i've never been to tijuana, mexico. i might be the only person in southern california who has never been. there's a couple things that symbolize california, especially los angeles, to non-californians and i don't think that i've done any of them. i've never surfed, never been to the hollywood sign, etc. then there's a couple of things that it seems like all southern californians have done that i have never done. go to the santa monica pier, go to tijuana, etc. so today i went to tijuana. i've been to baja california before, but to ensenada by boat, and it was on easter so all the stores were closed. so i've never seen what people are talking about when they talk of tijuana and baja. i had to correct this. i went with twiddle thumbs and her parents. her dad drove. i barely slept last night so i slept almost the entire drive down.

i was sitting at the back of the minivan so i didn't get great pics, but here's what the border is like:

i was surprised at how close to the border the center of tijuana is. i thought the town might be separated from the border but it's right there. we drove around and the first place we looked for was vallarta natural, a vegetarian restaurant i looked up on the internet. we found it pretty quickly. it's right across the street from el toreo de tijuana (bullfighting ring).

el toreo de tijuana

i don't speak spanish, but judging by the menu, vegetarian means something different to mexico--apparently eating chicken and fish is ok. i had a hamburguesa vallarta (soy burger), sin queso. i thought my pronunciation was good but the waiter didn't understand what i said. :( or maybe the concept of "sin queso" (without cheese) was surprising to him. i don't know. he missed the "sin queso" part and i think looked at twiddle thumbs's parents so her mom told him what i said. then twiddle thumbs piped in that it shouldn't have mayonnaise either. all three of us women tried a drink that had cinnamon in it. even though it had ice, it wasn't very cold. i don't normally like cinnamon but the drink was pretty good. there were big bits of cinnamon in the drink. it was like a meal 'cos it gave you something to snack on. twiddle thumbs didn't like the bits but i did. the cinnamon wasn't overpowering, it was just right. the burger i had was pretty good but since it didn't have any sort of spread or dressing on it, it was a bit dry and lacking. it had sprouts though, yum.

vegetarian food, mexican style

after lunch, we drove around and around. twiddle thumbs's dad kept doing crazy driving moves that twiddle thumbs was freaking out over. while we were driving around, twiddle thumbs got a call on her cell phone. it was my brother calling from japan! a japan-mexico call, cool!

we stopped to look at the beach behind the plaza monumental bullfighting ring and had some popsicles. i saw a skinny squirrel on the side of the road during the drive to the beach. i saw a fat squirrel at the beach so there must be plenty of good trash to eat at the beach.

this squirrel's doing just fine

playa de tijuana

maybe next time i'll go swimming

tijuana lighthouse

this phone at the beach was nasty; you couldn't pay me to use it

art by the beach

the reason for this trip was that twiddle thumbs's parents had a dentist appointment. even though it's a drive, apparently it's much cheaper for them to go to mexico for medical care. there was still time to kill until their appointment so we drove to a shopping complex and walked around for a bit. at a music store we picked up bushido's cd, enrique bunbury's new group. the prices were a little high, so we didn't buy anything else. there was another store, but they didn't have anything interesting. the rock selections are really small at these stores. they seem more like shrines to banda.

i'll meet you at the cemetry gates

then it was time for the dentist so we went over there, close to the main streets that everyone says you must go to in tijuana. twiddle thumbs and i walked up and down the streets, looking for cool things, especially music stores. there was this little complex that you could barely notice from the street. i didn't think there would be anything interesting, but twiddle thumbs wanted to go in. the only thing interesting we could notice from the street was that there was an internet cafe inside. once we were inside, i noticed a sign for a rock shop on the second floor. we went there and it was mostly t-shirts. metal t-shirts. hardcore fucking metal t-shirts. there were also some accessories such as badges and bracelets. i bought a cloth patch that had a picture of jason voorhees and the words "vegan" and "meat is murder" on it. it'll be great for my backpack.

main road under construction

i noticed the music playing in the store (too tiny to actually be called a store, more like a booth) sounded like a cradle of filth copy band. the vocals sounded like dani filth, for the most part, but the music wasn't that good. i asked twiddle thumbs to find out what it is. the clerk said and twiddle thumbs didn't quite understand him. then he showed cradle of filth's "midian" cd and i was like, see it is cradle of filth! then the clerk said it's the latest release. i said it wasn't and held up hand to show 4 fingers. twiddle thumbs explained to him it's 4 years old. he said, no it's the new one, then put the cd away. i said that i'm pretty sure "midian" is from 2000 and to tell him to look at the back of the cd. then he pulled out some other cd and it was a cd-r case. it had the name of a cradle of filth album i'm not familiar with so it must be the new album. thanks for the preview! guess i won't be buying that one. i stopped at "midian". i think it's pretty good and better to end on a high note than have a bunch of crappy cds i'm not happy with. the clerk told us where we could buy the cd and the shop wasn't very far so we embarked on a mission to find it.

mexico is notorious for the friendliness of the people

on the way, we found another music store and saw a cd we hadn't seen in the other stores yet, the solo cd of alejandro marcovich from caifanes. we didn't even know he had a solo cd. it was pretty cheap too. $70 nuevo pesos. we decided not to buy it and check out the other store first. if the other store didn't have it or it cost more there, we would come back for it.

