news feed that is by and by more comprehensive and dogged than the U-T. Right now its major front-page stories are a jailhouse interview with the first San Diegan prosecuted for armed robbery in pursuit of OxyContin, and a big scoop -- Barack Obama's likely choice for the next U.S. Attorney in San Diego.

On the other hand, the top local story at the U-T is ... a feature about the Christmas traditions of historic Old Town. In slightly more useful information for residents, the paper also lets us know today that the local cab industry is dominated by Somali immigrants.

The Voice is not a turn-around alternative to the print competition -- yet. It doesn't have a big enough staff to cover daily public safety news, which the U-T still does decently. The Union-Tribune also pays a fair amount of attention to breaking border-related news, as well. But in the over-all battle for more intelligent and aggressive coverage of local issues that matter to people, the Voice of San Diego is clearly in the lead.

I feel for the U-T, but I don't feel sorry for it. This is a city with a wide variety of news sources -- the Reader, CityBeat, Spanish-language papers, Asian-language papers, the African-American Voice & Viewpoint, LGBT papers. In the long-run, San Diegans have enough choices in their media diet to make a future without a "mainstream" daily newspaper not an altogether terrifying thing to look forward to.

The hustle held

I just turned in the edited manuscript for my book to my editor at Simon & Schuster in New York City. I imagine he's printing the damn thing right now -- all 195 pages -- and carrying it down those cold, symmetrical Manhattan streets just before leaving for the holiday break.

Who knows. New York feels like another planet to me. What are they wearing over there these days?

I've been living in Mexico City for two years and two months, with almost no travel away. Since the day I landed in D.F., I've been working on this thing. We still have to finalize it, of course. I've gotta do an epilogue, notes, and a reading list. Maybe some pictures and maps? But otherwise, the book is actually, finally, just about done.

The project, as you might recall, has been ... tough. Right now my brain is so blank ("I can't see my eyes") and my heart unsure what it should be feeling that I'm just gonna go to a mall here in San Diego and stare at things for a few hours.

Then, a drink or two? They've got good, cocky micro-brews here.

Meantime, above, I am entrusting you with my book's working "thought diagram." I had this poster hung in my study space for months as I drafted and re-drafted the manuscript. It's a very intimate reflection of my process and my values. In June, in ritual sacrifice, I burned it.

Happy Holidays!

Imagining divine androgyny

Soaring through the sky in an airplane, as June Singer writes in the opening of her 1974 masterwork "Androgyny," is nothing to fear. Flying is being "suspended in the universe," she writes. "Since the universe is universal, therefore everywhere, I cannot fall out of it."

Here is Singer's primer on the founding of cosmic love, from the chapter titled "Androgyny as Guiding Principle of the New Age":

The idea of the Divine Androgyne is a consequence of the concept that Ultimate Being consists of a unity-totality. Within this unity-totality are seen to exist all the conjoined pairs of opposites at all levels of potentiality. Creation occurs when the cosmogonic egg is broken. Then the world is born. Or it occurs when male and female, having been incorporated in one spherical body, are separated by the supreme power of creation. Cosmic energy is generated by the surge of longing in each one of the two for the other.

Singer, who died in 2004, was a Jungian analyst whose great ambition was to break through the final barrier in Freudian and Jungian theory -- the liberated sexual psyche. Her "new theory on sexuality" was published more than 30 years ago.

Jung is in the air. Here is the richly rendered New York Times magazine piece on his mythical "red book," and an NYT review of the book's exhibition currently on view at Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan.

Impact of a warming Earth

Read the Washington Post catch-all on the end of talks at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen. A startling excerpt:

In the deal, spelled out in a three-page document, each country needs only to list its current domestic pledges for emissions reductions and to promise to allow monitoring of their progress. It also outlines steps to help poor countries go green and prepare for the impact of a warming Earth.

But it sparked a rebellion among more vulnerable nations. They said they could not accept an agreement that lacked deep emissions commitments from the industrialized world.

"The science tells us we must act now, and urgently," said Ian Fry, climate-change representative for Tuvalu, which may be submerged by rising seas in a matter of decades. "To use a Biblical allusion, it looks like we're being offered 30 pieces of silver to bargain away our future. Mr. President, our future is not for sale."

The room burst into applause.

Here is the conference's official site, where I grabbed this potent image of the negotiators.

The nation of Tuvalu could be gone in a few decades? What is happening, really, to this planet? Can we do something about it? Are we willing?

* Image above from a previous post, "Anything to stay cool: Picturing a planet without us."

