TL;DR: I went to my friend’s café in Mexico City, and it gave more momentum to my interest in making things moving in the direction of people.
I did a good amount of photography and writing while I traveled in 2024. I intended to share it, but then didn’t—mostly because it felt vulnerable and imperfect. Now that I feel less like that, I figure I might as well start posting retroactively. Here’s another one of those.
For the past few years, I kept hearing about how cool Mexico City is. Well-traveled friends would tell me it’s their favorite city in the world. A few people I know from New York visited, then more or less spontaneously decided to move there. I like tacos. I wanted to check it out.
On the recommendation of a friend, I stayed in Roma Norte. It's a Bohemian neighborhood with a tree-lined walking path that loops around a green space. It’s a perfect place for long walks, which I tend to seek out when I travel. One in four people I overheard on the path were speaking American English, which was striking. Small, hip streets break off from the loop, lined with cool cafés and craft shops.
I, once again, attempted shopping for vintage clothing and felt the same way I have before: concerned for the person who formerly owned it. Under what circumstances did they have to sell this item? Financial stress? Can we get in touch with them and help them?
On my first night in the city, I walked past a storefront containing peculiar art objects. The guy putting out the shop’s sign noticed my hesitation, made eye contact, and said, “Come in! Really. You should come in.”
He turned out to be a furniture maker. He gave me a tour of his new store and showed me the stuff he makes. The most compelling object was a table that looked and felt like marble but was actually plastic. I’ve been really into plastic lately. I work on toys for a living, and I think plastic is amazing and gets an unfair reputation. I could write more about that some other time. Anyway, this guy and I spent a part of the evening talking about molding and casting.
A character flaw I have, which sometimes works as a gift, is that I tend to be more interested in things than in people. A workaround I’ve found is talking to people about making things. That happened several more times during my trip.
Some quick observations about Mexico City:
- There’s a lot of pink. Pink buildings, pink cars. Tokyo has green. Mexico City has pink, I believe.
- There’s a lot of candy. Candy stands, actually. Little carts overflowing with candy, everywhere. Yay?
- The city is rough around the edges. The pavement is uneven. I saw guys pouring gasoline into their cars by hand out of repurposed water jugs.
- The thing people kept telling me about there being both “a lot of greenery and a lot of concrete” is true and striking.
My friend Miguel started this café in Mexico City called Post. Part of my trip was to go down there and check it out. He and I are both into coffee—the drink, and the process of making it. He also happens to be a talented engineer and designer, which added more intrigue about Post.
So I went to the café. And yeah, it’s rad.
The impression I took away from it wasn’t so much about the coffee—it was about the coherency of the whole place. The experience, basically. The taste of the coffee, the lighting, the furniture, the sound system—everything together.
The coffee is excellent (no one who knows Miguel would be surprised by this). But the space itself is just as considered. The stereo box and espresso machines on the bench are both functional and beautiful. A big window in front and a tube lamp above the bar combine to make for this unusually perfect lighting environment—the space gradually turns orange as the sun goes down. Most every other thing “of design”—typography, furniture, branding—is something Miguel personally made.
I was intrigued by the café from two angles.
The first is as a customer.
I like places and experiences like this one. I’m a non-alcohol-drinking coffee enthusiast who admires craft and thoughtful environments. These days I'm increasingly attuned to and seek out places—cities, stores, restaurants—not for the discrete things inside of them, but for how their cohesive environment makes me feel. Seeing a friend execute something like this is cool.
The second is as a maker.
I don’t know what my friend’s exact experience of running the café is—he’s at least mentioned it’s nuanced—but from the outside, it seems nice.
I’ve been professionally into making stuff for a while now. I anticipate that will keep going. But to what end? Seeing a designer and engineer pivot into running a café is unexpected. But being there, it was obvious that the same skills apply. Aesthetics, material processes, attention to detail—they all translate.
Maybe this is just my bias, but if you squint at this café, to me it basically looks like a machine shop or prototyping lab. It has similar elements:
- Handling physical processes—vacuuming, grinding, sealing, shipping.
- Operating and maintaining precise and beautiful machines.
- Wielding a raw material, trying to express something from it, with tight tolerances.
- Adding aesthetic elements wherever they fit.
The main difference seems to be: a machine shop is about making stuff, but a café connects that stuff with people. It’s craft plus hospitality—making things while interacting with people, handling a physical process while creating an experience. That combination is interesting.
My enthusiasm for that makes sense because lately I’m realizing all my newer interests in “making” exist at this intersection of people and things: toys, gifts, hospitality, coffee, and some others. It’s possible that my interest in making pure stuff—on a milling machine in a basement—is running its course, and that a better place to replant it is somewhere along this intersection.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I keep circling back to it.
Here are some photos I took of Mexico City and Post on my iPhone.
