When Zona Rosa is your backyard

Posted on April 8, 2010

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
– The Waste Land: I The Burial of the Dead by T.S. Eliot

We’ve been keeping in touch with our friends from the Monterrey trip. Last weekend Taurin and I hosted our first party here in D.F. Not too different from house parties back home except for the language we speak (but hey, my Spanish is improving!).

Here is a short video my friend Carlos shot during the party.

I live very close to Zona Rosa (“The Pink Zone”), a safe haven for Mexico City’s LGBT population as well as its growing Korean immigrant community.

I’ve been hesitant to try out the Korean restaurants, mostly because the only thing I know about Koreans here is that there are Korean mafias running Tepito (not kidding). But Taurin and I were craving some Korean BBQ one late afternoon. And because we are just that hardcore, we ended up going into a restaurant that did not have a sign in Spanish or English. (But if you can read Korean, it’s called Minsokchon. If you can’t, it’s that small restaurant with a beaded door right across from Tahiti, which I think is a giant strip club).

We ordered a soft tofu hotpot and two portions of spicy marinaded pork belly + octopus (okay that octopus was still moving on that grill). Our meal came with about ten small plates of banchan (tapas), two different types of kimchi (daikon and nappa), and bowls of hot sticky rice. I felt like I could be back home in the U.S. except I could barely understand the Korean people were speaking around me. Everyone was speaking a mix of Korean with Spanish words thrown in. I stopped trying to eavesdrop and concentrated on my food. DELICIOUS.

P.S. I took my housemate Alina’s suggestion and got a haircut in Zona Rosa earlier this week!