Braving San Pablo's bike market

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
(My photo too, although a better one is in the actual paper)

July 31, 2009

Any peddler thinking about buying a bicycle in Mexico City has probably been told to swing by San Pablo street in the Centro Histórico, a place where a string of small shops boasts endless collages of black rubber tires stacked high in the air.

A passing mention of the markets, however, hardly seems sufficient. "What is this place anyway, and what do I do once I get there?" shoppers might ask themselves. For those with more questions than answers, here's a quick guide of what to expect.

FINDING THE BEST FIT

As the Mexico City bicycle culture blossoms, more opportunities for recreational and competitive biking are opening to everyone. Bike rental stations have sprung up throughout the city as part of municipal government initiatives and private programs like Mejor en Bici, giving residents and visitors a chance to enjoy the newly paved cycling paths free of charge.

But owning a bike means avoiding restricted rental hours or the likelihood of riding a well-worn machine with squeaky breaks and stone-like seats. And while many individual bike stores are scattered throughout the Federal District, the San Pablo shops offer the widest selection around in just a quarter-mile stretch.

San Pablo is a downtown street that, like many others in the neighborhood, specializes in just one product - in this case, bikes. Around 30 shops line up in a row and off small alleys between the Pino Suarez and Merced metro stations and spilling over to Circunvalación street.

The area has been branded as seedy, perhaps because an astounding round up of prostitutes stand outside some of the shops even during the day. The bike stores, however, are clean and professional, and the street is not any less safe than other parts of the historical center.

It's essential to do your homework before heading out to shop, as the market offers an incredibly wide variety of different models. Prices on brand new bikes range from around 1,000 pesos for the most basic model and up to 14,000 pesos for more professional makes.

An easy way to make a wish list is to visit Benotto's web site (www.benotto.com.mx). The Italian bicycle company practically has a monopoly on San Pablo, with nine shops on the street alone and five more scattered around the zone. The company built up its first San Pablo shop 75 years ago, and as more entrepreneurs took notice, the street started to become a bicycle emporium around 25 years later.

Now, Benotto boasts an extensive offering of mountain, road, urban and specialty bikes for men, women and children. The shops also provide a one-year warranty on bike frames and three-month guarantees on individual parts like handlebars, seats and tires.

When picking out a bike, the most important questions to ask should establish where the bike will be used and what it will be used for, said a Benotto sales associate on San Pablo who declined to give his name.

Orlando Peñuñuri, a sales associate at a Bicitodos shop, suggests a mountain bike with thin tires or urban "comfort" bikes for daily use in the city.

"The conditions here aren't very good for a road bike because their tires are so thin. The potholes can catch you much easier," he said.

Both types of bikes can handle the streets' bumpy terrain without creating the friction of thicker tires. While comfort bikes are better for leisurely cruising, the mountain bike is more versatile and better for ripping down the city's bike lanes and cycling paths. Road bikes, however, are still king when it comes to riding on country roads outside the city.

Bicitodos has three shops on San Pablo and several more in cities like Morelia, Querétaro and León, Guanajuato. The company specializes in Italian-made Turbo bicycles, including mountain bikes for both daily riding and extreme terrains. They also sell comfort bikes with pale colors, big fenders and detachable front baskets, a model becoming a growing European trend and one that Turbo is striving to popularize in Mexico, Peñuñuri said.

Benotto and Turbo are among the most dominant brands in the San Pablo gamut, but other brands can be found easily by simply peeking into the shops while passing down the line of shops on both sides of the clustered street. Even for shoppers uncertain of what to buy, the San Pablo stores are a great place to do some preliminary research before committing wads of pesos to a bicycle.

Bar 246 opens for biz

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News (+ my photo)

July 30, 2009

On a block surrounded by dance clubs and dingy cantinas, a newly opened restaurant-bar has emerged to offer a fresh perspective to night owls in Mexico City's Colonia Roma.

Bar 246, which opened on Tuesday, strives to serve a wide variety of clientele: soccer fans who come to watch the game; reggae or rock fanatics who come to hear deejays spin; artists who come to display their works; or hungry guests who simply wish to enjoy some tapas and good wine.

The bar is a long corridor filled with comfy booths and low-lying leather tables paired with matching stools. Most walls are painted with warm shades of green and red, and a graffiti wall is designated for patrons to scribble away.

Felipe Bustamante, one of the bar's 12 owners and a musician with the rock-ska band Panteón Rococo, said that while the creative team is still developing the spot's overall concept, the central idea remains that 246 should be a bar where all the owners would want to hang out themselves.

