Would you like to say welcome to Mexico?
Welcome to Mexico
Órale güey!
Buenos días. Good morning. Day two. Mexico City.
Right now we are in Condesa on Calle Amsterdam,
and we have an amazing day planned.
The whole day we're going to be exploring Mexico City's
long history of art, but first it's breakfast time.
And there's a really famous spot right around
the corner that has a huge line.
We're going to show you when we get there.
Supposedly, people will sit here and wait
for upwards of an hour.
But it's worth it because these tortas...
tortas are basically like sandwiches,
and these ones are filled with chilaquiles chips,
tortilla chips that have been
soaked in a beautiful sauce.
Gracias
Beans, shredded chicken, chilaquiles,
a little bit of cream.
Yum
Well we've just demolished
two of those tortas, super deliciosas.
Now we're going to switch gears a little bit.
We're going to dive into the world
of street art here in Condesa.
Muralism has a really long history here in Mexico.
It goes back to Diego Rivera and before that.
We're going to go talk to Genaro and Alejandro
and learn a bit more about what's going on
in the world of street art in Mexico City.
We are Street Art Chilango
and we are here at Condesa.
We are standing in front of Storm Trooper
that we did last year.
In 2013 we decided to open this web page
called Street Art Chilango,
just to index all the street art in Mexico City
by using the hash tag #StreetArtChilango,
uploading it to Instagram.
Just tell them about how street art got started
here in Mexico City. It has a lot of history
back in the last century with Diego Rivera,
Siqueiros, and all the rock street artist
that actually traveled the world painting,
and they called it "Muralism"
In the last, I don't know, seven years the street art
hype around the world has created a
sense that we Mexicans, we knew about.
We feel really proud of it.
We feel its part of our Mexican ideology.
We found two storm troopers over there,
but it looks like we've just stumbled upon
the entire Imperial Army.
These guys not only curate street art,
but also create a lot of their own
with local artist.
We're walking through Condesa.
This is a really beautiful neighborhood.
There's a lot of old art nouveau houses.
Show you more in a bit.
Princess Lea paying the parking.
That's instead of her putting the USB drive
into R2D2
with the message for Obi Wan Kenobi
She's paying the parking fees.
This one is called "Open Your Heart."
and we just finished it a couple of weeks ago.
Okay. So the name of this artist is Curiot.
He's Mexican and paints Mexican -themed murals.
What do you see in this one, Alex?
It's a God. Huitchol god. It's a tribe.
that lives in the desert.
It looks pretty psychedelic. Do they have
psychedelic experiences in their tribe, as well?
Peyote.
It's an indigenous group from Mexico.
They live in the desert, and they use peyote
which is a type of cactus that if you eat,
you have an hallucinogenic experience.
Curiot has kind of harnessed that.
I love the colors. The colors of Mexico are so vibrant.
It makes it way more different than the street art
you might see in Europe or something.
Okay guys. That was super cool,
but now we're going to switch gears up a bit
and go find the original Mexican street artist
which are the muralists -
Diego Rivera and all of his colleagues .
So long story short, a hundred years ago Mexico
went through a revolution,
and they brought in a progressive government
that contracted Rivera and other artists
of the time to create these huge
public works of art with two goals:
1. To educate the illiterate through art and
2. To create a national identity.
We're going to go check out the Palacio de Bellas Artes
which is where some of his most famous works are,
including "Man Controller of the Universe."
So now we are inside Palacio de Bellas Artes,
which was originally built as an opera house.
This place is cool.
Gotham City vibes.
I'm Bruce Wayne. I live in Gotham City - a.k.a. Mexico City
And I'm here for the art
Behind me is Rivera's most famous painting:
Man Controller of the Universe.
If you've seen the movie "Frida," then you know
the story behind it.
Basically, he was contracted by Rockefeller
in New York, who was the epitome of
the capitalist, and Rivera was a communist.
