At night, the Mexican street is much more alive than its American counterpart. It is alive with conversation, music, sounds of all kinds, the colors and lights of buildings, the smells of food cooking and wood fires. They are by no means what you would call “quiet.” Taco stands, hot dog vendors and other food venues appear at night, almost magically out of nowhere. The background music varies depending upon where it is happening. In the north, it would most likely have the norteno beat or a bouncy accordion-driven polka beat of a narcocorrido narrating some tale of the drug world. Not nearly as common, but not out of the ordinary, would be the Beatles singing “I’ve Just Seen a Face.”

During the late afternoon or early evening hours, las horas buenas, many people sit and talk outside their homes. This is mostly driven by the desire to converse with friends and family, but we later discovered that a big part of it also had to do with the fact that their masonry concrete and brick houses would either get so hot in the summer or cold in the winter, that the only remedy was going outside.