This City is a Beast Part 2: This Time It's Personal

Last post I covered six of the sixteen districts in Mexico City before realizing that most of you moving to this city will probably never have to set foot in some of these unless you're into some pretty illegal shit. So, I'll try to deal with the remaining ten districts (or delegaciones) in a manner that is both brief and, hopefully, informative. Let's get to it:

Note: 1 on the Safety Rating = Good, 10 = Good God Man, Run!

Numero 7: Coyoacan. The haunt of hippies, pseudo-intellectuals, gringos like me and the elderly. Famous residents included Leon Trotsky (till they brained him with a fricking icepick, well, something like an icepick http://www.cracked.com/article_16822_7-historical-figures-who-were-absurdly-hard-kill.html), Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo....along with several ex-presidents, ex-senators, ex-congressmen, retired actors. But Trotsky, Rivera and Kahlo are the big three you should remember, since I have yet to come across one of my fellow Americans who knows who Miguel de la Madrid was/is (is he still alive?). Coyoacan is littered with colonial style buildings which enhance bars and restaurants (my personal favorite area being the Centro de Coyoacan, but not Centro Coyoacan, which is a mall, that little de really makes a difference). Safety Rating: A Nice and Solid 2 - Coyoacan is still part of the city, never forget that... Fun Fact: The chairs in the bar El Hijo del Cuervo in Coyoacan's historic center are the most uncomfortable pieces of shit I've ever sat in, yet curiously, after that 4th pitcher of beer, they become Laz-E-Boys.

8. Venustiano Carranza: Named after a former president (by former I mean, assassinated) who by all accounts was a decent enough guy with a ridiculous name, this place is a no-go-zone. The VC, as I am referring to it since typing out the full name is a pain in the ass, is where the airport is. That's it. You have no business going elsewhere in this delegacion. Safety Rating: 8, You Should Be Running - I don't think of myself as a person who scares easily (I live in this city after all), but God help you if you get lost in this area at night. Fun Fact: Getting lost while coming back from the airport in this area I have seen some shit you wouldn't even believe, let's leave it at that.

9. Magdalena Contreras: Nothing to see here people. Safety Rating: 5, Meh. Residential area. Fun Fact: http://www.mcontreras.df.gob.mx/turismo/esculturas.html there's, uh, statues!

10. Xochimilco (pronounced So-chi-meel-ko): By far the best thing to see here are the canals that date back to when the Aztecs ruled the region. When I was in high school, you could drink on the little boats that navigate the canals, now it seems, the Man doesn't let you do that anymore (though for the right price I'm sure you could get away with it) since, as always, some drunken moron had to drown and just fucking ruin it for the rest of us.

You learn to ignore the brightly colored boats after that first bottle of Bacardi

Oh, and Xochimilco has a huge population, making it, like any other densely populated area in the city, insanely dangerous. Safety Rating: 7, Insanely Dangerous - Best way to organize a trip down here is with more than 10 people, I shit you not. Safety in numbers people. Fun Fact: The water in the canals tastes like lime, or at least that's what the local kids who were swimming in that green sludge told us back in 2001.

11. Azcapotzalco: There's 32,000 people per square mile in this delegacion, and it's only 13 square miles big. The only thing I know about Azcapotzalco is that gringos like me should never go there. A couple of words that come to mind when I think of this area: bleak, poverty, dangerous, gunshot. Safety Rating: 8, Don't Ever, Ever Come Here. Just an awful place. Fun Fact: Despite having a respectably large crime rate, Azcapotzalco is nowhere near as dangerous as Ciudad Juarez, or the rest of Northeastern Mexico for that matter.

I'll Get to the Last 5 As Soon As Is Humanly Possible I Feel Like It.