Sunday, August 27, 2006

Trendy Crossing

Tijuana. San Diego's poor, seedy sister across the Mexican border. The place everyone goes to with the thrill of maybe getting mugged, but otherwise having a good time. Cheap food, cheap tequila, cheap local artifacts. Then back home. A little caricatural, non?

In its article It's Hot. It's Hip. It's Tijuana?, the New York Times reviews the changes and cutural revolution happening in the city:
When you walk across the border from the United States to Mexico and the steel revolving doors clank behind you, locking you in, there they are — the pharmacists in their crisp white coats offering you discount drugs on the street, and the junk taxis making their rush at your pedestrian confusion.

The Avenida Revolución stretches ahead like a psychedelic version of Disneyland’s Main Street, with its multiplex margarita bars and outdoor party music and throngs of San Diego teenagers enjoying a day’s parole from being under 21.

Everything you expected to see, you see, and you think you know Tijuana.

But Tijuana is Mexico’s fastest-growing city. And it is changing. Cosmopolitan by default because of its proximity to the United States — 60 million people cross the border there each year — Tijuana is developing a new identity that is bringing it out of the shadows of its own reputation.

Its fabled lawlessness has become a kind of freedom and license for social mobility and entrepreneurship that has attracted artists and musicians, chefs and restaurateurs, and professionals from Mexico and elsewhere.

“You can see the cultural development growing with the city,” [says a local]. “So many artists have moved here, who want to show here or sing here. Tijuana’s a new city, so you can improvise culturally.”

“People think we have nothing,” [another local says]. “We have everything. We have two seas, the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez. California only has one.” [more]
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