Tijuana cab confessions

“Baby time” by Kinsee Morlan

So here’s how it goes: I walk across the border, dead tired after 12 hours of work, carrying three bags because I can’t seem to fit all my shit in just one.

I drag, but eventually make it to the cabs parked in front of McDonalds, muy cerca de la linea en Tijuana.

I get into a cab, the cheaper smaller ones that cost me $4 to get to La Cacho.

The cab driver looks at me with his watery brown eyes in the rearview mirror and asks if I just got off work.

“Si,” I say wearily, “Y estoy muy, muy cansada.”

“Oh, si?” he asks, with feigned concern. “Adonde vas?”

“La Cacho,” I answer. “Cerca de la Calimax en Boulevard Aguas Calientes.”

He drives in silence for a bit, but never stops looking at me in the rearview mirror.

“Estas casada?” he asks with a sly little smile.”

The dude wants to know if I’m married (for all you gringos out there).

“Nope,” I say. “Estoy soltera.”

“Neta?” they always seem to say. “Pero, tienes ninos, no?”

“Nope,” I say. “No tengo ninos. Estoy demasiado joven.”

“Cauntos anos tienes?” they ask, eyeing the wrinkles around my eyes.

“Tengo venti y seis anos,” I say, raising my eyebrows in an attempt to look younger.

“Y no tienes ninos?” they ask, thoroughly confused.

“Nope, no tengo hijos y vivo en tijuana sola y no tengo un novio tampoco.”

I go ahead and answer all the questions I know will immediately follow: I live in Tijuana. I live alone, and no, I don’t even have a boyfriend.

I sometimes go on and try to explain that in Estados Unidos, or California at least, or at least the women in California that I know, don’t tend to have children until they’re 30 or so. Having kids any younger, I say, isn’t really socially acceptable anymore. Plus, I always try to add, I’m a journalist and I have a lot of stuff I want to do before I settle down. Babies are a lot of work, I say — they always agree on that last point.

And until the moment we pull up to my apartment tucked behind Jazz Tacos in beautiful Colonia La Cacho, the driver is looking at me in the rearview mirror trying to spot the one hideous imperfection that must be keeping me from finding a man and getting knocked up.

I wonder if they ever find it.

Listen up: Art Rocks! internet radio

I’ll be guest co-hosting Art Rocks! internet radio this Wednesday, May 28, at 7 p.m. Tune in live or podcast it and listen to it later. Guests include Ashley Gardner of the Women’s History Museum, Michel Yvone of MYM Entertainment and Patricia Rincon of the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective.

Sigur Ros in Tijuana

D-Town Tijuana is shaping up to be the biggest and best thing that’s happened to Tijuana since the cesar salad (yep, the cesar salad was invented here). The lineup includes Sigur Ros, Album Leaf, Shark Attack, Buddy Akai and mucho, mucho mas. Buy your tickets online. Do it now. Do it for me. Do it for Tijuana.

UPDATE: I just got word that the Sigur Ros has been canceled.  Damn.

From CityBeat’s Summer Guide

“Mercado HIdalgo” by Kinsee Morlan

This was first published in San Diego CityBeat’s Summer Guide 2008 issue, which came out Wednesday, May 21.

10 reasons to go to Baja California

1. Lots and lots of wine: In Season 4 of South Park, Kenny ends up in Ensenada and is convinced he’s in Hell. But the Ensenada Wine Harvest Festival/Fiestas de la Vendimia shows just how wrong Trey and Matt can be. With wine events happening in Ensenada’s gorgeous Valle de Gaudalupe from Aug. 1 through Aug. 17, the port city is waaaay closer to the fluffy clouds of heaven than the fiery pits of hell. E-mail fiestasvendimia@hot mail.com for details.

2. Dogs running after cute little fake bunnies: The dog races at Hipodromo de Agua Caliente are entertaining whether you bet your hard-earned cash or not. Experts check the stats of each beautiful greyhound for betting purposes, but we recommend putting your money (or just your gentleperson’s bet with a friend) on the dog wearing the cutest little jersey. The stripes! The stripes! Check out bet.caliente.com.mx.

