*MEXICO EDITION: The Week in 15 Selections*
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Welcome back to ME! I’ve returned from my week-long vacation in Mexico followed immediately by my week in Atlantic City for Defector company meetings. This means that I spent one whole week eating tacos followed by a whole week eating America’s truest cuisine: New Jersey Italian Food. All weekend, as you may have guessed was medically necessary, I sat on the couch and ate vegetables in an attempt to recover. TBD if it has worked yet.
As a brief foray into Travel Blogging, I have included a few recommendations from my trip to Mexico as part of my newsletter this week but also [a note about this week’s newsletter]: Because the Cornell 7 rape case is the biggest story this week, and there is a lot of reading to be done around it, I have included these readings at the bottom of this list. I have put those links after the section break at the very end in case you don’t want to see those, or are (reasonably) triggered by the conversation around this case.
On to the selections!
Here’s me in Mexico City. I wore this lightweight Babaa cotton sweater the whole trip. I bought it for myself last Christmas, and it’s perfect for fall and throwing over your shoulders when the weather is stupid and variable. Nothing in this newsletter is sponsored but BABAA SPONSOR ME.
The most exciting fancy meal we ate was at Masala y Maiz. We loved the whole fried fish and the very spicy shrimp.
Kelsey Newsletters’s Top Bar in Roma Norte, which I have loved since 2018 is El Palenquito. I’m thrilled that it survived the pandemic and still whips.
Kelsey Newsletter’s New Favorite Bar in CDMX is Sin Cruda. Great vibe, excellent wine list!
I cannot recommend the store A Mesa Puesta enough. I bought adorable little ceramic mezcal glasses and (thrilling) a stack of glasses that looks like a fish!
I bought an insane mixed denim jacket at Monteserrat Messeguer. It’s ridiculous and I love it.
The most surprising exciting thing we did was visit the city Queretaro, which has beautiful aqueducts and an adorable historic center, and a great mercado. Very fun place to spend a couple of days.
I spent an entire day reading in Parque Mexico, which was such a delight. There were a lot of ducks and people taking salsa lessons.
What did I read? Thank you for asking. I picked up Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild on Fran Hoepfner’s recommendation, and it was the perfect vacation/airplane/waiting at the airport read. Messy! Fun! I literally thought about it the whole time I was getting tattooed.
We brought home a bunch of Copal incense which cost about $2 American dollars for fifteen. You can buy these at any mercado and they smell so good and mosquitos hate them.
Did I bring home four handles of Mezcal from my favorite store Mis Mezcales? I’ll never tell the customs officers!
Now a few other links:
Genuinely what the HELL is going on with ceiling fans? Why do they look like that?
Sarah Hagi’s review of the atrocious Daily Wire MOVIE(?) about how muslims are the bad guys (lol come' on), is a must read.
I loved this article about the mystery of the concrete murals outside the Dodgers’ Stadium.
I’m obsessed with Sophie Abromowitz on the new Resident Evil:
“more than any other genre, survival horror games capture the experience, the headspace, the phenomenal reality of active addiction. Survival horror games are defined by scarcity, the panic of lack. You never have quite enough bullets for all the living corpses bearing down on you. If you throw that grenade at a monster now, what happens if you need it for a bigger one later? You always need more, and it’s never enough”
This week I contributed to our weekly trip to hell (trying to do the bake-off technicals)
TRIGGER WARNING CORNELL 7 LINKS:
It’s never a mistake to start your understanding of something with a Jessica Winter article, and this one in the New Yorker is no exception.
Every time there is a big rape case in the news, which feels like it is every single season at this point, I return to Elizabeth Schambelin’s 2019 article in N Plus One Mag.
FREE KELSEY HOT TAKE OF THE WEEK: The lede on this Caitlin Flanagan article about fraternities from 2014 is making the rounds again as it does every few years when people decide they like stylish writing again. The article does not answer the inherent question posed by all this stylishness, which is “what happened to that man?” and that, to me, is a failure no matter how fucking fun it is.
If you are, like me, feeling quite at sea this week and full of rage, you can always throw money at the issue. In this case, I’ve given to the Cornell Daily Sun, the student paper at Cornell that broke this story and stayed on it despite immense pushback and bullshit.
Take care of yourself this week! I love you all!
