Tijuana wants to break me

“Beautiful Destruction” by Kinsee Morlan

Broken glass and a missing orange backpack — that’s what I found a week after my car was stolen and eventually returned. Someone had decided it’d be worth bashing in my car’s back window to nab the backpack filled with dirty clothes that was sitting in the back seat.

I wanted to scream but I laughed instead. And after telling myself I was done with Tijuana and all its bullshit, I finally came to my senses and realized it wasn’t the city’s fault. I shouldn’t have left the backpack in the car. Simple as that.

Now my car has cardboard for a window and a driver’s side door that doesn’t work (battle wounds from the first robbery). It has been Tijuanized. Me? I’m not quite there yet. I’ve learned to use a steering wheel lock and never leave anything in my car. I’ve learned that sometimes people suck. But I’m not completely broken down and battered just yet.

I rode my bike through La Cacho again today and the beauty overwhelmed me. Everything is so textured here — so weathered and worn. Everywhere I look is a picture or a story with paragraphs and paragraphs of history and struggle.

I passed a broken-down public basketball park and thought about the person who pushed to get it built there. How proud she must have been when the cement finally dried and the first kid shot his orange ball through the hoop.

UPDATE: A few days after the stolen backpack incident, I went out to find that someone had broken into my car again.  This time they took the car stereo.    I laughed until I had to ride all the way from Tijuana to Mission Valley without the sounds of my good friend KPBS.

The dumps

 

I forgot to mention the cover story I wrote for CityBeat last week. You can read it here. Please tell me what you think. Mostly we writers feel like our words disappear into the void.

Illegal crossing

Last weekend, I started my day off right with a nice tall glass of orange juice and champagne. Five hours and about six mimosas later, I found myself a bit tipsy in Playas, the beaches of Tijuana.

A friend of a friend from England was in town and he was blown away by the absurdity of the border fence that runs right into the water (see below).

A bit tipsy and bewildered himself, the Englander demanded we cross through the gaps and use the toilettes on the other side (aka U.S. soil). I couldn’t say no. I’ve always wanted to try to cross illegally, not to mock the experience but simply for the experience itself.

So we crossed. The one resident Mexican we were with that day refused to cross and was understandably a touch annoyed, although amused by our undertaking.

We walked the beach on the U.S. side for a few minutes and nothing happened. The Brit needed more so we climbed the hill toward the public bathrooms and, within seconds, I spotted a Darth Vador-like image in the distance. The Border Patrol agent, wearing a dark helmet and goggles with a gun strapped to his thigh, didn’t do anything but stare. The Brit, being the good ol’ chap he is, walked right toward him in a “hey, I’m a stupid tourist” kind of way, and believe it or not, it absolutely worked.

By now, three agents had swarmed around us, two guys, one girl, and the Brit had them all laughing and smiling and nearly ready to let us snap their photos. They would’ve let us use the bathroom, too, but it was closed for the winter season.

We were white, so they were nice, but they pointed down at the shores at a family of Mexicans having a picnic below — half of the family on the Tijuana side, half on the U.S. side — and said, “You’ll have to cross back the way you came. We don’t want those people to get the wrong idea. A few of ‘em will probably try to cross on us tonight.”

We shook their hands and went on our way, back through the fence to el otro lado where a nice homeless expat with a cockatoo was nice enough to mark the momentous occasion by taking a photo of me, the Brit and the bird.

Tijuana by bike

“Rim Wall” by Kinsee Morlan

The upside to having my car stolen last week was that it gave me an excuse to ride my bike. And yes, by the way, I’m aware of the horrible murders that happened in TJ early Tuesday, but I prefer to focus on poor Tijuana’s prettier side.

“Read When You Can” by Kinsee Morlan

Car tales and tears

It’s late Saturday night and I’m lounging, getting ready to crawl into my first real bed — the rest have been mattresses thrown on floors — in at least four years, when my friend Memho takes one of his many paranoid peaks out the window at our cars parked in front.

“It’s Tijuana,” he’d tell me later, “I don’t trust it.”

On this particular peak, his face changes shapes. His eyes popped, he looks at me then back through the window then back at me, then manages to half yell, half whisper that my car is no longer there. Vanished. Finito Benito. Gone. Stolen.

My reaction was unusually calm. I eventually cried a bit, but only because moments before I’d been watching Quinceanera, a touching little Mexican movie about a 14-year-old girl who gets pregnant. I almost immediately accepted the loss and went about figuring out how in the hell I was going to get from my apartment in Tijuana to my office in Mission Valley (past trolley trips have taken me anywhere from two to three and a half hours).

Nowhere in my mind did I think of the possibility of the car being found.

“This is Tijuana,” I thought to myself. “and I don’t trust it either.”

Not that I don’t trust the people living in Tijuana, but the Tijuana police aren’t even trusted by their own government (I was here last summer when the federal police took away the Tijuana officers’ guns and did an in-depth investigation on internal corruption).

“Besides,” my inner dialogue continued, “the Tijuana police have better things to do than look for my shitty Honda Civic that’s on its last few thousand miles anyway.”

The Minute Men are so tough, so smart

According to Jeff Schwilk of the San Diego Minutemen, if you support immigrant rights, you support child rape. Jesus, Jeff, maybe if you put one more squinting eagle on your logo you’d be able to see things a bit more clearly.  Oh, and on the topic of your nifty new logo, my coworker Eric says he likes the addition of the Jewish star in the middle.  Oh wait, oops, was that supposed to be a five-point star to match the ones on the U.S. flag?

Read Jeff’s email below:

Do I need a passport to cross into Tijuana?

The short answer is yes, if you’re walking or driving across you do need a passport. If you don’t have a passport, they will accept a driver’s license and a birth certificate.

Officials are trying to phase in the passport requirement, but come on. What are they going to do if you don’t have it? Refuse to let you back in the U.S.? They may detain you for a bit and ask you citizenship questions, but they’ll eventually let you back in.

What most people don’t know is that until 2008, you didn’t even need a driver’s license or birth certificate to get back into the U.S. It was highly recommended, but if you didn’t have either, all that was required was a verbal statement of citizenship. It was up to Border Agents to challenge your verbal declaration.

My how things have changed.

UPDATE: I’ve crossed a few times without my Sentri and it looks like Border Agents are still accepting driver’s licenses only. So no need to freak if you don’t have your birth certificate or passport. Ven a Tijuana!