Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Wanderlust: Metal Edition :: Mexico City is "muy caliente" (El Chopo)

We have discussed to length before how the rest of the world is still living in 1988 and it's the U.S. alone that thinks metal is dead. I recently spent 2 weeks in Mexico City and, let me tell you, it was an ALL-OUT-METAL-ASSULT! Or, like they'd say over there: TODO-AFUERA-ASALTO-METALERO!

Sometimes, when I fall asleep listening to Slayer, I dream of a place where you can hang out with other metalheads with South of Heaven blasting from a car parked near-by. A place where thousands will gather to show off their backpatches. A place where I can buy an Iron Maiden Eddie rubber mask for $9 and Morbid Angel's complete bootlegged discography for $0.75. Well, my friends, that place exists, and it's called El Chopo. This heaven on earth is basically the awesomest flea market in history. Hundreds of little metal/punk/goth street vendors set up shop on the weekends through about 8 blocks of city streets. They sell EVERYTHING metal, from spikey belts and bracelets to Acid Reign bootleg DVDs; from Pungent Stench T-shirts to King Diamond embroidered patches. My Mexican friend Memo warned of the sheer amazingness of this place, but I was not ready for this level of absolute, dark, metal mayhemic (Metal Sin reference) rock-o-rama! I'm sure right now you are thinking: "No way, 'Krusher, you GOTTA be lyin'!" Nope, I'm not. Proof? I got your proof RIGHT HERE! (I'm grabbing my crotch and pointing to this YouTube video narrated by Pedro, from Napoleon Dynamite... not really.) Ignore the punk, goth and hippie shit:





Oh, yeah, they also have awesome live bands:






So, of course when I was there, I met lots of Luchadores and bought plenty of shit. I asked my new Luchador friends to pose, wearing some of the shirts I bought and here's the gallery of my treasures:

Dr. Wagner Jr. sporting an awesome WehrMacht tee.


Ultimo Dragón wearing Dark Angel


Avismo Negro (R.I.P.) in a gorgeous Venom long sleeve


Mistico (my current fave Luchador) rocks the CF t-shirt right




Please Note: The above are not the ACTUAL luchadores. It's just me wearing their masks in my apartment. Please don't make fun of my circa 1998 hp scanner/printer that I haven't used in over 5 years or of my lady bug kitchen towels, my still-sealed spice rack or my never-been-used red kettle. Shaking off the remains of my ex-wife's influence in my life is tougher than I thought. Well, Abismo Negro died like six months ago and Ultimo Dragón lives in Japan, so it's not like this fashion show would have been impossible anyway.

28 comments:

  1. Those 3 longsleeves are pretty sweet... I used to have that Venom one until some cunt stole it (may she forever burn in hell and be forced to listen to Bullet Boys on repeat for all eternity)...

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  2. Yeah I bet those longsleeves pull all the ladies and impress fat metal nerds

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  3. cool post and cool place! i'd love to hunt for bootleg loudness shirts there!

    i can't look at the to mega therion artwork without getting pissed off though. there was a really shitty local death metal band around here (st. louis) that used the art from that album for the cover of one of their releases...without even being aware that CF used it, or that CF commisioned it just for that LP. i'm not even sure if they knew who CF were.

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  4. also:

    dark angel long sleeve = holy loly

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  5. Anonymous: when was the last time you saw a clitoris? Huh? Who was president back then?!

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  6. Mexico City would be cool except for all the dirty beaners. Always yapping in their stinky lingo. Gotta give 'em props for the whole human sacrifice thing centuries ago and their decent body counts these days in the cartel wars. Pretty fucking metal.

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  7. John,

    wishing for someone to be forced to listen to Bullet Boys for eternity is a bit rough. With time, you'll regret having said such things, just sayin'

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  8. no "la parka" mask? could you score an old "tiger mask" or such?

    lucha libre!

    metaleros rule! i wish i wasn't so overtly caucasian and other metaleros to hang with. curses!

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  9. Holy fuck! I'm so jealous! I was just in Guadalajara, and i was searching for fellow metalheads! No luck! Next stop Mexico City, I just don't want to get kidnapped.

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  10. Whoa! Nice fucking kettle. That thing rocks.

    Seriously, I thought I'd died and gone to Metal Heaven (or Hell) after I'd queued for about four hours in sub-Saharan temperatures to get into the Metal Market at the Dynamo festival back in '98, but this place beats the living tar out of that. It's almost worth getting a ticket to Mexico City just for that Venom and CF top...

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  11. ben, La Parka (or LA Park) masks were everywhere, but honestly, since he split from AAA I can't stand the whole thing.

    matt from denver: i did see TONS of voivod shit, but i only got stuff from good bands. ooooooh! zzzzing!

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  12. definitely need more rasslin' talk .... who was in the AAA cage match that actually died in the ring for five minutes or something?

    plus another one where a guy juiced so much it was coming through his mask.

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  13. i dunno about anyone dying in the ring recently, but abismo negro died while i was there. im a big fan of CMLL and never really liked AAA, but now i have a very good reason not to like them fo'real. they dressed black abyss like abismo negro and had matches like that after his death. thats SO disrespectful! whatever, AAA just wants to be WWE = crap. CMLL is where it's at in mexico.

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  14. im not as concerned with the lady bug towels and the spice rack as i am with the queer silk adidas shorts that you are wearing.

    you need to go with sarge to H&M.

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  15. hey! they are NOT silk. they are climacool polyester. they are for when i get sweaty in the pit, dude!

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  16. HookerVonSkankyassJune 10, 2009 at 7:50 PM

    Your wife had terrible fucking taste. I would've divorced her just for the ladybug towels. Marry someone more metal next time.

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  17. You can't say you only got "good bands" when one of them is Venom. Oh yeah, I said it.

    Did they have the Waking the Cadaver gaydar? I really could use one of those.

    Matt From Denver, now anonymous because he's blogging from work.

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  18. 20 years ago I would have given my left stone to go to a place that was that friendly to all things metal. Now I would just be afraid of getting easily assaulted.

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  19. Q: do any of these vendors offer off-center, mirror-image backwards logos and/or misspelled cities on the backs of the shirts? Because I collect those specifically.

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  20. Oh man, one of the greatest moments of my life was when I was staying with my aunt in the DF back in 2003 and her friend took me to El Chopo. I honestly had no idea a place that amazing existed, I miss it like crazy and I really wish something along those lines existed in the United States. I definitely have a few "Mexican special edition" shirts that I still rock to this day. As far as I can tell, the closest thing in my area to El Chopo is Metal Devastation in Phoenix AZ.

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  21. elgianormousgringoJune 11, 2009 at 1:48 AM

    When people are dissing Voivod & Venom in a post, it makes you realize that this world is indeed full of cornholin jackasses! I hope you get your nails pulled out and your eyebrows plucked one by one in the near future. BTW I only listen to one Voivod album "Dimension Hatross" and the best Venom album "Black Metal", if you can't respect those two t-shirts (pirated or not) you're not metal! Period!

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  22. Oh, I make no claims to be metal. I'm not metal, I just like metal. But I wouldn't go around questioning Skullkrusher's bona fides.

    But I do agree. The only Voivod album worth listening to is Demention Hatross. And I'm only picking on Venom because I had to pick someone. Metalheads take these "who's a better band" arguments so seriously...

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  23. You lucky fuck. I want a Wehrmacht shirt!

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  24. You're gonna ignore the power of Killing Technology? For shame.

    And Skull, ignore that guy about marrying a metal chick.. Next time, save a few steps, just find some bitch you hate, and buy her a house.

    That place does look awesome. What's the exchange rate like these days?

    Did the shirts cost you 3 cents American? Hell, I'd need a U-haul.

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  25. Hey SkullKrusher, wath´s up, Im Fernando, from Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico, i went to metallica shows in Mexico city, and despite their country odyssey "the day....." the concert was fucking aswome, did you went to the concerts?.
    Well enough of country stuff. What I want to say is that in Guadalajara exist a similar place call "El tianguis cultural", or just "el cultu", but smaller, there you can get shirts like you show in your post, vinyls, complete bands discography, your favorite metal singer hand-made sculture, and of course metal bands, its a metal paradise, well, a mini-metal paradise, the you can find also punks, gothic, rastafari guys, and shity mexican pop music.
    Ist a great place.

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  26. Always i feel glad after seeing such wonderful post .

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  27. Terrific post but I was wanting to know if you could write more

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