“Should I Feel Guilty For Dining Like a Fresa?”: Five Days in CDMX for Tono Festival

Our senior editor Taylore Scarabelli documents her trip to Tono Festival, an art exhibition in Mexico City and Puebla featuring local and international performers including Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Freeka Tet, Eartheater, Jota Mombaça, Adam Linder, and more. 

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TUESDAY 1:07PM APRIL 1, 2025, CDMX

We’re in an Uber to Jardin Prim, a historical private residence in Colonia Juárez where we’ll be crashing the next five nights. “Everything is beautiful,” I tell my husband, who I brought along as a chaperone for my non-Spanish speaking, freewheeling self. I’m never afraid to travel alone, but it’s my first time in the city, and my gringo guilt has me feeling needy. We drop our bags and head out in search of street tacos. 

4:45PM

Another Uber, this time a half-hour south to meet Tono’s curator, a fast-talking modelesque New Yorker named Sam Ozer, at the Museo Anahuacalli. “Diego Rivera designed this building to be his tomb,” she tells us before guiding us through activations by local artist Paloma Contreras Lomas and the Oaxaca-based painter and filmmaker Carolina Fusilier. Together, the women have enlivened the temple and its accompanying artifacts with their subversive sculptures (Rivera was a rabid collector of pre-columbian art: some stolen, some bought, some inauthentic). Highlights include Fusilier’s eerie sound installations and totem-like paintings, as well as Contreras’ vast charcoal scrolls juxtaposing Rivera’s murals with political text (a rough translation: the world is burning and we’re drinking negronis), and cartoon-esque symbols of resistance.

5:56PM

The sun begins to set and Sam leads us toward a building on the opposite end of the property, where dancer and choreographer Adam Linder is staging a solo act. Before going inside, we gather for drinks in the courtyard, where Karla Niño de Rivera, the museum’s head curator, tells us about some not-so-happy guest book entries in response to the provocative exhibition (some frog-inspired sculptures poke fun at leftist hero’s claims to cannibalism). We agree art that doesn’t piss anyone off probably isn’t worth it. I excuse myself and order a beer. 

7:33PM

Adam Linder is reciting poetry in between stop-and-start dances best described as deconstructed club and bedroom ballet. It reminds me of my notes app posts on Substack, how good it feels to execute something you’re well-trained in fast and loose. “I want my mind to be free of self-criticality,” he deadpans before pausing to breathe and complain about the altitude. Is that why I feel so dizzy? Adam keeps on reading, dancing, stopping to breathe. I think the panting suits him, particularly when he does a desperate dog impression. While Adam wags an invisible tail, local hounds bark in the distance. They, too, want to be free. 

WEDNESDAY 1:55PM APRIL 2, 2025, CDMX

I wrap up some work calls and head out for a walk. We eat gorditas (not my favorite), stroll through Plaza Rio de Janeiro (gorgeous), and visit Hi-Bye, a colorful clothing store I’ve been following on Instagram for nearly a decade. The first thing I notice are a pair of Thistle’s, a sunglass line designed by an acquaintance of mine. We leave empty handed and breeze by a Le Labo store. “I didn’t fly five hours to go on a walk through SoHo,” I bitch to my husband, unsure of what I was expecting to find in the fancy neighborhood of an international city. 

5:32PM

We stop at an extremely cinematic restaurant for a beer and head to the Museo Universitario del Chopo to catch TONO x MoMA, a series of short Super 8 New York Underground films curated by Sophie Cavoulacos. A tear drips down my cheek. I think about the movie I’m trying to get made, the political rally I went to at the newly revamped Pyramid Club, pictured before me in its heyday. It’s pretty stupid to be nostalgic about an era that you didn’t live through, one that had its share of hacks, assholes, and social climbers. But the quick cuts and scratched up film makes everything seem so much more poetic, sort of like that feeling you get when wandering around a new city. 

8:00PM

We make our dinner reservation right on time. The restaurant is fancy, the kind your friend who moved to CDMX during the pandemic told you about a few years ago. A Michelin-mapped place where you can have “The best meal of your life for $40 dollars,” only now, everything costs the same as it would in Manhattan. I sip a too-sweet Avocado-something cocktail and do my best to decipher the menu. Should I feel guilty for dining like a Fresa? For not speaking Spanish? For spending money I should be saving for taxes? At some point in the meal, my eyes swell. I’m stressed about stupid life stuff, and for the first time maybe ever I decide that expensive restaurants are more fussy than they are fun. 

10:02PM

The bill arrives and I realize every meal in Mexico City either costs $2.50 or $250, which might actually be a good representation of the wealth gap. We pay and walk to a salsa club where one intimidating waiter per-table watches on, waiting for you to finish your mezcal so he can make you order a new one. The place is pretty much empty apart from a few girls in plastic heels and micro-minis, and an old, big-bellied man who leads a woman a quarter of his age with so much swagger I almost find it sexy. I want to dance but I don’t know how, so we just drink and gawk and go home.

THURSDAY 12:30PM APRIL 3, 2025, CDMX

We arrive at the Pyramids of Teotihuacán. It’s hot and my stomach hurts and every 30 seconds a panther growls next to me and I jump. It’s a chorus of flutes, some scary, some transcendental, and together they make the perfect soundtrack. These pyramids were meant for climbing but they don’t allow tourists to traverse them anymore. I imagine this has more to do with people accidentally sacrificing themselves in the heat than it does with preservation. I pose in a shirt that says SHAME as a brush fire rages in the hills behind me. We discover a covered temple and watch a blonde man with a six-liter backpack and an Indiana Jones-style hat siphon vibes from the reconstructed floor. “That is the spot,” he tells his companion as he stands with his eyes closed and his arms splayed. “The energy is so strong here.”

