When the Americans Split, Tijuana Got Hip
A new flowering of art and nightlife has taken hold in a downtown that once filled with partiers from north of the border.

By Rex Wockner for MSN Local Edition

When the sun goes down in Tijuana, a revitalized club scene heats up.

Something you'd never guess is happening in Tijuana.

Americans pretty much have stopped visiting the city, put off at first by long lines at the border after 9/11, then stopped in their tracks by a new requirement to have a passport to hop back and forth between San Diego and Tijuana, and now scared by crime reports.



The city's famed Revolution Avenue -- where booming discos, cheap booze, a drinking age of 18 and uncountable souvenir shops had attracted hordes of Americans for decades -- fell on hard times.

But then something remarkable happened. Trendy clubs started opening on Sixth Street, on either side of Revolution, a little over two years ago. Stylish and fashionable, some of them feel like an Almodóvar movie, like Buenos Aires, maybe Barcelona.

These hotspots are devoid of American visitors, filled with Baja California trendsters. Yes, Tijuana has gone and gotten groovy.

Jason Fritz, 33, is an American grad student in Latin American Studies at San Diego State University. He lives in Tijuana because he finds it much more interesting than San Diego.

"A lot of edgy, young hipsters had been hanging out here on La Sexta (Sixth Street) before there was any of the new cool bars here -- at the Dandy del Sur and La Estrella -- but in January of 2009, the Mezcalera opened up and that's when things just really took off," he said. "You started to see a whole new hip scene emerging in Tijuana."

"If people are open-minded to discover what's happening here, they will really be impressed," Fritz said. "I would say it's one of the great cultural centers on the West Coast, but the thing is, most people aren't in on the secret."

The coolest clubs play "amazing new cutting-edge" local music, he said, referring to internationally known Tijuana creations that blend regional and folk genres with the latest electronic music.

Derrik Chinn: "Despite everything, Tijuana keeps moving."

Fritz is not alone in gushing over this big border city that many foreigners consider gritty at best. Derrik Chinn, 29, is an American journalist who has lived in Tijuana for four years and has organized "atypical" outings in the city for friends on both sides of the fence. Recent adventures have included a professional soccer game, the Tijuana Fair and a rollerskating night.
Tijuana is "organized chaos taking an aesthetic form," Chinn said. "You have hundreds of different little worlds existing right next to each other in one city block. It's amazing."

"So many spaces have been left empty because of the lack of tourism and finally local businesses started opening up that were finally catering to locals," he said. "If you come here from the outside and you observe what's going on here -- how people dress, the music they're listening to, their overall style -- it really does feel like a hipster scene. Despite everything, Tijuana keeps moving ... it keeps living."

Sergio Gonzalez, 34, is one of the owners of La Mezcalera, which started it all, as well as an owner of retro-cool Pop Diner at 6th and Revolution.

"People were afraid to go out at night two years ago," Gonzalez said. "The city was really messed up [so] people started to come downtown because they weren't [as] afraid [here]. When we opened La Mezcalera, we tried to do the mix of everything: Come here, it's not going to be a pretentious space, you can be around all kinds of people. And I think that was the formula to start to develop this phenomenon and, after that, 30 bars opened in the same street!"

"The street is about seeing people," says Sergio Gonzalez.

"The street is about seeing people," Gonzalez said. "It's really exciting to see people walking around and to see the city alive. That, and the fact that you can go from bar to bar and each bar has a different concept. The people who have opened these bars are young people who travel and have been in Europe or Mexico City. ... I was inspired by Pedro Almodóvar. [My] bar is one of the scenes in the movie 'Volver.' The places look kind of stylish even though they are really simple."

OK, we hear you. Sounds great. You'd love to check it out. But isn't Tijuana too "messed up"? Let's crunch some numbers and see what we can learn. Tijuana, population 1.6 million, had 818 homicides last year. That's a lot. It's not a safe city like San Diego, population 1.3 million, which saw 29 homicides last year. But consider this: New Orleans' homicide rate is roughly the same as Tijuana's, and St. Louis, Detroit and Baltimore saw homicide rates last year more than two-thirds as high as Tijuana's. Beyond that, most of the violence in Tijuana is not random."The violence that we live here is not for tourists," said Gonzalez, a Tijuana native. "It's a war between the police and the narcos. It's nothing to do with the common citizen or the tourist."

Fritz once lived in Baltimore and said it's "a much more frightening town than Tijuana. ...I've never really felt threatened here."

Chinn said humans tend to "identify with whatever we read in the newspaper: 'That could happen to me.' The trick is that, no, it probably won't happen to you. It really doesn't affect our lives like people would think."

That certainly feels true on the downtown club scene. To get to the action, head down Revolution to Sixth, turn right or left and start barhopping. Check out trendy Don Loope, Callejón de la Sexta, La Mezcalera, La Chupitería, Zebra and Tasca. Iconic cantinas on the street include Dandy del Sur (said to be a favorite of movie stars Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal of "Y Tu Mamá También" fame) and Tropic's Bar. The blue-collar dancehall La Estrella also is a classic. Beer is $2. Absolut vodka goes for a bit over $4. Fritz suggests starting with dinner at Caesar's, 8190 Revolución at Fifth Street.

Something else new and cool to explore is Pasaje Rodríguez, a long passageway between Revolución and Constitución avenues that's accessible from Revolución between Third and Fourth streets.

"It's all these independent galleries and shops," Chinn said. "Most of the owners are under 30. They're selling vintage clothing, accessories, housewares stuff. There's cafes and bookstores."

And although there are shuttered storefronts on Revolution, the old tourist drag is far from dead. On a recent Saturday evening, the remaining clubs, along with surviving and new restaurants, were busy. And there are even a couple of nice new hotels with rooms for around $30 a night. The sidewalks were hopping -- 100 percent Mexican, a remarkable change for Southern Californians who remember when trying to entice Tijuana friends to Revolution Avenue elicited howls of horror.

In a phrase, it seems this ain't your daddy's Tijuana no more.

Rex Wockner has been an independent journalist since 1985. http://local.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=27814298&page=0