Most are safe, some are clean, none have windows and all serve cheap beer & mixed drinks

To find the true cantina, one must journey deep into the labyrinth of Centro Mazatlán.

The establishments in these neighborhoods are the perfect venue for a unique type of cultural immersion. Most are safe, some are clean, none have windows and all serve cheap beer and mixed drinks. For the price of three beers in a Gold Zone bar, you can get falling down drunk in a Centro cantina… in theory, of course. Some folks view these places as sordid dens of iniquity filled with drunken banditos and hookers, while others see them as a destination for cultural adventure. No matter what preconceived notion you carry through the portals of a cantina, it’s never quite what you expect.

The better cantinas serve botana, basically a free lunch, usually between about 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Botanas run the gamut between unrecognizable goop to high-quality pulled pork, varying from place to place and day-to-day. There are several cantinas that will custom-cook shrimp brought in by patrons, a shrimp feast on the cheap. The easy way is to buy shrimp from the “shrimp ladies” on Aquilles Serdan, just north of Zuniga, and take them around the corner to Dunia’s Cantina. Here they’ll prep and cook the camarones to your specifications, for less than $100 pesos per person.

La Alemana, on Zaragoza, is a typical Centro cantina in all aspects but one: it’s air conditioned. It appears that some form of a/c has been cooling this place since the dawn of time. The old foil-wrapped ducts still hang from the 6-meter ceiling, stained by age and neglect. The wheezing antique compressor has long since been replaced with two industrial strength split units capable of reducing the interior temperature to near Arctic levels. In the summer months, this is a popular place to escape the sweltering heat. And as with all cantinas, the character of La Alemana is in the quality of the characters that come through the door.

If you want to live life a little closer to the edge, try Club de la Amistad. This hard-core Centro cantina is right across the street from Edgar’s on Mariano Escobedo and Aquilles Serdan, and can get a little rowdy on weekend nights. The pool table is in excellent condition - for a cantina - and there’s always someone willing to show you how to play. Playing pool with the regulars for drinks is always enjoyable and relatively safe. However, it’s always best to judge your opponent’s level of inebriation prior to engaging in this game of skill. Past experience has taught me that drunks don’t play well, but for some unknown reason they still expect to win.

The vendors that habituate the local cantinas are a breed apart from those that ply the beaches and tourist areas. I think my favorite is the one that dispenses pain and suffering. He comes through the door carrying a black box with two steel bars wired to it and a battery so large it requires a wheeled cart. People actually pay this merchant of madness for the dubious privilege of grasping the steel handles while he runs 20,000+ volts through their bodies. The object of this masochistic practice is to see who can hold on the longest as the power is increased. It usually requires three or more very drunk, very macho Mexican males; sober people know better. I guess a really macho guy would hold on until his eyes rolled back and he lay twitching on the floor. I won’t touch the damn thing, but watching poor inebriated fools willingly clutch the handles of this Third World torture device is greatly entertaining.

When my research team and I entered the small but clean Delisosas Del Pacifico, we were looking for ethnic adventure, not botana. This long-established watering hole is directly across the street from the Pacifico brewery and serves only Tecáte brand beer - an irony not lost on even the most impaired member of our group. As we scanned the room, it became clear the only available table was directly in front of the jukebox, standing mute and glowing against the faded plaster wall. One of the principal rules when cantina-hopping is to pick a table as far away from the jukebox as humanly possible. All cantinas, even the decrepit caves that serve $8 peso beer, have modern, neon-trimmed behemoths capable of making your ears bleed. However, since this box was not playing, we took the table with only a tiny bit of apprehension.

Nothing livens up a cantina more than someone willing to plug pesos into the electronic altar of Mexican pop music. The only unfortunate part was that the box was less than three meters from our table, but what the hell. Thirty seconds into a well-chosen tune, the psychic ambiance of this small cantina went from borderline boredom to almost fiesta and the volume was near-tolerable. Several tunes later, it was obvious the music had loosened the place up, as several of the regulars along with a couple of the gringos sang along with El Recodo.

So whichever cantina you choose to patronize, I encourage you to spend some time, have a few drinks, relax and enjoy the funky fun. You never know when something strange, something wonderful or something somewhere in-between is going to occur.

As Bodie Kellogg continues his arduous task of cantina research, he strives to keep the readers of M! fully informed of his findings on a somewhat  regular basis. Find him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .