On the up and up

That’s Poo by Kinsee Morlan

I’ve watched for the past year as two residential towers have slowly — very slowly — gone up about a mile from the border. It’s a nice change from the hideous mini-suburb developments that have been popping up in Tijuana and Rosarito for the past decades. A good article came out in the Union-Tribune last week exploring current housing prices and the building-vertical trend in Tijuana. My favorite part of the piece, though, is the paragraph below:

Blocks from the U.S. border, New City’s plans include seven towers with swimming pools, tennis courts, meeting rooms, a sky lounge and covered parking. But one of its biggest selling points is the 11-foot-high wall surrounding the 7.5-acre site, along with video cameras, electronic access cards and the 24-hour presence of security guards.

It’s not the swimming pool or the tennis courts that have people buying up the units, it’s the 11-foot-high wall and security cameras. That’s a reality in Tijuana that I’m not cerain will ever change.

August at CECUT

Who Needs a Stupid ‘S’ by Kinsee Morlan

The Centro Cultural Tijuana’s event calendar is in Spanish, but it’s not too difficult to figure out what’s going on. The museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary, so there’s lot of neatness this month.

Click below for the full schedule:

Starbucks crossing lines

To USA by Kinsee Morlan

Starbucks is reportedly heading south, setting up shop in parts of Mexico, including Tijuana. The store is set to open by the end of the summer.

I do hate evil corporations, but I’m not convinced that Starbucks is completely evil just yet. I don’t typically go to Starbucks, mostly because I think their coffee is disgusting, but I understand that independently owned cafes can be just as bad if not worse than big companies. I’ve worked at two independently owned cafes, in San Diego nonetheless, where I was paid under the table. I worked long hours, never got over-time, never got any insurance of any kind, was sexually harassed by my bosses and on and on and on.

Perhaps there are things about Starbucks I don’t know. What I do know is that they pay workers fairly well, offer benefits even for part-time employees and they offer incentives for students.

Jorge Hank Rhon is a fucking weirdo

La Lucha Life by Kinsee Morlan

Seriously. It seems as though Mr. Hank is obsessed with animal penises. Here are some bits from various reports:

From the Associated Press: In an interview Tuesday with the Televisa’s main national morning news program, Hank Rhon estimated his wealth at about US$1 billion (euro734 million) and he endorsed a strange brew of tequila steeped for a year with bear bile, scorpions and tiger, lion and dog penises.

“It gives you an impressive amount of energy,” he said. “It tastes like tequila, but smoother.”

From Frontera NorteSur: A collector of exotic animals, Hank is notorious for throwing lavish parties, rewarding allies generously and wearing flashy clothes. Perhaps in jest, Hank recently told a pair of journalists that a desired piece of clothing would be a vest made from a donkey’s penis.

A Tijuana weekend

Beautiful Basura by Kinsee Morlan

I went to a wonderful house party, I checked out a brand new Radio Global-sponsored club — LF on Sixth between Constitucion and Ninos Heroes in downtown Tijuana, if you’re interested — I hung out with two of my favorite Tijuana artists (Charles Glaubitz and Foi Jimenez) and I watched some movies. But the most memorable part of the whole weekend was walking alone through the Sunday open markets. I got a lot of great shots and my senses were stimulated. I don’t know if I can ever live in the US again…it’s just too sterile.

When you walk through the streets of Tijuana you smell carne asada mixed with bleach. You see live crawdads being sold next to chopped nopales, fresh flowers next to headless chickens and clams beside homemade Jesus candles. I walked into a church service so crowded that some people were forced to kneel on the floor. I got lost and ended up on a street lined with vans offering cheap massages — you just climb in and lay down in the back, they lather you up and 10 minutes later you’re as good as new.

Showing signs of globalization

“Globalization” by Kinsee Morlan

Tijuana is studied by academics worldwide. I ran into one who said the reason he was so interested in the border town was because it is one of the first places to really show the effects of globalization. He said the rest of the world would be following the lead of Tijuana in the next decade or so.

I see the effects he’s talking about, and they’re both good and bad. The bad is on the econmic side. NAFTA has completely devestated not just Tijuana, but the entire country of Mexico by making it impossible for Mexican farmers to compete with the big American corporations. Many of the out-of-work farmers have migrated north to work in the maquiladoras, or foreign-owned factories, that populate Tijuana and other parts of northern Mexico. The maquilas disrespect not only the workers, but the environment and Mexican laws as well. If you ask a NAFTA supporter, she’ll say, ‘well, at least they have jobs now, they wouldn’t have anything without foreign investment.’ If you ask people inside the fight for workers’ rights, however, they’ll tell you the Mexican people would be better off without the maquilas.