3. Mercado Hidalgo: This open-air farmers market (corner of Sanchez Toboada and Avenida Independencia in Tijuana’s Zona Rio neighborhood) is fun and functional. Go for the produce and homemade Mexican candy, but stay for the strange Mexican curiosities, the excellent food at little taco joints tucked here and there and the totally Tijuanense atmosphere.

4. D-Town Tijuana: This new arts and music fest is being shaped as we speak, but with Sigur Rós and MSTRKRFT already booked, it looks like things are taking the shape of awesomeness. The events are going down June 6 through 8, but you should get your tickets now at www.dtowntijuana.com.

5. Julieta Venegas: A beautiful Mexican girl who can play the accordion and the piano while singing heart-wrenching love songs—that’s more than enough reason to cross the line, right? Venegas is the pop princess of Latin America, but unlike Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson, this woman has a soul and a brain and a heart and a little something they call talento down south. The lovely lady takes the stage at El Foro in Tijuana July 19. Call 619-734-2333 for tickets.

6. Sweet treats: El Mejor Pan de Tecate, the fabulous bakery located at 331 Av. Juárez in Tecate, has a mouthwatering selection of cakes, donuts, conchas, breads and other colorful, fresh-baked delicacies. Founded in 1969, El Mejor Pan has been a staple for Tecate residents and tourists alike. Bread is still warm and the quinceañera cakes are to die for, so grab a tray and load up with goodies before you head back to the border. Visit www.el mejorpandetecate.com for details and recipes or call 011-52-665-0040.

7. Camping: Fresh air, stunning mountains and an abundant wine country are just a few reasons to abandon the beach and set your tent up in Tecate. Rancho Ojai is a working ranch and campsite located in Tecate’s countryside, about 13 miles from downtown. The site has room for tents and RVs, or you can rent a wood cabin with full electrical service if you’re into that whole camping-with-amenities thing. Call 011-52-665-3014 for reservations. www.rancho-ojai.com.

8. Fairs and fiestas: Art, culture and beer abound in Tecate in summer. The usually quiet town takes a few weeks to celebrate with the Feria Tecate en Marcha, which falls in July some years and August in others. In addition to parades and rodeos, the annual fair showcases crafts from Tecate’s thriving arts community. To learn more, contact the Tecate Tourism Trust at 011-52-665-654-5892.

9. Dead bulls: That’s right—bullfighting. We know we’ll get some concerned e-mails from the PETA folks, but the Mexican consulate called and won us over with the old cultural-importance argument. The season kicks off May 25. www.tjbullfight.com.

10. Men in masks: Tijuana’s Lucha Libre fights feature some of the sport’s most voracious men in spandex. The luchas smack down on Friday nights throughout summer. You wish you could easily order tickets online and show up an hour before to get to your seats, don’t you? Well, leave your sense of American privilege behind and drive down at least three hours early to purchase tickets (which start around $10) at the box office, located at the Auditorio Municipal on Agua Caliente Boulevard in Colonia El Parais (best bet: take a cab; otherwise, you’ll get lost). To find out when the fights are happening, call 011-52-664-250-9015 or 888-775-2417 or visit www.seetijuana.com.
—Kinsee Morlan and Athena Davis

Three ways to not get kidnapped in TJ

1. Don’t look too American. Get a dark tan, wear a straw hat and refer to everyone as “ese.” You’ll be brushed off as part of the local working class immediately.

2. Don’t flash money around. In fact, try paying for your 2×1 cervezas with Monopoly money (better to have them think you’re slow than well off; plus, pesos look a lot like Monopoly money so it may actually work).

3. Don’t wear Crocs. Just don’t. Trust us.
—Kinseee Morlan and Enrique Limón

Four ways to get kidnapped in TJ

1. Wear snake-skin everything and walk like George Jefferson while whistling the “Moving on Up” theme song loudly.

2. Go ahead and let that annoying guy with a whistle poor tequila down your throat, then walk along Revolucion at 4 a.m. proudly yelling at natives, “Si yo quiero, te compro, cabrón!” (“If I want, I can buy you, fucker!”).

