El Sabroso

Seattle is newly replete with food trucks. The new laws passed by the city in July 2011 made it much easier to be street food vendor in this town, and the payoff has been huge. At any lunchtime in most neighborhoods - and on most major corners - you can find trucks selling sushi, felafel, french toast, udon noodles, crepes, bibimbap - pretty much any street food from any corner of the globe.

For my two bucks, the best "taco trucks" are still taco trucks. Long the only street food vendors of any note in this town, the many Mexican families selling cheap tacos, burritos, tortas and tamales out of their converted panel vans are the people who have long since perfected this art form. And in this Dogg's humble opinion, El Sabroso on Beacon Hill remains the ne plus ultra of taco trucks. This family-owned business was founded by Daniel Perez Jimenez - born in Oaxaca and schooled in cooking in Mexico City. Arriving in the U.S. in 1999, Perez helped open the kitchen of Tango Tapas Restaurant in Seattle, moved to San Antonio for a stint, then came back to Seattle in 2006 to direct a kitchen on Capitol Hill and open his taco truck in his family's Beacon Hill neighborhood.

The menu at El Sabroso doesn't vary greatly from standard Mexican street fare - tortas, tacos, burriots and horchata - but the ingredients are always fresh, there is always seafood on the menu in addition to the usual meats, and the chef's special quesadilla "La Sabrosota," filled with bacon, sausage, ham, egg and cheese - is a masterpiece.

The truck itself is gorgeous as well, with a spray painted mural of Emiliano Zapata and the slogan "La Tierra es Para Quien la Trabaja" ("The land belongs to those who work it") painted high above the serving window.

El Sabroso can be found every day at the corner of Roberto Maestas Festival Street and 16th Ave. S., in front of El Centro de la Raza.

Bob Gasoi

Robert Gasoi was a product of the last great time. Born in 1932 and raised in Brooklyn, the son of an immigrant milkman, his drawing and painting skills led him to the Cooper Union School of Art, to the Korean war, and then to Oxford University, Rome, Upstate New York, and his final home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Though Gasoi only managed to scrape a meager living out of his art work, he never stopped painting, leaving a large legacy of paintings, drawings, murals and illustrations. When he died in 1997, his daughter Emily traveled to Mexico to collect his few belongings, which included the many paintings, drawings, photos, newspaper clippings, and other detritus that documented his incessantly creative life. After years of work, Emily recently published a lovely tribute to her father on the web, rich with images that convey the love she felt for her Dad, and the wonder he found in the world.

Happy Days

As you read this, I am currently laying on the beach on Mexico's Pacific Coast, watching the waves come in. Or maybe I'm already in the bar, drinking a Negra Modelo and eating fresh ceviche. Happy Days.

Back home in Seattle, another woman is spending time on the beach. However, seeing as how her travel agent is one Samuel Beckett, one can assume her time is somewhat less enjoyable. In fact, actress Mary Ewald is currently buried in sand up to her neck, getting ready for her turn as Winnie in the New City Theater production of Beckett's play Happy Days.

The ironically titled play is indeed a beach scene of sorts - the action takes place on an endless expanse of beach, with harsh sunlight beating down on the protagonists. Winnie, the main character, is buried in sand, completely immobile, engaging in her tedious daily routine. There is no relief from the heat - at one point even her parasol, her only protection, bursts into flames. Meanwhile her only companion in the world, Willie - played by Seanjohn Walsh - grunts with irritation, works Vaseline into his privates and sleeps. In short, this is theater not be missed.

Happy Days opens on March 1st. Tickets are available right here. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a margarita demanding my attention.

WK in DF

Street artist WK Interact is in Mexico City right now, having just completed work on a massive mural on the walls of the Archivo General de la Nación or General National Archives. The image above is just one cropped section of the 200 meter long design that WK has been installing for weeks. More images from the mural in progress here.

With WK’s characteristic energy and dynamism the mural expresses the power-struggle between the federal and revolutionary armies during the Mexican Revolution, which commemorates its 100th anniversary this year. The building commonly known as the “Black Palace of Lecumberri” was built by Porfirio Diaz’s government in 1900 and served as a prison until 1976. The notorious jail held such figures such as Pancho Villa and the legendary muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros and was the site of the assassination of President Francisco Madero, the event that sparked the most violent period of the Revolution. Today the Archivo houses an important part of Mexico’s graphic legacy, and a section of the building will soon be transformed into a museum.

The grand opening took place yesterday, November 20, and the monumental mural will be exhibited until January 20, 2011.

San Pancho Rooster

One of my favorite artists in Seattle - an extremely talented painter, illustrator and graphic designer who also happens to paint splendid graffiti behind the tag 179 - was down in San Pancho, Mexico during the recent storms and floods that washed out seven bridges in seven days, left dozens of families homeless, and cut off the small rural community from food and supplies.

In between watching the disaster unfold and helping where she could, she created a new illustration which she has now turned into a silk-screened limited-edition print. She is selling the signed and numbered prints as a way to raise money for the ongoing relief efforts. She has set no price - all sales are by donation - and all proceeds are going directly to the relief organization Entreamigos.

For more information on the relief efforts go here. More of 179's work here, and images from her adventures in Mexico right here.

Salvador Elizondo

Today is the birthday of Salvador Elizondo, born December 19, 1932. The Mexican novelist, poet, critic, playwright, and journalist was one of the most unabashedly experimental writers coming out of the vibrant Mexican literary world of the 19650's & 60's. Elizondo is perhaps the best known of the Mexican "meta-fictionalists," his style combining a wonderfully poetic sense of language with vernacular outbursts from news reports, comic books and the sounds of Mexico City street life. Elizondo was a Professor of literature at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for two decades, and received dozens of international awards, including both Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants, and received the 1990 Mexican National Prize for Literature.

Elizondo's most widely read novel is Farabeuf, the fictionalized biography of an early-20th century renegade anatomist, but my personal favorite is the wonderfully strange and idiosyncratic El Grafógrafo ("The Graphographer"), a series of short texts using dozens of voices and unexpected twists of language to give a tour of a writer's mind as he puts pen to paper.

Elizondo died in Mexico City on March 29, 2006.

From El Grafógrafo

I write. I write I write. Mentally I am writing I write and I can also see that I write myself. I remember seeing and writing and writing. And I am remembering that I am writing and I remember seeing myself remembering that I wrote and I write seeing myself write that I remember having seen me write that I was writing I remembered having seen me writing and writing writing writing writing that. I can also imagine writing that he had written that I imagine writing that he had written that I thought writing that I am writing to write.