A Sad Trip

Yesterday was a chilly, overcast day.  The dismal weather seemed appropriate for where I was going to go, a place that I dreaded seeing, yet a place that I needed to see.   I was going to Condesa, one of my favorite parts of the city.  This neighborhood of tree-lined streets, art-deco buildings, and innumerable restaurants is where I stayed on many of my previous trips to Mexico City.  And this is one of the neighborhoods that was most severely affected by last month's earthquake.

I took the Metrobus north up Insurgentes Avenue for five stops.  I got off, and headed toward Amsterdam Avenue, a pleasant, leafy street that runs in an oval, following the course of the horse track that used to be there in an earlier era.  Amsterdam is very much the heart and soul of Condesa.  At first everything looked just the same as I passed by my familiar haunts.  There was the pastry shop, Gran Vía... the teahouse, Cassava Roots, where I would often get a chai latte... and the little restaurant El Orujo that serves tasty Uruguayan sandwiches.  

Then I arrived at Amsterdam #7, where I had rented an apartment through AirBnB at least a half dozen times.  The building was still standing, but the bags of cement by the entrance indicated that all was not well.

One of the doormen from the apartment building was standing outside.  I walked over, and he remembered me.  We chatted for a while.  The building suffered serious damage, but was still structurally sound.  However, while repairs were underway, the residents had to move out.

It seemed as if my former abode was the portal to destruction, because as I continued down Amsterdam the evidence of damage was more obvious and more distressing.  We all saw on the news horrific images of buildings that had collapsed, but there are many, many more buildings which still stand but which were damaged beyond repair.  They will have to be demolished.

Just three doors down from the apartment where I used to stay was this modern apartment building which was heavily damaged.  I don't know if it can be repaired.

Just a block away was an art-deco building which had recently been spruced up, and a beauty salon had opened on the ground floor.  That building is now gone.

Next door to that is an apartment building with posts holding the entrance up from collapse and a sign saying that it is condemned.

I detoured a block from Amsterdam to Alvaro Obregón Avenue.  There, just across the street from the supermarket where I used to shop, was the one of the larger collapsed buildings that had been shown on news reports.  Around thirty people died here.

The street in front of it is closed to traffic because the rubble is still being hauled away.

Not far away on Sonora Avenue there are more damaged buildings.

Alejandro had told me about this building... Edificio Basurto.  Built in the 1940s, it was one of the most beautiful and emblematic of the art-deco apartment buildings in Condesa.  Although to the casual observer it does not look too badly damaged, it will have to be demolished.

As I continued my walk through Condesa, it seemed as if I had left the earthquake behind.  Then, at the southern end of Parque México, there was another cluster of damage. 

Then, as if to say that Mexico City will survive this tragedy, the clouds broke and the sun shined in Parque México.

In memoriam to

those who perished in the earthquake.

In honor of those rescuers

who saved many from the rubble.