Tijuana

I drove down to Tijuana way early. They were just opening up the shops, praying the streets, and propping up the awnings. No problem for the most par with taking photos of people - stealing their souls and all. Either no one if superstitious anymore or they figure, “hey, soul’s gone anyway.” The difference the moment you cross the border is stunning: go 5 miles back toward San Diego and you’re in the bilingual mall - everyone decked out in Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Nike - while a hop, skip, and a jump away your neighbor is living in a cardboard box.

So I’m walking around with crocodile boots on the brain. The first pair is $600, but before I can get back on the street it’s down to $300 ( I now realize I can live without these boots). Back walking the streets, I can’t help but notice that as soon as you wander off the beaten path, you can feel the danger and paranoia welling up. Taxis pas by with 8 or 10 people jammed in. ON the corner is a mule painted up to look like a zebra so you can have a Polaroid taken astride it with or without a Sombrero. The photographer is truly grizzled and well past 60 with an ingeniously rigged camera made out of the bits and pieces of several other orphaned cameras. I guess he figures he still has a soul and steadfastly refuses to allow me to take his photograph. I finally give him a couple of bucks to take a photo of me using my own camera. I figure if worse comes to worse, even in the shape I’m in, I could probably catch him.

Every storefront not dedicated to souvenirs is a drug store. In Mexico, you can buy Valium and Qualudes over the counter. Hustlers approach offering pot and various forms of sex, but it’s pretty early in the day to even entertain offers, and the hustlers themselves don’t seem to have their hearts in it. The streets are virtually empty of tourists. There’s almost no one of a northern persuasion walking around Tijuana this morning, and I’m picking my way back to the border when this guy runs out of his store front, chases me down the street and says, “take the boots for $150, though you’re robbing me.” I figure that even if they’re made out of hamster, it’s still a pretty good deal, so I take them and am grateful. I spot a grizzled mariachi band, and I give them all of the pesos left in my pocket to play a tune just for me. At this point I’m sure that I am the Ugly Americans. So I finally find my car and head for the border. Of course I get stopped. Aside from making a 3 hour morning trip in a rental car from Memphis, I’m apparently making some kind of inappropriate eye contact. So they have me with my back to the car answering questions posed by border cop on the other side of an aluminum table. I glance back over my shoulder and see that they’ve removed the back seat as three German shepherds swarm over the car. Eight minutes later, I’m sitting in a Red Lobster eating red fish with portabello mushrooms.