"That's one of our basic ideas - a place where the cost is low, the music is great and the service is good," he said.

The 246 kitchen offers a variety of simple tapas and a full list of beer, wine and liquor; a small plate and a couple of drinks should cost no more than 150 pesos per person.

Elí Evangelista Martínez, subdirector of the Institute of Youth in D.F., said the bar strives to be a melting pot of the diverse Latin American and international cultures throughout the capital city.

"We're looking to establish a type of dialogue that doesn't just remain at the level of Mexico City, but further," he said. "We're reaching out to the social and cultural actors in the city, but we're also thinking about building bridges of communication with other communities."

Café serves a 'bizarre' twist

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News

July 30, 2009

Beneath dim lighting and loud music, plaster skulls protrude from the wall beside tiny dangling skeletons. The seemingly creepy touches, however, are only part of the subtle eccentricities and alternative flavor at the Bizarro bar-cafés in Mexico City.

Café Bizarro, with shops in the city's Roma and Coyoacán neighborhoods, is neither a pretentiously hip café nor a cheesy theme bar with a pricy drink list. Initially geared towards members of the "dark," or gothic, movement, Bizarro still plays mostly rock music and keeps a more sinister vibe with its décor.

But the bar-café has since expanded its appeal to city dwellers with or without urban labels, meaning office types in shirtsleeves can grab a drink alongside heavily tattooed or darkly-dressed patrons, said Bizarro owner Gustavo Sánchez.

"We've opened up without losing our main line - the question of being underground and alternative," he said, adding that the project aims to foster local musicians and artists by hosting in-house concerts and expositions. The bar's web site will post such news when it goes online at the end of August.

Sánchez said he first opened the Coyoacán bar in 1999 after he began selling kilos of coffee for CEPCO, an association of small-scale coffee farmers in Oaxaca. The group gave the then 24-year-old financing to open the rock-based project, and Bizarro continues to sell the farmers' organically grown coffee in its shops by bulk and by the cup.

Recycled furniture completes the bar's interior, such as tables made from the tanks of trucks and cars. The tall bar table includes the rollers used in a tortilla machine.

Café Bizarro's Roma branch opened in 2003 following the success of the first and maintaining a dual personality of being underground with high-quality service and products, and alternative with doors held open for all.

Both bar-cafés serve up light plates like baguettes, chapatas and bagels that cost 35 pesos on average. Bizarro's signature drink, the "Bizarrada," blends beer with various flavors of fruit concentrate into a creamy, chilled treat for 33 pesos each. The menu is also replete with varied coffee drinks, teas, beer, wine and creative cocktails, mostly under 50 pesos.

Two revolutions, two exhibits

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News

July 28, 2009

For the rest of July and through the end of August, two separate photography exhibitions in Mexico City will chronicle images both past and present of the Mexican and Cuban revolutions, commemorating landmark dates in the respective movements.

"Zapata 90 años" ("Zapata, 90 years") marks the 90 years since the Mexican hero's death, while "Cuba: Imagen y Posibilidad" ("Cuba: Image and Possibility") celebrates the 50th year of revolution in Cuba.

Both displays offer history lessons far more interesting than those inside textbooks, so check out these exhibits while they're still here.

ZAPATA & MEXICO'S REVOLUTION

Photographs, texts and original documents are on display at the Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal (Historic Archives of the Federal District) in the Centro Histórico. The historical tour chronicles the life and achievements of Mexico's revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata Salazar.

The exhibition recognizes the nine decades since Zapata's assassination in Chinameca, in the state of Morelos.

The collection's title, "Yo no entrAc a la Revolución para hacerme hacendado: Zapata 90 años," refers to the revolutionary leader's response to president Francisco I. Madero's proposal that Zapata drop his arms in exchange for ownership of a large hacienda.

"Mr. Madero, I did not join the Revolution to make myself a landowner," Zapata wrote, according to curator Mario PAcrez with the city's Culture Secretariat.

Zapata lead the Liberation Army of the South from 1911 until his death, pushing for an agrarian reform that would put the fruits of the earth into the hands of those who worked it, PAcrez said at a ceremony at the city's Monument of the Revolution on April 10 - Zapata's exact date of death.

