Where Everybody Knows Your Nombre

MEXICO CITY—The clock behind the bar at El Nivel, the oldest cantina in Mexico City, runs backward, an apt metaphor for the spiritual condition of two of its clients on a recent Friday afternoon. Fiftyish, with rumpled, crooked smiles on their faces, they sat with their arms around each other’s shoulders, not only as a gesture of solidarity but also to keep from falling to the floor. There were more than a dozen empty glasses on the table. One said to the other, in a voice loud enough to be heard through most of the cantina:

Seas Domínguez
O no me chingues,
Estás pedo.

This is vulgar, specifically Mexico City slang. A literal translation would make no sense, but the gist was that his friend was staggeringly drunk. The friend removed his arm from the other man’s shoulder, dismissed him with a wave, and rose to go to the bathroom. As he stood, most of the cantina’s patrons—art students and ponytailed post-hippies, middle-aged boulevardiers in antique suits, bureaucrats who would not bother to return to work that afternoon, neighborhood layabouts—scrutinized him with morbid curiosity to see if he would actually arrive at his destination.

Miraculously, he made his way in a more or less straight line. Yet just before he got to the WC, he tottered and dropped to the floor like an elevator cut from its cables. A long-suffering white-jacketed waiter pulled him to a standing position and escorted him back to his seat, where the waiter would continue to serve him drinks.

Although Mexico City cantinas are mostly no-frills establishments, lit by fluorescent bulbs and with mounds of cigarette butts on the floors, they have as much personality as London pubs, Paris cafés, and New York bars—and not only due to the performance art of their most intoxicated clients. Cantinas have history—El Nivel opened its doors in 1855. They have tradition—Mexicans are used to drinking in them, while European- or American-style bars are fewer and often located off hotel lobbies.

There is also entertainment, in the form of itinerant musicians whose talents vary wildly, many of them more interested in cadging drinks than in playing. At Tío Pepe, decrepit troubadours play guitars and sing for the customers, who are mostly middle-aged men in suits and ties getting progressively smashed. One afternoon at Tío Pepe, I saw a dwarf with a straw hat and a sparse beard sit on a high stool and sing incantations of passionate love in the nasal tremolo of a Munchkin. He turned out to be Margarito, a down-on-his-luck film comedian whose career would soon be resuscitated on TV.

In a far-from-egalitarian city, cantinas are the most democratic institutions. Anyone who can afford the price of a drink is welcome. The best ones attract a heterogeneous crowd: Bureaucrats in polyester suits, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by extravagantly made-up women who are clearly not their wives. Guys with thick mustaches and muddy boots who appear to have just gotten off a turnip truck from Sonora. Smooching couples. College kids, wearing nose rings and huaraches and sporting elaborate tattoos. Men with crew cuts who could be drug dealers, undercover police officers, or both. An evident minority of foreigners, teachers, journalists. On Saturday afternoons, some cantinas attract entire families, including toddlers and grandparents.

Perhaps what best distinguishes cantinas from bars in other cities is that they’re great places to eat—free with the price of drinks. No city I know is as generous to its drinkers as the D.F (Distrito Federal). During the traditional lunchtime (between about 2 and 5 p.m.), as long as you keep ordering booze, you’re rewarded with botanas, the Mexican equivalent of tapas. While the portions aren’t huge, there are frequently five or more different items available. Sometimes the abundance, variety, and quality of the offerings are stupefying. For example, recently at La Mascota (where an annoying waiter insistently tried to raffle off bottles of cheap rum and domino sets), there were seven dishes. I tried the pancita (a spicy tripe soup), stewed pork shank, chicken in green sauce, and meatballs in chipotle chile. They would have kept it coming, but I cried uncle.