It’s also where many young Mexicans who don’t fit in elsewhere seem to wind up. It’s not only where you can pick up a bootleg copy of the Clash’s “London Calling,” buy a Rasta cap, recruit a bass player for your band, grab a quick snog with your boyfriend or girlfriend (away from prying parental eyes) and get one or more body parts pierced, all in a single afternoon.
Since its humble beginnings in the early 1980s, “El Chopo,” as it’s popularly known, has mixed anti-authoritarian politics and under-the-radar lifestyles, and, more recently, cash and commerce. That’s why, for nearly a quarter-century, Mexico’s young and disaffected, along with a number of their graying elders, have flocked to El Tianguis Cultural del Chopo, an open-air flea market that every Saturday commandeers a three-block area of this capital city. And what’s the point of wearing a “Never Mind the Bollocks” T-shirt if almost nobody here knows what bollocks are?īut you can’t keep a good anarchist or “Oi” skinhead down.
The requisite apparel - long black coats, bovver boots, a spiky headful of gel - can seem borderline masochistic with summer temperatures hovering in the mid-80s. It takes a certain fearlessness, or sublime indifference, to be a punk, Goth or other type of tribal provocateur in this tradition-minded metropolis.
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