this is genius! loved listening to all the different horn sounds - all of which i implicitly understood the meaning of, but have never given words to them.
One noteworthy omission: if you tap the seven notes of "Shave and a Haircut" (dit diddyditdit, dit dit) on your horn, it supposedly means "chinga tu madre, cabron" (fuck your mother, asshole) in Mexico.
Btw, the abbreviated version only consists of 5 honks (ie "chinga tu madre" without the "cabrón" at the end), which is much more common in cdmx these days.
As a matter of fact, there's a common interaction in which one person will do the 5-honk salute and the receiver will reply with the missing 2 honks.
You can hear a couple of samples of that on sound file #13.
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the city’s roads supplant the courtesy more typical in Mexican life for a single rule: “don’t give away an inch”. For this reason, he says, “[d]rivers in Mexico City tend to drive with their eyes pointed straight ahead and cast slightly downward”, because if they were to inadvertently make eye contact with another driver, politeness would demand that they manifest them a gap in the logjam.
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You don't _need_ to be stuck in traffic! Take the metro. Usually you won't be involved in a crash. In all seriousness it's extremely cheap, actually pretty safe, and much faster than a car much of the time.
Agreed. I visited Mexico City a few times this year and found the metro to be excellent. They even have WiFi down in the stations! Just make sure to get the metro card and take change/bills with you for filling it.
Also, Apple / Google maps are so good at the metro system that it’s trivial to use it since you don’t have to think so hard about which direction, which stop, which transfer.
> drivers abandon their chosen path and believe a twisting side road will make things better, if only because they keep moving forward.
I actually wish it was a more widely accepted and recognized feeling. I've seen many drivers consciously choose a suboptimal, smaller route to drive with less people around, more pleasantly, even if they'd arrive later at destination.
But that means the GPS becomes either useless or adversarial. It will always point to an optimized route, and even asking to avoid congestion will only be for the biggest blocks. There's no "choose the path with the absolute fewest people" option, you have to set bullshit waypoints that have a high probability of being traffic free.
Lmao, I grew up driving in Mexico City, it is not a "belief" that the side road can be better. In the US, navigation will purposely avoid residential streets which will save quite a bit of time, but most people blindly believe the GPS route.
I think it comes down to whether people using these roads is seen as an abuse or not.
Sure there will be more traffic, but those roads were built to be open to the public. It wont be the depletion of a natural reserve, and rules can be set to protect from toxic behaviors. For instance many small towns in EU reduce speed to a very low limit and forbid commercial trucks; that avoids intensive drive by and travelers trying to shortcut the highway.
Such a shame that this great article is not published in Spanish alongside the original English publication.
Only about 13% of people speak Spanish in Mexico [0], and while Google translate does an ok job, publications like this would be immensely more impactful if they could reach the people they are written about.
I agree having a translation would be good, but also everyone that lives in Mexico already is very familiar with all of this.
It's not just the car honks. The various noises of the street are an essential part of daily life there, both in CDMX and even in rural areas far from it. I spent some months in both some years ago and you learn the honks on like day one so you don't get run over. You learn all the local jingles within a week or two, because you just have to. The water and gas sellers are easy enough because they just yell or use a tape recording. You learn the cow bell is the trash service. The steam whistle is the sweet potato roasters. The little flute trill is the knife sharpeners. Other vendors all tend to use the same recorded jingle for whatever they're offering.
Mexico is an amazingly pragmatic place where all these various signals emerged organically and are an integral part of daily life. I'll remember the recording for the tamale vendors[1] and the gas de oaxaca jingle[2] for the rest of my life.
A much more difficult one to learn is the whistles used up in the mountains of Oaxaca. These date back to ancient times and people can use them to communicate huge distances, from one side of a valley to another[3].
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 82.7 ms ] threadhttps://pudding.cool/2022/09/cdmx/
https://youtu.be/yitoITlNcKs
Was hearing that recording (not the above track) all over when visiting CDMX a few years back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shave_and_a_Haircut
...actually would be: dit, dit-dit dit dit. You added an extra beat/ syllable (the diddy bit = shave-e-and a hair cut), or two extra.
I see five notes (beats/ syllables) in 'shave and a hair cut', though the seven would fit in.
"Shave and a haircut, thank you". I stand to be corrected, but it is late and i am somewhat tired and emotional.
Btw, the abbreviated version only consists of 5 honks (ie "chinga tu madre" without the "cabrón" at the end), which is much more common in cdmx these days.
As a matter of fact, there's a common interaction in which one person will do the 5-honk salute and the receiver will reply with the missing 2 honks.
You can hear a couple of samples of that on sound file #13.
knock, dah-dah-dah-dah, thump thump.
... I feel observed.
I actually wish it was a more widely accepted and recognized feeling. I've seen many drivers consciously choose a suboptimal, smaller route to drive with less people around, more pleasantly, even if they'd arrive later at destination.
But that means the GPS becomes either useless or adversarial. It will always point to an optimized route, and even asking to avoid congestion will only be for the biggest blocks. There's no "choose the path with the absolute fewest people" option, you have to set bullshit waypoints that have a high probability of being traffic free.
Sure there will be more traffic, but those roads were built to be open to the public. It wont be the depletion of a natural reserve, and rules can be set to protect from toxic behaviors. For instance many small towns in EU reduce speed to a very low limit and forbid commercial trucks; that avoids intensive drive by and travelers trying to shortcut the highway.
Only about 13% of people speak Spanish in Mexico [0], and while Google translate does an ok job, publications like this would be immensely more impactful if they could reach the people they are written about.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English...
It's not just the car honks. The various noises of the street are an essential part of daily life there, both in CDMX and even in rural areas far from it. I spent some months in both some years ago and you learn the honks on like day one so you don't get run over. You learn all the local jingles within a week or two, because you just have to. The water and gas sellers are easy enough because they just yell or use a tape recording. You learn the cow bell is the trash service. The steam whistle is the sweet potato roasters. The little flute trill is the knife sharpeners. Other vendors all tend to use the same recorded jingle for whatever they're offering.
Mexico is an amazingly pragmatic place where all these various signals emerged organically and are an integral part of daily life. I'll remember the recording for the tamale vendors[1] and the gas de oaxaca jingle[2] for the rest of my life.
A much more difficult one to learn is the whistles used up in the mountains of Oaxaca. These date back to ancient times and people can use them to communicate huge distances, from one side of a valley to another[3].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzjlyeeXnec
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi4Rlif4YU8
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eliANcZdkw
Also the "se compra fierro viejo" recording and the whistle of the camote seller.