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Septemeber 23, 2002.
Over the last few weeks, some of
our readers called to point out a few things to me,
and some even had some suggestions, regarding Vallarta's
"historical" downtown area. With respect to
the numerous articles that have been published recently
dealing with the fact that there have never been so
many empty shops along the main drag, one reader noted
that none of those articles mentioned the astronomical
rents some of the building owners are demanding…
He went on to say, okay, if the landlords don't want
to lower the rents, why doesn't City Hall ratify new
taxing regulations based on a sliding scale? Thus, if
the landlord wanted "X" pesos per month, he
would be required to pay "Y" in income tax.
And if he wanted 10 times "X" per month, then
he would have to pay 10 times "Y" in income
tax. Sounds logical. And it may even get them to lower
some of the absurd rents they are asking.
On the topic of the traffic problem
there, I saw a news clip on TV that dealt with the measures
London, England, has implemented to counteract its own
traffic problem: every vehicle wishing to enter the
downtown core of the city will have to pay the equivalent
of $7.70 U.S.D. as a "congestion toll" every
time it does so. The London city authorities figure
that traffic will decrease by some 25% as a result of
this measure. Closer to home, here in Vallarta, I was
thinking that maybe someone from the municipal government
could go chat with the bus companies, find out which
buses are the 50% designated for downtown routes, put
some stickers on them, and there you have it. Problem
solved. Any bus without a sticker could be fined, or
stopped …if they can catch them, that is! (Those
guys drive as if they're on the last lap of the Grand
Prix or the Indy 500…)
So it looks as if the authorities
forgot about the commitment they made to the American
Consul in Puerto Vallarta… They're still distributing
those posters warning that sexual contact with children
is a crime, the one with the American passport on it
and all its consequential insinuations… Maybe instead
of blacking out the infamous passport, they should just
add a whole bunch of others… After all, according
to the CNN News Briefs, they just arrested two British
police officers for committing that particular unforgivable
act…
Last week I had to go to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo
on business. For those of you whose knowledge of Mexican
geography is not at an A+ level, suffice it to say that
this lovely coastal resort is near Acapulco, in the
state of Guerrero, the same distance from Mexico City
as Acapulco, on the Pacific coast just like Vallarta.
If there were direct flights from here to there, they
would take about 1½ hours. But, because this
is Mexico and the national airlines still wield monopolistic
powers, Mexicana charges more to fly to Ixtapa than
to San Francisco. Twenty-five percent more. And the
connections are pitiful. So you leave at noon and you
have to take two flights and they don't serve you anything
to eat because both are very short, so by the time you
can sit down for a bite to eat -around 4 p.m.- you're
weak with hunger because the last bite you had was at
breakfast time. No wonder the local authorities have
been battling for so many years with the airlines! As
has been published many, many times in the past, getting
from PV to anywhere is more costly than any other route,
per air mile or kilometer as the case may be. I was
just glad that my business meeting was the next morning.
I just read that heartthrob movie
star Brad Pitt has been cast to play Achilles in a new
movie that will be called "Troy", based -of
course- on Homer's Iliad. I had always visualized heroes
the likes of Hercules or Achilles, looking like that
gorgeous hunk that played the role of Attila in the
recent made-for-TV movie, so trying to visualize Brad
Pitt in such a role was a little difficult. My memory
of Greek Mythology 101 not being what it used to be,
I decided to refresh it. What I found out was that his
mother, the nymph Thetis, didn't want Achilles to join
the Greek army because she knew he was doomed to perish
in Troy, so she dressed him up as a girl, and that's
how he lived for a while - until he was found out…
Okay, now the choice of Brad Pitt made a little more
sense.
And still on the topic of the beautiful
people, don't be surprised if you see superstar Julia
Roberts shopping for some Evian water in front of you
at the supermarket. The lady with the dazzling smile
will be in the area for six weeks, filming a new movie…
That's it for me. The rest of the
space goes to my colleague Gerardo this week, on the
occasion of the 13th Anniversary of our mother publication,
the Tribuna de la Bahia. Happy birthday, TdlB! And a
wonderful week to all of you too.
Hasta luego!
anna@pvmirror.com
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