3. Wear Crocs.

4. Visit the Red Zone and buy yourself a $30 hooker. When you wake up to find your wallet missing, get all huffy and indignant, find her pimp and threaten him with promises of how well-connected and important you are.
—Kinseee Morlan and Enrique Limon

Deported in Tijuana

Tijuana border deportees

Lately, I’ve been parking my car in San Ysidro and walking through the Port of Entry. Every night, no fail, at around 7 p.m. I walk through right as Border Patrol agents are deporting their latest batch of undocumented workers. The group of deportees are made up mostly of young men, but there have been times when I’ve seen women, small children and old men barely able to walk.

It’s sad, to say the least. The people are taken off a bus, forced to stand against the border fence with their arms up like criminals, then they’re given a brown paper bag with the letters “MX” scribbled across the bottom corner and squeezed through a little side door right next to the turnstile gate where people walk through.

Most of them look bewildered and scared. They group together near the border fence and go through the contents of the bag — so far, what I’ve seen are shoelaces, belts and bottled water — then they eventually wander off into the wild that is Tijuana.

A few of the deportees ask passersby for money so they can call their families on the nearby public phones. Others likely have no way of contacting their family members. I can’t even imagine being in that situation. No wonder Tijuana has so many problems. The deportees have no food, no shelter –they have nothing but the clothes on their backs. If I were in that situation, I’d do whatever it took to get food and shelter. Steeling and panhandling comes to mind.

There has simply got to be a better way. Aside from humanitarian organizations like La Casa Del Migrante, which has representatives waiting at the fence for deportees from time to time, and a new program that gives immigrants a ride back to their hometown (which most left for good reason and have no interest in returning to), the people have little to no resources. It’s just not fair.  The United States should take more ownership in what happens to the people we deport.  Dropping them off in Tijuana with nothing but a paper bag filled with crap is just not enough.

The shock

“The Shock” by Kinsee Morlan

Prepare yourself for some garbled stream-of-consciousness crap: I drove 15 hours yesterday. I was in Ohio for a cousin’s wedding. It was lovely — that’s my programmed response — because really, it was a tad sterile. But then, everything seems sterile in comparison to Tijuana. Look up at the girl playing with the Elmo doll. I took that photo a few weeks ago at a bar called Chez. The place isn’t so much a bar as it is a broken-down two-story concrete building that sells 2-for-one drinks called nasty and offensive things liked chinga tu madre, plays death metal mixed with the occasional Portishead for the emotional rockers wearing the Chez-required all-black ensemble and has bathrooms that would make even the most hardened pee-anywhere partier think twice about breaking the seal.

Upstairs, the balcony is surrounded by chain-link fence — to keep the moshing or just straight-up fighting from becoming deadly of course.

So, the Elmo doll is actually an old car battery veiled by a hollow Elmo doll and that laughing girl up there is holding onto two metal bars that carry a pretty damned strong electric current. The guy holding Elmo cranks up the current slowly until the person holding the metal bars can’t take it anymore. It’s a novelty — a semi-dangerous novelty I suppose — and I absolutely love it. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

Television is so goddamned boring. Life in the United States can be so painstakingly dry and empty and predictable and planned. So many rules. We’re always so careful. And while I’m at it, let me just say that I absolutely hate railings. Stairs without railings — which you’ll find all over Tijuana — are so much more beautiful and interesting looking. I love stairs without railings.

The 15-hour drive wasn’t all that bad. Tornadoes in Ohio made my flight to Denver long and daunting, but once I slept for a few hours I was ready for the road. Denver, by the way, is lovely — and that’s not a programmed response at all. The dry desert-meets-mountain terrain will always and forever be home to me. The color pallet is much more muted than the dark greens and grays of Ohio or the bright blues of Southern California, but the Colorado countryside holds an inherently rustic kind of beauty that I’ve never found anywhere else — not even in the old deserts of Arizona.

