‘On the Road’ Sites, Including a Mexico City Sanborns, Then and Now
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 09.04.07 | 2:30 PM ET
Fifty years after the publication of “On the Road,” the Los Angeles Times’s Christopher Reynolds observes how a number of places depicted in the book have changed—or not—from Sausalito to New York City. Among the places he includes is Mexico City’s famed blue-tiled Sanborns (pictured).
In the novel, Jack Kerouac writes that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty “ate beautiful steaks for forty-eight cents in a strange tiled Mexican cafeteria with generations of marimba musicians.”
Writes Reynolds: “Sal never mentions a name for that eatery, but it sounds a lot like Sanborns’ La Casa de los Azulejos, a city landmark (and cafeteria and department store) that dates to the 16th century. Famed for its tile work and murals, the building has included a restaurant since about 1919.”
I stopped by the historic restaurant on a recent visit to Mexico City. The place looked as though I imagined it way back when—though I didn’t see anything on the menu for 48 cents.
Related on World Hum:
* Marking 50 Years of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’
* The Distance Between Then and Now
* Blog Category: Icons: Jack Kerouac
Photo by jrsnchzhrs via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Email to friend
Twitter
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz
Jim Benning is the cofounder and coeditor of World Hum.
seward. 09.05.07 | 11:57 AM ET
thanks for the tip. i’ll drop by for a visit after i beat this shooting-my-wife-in-the-face rap.
William B. Kaliher 09.09.07 | 11:03 AM ET
My first visit to the Sanborns mentioned in Mexico City was in 1971. The city was about eight million then and outside Sanborns was the only public phone in the city where it was possible to call the United States. It was a great place.