tijuana arch

the store we were looking for was very close and they were an interesting shop, but not that interesting. the prices were good. we bought the latest release from vicentico (los fabulosos cadillacs). we saw his other solo cd in another store but didn't buy it because we were saving our money for a really good find, but as the day wore on we realized the music stores in tijuana suck. we need to go to mexico city again. we need to find a tower, hmv, or some other huge store in tijuana if we are to find the music we like. on the way back to the dentist, we stopped by the other music store and bought alejandro marcovich's cd. i paid $7 and got back change. that's a very good deal. of course now i see why it was so cheap. it's not an album at all, just 4 songs. i looked up on the internet right now to see if it's an ep or a single. it's a single. still, it was cheaper than how much it is for sale online.

for dinner, we went to sanborns, a chain of stores with a restaurant or a chain of restaurants with stores. i was looking forward to going because i'm pretty sure cafe tacuba mentions sanborns in one of their songs. before we went to the restaurant part, we looked at the cds. man, they were a mess! there were dividers for english and spanish music, then A, B, C, etc. but all of the cds were not in any sort of order whatsoever. the languages were mixed and there was no alpha order to them. so it took a long time to go through them. there was nothing we wanted to buy. but we were curious about some cds because the packaging was slightly different. i'm thinking that we own the skimpy american release and the mexican release has full liner notes.

sanborns

at the restaurant, i was looking over the menu and noticed the picture in the menu was of the zocalo in mexico city. makes me think that the chain must have started in mexico city. to drink i asked for té frio con limón and the waitress didn't understand so i think both twiddle thumbs and her mom said at the same time to the waitress what i said. i know i've never studied spanish but i grew up in LA and watched sesame street damn it! i know what words i can pronounce and the words i chose to speak during this trip are ones i can say pretty good so i was disappointed again that i wasn't understood. twiddle thumbs said that the waitress and waiter from earlier probably didn't understand because they weren't expecting me to speak spanish. twiddle thumbs said she was very conscious of her spanish in mexico. i told her that it's because she speaks spanish like a white girl. :p it's because she doesn't slur her words together like a native speaker. her pronunciation is way too clean.

after dinner, we browsed the books for sale. i found a macrobiotic book in spanish. cool. then we walked across the street because twiddle thumbs's mom wanted to buy something at the pharmacy on the corner. then we walked back across the street to check out a rock shop. they had the same basic things as the shop earlier in the day, but were a bigger store so they had piercings, bags, etc. i even saw a bauhaus shirt. i got a dragon bracelet that i thought was cool. twiddle thumbs asked the clerk about concerts at the jai alai place. earlier in the day we drove by a wall that had an ad for cafe tacuba to play a concert in that jai alai building on october 2nd, this saturday!, and tickets were only $12. so twiddle thumbs asked him how does one go about getting tickets, what time do shows normally start, etc. as we knew nothing about going to concerts in mexico.

graffiti advertising cafe tacuba concert

then we walked around the streets because twiddle thumbs's mom wanted to get some things. a lot of the stores had closed and the stores that were open didn't have anything that i liked. a little kid kept bothering us to buy a necklace. then her mother kept trying. twiddle thumbs's mom caved in and bought something. the lady finally left us alone after that. i only saw maybe 3 tourists (everyone else looked like they lived in tijuana or in the area) and that was our only time we had a hanger-on so that was pretty good.

a view of tijuana

we walked by the building where they play jai alai. the ticket office was still open so twiddle thumbs and i seriously debated whether or not to be adventurous and get tickets. i think we should go to at least 1 concert in mexico. twiddle thumbs's mom was encouraging us to go too, which really surprised twiddle thumbs. she was saying we could take the bus, or park at the bus station across the street, etc. we went to the ticket office and it turns out that tickets start out at $12. it's assigned seating and the tickets up front were $36 or $38, i can't remember. it's such a big venue and we've seen cafe tacuba in small venues up front. this is more for the sake of seeing cafe tacuba in their home country and appreciating that we get to see them in small clubs in america. we have binoculars so we bought the cheap, way in the back $12 tickets. we didn't want to go alone as we really don't know how to navigate around tijuana but wasn't sure who else could go, especially someone who knows tijuana. i'm not comfortable with the idea of driving in tijuana, but if i have to do it, i guess i'll make the effort. the guy said he'd give us 3 tickets for $30. cool. then we headed to the car to drive back home.

some tijuana homes in bad shape

i kept getting warned by twiddle thumbs that crossing the border can take 2-3 hours. i was prepared for that. what i wasn't prepared for was all the people who are selling things and begging almost up until the border itself. i'm not kidding. the last person approached the car about 20 feet from the border. there's just tons of them there. we got through the border very quickly. the guy didn't even look at our IDs, he just let us through because we said everyone in the car is american. it only took us 30 minutes to get through the border. that was as easy as a family trip through canada in '89.

cuidado, la migra

thoughts on tijuana: it seemed like no one had any patience. constant honking. you need earplugs. the curbs are quite high and the sidewalks have a lot of holes, so be careful when you walk, lest you twist your ankle. also watch out for the mystery moisture--there's a lot of puddles and i don't think it rained recently. (don't forget all the americans who go down to party 'til they puke!) a lot of stores with nothing much to offer me. tons of auto repair shops and pharmacies. i don't get the take a photo with a donkey painted up to look like a zebra.