The exhibit includes both sides of six large screens divided into sections including: "La paz porfirianO ("Porfirian Peace"); "La semilla de la insurrección," ("The Seed of the Insurrection"); "El estallido de la Revolución" ("The Outbreak of the Revolution"); "Zapata, el revolucionario" ("Zapata, the Revolutionary"); "El pueblo hablO ("The People Speak"); and "Zapata vive" ("Zapata Lives"), among others.

50 YEARS OF PHOTOS IN CUBA

Workers slashing through sturdy stocks of sugarcane; raisin-faced men playing festive tunes on the trumpet; streets clogged with protestors holding dutifully painted signs. These still portraits of Cuban life help compose part of the Mexico City photography exhibit that honors the island nation's 50th year of revolution.

"Cuba: Imagen y Posibilidad" opened last weekend along the green gated walls outside Chapultepec Park facing Paseo de la Reforma.

Cuba's anniversary celebrates the mid-century mark since Fidel Castro led the ousting of dictator Fulgencio Batista and implemented a Communist government.

"It's an homage that a group of photographers made to 50 years of the revolutionary process in Cuba and to the paths that are opening up toward the future," explains curator Mabel Llevat in the exhibit's opening slide.

The 120-photograph collection displays black-and-white, boldly colorful, experimental and traditional images by nearly 20 Cuban photographers both past and contemporary. The cultural institute Fototeca de Cuba procured and provided all the images for the exhibit.

Vivian Martínez Tabares, cultural attachAc for the Cuban Embassy, said that the artists present their own individual style instead of works that follow rigid thematic guidelines.

Raúl Cañibano's images, for example, show a sugarcane farmer passed out in his cot and rowdy festival goers partying into the early morning, while Michael Pou's abstract art combines bright shots of modern day Cuba with pixilated squares.

The photo display starts across from the wide entrance of the national Anthropology Museum with Jorge Valiente's nearly 20-year-old portraits of sugarcane workers slashing through the crops or resting in the emptied fields.

Further down the right-to-left exhibit, Ricardo Elías's work plays up the "past and present" angle by presenting parallel images on each slide. An aged, blurry 1961 image of the U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion at Playa Girón is paired with a recent photograph of empty, tranquil waters at the same beach. A hectic image shows Fidel Castro's grand entrance to Havana after his 1959 takeover, while another shows the same street desolate and decades later.

The collection mostly captures moments from Cubans' day-to-day lives. In one slide, a mechanic repairs one of the 1950s-make cars still ubiquitous throughout the island. A group of young adults sip beers and play dominoes, the national pastime, at a small table in the street. A man and woman break out into an impromptu dance inside the hazy cigar-rolling factory where they work.

Slides by Mabel Llevas in her "Parque Almendares" series show cutouts of photographs built into 3-D paper models of the Havana park, including a smiling family in a boat passing under a bridge, the towering JosAc Martí Memorial monument and the weathered Malecón sea wall.

Jorge García Alonso energetic photos show captured moments of rhythm and motion from the "Habana en movimiento" ("Havana in Movement") festival of contemporary and folkloric dancing.

The photo exhibit will remain outside Chapultepec Park until Aug. 31. Over the course of two years, will travel to the city's other Galerías Abiertas (Open Galleries) at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and neighborhoods Iztapalapa and Alvaro Obregón, although dates and locations haven't yet been set.

Transport group brings bikes, better air to Mexico

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Embassy Row - June 2009

Mexico City can often seem like a transport war zone, with vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists all waging a stressful battle to claim their share of the road. But the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy is fighting back just as hard to make public and pedestrian transport an accessible and attractive alternative for city residents.

ITDP, a non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, holds branches in 13 cities worldwide, including Sao Paolo, Bogotá, Jakarta and New Delhi. Funding for the NGO comes primarily from individuals and California-based donors like the Hewlett Foundation and Climate Works.

In Mexico´s capital city, a team of eight helps consult the local government on ways to build efficient public transportation like the Metro rail system and Metrobús lines.
In a metropolis where an estimated 6 million cars, taxis and buses clog the roadways each day, the group hopes to reduce the engines in favor of bike lanes, walkways and carpooling.

"We think that the future of the city, despite all the problems, can be much better than it is," said local director Bernardo Baranda from the group´s office around Parque México in Colonia Condesa.

"I think it´s an exciting time to be working on issues regarding mobility in the city because it affects everyone, especially their quality of life."

He said impoverished communities along the city´s peripheries were a target audience for such improvements. Many people in the outskirts take two to three hours and spend around 30 percent of their income just to travel into the city for work, meanwhile subjecting their lungs to exhaust fumes and airborne illnesses, he said.