Ice cream on Madero

Above, Ashland Mines, aka Total Freedom, and Daniel and Asma of NGUZUNGUZU, having a 10-peso ice cream cone on Madero in the Centro Histórico of Mexico City.

The three were in town to play at the opening party for Animal, a new magazine by the Habita hotel group. Over at The Fader, you can download a recent mix of theirs. Have a good holiday break, everyone!

* Previously, "Christmas in Mexico City: 'Are we in Disneyland?'"

Excavations: 'That's the way love goes'

I was just 12 years old when it came out. But I'm realizing now that this video was my first object lesson in sensuality, "That's the Way Love Goes," off Janet Jackson's janet.

It was a breakthrough, I think, not just for Janet but for an entire decade -- its sound, vibe, look, and expression of certain values. Mainly, the de-inhibiting of desire, the pleasure of total comfort in one's sexuality, the chasing and sharing of love. Director Rene Elizondo Jr., Janet's Mexican-born secret spouse, catches an early Jennifer Lopez doing a ridiculous "Latina" accent, and misses an opportunity to display or even hint at some same-sex affection, but otherwise the video is perfect.

Janet, forever my lady.

* If the embedded clip above doesn't work, try the official video here.

A taco's taco in Polanco

Let's say it's half till 5 -- in the morning -- and you're wandering the streets of swanky Polanco with four friends, because you'd rather walk where you're going than pay an outrageously expensive Polanco cab rate. You're desperately hungry. And not rich.

Ultimate nightmare scenario?

On a corner of Presidente Masaryk, considered the wealthiest commercial real estate strip in Latin America, the gods provide. It is a taco stand operating from the back of a parked van, complete with a gas-powered grill -- as paisa as you can get. The sidewalk is packed with Polanco people rummaging for food after a night in any old antro charging thousand-peso bottle service.

What's going on here? "Mari, Mari," the regulars call to the woman taking orders and collecting coins.

You wander close, inspecting with your nose. Mari and her grill workers are offering not only a good mix of meats -- bistek, suadero -- but a full selection of D.F.-style taco fixings. Beans, cactus, potatoes, radishes, several kinds of salsas. You're rubbing your eyes, unable to believe it. They even have Lulu soda pop.

Saved by the taco, and the lesson bears repeating: Never judge a neighborhood by its cover.

Future home for the Jumex Collection

This is a rendering of the new Jumex Collection museum planned for the Polanco-Irrigacion area, as designed by David Chipperfield Architects. Chipperfield was himself in Mexico City a few weeks ago to present the plans to the press (the red dot near the bottom of the photo is the architect's moving laser pointer).

That huge vase-like structure behind Chipperfield's limestone design is Carlos Slim's planned Soumaya. The challenges facing Eugenio Lopez in this setting may sound almost insurmountable. His new museum will be set in a small wedge-shaped parcel, on a hectic boulevard, and buffeted by commercial high-rises and a guaranteed dazzler in the Slim project.

This will force the collection to exert its pulling power -- great contemporary art, and lots of it -- almost as strenuously as it did when it competed for attention an hour north in Ecatepec. We'll see how it all turns out in the coming months and years.

* Previous posts covering exhibits at the Jumex plant are found here, here, here, and here.

Pyramids behind fences

Two new friends, visitors to Mexico City from New Orleans, are seen above observing the remains of ancient structures belonging to the Cuicuilco ruins, behind fencing and barbwire, on the campus of the Villa Olímpica.

We wandered through the old 1968 Olympic village in the south of Mexico City with a feeling of ... flatness. Cuicuilco is the earliest known human settlement in the Valley of Mexico. The main site, with the rounded, circular pyramid, is across busy Insurgentes Sur, a relatively new boundary, as Cuicuilco was constructed about 2,000 years ago.

These fenced-off pre-Hispanic pyramids that now lie within Villa Olímpica look pretty sad -- unreachable, covered in weeds, and sitting inside a site that is itself sadly retro. 1968, the glossed-over glory days, is a long time ago now.

Cheech Marin on 'Born in East L.A.'

Last Tuesday I moderated the Q&A with Cheech Marin at the Guadalajara screening of his greatest hit, "Born in East L.A." A lot of pochos living south showed up. They asked Marin how he view Tijuana, and asked about the future of Mexican American film, why there's so little still. Cheech's response was, given the demographic shifts happening in the U.S., "It's gonna change no matter what."

"Born in East L.A.," which Marin wrote and directed, remains the model, I think -- along with Luis Valdez's "La Bamba" and "Zoot Suit." I remember going to see the film at the drive-in theater in Imperial Beach with the whole family, and experiencing such a thrill even at six years old to see people like us, and places we knew, on the big screen.

