Partee

Well, I went to the Mexico-US Chamber of Commerce party and as I should have expected, it was a stiff affair. Nobody told me I had to bedeck myself in finery, so I wore civilian clothing, only to find everybody wearing suits and cocktail or evening wear, some of it quite fugly (oh, how I wished the girls from Go Fug Yourself were there).
There was a Mariachi band playing the usual standards but the crowd was so stiff they weren't paying attention. Not even endless quantities of excellent Don Julio tequila (who is doing an amazing marketing campaign, they are everywhere) were enough to rouse the crowd from its stiffness.
I think it is a remarkable achievement to throw a party with these three elements: mariachis, tequila and Mexican food and succeed in making it boring.

To be fair, I left at 10 pm, long before people got really plastered, or so I hope. The high point of the evening, besides seeing my dear friends Jorge and Marlene, was the food. Pretty much every serious Mexican restaurant in NY was represented and it was yummy. There was goat stew, and cochinita and chiles en nogada and quesadillitas de huitlacoche and ceviches and I ate a lot. I remembered the days not long ago when you could not find a decent Mexican meal in NY. Not anymore.

Chiles en Nogada...


Octopus ceviche (I think)...

Quesadillitas de Queso Oaxaca... mmm.

There is a kind of Mexican (the well to do, investment banker kind, or the fortunate bureaucrat type), who wears a bottle of gel in their slicked back hair (for the women it's mountains of spray and oodles of makeup) and looks like (my mother used to say) they are smelling farts. So there was a lot of that at this party. Jorge Castañeda arrived, acting as if he really wanted to be recognized, or as we say in Mexican, dándose su taco, giving himself his taco (airs) which worked because he was, as far as I could tell, the only somebody there. I introduced myself to star architect Enrique Norten and told him I love his buildings. Is that a great pickup line or what?
I had a great time with my friends and then I went to my other party, which was in a small, lovely apartment overlooking Tompkins Sq Park, with more lovely friends.
I didn't make it to the third one. And this is what I found when I got home. A bicycle hanging from a lamppost.