Barrio Antiguo, a forgotten place for nice people.

Taking the trip down memory lane for Throwback Thursday, we end up in Matamoros during the late 90’s and early 2000’s.  Back in the day, when you wanted to get drunk with your friends and under 21, Matamoros was the place to be.   Many of the familiar places at the time on the main strip of Alvaro Obregon was Zero Zone,  El Chaparral, Crazy Lazys, Black Cats and if you ventured further towards Calle Sexta (6a) you would find a place called Barrio Antiguo. 

Barrio Antiguo was located half way between Calle Abasolo and Calle Matamoros on Sexta Street and was styled in a similar fashion to the old neighborhood known as “barrio antiguo” of Monterrey.  The place was considered a “fresa” place, a term to describe a cultural stereotype in Mexico of superficial youngsters who, by the traditional definition of the word, come from an educated, upper class family,  I wasn’t from any upper class family and I was just studying in community college at the time, but my friends who I met while living in Matamoros were kind of considered fresas. 

Now I don’t remember a whole lot about this place,  but one of the main things that stood out from the outside was this big wooden door in front of the entrance and as you came inside, there was two floors and an acrylic dance floor right in the middle.   Everyone used to drink whiskey with agua mineral and if you were caught drinking beer then you were considered a “naco” and really shouldn’t of been hanging out with the nice crowd.   Fights were a very common occurrence, the few times I did go it seemed like there was a scheduled fight always after 1:00am, there was a bouncer named Jaime that would let people fight for a good 15 seconds before jumping in and kicking the perpretators out.

I don’t know when Barrio Antiguo closed down but it was probably sometime around 2005 and why it closed down is a mystery.   I asked around several of my friends and nobody really has an answer, my best guess that it died down in popularity and wasn’t generating enough revenue to keep it around.  Whatever the case may be, Barrio Antiguo holds a dear memory to those awesome times of being a young crazy adult.  If you have any pictures of this place, send them over and I would like to update the site with them.