At the Q&A, Marin told us that the inspiration for the film was a small news story he had read about an L.A. boy who had been wrongly deported to Tijuana. I mentioned to him afterward that incidents like that still happen. Off this case, I wrote a long feature for LA Weekly about Pedro Guzman, the Lancaster man wrongly deported from the L.A. County jail system in summer 2007. Guzman was eventually reunited with his family.

Above, the 'Waas Sappening' scene from "Born in East L.A."

Remembering the Guadalajara gas leak disaster

On April 22, 1992, in an event that would be permanently eclipsed by the concurrent outbreak of civil unrest in Los Angeles, a gas leak explosion destroyed a neighborhood in Guadalajara, claiming more than 200 lives.

The disaster was blamed on poor infrastructural management by state oil company Pemex. But since it occurred at the height of the PRI's authoritarian decadence, deaths and consequences were quickly swept under the rug and all but forgotten.

On the morning I arrived last week for the FIL, my hosts picked me up at the airport and drove me around town for a bit, telling me the stories of their city. We stumbled upon a memorial for the Analco disaster, got out, and snapped some photos.

Lowriders in Guadalajara *

* Post updated with more photos.

The U.C.E. car club from San Fernando brought two customized cars and two bikes down to the FIL in Guadalajara. Author Luis Rodriguez at Tia Chucha's Cafe organized the exhibit. He blogs about it here.

By the looks of the constant crowds around the vehicles, the lowrider presence at the book fair almost stole the whole show. Above, Orgullo Mexicano, a multiple-award-winning piece of beauty designed around a Mexican roots theme. Glass panels were placed below the car to make its bottom side visible.

* See more photos here, here, and here.

Note on Guadalajara

The building above epitomizes Guadalajara style to me, where so many modern or semi-modern structures, no matter the architectural idiom, protrude slightly outward at the second floor, sometimes again at the third and fourth, sometimes dramatically at corners. It's strange because it's so prevalent, like a mainstream design trend that sprung up locally at some point and just stayed.

This city feels more genetically similar to Los Angeles than to Mexico City. It is flat and wide like a lot of L.A., and car-oriented like L.A. is, too. Public transit is limited to two light subway lines, a bunch of out-of-date buses, and a Metrobus-like system that everyone seems to have a different complaint about. Taxis are expensive. So basically, without a car or a driver, it's difficult to get around. Worse so than in L.A., surprisingly.

They don't say "bistec" like in D.F. but "asada" like in the North. It's not "bolillo" here it's "birote." People seem more or less ... comfortable. You don't see strangers with that wild look of desperation in their eyes like you do in the big city. It feels less provincial than its reputation tells you. In downtown we ran into a tucked-away block populated by several subtle lesbian-friendly bars, with teenage girls holding hands and kissing on the sidewalk outside in the daytime.

And it's true what they say. The people of Guadalajara are generally hot. Effortlessly attractive -- good faces, good bodies -- regardless of where they landed on the class or mestizo scale.

I keep wondering, Why is that?

Curtis Hanson on 'L.A. Confidential'

In many opinions "L.A. Confidential" is considered one of the very best films made about Los Angeles. Curtis Hanson's noirish thriller is a fascinating study of power in 1950s L.A., dealing with corruption, the limitations of justice, and the thin line between illusion and reality. Listening to Hanson talk about how he managed to get his movie made last night during a Q&A at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, with David Kipen of NEA, my appreciation for the film grew immensely.

A good director's vision doesn't quit. Warner Bros. wanted a major star in the lead, but Hanson wanted to cast virtual unknowns at the time, and have three leads propelling the story, not just one. The idea was to allow audiences' impressions of the characters to change over the arc the film. He rehearsed for six weeks with Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe in order to get their on-screen relationship just right. He met Kevin Spacey at the actual Formosa Cafe to talk to him about playing Jack Vincennes. He'd hunt for locations in L.A. with production designer Jeanine Oppewall, who had to take many security bars off windows to recall L.A. in the '50s.

In order to convey how Hanson wanted "L.A. Confidential" to feel overall, true to James Ellroy's original novel, he'd present a series of Pablo Ferro images to studio executives, actors, designers, and editors, contrasting the illusion of Los Angeles as a land of plenty with the reality of its less squeaky clean core. Those images eventually inspired the movie's opening sequence.

The perseverance paid off. "L.A. Confidential" was nominated for nine Oscars and won two.