6:48PM

Chris Kraus, the New York writer and publisher of Semiotext(e), is doing a reading and a talk hosted by curator Fabiola Talavera at a little cocktail bar called BEBE. When we arrive, we’re offered to share a table with a local gallery girl. We smoke cigarettes and make small talk while we wait for the event to begin. The occasion is a new translation of the author’s book of essays titled Romance Artístico, but Kraus reads in English—a piece on art and fashion collective Bernadette Corporation’s controversial poetry (a child could write this!). During the Q+A, our new friend asks a question about finding success as a Mexican artist who isn’t interested in pandering to the shallow aesthetics of the global market. Chris doesn’t have the answer, but she does say something interesting about personal writing not equating to truthfulness. Selfishly, I think of my diary. 

7:55PM

I exchange Instagram handles with my new friend and join a group of American expats and visitors who are chugging martinis like Manhattanites. Next stop: Veri Bari, a Russian-owned hole-in-the-wall somewhere in Centro that serves the best pelmeni I’ve ever tasted (incredible what a little butter and herbs can do). A writer and I sip mezcal and gossip about our mutuals while a DJ spins slowed down rock n’ roll records recorded by a Mexican cover band. Suddenly, the bar is packed and a young mustachioed man named Avant-Gardo is screaming across the table, telling us it’s time to party. I’m drunk and generally down for whatever but my chaperone reminds me to go home.

FRIDAY 11:39AM APRIL 4, 2025, CDMX

We stop at what appears to be a Milanese cafe but isn’t. Outside, English-speaking people are drinking Aperol Spritzes and discussing everyone’s favorite topic: expats and gentrification. We share a chocolate croissant and walk to Laboratorio Arte Alameda. Inside, Sam and Fabiola show us through the space: a piece by Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic about uprisings and death, a sunken image of an eye surrounded by swimming tadpoles. “Most of this stuff is shot in Latin America,” Sam tells us of the Luiz Roque exhibition, which includes videos that are simultaneously being shown at Mendes Wood in Manhattan. She points to two screens on the floor, one featuring a docile deer and the other a spinning image of a Herzog & de Meuron building in New York that she can’t quite remember the name of. “Jenga,” I tell her. “That’s what we call it.” 

6:10pm

As always, we’re late, and the guard informs us that we’re not getting in. “But I’m press,” I whine. “We’re on the list-o.” He nods and we cross the slanted entryway of Ex Teresa Arte Actual, a former church-turned gallery where Delia Beatriz is hosting a sound installation and performance based on Carmelite traditions. At the front of the space, a choir sings; Delia, donning a habit and bodysuit made from pantyhose, leads with an electric flute. Her shadow inches up the wall, a female Nosfuratu leading a musical mass punctuated by poetry delivered by a cast of powerful women. I don’t understand what they are saying so my mind drifts. I think about American girls getting rid of their blonde hair under Trump. My too-tight pants. Someone sits in front of us and they smell like Santal 33. A spotlight emerges on the painted fresco. Angels fly across a glowing pyramid and it feels like ASMR. 

8:16PM

Outside, I photograph the performers and sip mezcal from a plastic cup. The show was serious but everyone’s smiling now. I spy another acquaintance from New York and Sam invites us along with some other friends to a stranger’s birthday dinner. Within an hour, I make eight new friends and sample four different pastas. I’m starting to love it here. 

SATURDAY 1:04AM APRIL 5, 2025, CDMX

We arrive at the secret location for Desculonization, a rave that charges extra for attendees with IDs from the global north. More mezcal, dancing, wandering through a small room where girls are selling leftist literature and boys are administering tooth gems. I run into my friend from BEBE and she offers me some [REDACTED]. We dance and she smiles and yells in my ear, “Today I quit my job at the gallery!”

5:35PM

Sam, Delia, my husband and I step out of an Uber in front of AXE Ceremonia, a massive music festival where Tono is curating video art at one of the smaller stages. I urgently need to find a bathroom. I ask Sam if expats ever get used to the food here. She tells me she’s not sure how anyone bottoms in this city. Inside the gates, we walk past a large group of policemen. They’re guarding a fallen butterfly sculpture and I feel scared for an second. Is the scaffolding in this VIP area safe? Piolinda is playing and I do my best to dance but I can’t compete with the tweety birds flitting around me. It isn’t until later we find out two people perished by butterfly. 

10:15PM

Everyone disappears except for my husband, our new friend Pol, and I. Piolinda is wrapping up. Pol buys a cold hot dog and we wander aimlessly. None of us have cellphone service or care about catching A.G. Cook and Charli xcx. Nataneal Cano is that way. We order mezcal and the music starts and flames coming from the stage warm our bodies. Cano is performing with a red solo cup, smoking, slurring, inhaling an oxygen tank. Corridos tumbado is controversial but no one I’ve met on this trip is against indulging in the fruits of narco culture.  

1:11AM

We walk out and I spy someone hawking a Nataneal Cano blanket. Pol knows I’m cold so he buys it for me: 100 pesos. The boys get in line for a torta de tamal and Sam secures a cab. Within seconds, I’m snuggled up in the back seat, the hot spicy grits coating my throat while the driver swerves like we’re in the Grand Prix. I’ve never been so happy.