Tijuana is not a good city, though. It's hell. Anyone who says otherwise is just happy that a high school senior can legally get beer and a hooker (and is probably also a high school senior).
My second trip to San Diego was a longer one, almost a week. I had plenty of time to soak up the architecture. It doesn't snow in San Diego, so the roads never gets salted in the winter. Concrete was white. Glass and metal gleamed in ways New York can't muster. My hotel had a balcony with a southern view of the city, and I spent hours just staring at the architecture. Just beyond those skyscrapers was Mexico.
I knew in the back of my mind that any Tijuana trip was going to be disappointing. Mexico's poverty-stricken, just like most of the countries in the world. Whatever Tijuana could assemble to hide its poverty wouldn't be good enough. Hell, if I needed to see poverty, all I had to do was look out the elevator lobby and see homeless guys living by the overpass.
The San Diego Trolley takes you south all the way to the border in San Ysidro. It takes an hour from downtown (maybe twenty minute if you're driving). The differences between America and Mexico don't suddenly happen at the border. The trolley ride took me through what looked very much like the Mexico I was about to see: ramshackle trailers, dusty hills, and out of work locals. Southern California is about 70% Mexican by volume.
There are two foot bridges to cross into Tijuana, one over the highway, and a second over the mighty Tijuana River. I've got ties that are wider than the Tijuana. You physically cross the border in the space between these bridges. There are no customs going into Mexico, just an extraordinarily rusty turnstyle. It looked like a prop from a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
It became instantly obvious that this was not going to be a fun trip. Beggars were throughout the Tijuana bridge, most of them children. Multiple five-year-old girls were squeezing accordions while sitting in the dirt. One guy sat cross-legged on a skateboard and pushed himself with his arms, presumably since he didn't have a wheelchair. Whole families were lying against walls, possibly living there. A dog missing half his hair bounced from person to person like a slow motion pinball. This was Calcutta, or Bangladesh, or some other horror show on the other side of the planet. Yet here it was a trolley ride away.
From the bridge I could see the first tin roof shacks I'd ever seen with my eyes. The classic of third world poverty, and there they were, just feet from the U.S. border. I can see why tequila is so popular here. If I was a drinker, I'd want to get blitzed as soon as possible.
I really wish I had brought my toaster pastries with me. I had 36 of them back in the hotel room. I needed the packaging for work (it was a club pack, unusual for private label goods), but not the actual pastries. I stuck the flattened boxes in my luggage, and had three dozen breakfast treats to unload somewhere. Best case scenario would be to give them to starving children in a third world country, but I didn't think I'd have that opportunity today.
Beads, trinkets, blankets, and Spider-Man luchadore masks were at tables every ten feet. Half the restaurants were selling tacos at 3 for 99 cents. I wouldn't mind getting a souvenir and am always interested in cheap food, but didn't want to stop. I felt like if I stopped, THEY could get me. I couldn't define THEY, or the threat THEY posed, but I felt once my big ol' American wallet was gone, THEY wouldn't be a threat.
My big ol' American wallet had eight bucks in it, by the way. I never bothered to exchange money in Mexico. I don't know what Mexican money looks like. The peso got overhauled, so it's no longer eight gajillion to the dollar. It's now just ten or eleven to the dollar. McDonalds has a ten peso menu.
In the center of town is a huge arch marking Avenida Revoluci�n, the tourist area. A giant TV screen is secured by dozens of steel cables. At its base were hundreds of people just sitting. I didn't know if they were homeless, or unemployed, or just didn't have a TV at home. I would have watched, but then THEY could get me.
Every block has what seems like three or four drug stores. Prescription drugs are a quarter of what they are in America, so Mexican border towns are rotten with pharmacies. I forgot to bring the prescriptions of my family, but I considered just guessing. My sister might be taking Allegra, or might be taking Claritin, so might as well stock up on both. From my last family reunion I could see that whoever wasn't on Lipitor damn well ought to be. Prilosec for a stocking stuffer, sure! I could go for a stiff Paxil myself.
Every block also has what seems like three or four strip clubs. Some of them have guys outside drumming up business by inviting people in to enjoy poverty-stricken minors who have found a way to get dollar bills from people. I was getting plenty of that outside, and without having to sort out who was 14, who was transsexual, and who was both 14 and transsexual.
