South of the Border they say
Just chillin' on the west side listening to my buddy Vinny's new CD....It’s not bad....you know it's even better if you watch it with “2001: A Space Odyssey” with the volume turned down. (Hmm….maybe that works with all electronic music?)….I don’t know, but it sure makes awesome background music when those monkeys are running around breaking shit with femurs.
So anyways, I was in Tijuana last weekend and I must say it’s pretty much what I expected: kinda dirty, kinda poor, and kinda confusing. I think the Mexicans fall prey to placing a lot of emphasis on the wrong things. It seems like the whole country is misplacing their law enforcement officers. We actually had to go through a gate checkpoint with two police officers with automatic weapons to get into a SAM’s Club parking lot…..good thing we didn’t look too suspicious.....”Senor, dis is a Costco Card, Jou are at Sammmsss! prepare to die!”. Then we were at a Mexican restaurant and a cop was with an Uzi was practically the maitre de…he took our name and how many people we had and sent us to a waiter to get seated.……this place we ate at looked like a typical Mexican restaurant…but they had to lock the door after you got in….so I guess they have a lot of problems with people dining and dashing or those menacing little flower girls outside who harass you after your meal. The theater we went to see a movie was great, you sit in cushy leather seats and has a little dinner tray to eat at. There’s a bar outside where you can bring drinks in and you can even order sushi….(which in retrospect, probably isn’t a good thing to order in Mexico). As we were leaving, we had to wait like an hour to get through the line of cars to cross the border. As we got closer to the U.S., however, I felt like we were getting deeper into Mexico.….a small handful of impoverished Mexican vendors ranging from old men with to young girls juggling, were weaving though the maze of cars with their trinkets and their cheap imitations of popular U.S. culture. This eventually turned into an entire market of the worst souvenir extravaganza I have ever seen in my life. But, if you ever need a statue of a giant monkey in a bathing suit on a surfboard, let me know. I’ll know which tent to send you to.
So anyways, I was in Tijuana last weekend and I must say it’s pretty much what I expected: kinda dirty, kinda poor, and kinda confusing. I think the Mexicans fall prey to placing a lot of emphasis on the wrong things. It seems like the whole country is misplacing their law enforcement officers. We actually had to go through a gate checkpoint with two police officers with automatic weapons to get into a SAM’s Club parking lot…..good thing we didn’t look too suspicious.....”Senor, dis is a Costco Card, Jou are at Sammmsss! prepare to die!”. Then we were at a Mexican restaurant and a cop was with an Uzi was practically the maitre de…he took our name and how many people we had and sent us to a waiter to get seated.……this place we ate at looked like a typical Mexican restaurant…but they had to lock the door after you got in….so I guess they have a lot of problems with people dining and dashing or those menacing little flower girls outside who harass you after your meal. The theater we went to see a movie was great, you sit in cushy leather seats and has a little dinner tray to eat at. There’s a bar outside where you can bring drinks in and you can even order sushi….(which in retrospect, probably isn’t a good thing to order in Mexico). As we were leaving, we had to wait like an hour to get through the line of cars to cross the border. As we got closer to the U.S., however, I felt like we were getting deeper into Mexico.….a small handful of impoverished Mexican vendors ranging from old men with to young girls juggling, were weaving though the maze of cars with their trinkets and their cheap imitations of popular U.S. culture. This eventually turned into an entire market of the worst souvenir extravaganza I have ever seen in my life. But, if you ever need a statue of a giant monkey in a bathing suit on a surfboard, let me know. I’ll know which tent to send you to.