In working to expand mass transit for everyone, for example, the ITDP chapter recently shared its technical expertise - studies of best practices implemented worldwide - as the city built and installed a second Metrobús line, which runs perpendicular to Ave. Insurgentes line.

Although outskirt populations lay mostly outside the reach of metro and bus lines, the group directs most of its approximately US$150,000 annual budget on projects in the city´s center.

"We definitely want to do more with that," he said on work in periphery communities. "Perhaps it hasn´t even been a question of resources, it´s that you also don´t want to try to do too many things at once."

And the organization, which established its Mexico chapter in 2006, is certainly not lacking tasks on its full agenda.

The group advised the city´s environmental secretariat earlier this year on installing bike racks in prominent spots near metro stops, public parks and inside parking garages.

Baranda said ITDP helped the city select the cost-efficient, inverted "U"-shaped models installed in various European capitals and in Chicago. The government in its first phase set up around 900 racks in April and has plans to add more throughout the year.

The group continues to consult planners working on Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard´s efforts to build 186 miles, or 300 kilometers, of bike lanes across the city´s core in the next couple years.

"We´ve done some experiments of which types of cycle lanes are better, like completely segregated from traffic flow or not," Baranda said. "That should be reflected once the bike lanes are constructed. The [secretariat] said they´ll call for bids on construction this year."

ITDP has also helped set up various crosswalk tickers that count down the minutes between red lights and green. And in a city where pedestrian mortality is an estimated 9.5 deaths for every 100,000 people, the group is monitoring foot-friendly walkways being built in areas like Buenavista and around Revolution Monument.

"We´re also trying to push for an on-street parking policy to place parking meters in areas like the Polanco, Condesa and Roma [colonias] to make car users more aware, to try and inhibit car usage a little bit and to create a lot of resources for area improvements," Baranda added.

EXPANDING TRANSPORT NETWORKS

However, the NGO´s agenda isn´t entirely consumed by Mexico City government projects.

ITDP also consults with local bicycle advocates like Mejor en Bici, a free bike rental service with stations in the Condesa, Centro Histórico and Coyoacán neighborhoods that offer street cruisers for a refundable deposit.

Baranda, a bike user himself, is also involved in the Bicitekas riding group, which meets each Wednesday night around the Angel of Independence monument to peddle together through the city´s crowded streets.

He said everyone at his office, in fact, rides a bike or travels via public transport, which brings the team face-to-face with the real issues confronting non-motorized travelers that often go unnoticed by those who drive cars, which he said includes most policy-makers.

And ITDP is nearly just as active in urban centers in Guadalajara and León, Guanajuato, where the NGO chapter is consulting local environmental secretariats on master plans for bike lane networks, or "ciclovías," that are already being developed.

Baranda noted that Guadalajara in March celebrated the opening of its Macrobús rapid bus transit line, which runs for 10 miles, or 16 kilometers, along the principal thoroughfare Calzada Independencia and which aligns in some spots with the city´s light rail system.

The group also helped host an Urban Cycling Congress in Mexico City last year, where transport organizations from cities like Puebla, Morelia, Xalapa and Cancún shared some of their efforts in working with local governments to increase awareness for non-motorized transport alternatives.

Despite the group´s steady efforts to cut pollution and increase safety on Mexico´s roads, however, Baranda said ITDP alone can´t single-handedly change the car-oriented culture.

"At the end of the day, we cannot replace the responsibilities of the government on spending money for infrastructure," he said.

"But the [Mexico City] government is becoming more conscious about this," he said. "The problems will get worse if we don´t do anything about it. It´s up to all of us to make those decisions that will change it."

'Cupcakes' bring fresh indulgence to Mexico

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Embassy Row - June 2009
(I took the picture too!)

When Tom Grant first moved to Mexico City from Calgary, Canada nearly 10 years ago, he noticed a certain sweet treat was missing from local bakeries: cupcakes.

Tired of eating stale pastries and inspired by similar New York City shops like Billy's Bakery and Magnolia, Grant opened his Cupcakes by Tom café in 2007 to serve Mexico fresh batches of the handheld dessert - and he's gearing up to open a second shop soon.

"One of the reasons that I was inspired to start Cupcakes by Tom was that I was tired of going to the larger coffeehouses and buying their pastries that looked so delicious, only to discover that they weren't really fresh," he wrote in an e-mail while on a trip home to Calgary.

