Quezada at the Museo de la Ciudad de México

To call Abel Quezada Mexico's greatest cartoonist somehow undermines his importance. His medium may have been the newspaper caricature, but you could call him the Mexican Voltaire: a satirist and social commentator, possessed of a merciless rapier wit and profound wisdom about his country and his countrymen. He made fun of the powerful and the wealthy (among his favored personalities were Gastón Billetes, who wore a diamond ring on his nose, and the Dama Caritativa de Las Lomas, as well as any number of politicians) as well as starving-to-death journalists (so thin as to be barely visible except in profile), vendors of tacos de carnitas (replete with buzzing flies around their stands), bureaucrats, cops, mariachis, cowboys and supposed machos. He was also an accomplished painter and watercolorist. An exemplary retrospective of his work is on display at the Museo de la Ciudad de México (Pino Suárez 30, Centro Histórico) until April 3rd. Don't miss it.

In and around cantina La Potosina on calle Jesús María

You can make a donation at this altar to Santa Muerte before your drink.

Customer in training watches TV.

Perennial drinking buddies.

After a couple of pops, who cares about elves and raindeer?

Comida corrida

You've been working at home all day. It's about three in the afternoon, Mexican lunch hour. Do you want to start to disinfect lettuce for a salad, to cook a meal? I didn't think so.

Go out and get some fresh air. Around the corner are various luncheonettes where you can sit at a sidewalk table (or inside if you're sensitive to the afternoon breeze) and eat a multicourse meal. Have a refreshing glass of agua de jamaica -- water flavored with dried hibiscus petals and a little sugar.

First, there's the soup course. How about chicken broth with fresh vegetables? You can doctor it with that lime and some fresh salsa.

Then there's rice, made with tomato and garlic. This is the equivalent to the pasta course in Italy.

On to the plato fuerte -- the main dish. One of today's specials is chicken with green tomatoes, served with black beans.

The best part is the fresh tortillas that accompany everything.

If you're like me, you want to sit next to the grill, so you can get them while they're hot.

It's hard to get worked up over the dessert course -- usually it's jello or flan out of a package, as shown here. Still, it's nice to have a little sweet at the end of the meal.

There are at least a couple of choices for each course, and several for the plato fuerte. This was my lunch the other day at El Rico Sazón, on Calle Puebla between Veracruz and Tampico in Colonia Roma Norte. It cost 40 pesos -- a little more than three dollars, or two euros, at the current exchange rate. Of course 40 pesos is close to a full day's minimum wage here, but that's a perennial hard-luck story.

Worst kept secrets

In Mexico City, they get the "alcoholics" part well enough, but what happened to the "anonymous"?

Hairy tale

Once upon a time, men in the Colonia Condesa cut their hair every week. As soon as they could sense the hairs on the back of their necks touching their shirt collars, they felt raggedy and went straight to the barber shop. David and Miguel, who cut hair on Avenida Vicente Suárez, in between the cantina El Centenario and the restaurant El Japonéz, remember that they would sometimes go to work on December 31st and have so many customers that they wouldn't arrive home until the new year. Permanent staffers included a manicurist and a man to shine shoes.

These days the guys in the neighborhood are a lot shaggier -- the shop closed early on New Year's Eve --but there is still enough work for the two barbers, who have toiled in the the same spot for fifty-seven years.