Man, high summer has settled in here and there is no escaping it. Skimpy clothing, streetlife at high ebb, pedestrians slinking along the shady side of the street. And fans everywhere, though not the electric variety -- the classic, graceful Spanish numbers that appear in the hands of women of all ages and social types come hot weather. Some simple, basic, others elaborate, made of lace or wood, often sporting hand-painted images. They've appeared all over the city during the last week and a half, more numerous with each passing day. So natural to so many of the hands holding them that they're used unconsciously, spreading open when needed via a quick movement of the wrist (the sound a soft thwip) to fan the user's face.
Saw plenty of them last night, especially during a Metro ride to meet friends in an outlying Madrid neighborhood. During weather like this, a trip on the Metro is a bit of a crap shoot -- sometimes you step into a coach with AC, sometimes into a steambath. Either way, that first moment is a rush -- substantially cooler or hotter than the conditions on the station platform. (I found myself without AC, hence the display of fans.)
The ride took me to a neighborhood northwest of the city center, el Barrio de la Concepción. Packed with seemingly endless blocks of tightly-situated multi-storey apartment buildings, stretching away down various streets. Not pretty, most of them. Square, functional, solid, filled with small flats. Built during the years of the dictatorship -- originally for American troops stationed at a nearby base, I'm told. The troops apparently moved quickly on, working-class and middle-class Spanish families took over. And that's how it's remained. Families, old folks. Lots of street life.
A nice aspect of the barrio: streets lined with tall, spreading sycamore trees, softening an intensely urban district with lots of green.
Found my friends' flat (a couple: him American, her Spanish) -- two adjoining flats, actually, that they've bought and turned into one -- after a ride up to the top floor in a teeny, wheezing elevator. Met the resident cat on my way in, stopped to say hello. He took a moment or two of petting then raised a paw, took a cranky swing at me. (Hey, if I had to wear a fur coat in this weather, I'd be cranky, too.)
Five people were already there, working on glasses of beer/handfuls of nuts, deep into conversation. I sat, accepted a tumbler of spritzwater, adjusted to finding myself among a group of high-speed Spanish speakers, a shift after sitting at my 'puter for hours, reading/writing in English. High-energy blues played on the stereo, the first time I'd entered a Madrid apartment and heard with that. The windows were wide open, white curtains billowing out into the early-evening air.
Eventually, the idea of finding a table at a sidewalk eatery took hold, me walking down to the street level with one of the others instead of trying to cram all six of us into the asthmatic lift. Outside, local restaurants had set up tables everywhere they could find space for them, business boomed.
We found a spot among a lengthy stretch of tables set up along a parkside sidewalk. Food arrived, got eaten, conversation hummed all around. Ten o'clock passed, darkness fell as families strolled by, kids running around everywhere. I sat enjoying the way life takes to the street here, the way so many people go out instead of hiding at home in front of the tube, the way kids remain out with the family to hours that some Stateside might think less than proper.
The evening's main event: a visit to one of Madrid's pirate radio stations. (There are apparently several.) Around 11, I found myself in a small car, four members of the group crammed into a back seat designed for two very small humans. Me, for some reason, in the front passenger's seat, with the vague feeling that I was missing out on some excellent, vaguely carnal diversion.
[continued in entry of 6/7/04]
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 7:56 AM [+]
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