Nevada was nice. Vegas, as always, disgusted me with its over-the-topness. There are radio stations, by the way, several radio stations, whose whole purpose of being is to play music for those driving 80 miles an hour down Interstate 15. They’re called The Drive, or Highway and they play riffy old butt-rock that reminds me of the guys in high school who wore John Deere hats and shirtless tanks that blew in the wind just enough to see not one, but two of their nipples. I truly cannot stand Vegas. Trump’s golden tower caught the sun and almost caused me to run into the concrete median. Screw you Mr. Trump.

The towns just outside of Vegas, though, those towns are cool. There’s one place — and I can’t, for the life of me, remember the name…Baker maybe — that’s nothing but gas stations, fast food places and an RV joint/truck stop/restaurant called Mad Greek, a well-marketed roadside attraction whose owners must pay tons more for their dozens of billboards than they do for the actual building itself.

Utah — I forgot about Utah. Utah snowed on me. I grew up a snowbaorder in the mountains of Colorado but always meant to make it to Utah for what I’ve heard is some pretty killer powder. Utah is part red-rock Mars, part rolling-hill Americana — I dig it for its strangeness. Mormons aren’t bad…they’re just silly.

And California. Ah California. It really isn’t at all like the middle of the country. It’s not even an estranged uncle or a red-headed stepchild. California is a surfer who reads too much. California is a hippie who drives a Volvo, a CEO who shops at Whole Foods, an OC kid who uses words like “like” while describing the finer points of existentialism and an over-medicated psychoanalyst who secretly loves scratching his own dandruff — it’s all those things rolled into one. It’s one giant burrito that I love to sink my teethe into, but I can’t do it every day. Too much of California would make me as soft as a burrito filled with fries and beans.

While I was driving for 15 hours in my new car with a broken CD player, I listened to my good friend NPR. Ten thousand people were killed in an earthquake in China while my wheels spun across the United States. Thousands more suffered in Burma post-cyclone. And a few dozen picked up the pieces after the tornadoes ripped across the Midwest.

But those stories didn’t touch me. They can’t. I can’t let them. If I let myself feel the sorrow of all those deaths I would collapse.

What touched me was the story about Nuala O-Faolain, an Irish journalist, author and feminist who died May 9. After listening to old interviews with Nuala I decided that, if I ever squeeze a kid out from between my thighs and the kid happens to be a girl, I’ll name her Nuala.

Nuala is my homegirl. She always wanted a normal life — husband, kids, house and all of that — but life didn’t work out for her that way. She was probably infertile — she wasn’t quite sure, but her years of unrestrained, unprotected sex unofficially confirmed her suspicions — and she ended up falling in love with both men and women.

What I really liked about Nuala was how she talked about her impending death from inoperable lung cancer. She quite honestly said it sucked. Life sucks because of death. Knowing — really knowing — you’re going to die isn’t easy to deal with at all when you’re a rational woman who treats Heaven and Hell like the cute little stories they are. All Nuala could say was that she hoped she got to say goodbye to everyone and that death would come to her when she was alone, so she could deal with it alone. That’s the way it should be.

Death, like the important parts of life, have to be dealt with alone. Nuala reminded me of that. She said most men and women fill themselves or give themselves meaning by getting married and having children. They make raising the children the purpose of their lives. That’s fine. Respectable even. But what about those of us who can’t or won’t have kids? What the hell are we here for? Nuala decided to be a writer and gave her funny, brutally honest yet magically poetic voice to thousands of people like me who needed it. We need to hear that we’re not alone every once in awhile, especially after being surrounded by white people in Ohio who have been doing the same thing for hundreds of years and will do the same thing for hundreds more. Grow up. Go to school. Get a job. Get married. Buy a house. Have kids. Retire. Die.

I’ll most likely do the same, but at least I pretended otherwise even if but for a moment.

Goa Gil in Rosarito

“Playas for Life” by Kinsee Morlan

Wow. I made it. I survived. There was one point when I didn’t think I’d make it. I was in a tent somewhere outside of Rosarito, and as an inordinate amount of flashlights streamed by the broken flap in the tent, I tried my hardest to look away from the lights and focus on the rapid-fire Spanish the crowd of Tijuanenses surrounding me were speaking.