On the flip side, globalization has made Tijuana a truly bilingual, bi-cultural city. That, according to me, is a good thing. The city takes the best from both worlds, making the overriding culture a sort of hybrid form of Mexican-Americanism. I dig that for culinary, musical and artistic reasons.

Globalization has also been good for feminism. The traditionally macho Mexican culture you’ll find in Southern Mexico isn’t as prevalant in Tijuana. Tijuanense women are shown that there are more options in life than marriage and kids.

Looking at life

I can’t wait to get started on my new photo series. It’s going to be called, “Stoop Kid’s Afraid to Leave His Stoop” (thanks to “Hey Arnold,” a stupid cartoon I watched once during the 90s, for the title). It’ll be photos of people hanging out in their front doorways or, as the title suggests, stoops. Simple enough, right? As far as I can tell, this is a phenomena that is particularly unique to Tijuana and perhaps the rest of Mexico. The pace of life down there is noticeably slower, more relaxed and casual, and service workers sort of just sit about and observe passersby when they have nothing else to do.

Our anal, busy-body American culture doesn’t allow for this kind of behavior. Even if we dont’ have something to do, we busy ourselves by messing around on the Internet or creating meaningless projects or tasks. While we’re busily working life away, Mexicans our literally watching life pass them by. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, just different and worth noting.

Picking out a new cat

Thanks to a blog comment, I’ve decided to get a cat. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for the last few months anyway, but the commenter says the cat will kill all my cucarachas. Purrrfect.

What do you guys think of Jackie? Jackie is my mom’s name, I grew up with a Siamese cat and the profile says little miss Jackie likes to catch bugs. I think she’s the winner.

UPDATE: The people at the shelter turned out to be jerks. I am now attempting to catch a kitten that eats trash in front of my house. She’s a gangsta kitten…I can’t wait to get her inside, get her some real food and watch as she instinctively kills each and every bug.

Tijuana mayor: You’ve got my vote

If you don’t already know, Jorge Hank Rhon, a rich and shady businessman who owns white tigers mostly because they make him look tough, served as Tijuana’s mayor until February when he stepped down in order to run for governor of the state of Baja California. I haven’t been paying much attention to the race to fill Hank’s spot, but, as of today, I know who I’m voting for.

Fernando del Monte, Televisa’s leading news anchor, has thrown his hat into the ring. If ever there were a job that prepared you to be the mayor of one of the most dangerous cities on earth, a news anchor is it. I mean, you have to do all that talking and reading and smiling and, jeeze, you’ve got to master all those complicated tosses (A ‘toss,’ by the way, is television-news lingo for saying, “and now we go to John Smith live at the zoo where he’s got panda guru Sally Jones ready to talk about panda humping”). And when you toss to an anchor on location and they’re not there, OH MY GOODNESS…the stress is not unlike having you and your entire extended family threatened by narcos who kill people and stuff their dead bodies in barrels for fun. Believe me, I know. I used to work on the front lines of television news at San Diego’s local NBC affiliate. So take my words seriously when I say television anchors, most of ‘em anyway, are as sharp as a donkey’s hoof. They are prime candidates for political seats.

Fernando is more than ready to step in. I just hope his hair doesn’t get tassled while he’s out there dodging bullets.

Dreaming of death

Okay, this is the one and only time I’m going to write about a dream. Maybe it was the homemade veggie burrito I ate before drifting off to sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night with tears streaming down my face and a clear memory of a pretty messed-up dream.

I was, for some reason or another, sentenced to death by the US government.  I went all the way to Washington, D.C., to try to plead my case with Mr. George Bush himself, but he just wouldn’t see things my way.  Instead, I was captured and sent back to California where I was put in the electric chair of all things.  I mean, I didn’t even get the pleasure (or displeasure depending on your thoughts on how humane the death cocktail really is) of being put to death by lethal injection.

I wish I could say I was stoic in my last few minutes of life, but I wasn’t.  I was sobbing and begging for my life.  It was pretty pathetic and I woke up with a real sense of shame.  In real life, if the US government ever sentences me to death, I hope I’ll go out like a punk-rock radical and maybe flip-off the death spectators or say something extremely clever just before I sink into death.