StopSmiling

• David Lida Presents:
  Mexico City in the
  21st Century
• A STOP SMILING Event
• 10.01.2009

The STOP SMILING Storefront

Author and journalist David Lida visited the STOP SMILING Storefront to discuss his book First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, The Capital of the 21st Century (Riverhead), recently out in paperback.

Lida was born in New York but left when he saw much of what he loved about the city — energy, spontaneity, cultural richness — fading in the face of development. He found all those things, and more, in Mexico City, where he has lived and worked as a journalist for 15 years.

First Stop is fast establishing itself as the authoritative English-language guide to contemorary Mexico City. It argues that the definitive ubran areas of the 21st century will not be the orderly cities of Europe and the United States, but the hypermetropolises of the developing world — like Mumbai, Shanghai and Sao Paulo — which have grown at astonishing rates as populations flocked in from the country. Mexico City, Lida says, is North America's best example of such a city, and will become increaingly important to the continent.

Lida read from First Stop and discussed issues large and small, from socioeconomic shifts to his favorite neighborhood street cuisine, from slang to sex, to the love-hate relationship the Mexico City literati has with Andre Bretón and the Surrealists, who adopted the city as their home and, some say, co-opted it. Mexico City native Gabriel Feijoo moderated the discussion. 

Click here to read an excerpt from First Stop in the New World.

Special thanks to Riverhead Books, Pabst Blue Ribbon and David Barnes.

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Please visit Chicago Amplified, a Chicago Public Radio audio archive project, to hear a selection of clips from this and other STOP SMILING events.

photography by: Akasha Rabut