Night-time

Went out last night for our first real night-life experience in Oaxaca. We had thought we were going to a piano/blues bar, to satisfy a craving for live music, but after walking five blocks past where it should have been and then back, we started to feel pretty sure that a) the bar had moved, b) the address we had found was way off, or c) it was all some elaborate hoax designed to encourage blues-lovers to wander hopelessly up and down Calle 20 de Noviembre while the perpetrators laughed from some second story window. We're still trying to understand the culture here...

Anyway, what a great stroke of luck it turned out to be. We walked on up 20 de Noviembre to where it turned into Porfirio Diaz, past a number of pretty thumping dance clubs and one very noisy - yet strangely empty - bar, hoping that maybe we would see something enticing. And a few blocks up, we did. We were drawn into the front because it looked like a semi-quaint wine bar, with brightly painted tables and a few small, interconnected rooms; plus there was a lively band playing a loud mix of jazz, classic american pop and swing/ska, all at the same time - an infectious mix of drums, flute, guitar, saxophone and almost-snarky vocals. Wandering into the back, we found a small rough-concrete courtyard, with rough-hewn wooden tables and chairs, uneven floors, a diverse crowd (dress, nationalities and ages) and a mural of enormous figures on the walls that included lucha-libre wrestlers, shadowy skeleton gun-fighters and an old man in a lazy-boy. Perfecto.

The place was (and is) called La Nueva Babel and the owner told us later on in the night that this was because all languages were spoken there. (We only heard English and Spanish, but then again, we weren't really there too long.) Erica had a cheap, large, potent, and delicious mezcal, served with chile and plenty of limes. I had a beer and a michelada (beer mixed with chile), and we both felt like we had found a place we could come back to.

By the way, we found out that the old man painted in the lazy-boy was a prominent supporter of social causes ranging from gay rights to the struggle of workers. His name was Carlos Monsivais, and he died earlier this year.