My New York-honed way of dealing with street hustlers is just to walk right by them. High traffic sidewalks in New York get guys handing out strip club brochures, and we've all learned to just walk around them. But New York strip club hustlers go after everyone. 100 people walk down the street, the New York guys try to give each of those 100 people a strip club brochure.
Tijuana hustlers are target marketers. They only talk to people likely to actually go inside and spend money: white male tourists. I was walking down a crowded street, but to the hustlers' selection vision, I was the only customer in the bunch. Since I wasn't making eye contact with him (another art honed in New York) I had no idea he was talking just to me. When he went into the "Hey you, why don't you look at me" phase of his pitch, it did seem like an odd sales pitch. Especially when he poked me in the arm to see if he could get a response.
On the way back, I had a similar run in with a second strip club hustler. I continued with my default programming, and this time after I walked by the guy began cursing me out for not respecting him enough to look at him. Both these guys were white, by the way.
I wanted a big Mexican meal. Actually, I wanted to run back to my hotel room, but I felt like I should have a meal, if only to contribute something to an economy that obviously needed it. I wanted to see the town while I ate, but at the same time I didn't want THEY to get me. I compromised with a window seat at a indoor restaurant. I felt like an English colonist, only safe inside his gated mansion.
I picked one of the many taco/burrito/enchilada combos the English menu had, and a Coke. I had just about finished my Coke when I realized the ice could have come from Mexican tap water. I hadn't thought about drinking dangerous third world water, especially when America was still visible up the hill. This and eating salad washed in tap water are two of the more popular ways to accidentally get third world bacteria into your body (with a round trip ticket it's going to use immediately). But I saw a "Purified water" sign among the Tecate and Dos Equis XX neon glares, so I was safe.
I paid with a credit card, avoiding Mexican currency entirely. In one month I used American credit cards and ATMs to pay in Canadian dollars, Dutch Euros, and now Mexican pesos. The bank probably thinks I'm in a spy novel.
Next to the restaurant was an empty collection of tables and chairs. I wanted to do something in Mexico aside from walk, so I sat down and read a chapter of my book. No one approached me. I popped in a convenience store and looked around for a minute. No one approached me. Hey, this wasn't so bad. Maybe my overwhelming horror with the place made people think I was a local.
I never give money to the homeless in New York. I volunteer at a homeless shelter every week, and hope that makes up for it. I feel like scum not giving sometimes, but I know in most cases the money would go to drugs or alcohol.
The homeless in Tijuana are a different story. They're kids. There's a good chance the dollar you give them will go to food. I had three singles in my wallet, and I wanted them in the hands of kids who could use them. I ended up walking by many of these children, though. They were in big bunches, with lots of adults, and I didn't want to start off a giving frenzy when I only had three singles. I really wished I had my toaster pastries.
I was almost back to the American border when three children walked by me, their parents and grandparents a couple yards behind. "Mahney, mahney," they said with their palms out. Well, here was my chance. I took out my wallet, pulled my three singles out, and it was just enough to give each kid a buck.
I would have walked away feeling like a big man if the rest of the family hadn't rushed over, also with palms out. Parents, grandma and grandpa, all begging for mahney. I only had a five left, but I left it in my wallet. I was harboring thoughts of hitting an In 'N Out burger on the way back. Some of this family might have gone hungry that night, and I was allowing it because there was a fast food chain I hadn't tried yet. I walked away feeling like scum, like an English colonist, like an apathetic American.
Getting back into America is no problem with a valid driver's license. You wait in line for ten minutes before you present it to the customs guard, but he'll let you through with it. It felt disturbingly comforting to be home, where the homeless children are tucked out of sight.
I skipped the In 'N Out Burger. When I got back to my hotel room, I got my toaster pastries in a big bag. I threw in the bags from a flattened box of blueberry cereal and a sourdough bread mix for good measure. I hung it from the fence post where the homeless guys were sleeping. I still felt like an English colonist, but at least someone was able to eat a little better.
Every attraction Tijuana had, I wasn't interested in. Subtract the strip clubs, margarita bars and drug stores, and I was left with homeless children, starving dogs, and bacteria colonies in the tap water. If you ever go to Tijuana, bring toaster pastries so you don't feel like garbage. You'll also need a lot of Valium, but you can pick that up locally.