I picked up every sixth word or so and began to freak out as my mind went into dark places it doesn’t belong. I felt alone, alienated, confused, stupid and out of place.

Full disclosure: I may have partaken in the pot brownies. Maybe. I’m not admitting anything here, I’m just saying that I was suffering from the worst case of paranoia I’ve felt in a long, long time.

As Goa Gil played his speedy set of spiritual techno outside on a stage built into the trees, I sat inside that damned tent, freaking out like a chihuahua on crack.

“What the hell am I doing here?” I started to think, as more and more kids tried to talk to me in Spanish and I was barely able to respond.

But as 2 a.m. turned into 4 a.m., I calmed down and eventually slipped into my roll as the outside observer. A beautiful little lesbian Tijuanense crawled into the tent and talked to me about what she wanted out of life. She tried her best to speak in English while I tried my best to pull out my Spanish.

And the boy who had invited me to the two-day rave — isn’t there always a boy behind these type of things? — eventually got me to calm down, too. We talked about cow bones (he says he uses cow bones in the handmade electric guitars he makes in Playas) and other such nonsense and we intermittently tried our best to go back outside the tent into the world of black lights, loud music, stars and trees, only to gyrate for a few moments before we’d give each other this look like, “Man, it was just so much nicer inside that tent, wasn’t it?”

In the morning, when the dust from the all-night dancing and partying had settled, I finally got to see the true beauty of the place. Apparently, every year the same party promoter rents out a ranch off of kilometer 81 on the free road from Rosarito to Ensenada and they invite the Great Goa Gil to play. And the kids (as in kids as young as 14) come swarming –they pack up their little tents, or casitas as they call them — ‘Where’s your house?’ they kept asking me all night — and sleeping bags and head out for two days of dancing.

When we first arrived, our tent had been one of just a dozen or so, but by the time I woke up we were surrounded by hundreds of tents filled with kids who would have been full-blown hippies if only they’d been born two decades earlier. And for a moment, while picking my way through the squashed Tecate cans and empty plastic water bottles, I felt as young and as free as they all seemed.

The world is trying to break me

“The Leaning Tower of Booze” by Kinsee Morlan

Life without a car in Southern California is impossible. Life without a car when you work in Southern California but live in Tijuana is even less possible.

My engine blew up a few days ago. My life feels like it’s blowing up, too. But before you tell me to stop being a whiny pussy, let me squeeze in a few more complaints.

First off, I recently got audited. Yep, the IRS does actually care about the money you make, even if it’s less than 30,00 a year. I guess I learned that the hard way. Now I owe money, and I can add that to the increasing number that is not unlike the National Debt. Seriously, student loans are sucking my blood. Credit cards are eating my soul and now the IRS is munching on my heart.

Living in debt is the American way, but it’s finally hit the point where I feel like it’s hopeless. I’m tempted to drive down the coast of Baja California and never come back. First, of course, I’ll pull out a molar and fake my death. That seems more logical than actually attempting to pay off my debt.

As if that crap weren’t enough, the Border Patrol agent in the Sentri line almost took my Sentri card away. As my friend put it, it’s amazing how techonologically savvy credit cards companies are, but our own government still can’t figure this whole internet thing out. My card was stolen, I reapplied for a new card, they issued me a new card, but the system still thinks it was stolen. Awesome. So let me just drive out to Otay when I don’t have a car and waste an hour or two explaining how this mixup isn’t my fault. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I’m going to get a new car, but getting the new registration and plates and insurance and then taking it back out to Sentri so they can approve it just seems so freaking daunting. I hate beauracracy. I hate lines and official forms and my life, at least for the next month, will be filled with them.

And on top of all this crap, I have crap in my lungs and nose and throat. I went to the doctor after two weeks of it and she said I’d be fine. It’s been a week. I’m still not fine. I’d like to stop choking on phlegm if it’s at all possible. Thanks for nothing, doc.

Yes, there are starving babies in Africa. My life isn’t so bad, I know, but now and again I’m allowed to bitch.