"I felt like there would be a market for incredibly fresh products; I would say that's our number one selling feature," he said.

Business was admittedly slow in the first few months at the Colonia Condesa café, he said. Cupcakes in Mexican homes have long been overshadowed by more traditional sweets like the airy "concha" or the flaky "cuerno," or croissant.

But the demand for cupcakes has steadily increased - so much so that Grant says he's scouting locations for a second bakery.

"It took a lot of educating on our part to explain to our Mexican clientele that a cupcake is like a piece of cake that you can eat with your fingers," he said.

"When we opened, our clients were primarily ex-pats and Mexicans who had traveled extensively and were familiar with the product," he said. "Now, thanks to word of mouth, we have a very mixed clientele: moms buying cupcakes for their children's birthday, a co-worker taking fresh muffins to the office on Fridays, people taking a dessert to a Saturday family get-together."

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, two teenage girls bounded into the shop squealing, "Cupcakes! Cupcakes!" as they pored over the menu, although Sayana Guerrero, head pastry chef, said that the girls were a bit more sprightly than the usual fifty to sixty customers who come to Cupcakes each day.

Guerrero said she pops out a couple hundred cupcakes and a hundred or so muffins for two hours each morning at the Condesa "cupcakery."

Cake batters include mixes like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, carrot, blueberry and red velvet. Creamy layers of frosting include flavors like lemon, cream cheese, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Cupcakes cost between 15 and 17 pesos each.

Giant, fluffy muffins sell for 10 pesos each and come in blueberry, bran with raisins, carrot with raisins, strawberry and chocolate chip.

Guerrero said that while various other pastry shops in Mexico City also offer the compact treats, Cupcakes is one of the few places that sticks to the traditional cupcake style popularized by U.S. bakeries - fluffy frosting made from a sugar and butter base covering a petite, rounded cake.

Grant's personal favorite is a sugary rendition nicknamed "Tommy's," a rich chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting topped with gooey caramel sauce.

The café complements its desserts with freshly brewed coffee, the grounds a mix of beans from Chiapas and Veracruz and blended together by the city's own Café Etrusca. Hot tea comes in a variety of Stash-brand flavors.

Grant said that along with cupcakes' freshness, one of the café's top selling points is the bakers' ability to work closely with customers to fulfill special orders. One customer, for example, comes in every day for her special batch of raisin-less bran muffins.

FROM CALGARY TO `CUPCAKES'

Despite the steady success of Cupcakes by Tom, Grant says his initial intentions didn't include cupcake-filled dreams.

An employee at the time with WestJet Airlines in Calgary, the cupcake connoisseur in 2000 came down to visit Mexico City with a Mexican friend of his. Grant's original plan was to stay two years and move back home, but then the "entrepreneurial bug" bit, he said.

First, he opened a school for teaching English, Grant Languages (www.grant.com.mx), and soon followed the visions of swirled frosting, colorful sprinkles and moist, tasty cake.

Grant said that while the bakery is moving steadily along, there are still a few things he would change about the shop.

He said initially chose the cupcake café's spot on Chilpancingo Street because he lives just a minute's walk away. In retrospect, he says he should have filled a vacancy closer to Parque México or the restaurant-packed Michoacán Street.

"We are less accessible to drive-up traffic," he wrote in the e-mail. "We're currently scouting out a second location in Condesa where customers will be able to drive up, park their cars easily and come on in to purchase their product."

He said another challenge was gauging how many cupcakes and muffins to bake each day to avoid shortages or surpluses of the freshly made treats.

But even amidst the usual ups and downs of running a small-scale business, Grant has successfully succeeded in making the somewhat unfamiliar cupcake a must-have sugar fix in Mexico City.

Hello seahorse! pop group

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Embassy Row - June 2009

When Lo Blondo answered a MySpace ad soliciting a singer to front a band, she probably didn´t imagine that four years later she´d be the vocalist behind a top-selling album or performing in this weekend´s Vive Latino music festival in Mexico City.

But her simple reply in 2005 helped form Hello Seahorse!, a Mexico-based band that includes Oro de Neta on synthesizer and bass and Bonnz! on drums and percussion.

"I was the only one who responded," Blondo quipped from inside the Polanco-area studio where the group has filmed music videos.

Blondo, 21, was born in California and raised in Mexico City; her parents are both of U.S. inheritance but were born in Mexico´s capital. Oro de Neta and Bonnz!, both 24, are from Ciudad Juárez and the Federal District, respectively.

