Detail of street crowd, Mexico City, 2014 (click through for full photo)I’ve always liked photographs of crowds. Cameras are great at recording a lot of detail quickly and for me they give a way of studying the people, and seeing how I do (or don’t) fit in. I remember when I first came to Quebec I took so many pictures of people on the street, just trying to understand about my new home. Unfortunately, one of the things I came to understand is that you don’t generally do that here! But it did help me to feel a connection and start to find my place.
New Haven Green looking south towards Federal Courthouse, March 1968
Photos age well too. A picture taken now looks like, well, now. But a picture taken more than four decades ago records something that’s gone. That can be precious if it’s of one person. When the photo is of a lot of people it gives a feeling of the time, the place, and customs.
These are (mostly) Yale students, on the New Haven Green. It was one of the early large East Coast demonstrations against the Vietnam War and as such was covered by the international media and watched closely – by both friend and foe.
A large number of Armenians lived in Damascus, including this man with his two sons. I felt a connection to Hagop because his family endured the same Turkish/Ottoman exodus that had engulfed my mother’s side of the family. Added to that connection was his name – Hagop. It was the same as an elderly man who had been a surrogate grandfather to me.
On this day Hagop was displeased. He complained to me (in English) that his sons were not as capable of running the store as he was. Here they don’t look happy either. He probably wasn’t an easy person to work for.
Mexico City trolley line and traffic on Lázaro Cárdenas
Mexico City always gets a bad rap – crowded, worn, dangerous, polluted – take your choice. The stereotyping gets a little tiring. Yes, Mexico has its problems, but so too does Montreal, or New York, or for that matter any other city in the world. On a recent trip to Chicago, for example, the daughter of a friend who picked me up at the airport couldn’t help but tell me how many recent killings there had been block by block as we approached her parent’s home. Thanks but no thanks.
One of the things I like about travel is comparing the places I go to the place I live. I’m especially attuned to public transport and traffic; one I like and the other I don’t. My best traffic avoidance technique is a bike. In Montreal we have an extensive and expanding bike path system, but also serious problems with bike-truck accidents and figuring out how to balance the shared use of roadways and sidewalks. So when I got to Mexico City I had my antennas out.
Traffic looking down on Juaréz from the Tower Latinoamericana
We travelled by taxi from the airport and the right away the experience seemed like an invitation to take public transit. In Montreal we talk about using different forms of transport but in Mexico City it’s being done. Their systems handle a lot of people, often with creative solutions to difficult problems. An example would be extending the popular Metrobús system through the narrow streets of the Centro Histórico.
Narrow lane Metrobús line through Centro Histórico – notice bikes using other lane
Mexico City is the third largest city in the world – and the metro system carries 4.4 million people a day (2012), versus the Montreal metro system’s .975 million (2013) people per day – that’s roughly four and a half times more volume per day, ranking it eighth in the world.
Main artery traffic: The only time this street quiets is on holidays or late at night
The main avenues are rivers of traffic. They start flowing as soon as the light turns green and run fast until the next red. On the main arteries merges are not anything that can be called polite. The protocol is to barge in and whoever is chicken ends up last.
Not for the weak: Locked personally owned bikes near Tacubaya turnstiles
It’s that same vehicular aggressiveness that makes it hard to believe that biking in the city would have a happy ending. To be honest, my first reaction was that biking was out in Mexico City. That was my first impression. But I always watch people on bikes trying to gauge what it would be like to be one myself. I saw hopeful signs. Some riders had their own bikes but a lot of people were using bikes from the ecobici rental system. After exploring around on foot I found easy (and used) ways through neighborhoods that avoided the main arteries. I also found well constructed bike paths.
