El Taco Veloz
My long ago roomie, and good good friend Tim was in town, we had some house beers, and chatted it up for a while. He suggested going out for food, and well… we did. We walked down Chicago Ave, on our to the Highdive, or Cleo’s. We passed El Taco Veloz, and I made a comment about it being really good, but not as put together as my favorite Mexican food joint up the road a bit further, Tecalitlan. What does that even mean? better put together? Whatever, Tim said Veloz looked authentico, and with that word of an old friend, we went in. I explained that I sometimes go there to brood over a steak after a rough work day, not often, but sometimes. They have all the pickled goodies on the tables, the vat of sliced carrots, cauliflower, peppers, garlic, and onions. That alone is a reason to go and eat chips and Salsa. Here’s the deal. The food was super amazing, that is not what the coolest thing of the night was. The best part of our meal there, was between the nice jukebox playing Mexican jams, the TV would blast. As I sometimes looked up, it was mostly the big breast popping out of the tops of these reporter type women, I don’t speak a lick of the Spanish, so I would just look, and wonder what they were talking about, using the cut away shots to further my investigation. But eventually I noticed that they were reporting on something special, and before I knew what was what, the President of Mexico was standing on a balcony overlooking a very large square in Mexico City, I only know that because Tim knew the name of the plaza. He waived the Mexican Flag, and that is when I remembered my buddy Nata telling me that I was Mexican Independence Day at midnight earlier in the day. I looked at my phone for the time, funny right? what happened to the watch? It was 11:07 Central, so i’m thinking in Mexico City, it must be midnight, I’ll need to fact check that later, but for now… whateve, Then he walked over to a nicely covered bell, and began to ring it! Awesome. I said something to Tim like, “our country is so lame”. I loved all the midnight celebration. We do that for new years, sure, but so does everyone. As the Mexican national anthem played through the TV speakers, I slyly watched the table of 8 near us. Two women that were maybe in their 30′s were softly mouthing the words of the song. The couple younger men, watched with importance, and the lone teenage girl looked, and mouthed some of the words. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was born in Mexico, and left when she was super young, too young to know the words to this song. Or maybe she was born in the US, and just kinda knew the song from family heritage vibes. Regardless, it was beautiful. The very small children while playing and not paying any attention to the TV, were decked out in full on Mexican colors, Even if they didn’t understand, they were taking part. Yeah, El Taco Veloz, tonight was about more than the food.