Finding the old coffeehouses among the American chains in Mexico City is hard, says author and journalist Juan Villoros, but they’re wonderful spaces to write in when you find one.
Built over a lake that was drained, overwhelmed by the exhaust of cars and the pollution in a valley encircled by mountains that don’t let the wind in, Mexico City is a bastion of dust mites. The atmosphere isn’t as aggressive as our winter is benevolent (although you suffer inside the houses, built according to the superstitious idea that heat is unnecessary), but spring asthenia thrives in the dirty air. The arrival of the rains, more torrential all the time, provides relief from allergies but not from flooding.
In this context cafs are not, as in other parts of the world, places where you can escape the snow for a while, but rather spots where you can combat the rush and, in some cases, breathe differently. Some modern coffeehouses have a system known as washed air; the more traditional ones dont have it and dont need it: they make up for the vapors of the Italian machine with a fan that simultaneously refreshes the air. The best atmosphere in Mexico City is in a caf.
In my adolescence people spoke of caf intellectuals, not with the respect due to a sect that transmits ideas within the cramped space of a table but with the contempt reserved for those who turn their backs on reality and take refuge in vain speculation.
Nonetheless, the elusory cafs of Mexico City represented singular refuges for reinventing the real with words.
There have never been many cafs in Mexico City. If you don’t count the spots started by Cubans and Spaniards in the centro, among us the caf has never occupied the preeminent place it has in other metropolises. What’s more, the North American-style chains have bit by bit replaced the little cafs where the owner would smoke behind the counter with a dog on a comfortable cushion at his side the unique, unrepeatable places, the grottos of the initiates.
The capitals best-known caf is the Casa de los Azulejos, or House of Tiles, built by a revanchist Spaniard looking to get back at the authoritarian father who had told him, You won’t even be able to build a house of tiles (meaning a toy house). The stately building has a mural by Jos Clemente Orozco in its staircase. Upstairs there’s a bar with a little window in the shape of a flower which gives onto one of the best views of the centro histrico, dominated by domes and bell towers.