He included Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx,
and Trotsky in the painting, which
of course, the Rockefellers did not really enjoy.
So they forced him to
tear down the painting in New York,
and he came back to Mexico City
and re-created here.
This is like the Golden Era of Muralism
The power of these pieces is just incredible.
In that time when a lot of people in Mexico were illiterate,
this was a really powerful force for
for creating that identity, creating that education
that didn't exist until that time.
Well, interesting morning.
Definitely a really cool building,
but we're going to transition into a much
smaller, more intimate place:
the home of Frida Kahlo who was Diego Rivera's wife,
lover, complicated story, but interesting woman.
We're going to meet up with another
interesting woman named Fernanda Caballero
a local Instagrammer. So, see you on a bit.
And now we're at Frida Kahlo's house,
the blue house,
with Fernanda.
Tell us what you do.
I'm a yoga teacher, but I travel the world
around like these two guys.
Yeah, and she's got a killer Instagram account,
so check it out, as well. Link in the info box.
This is the blue house where Frida was born.
This is where she was living when she got in
that famous accident. If you've seen the
opening scene of the movie "Frida,"
she recovered here, started painting here,
later married Diego Rivera, whose works
we just saw.
When they got married, they bought the
house from her family and lived here together.
This is one of my favorite places in the city
because you can really get the sense
of her passion
and how much she suffered through
her beautiful, yet chaotic life.
The gardens are super nice.
There's a.....what is that called?
A pyramid. There we go.
There's a pyramid. There're snake heads.
There's an Olmec head back there
hiding in the garden.
You can feel the artistic inspiration.
OK guys. Well, we can't film inside the house,
so bear with us.
Give you a little photo montage
of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's
home, kitchen, bedrooms, and art space.
Pretty interesting seeing this place
and walking through the
space that they actually lived and worked in;
get a real feel for what life would have been like.
You can really understand their inspiration
and things that happened in their lives
and what shaped their world view.
Pretty interesting place, for sure.
I'm tripping right now.
Did we take mescal or mescaline?
Because I am....it's weird.
People get down in, like, parks here.
Everybody is just macking each other's faces off.....
just making out so hard.
Public parks is fair game.
A lot of people come here to "dominguear,"
which is to pass a nice "domingo," a nice Sunday.
And then we are going to "emborachar" un poco
because we are going to have some mescal.
And then we are going to "comer"
because you cannot drink without eating.
And I don't know where we're going to "comer,"
or what we're going to "comer,"
but guess what? It's going to be good.
My name is Marco Mendes
and we are now in Coyoacan
in the Corazon de Maguey restaurant
and mezcaleria.
We are the "mescal cathedral" of Mexico.
Tequila and mescal are the same.
Tequila is only from Jalisco
The mescal is produced in 20 states in Mexico.
But the mescal is protagonist of the towns.
When someone is born, people drink mescal.
When someone dies, people drink mescal.
When you are married, mescal.
When you divorce, mescal too.
I've got a feeling we're going to walk out of here
like three amigos.
Hashtag #Vagadrunk.
Or as they say in Spanish "de cuatro patas"
I'm not a big Tequila guy
because when I was younger,
I had a bad Tequila experience, you know what I mean?
But mescal is totally different:
it's smooth; you don't need a chaser,
and when you exhale, it's just smokey and delicious.
Si senor.
Mescal is supposed to be the medicine of the soul.
A good drink in our hand, some good friends,
and we're in a beautiful place.
I think I'm liking Mexico city more and more
with each passing minute. Salud! Yes. Salud!
Cheers.
El Rey Mysterio?
Vlogging in a Mexican wrestling match.
Fernanda, come in here. It's been a fun day.
Guys, thanks for watching. If you liked the video,
you know what to do: thumbs-up,
subscribe to Vagabrothers,
and share it with your friends. That's it.
In the meantime, remember to stay curious,
keep exploring, and we'll see you guys on the road
or in the ring.