Today, Blondo´s smooth, elegant vocals bring to life the band´s mostly upbeat, pop-style music infused with complex synthetic sounds and staccato drumbeats - a sound Blondo says was first described as "geek pop."

The songs, written in English and Spanish, are simple but original tunes that are easy to listen to and avoid the cheesy, formulaic nature of other tracks in the genre.

Hello Seahorse! has found unanticipated success this year with the release of its third album "Bestia" ("Beast"), which immediately became a Top 10 seller in Mexico when it hit stores late last year. The first single off "Bestia," of the same name, has enjoyed steady rotation on MTV´s music video playlist in the U.S., and the album´s second single, "Después" ("After"), has received similar attention from the entertainment mammoth.

Under the guidance of producer Yamil Rezc, the group´s third album layers the band´s traditionally head-bopping vibe with more haunting, melancholy sounds, and all tracks this time are sung in Spanish.

Vocals in the single "Bestia" have an airy quality, similar to Ben Gibbard´s voice in the U.S. band Death Cab for Cutie. In "Después," Blondo´s 10-year experience in a school choir shines through as she elevates her range beautifully, all the while avoiding the overdone trills and whiney projections that so often plague pop music songs. Drums pat steadily in the background as the lugubrious synthetic sounds chime in softly.

Other notable highlights on the disc include songs "Miércoles" ("Wednesday") and "Siberia." Both songs were recorded in collaboration with Mexican rock musician Chetes, who formerly fronted the band Zurdok, one of Hello Seahorse!´s personal favorites.

But if Hello Seahorse!´s sound has changed or grown, it´s only because that´s the direction the artists want to take, Bonnz! said.

"We´re not necessarily trying to sell records; we´re doing it because it´s what we want to do," he said.

FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP

Even as Hello Seahorse! has begun rapidly rising in the Mexican music industry and getting playtime north of the border, Blondo says it took years of "starting from scratch" to get to the point where they are today.

"It´s been a long way to get where we are, there´s been a lot of changes from `day one´ to right now," she said.

The group initially began with Blondo, Oro de Neta and guitarist Julio; the trio released their first album, "Hello Seahorse!...and the Jellyfish Parade" in the summer of 2006, producing just a thousand units to sell at shows.

Bonnz!, who has played drums since age 12, joined shortly after when the group needed drums for their show at the Festival Manifest in Mexico City. Having lived with Oro de Neta and Julio at the time, he said he was a natural pick for the band.

Hello Seahorse! in 2007 released an online EP, "Hoy a las ocho" ("Today at 8 o´clock"), which earned heavy rotation on local radio. The album´s 11 tracks are mostly light, energetic and bilingual tunes that might inspire listeners to bop along in their seats.

The track "Won´t Say Anything" boasts a particularly catchy melody with its frequent repetition and quick handclaps. "The Island Trip" is a very happy-go-lucky tune laden with triangle, saxophone and bouncing piano keys.

Julio eventually left the group following the second album´s release. Soon after, Blondo said the band stopped playing simply for extra-curricular fun and began to make its music a full-time gig.

The band in the first few years was just a fun escape from the mundane day-to-day, she said.

"But you get to a point where you know you have to do something," she added. "Now, the band is our daily job. We all dropped everything we were doing a year and a half ago for the band."

Despite their full-time dedication to Hello Seahorse!, band members continue to work on the side, because, according to Blondo, "it´s very difficult to eat from your music."

Blondo counsels and creates songs with people with bipolar disorder, while Bonnz! works as a freelance studio producer for various bands around the city. Oro de Neta runs an online apparel and art site, Hupop.net.

Since the trio began to dedicate itself fully to the Hello Seahorse! project, the band members have waved goodbye to their days of playing in a Colonia Roma strip club in favor of opportunities to play on more prominent stages.

In March last year, the group opened up for the Beastie Boys at the MX Beat festival in Toluca, just south of Mexico City. The same month, they played amongst hundreds of artists in the international music and film festival South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Now, they´re gearing up to play for the first time in the Vive Latino festival this Saturday and Sunday. The group is also set to head off on summer tour in California and Las Vegas this July.

Blondo called it a "great honor" to be part of the Vive Latino lineup this year, especially because the trio had spent so many years as screaming fans in the audience.

"Now, to stand on the stage and show people what you´re made of.it´s a dream," she said.

After a busy couple of months this summer, Blondo says the group will continue "squeezing all the juice" it can from "Bestia," striving to make the most of the album that took over a year to produce.