We took the early morning flight from Mexico City to Tijuana and ended up on Avenida de la Revolucion, walking towards the arc, which marks the intersection where the pure kitsch and the perverted collide. A concert is being performed on a concrete dais by the Familia Dulce Podrillo, which is headed by an eight year old cowboy hat wearing girl with a ponytail. She's accompanied by her siblings playing a variety of instruments-- a guitar, a bass, drums, and an asthmatic accordion. An emcee begs the equally ragtag audience to applaud and to consider spending 50 pesos--more than the daily minimum wage for Mexicans-- to buy the group's CD, which she assures us will be a good investment because this group is sure to go places and won't we be proud to say we saw them here?

We cross the street and find a place to sit down and have lunch, which we brought with us. To get to this little patch of sunshine, we've passed innumerable burros dressed in serapes, eating tortillas and corn husks, being tended by men who beg us to stop and take a picture. We've passed rows of shops where vendors have practiced one or two choice phrases of English in an effort to tempt us to consider their inventory. We've passed mariachis dressed in black and mariachis dressed in white, each competing group passing out its business cards in hopes of picking up some work. Their boots are polished. They glimmer in the sun as we sit under the sign of the "Obesity Goodbye" clinic, which is just across the street from the El Fracaso (The Failure or The Disaster) Bar. As we start eating, the first of several people approaches to ask for money and food and help through the border. We pack up our lunch and move on, to Avenida Primera 123, which is lined with bars and hotels. "If you have to advertise that your hotel rooms have a bathroom," I say to Francisco, "you know it's not a normal hotel." Francisco points out an aged prostitute dressed in a mini skirt, with a black spider tatooed on her large thigh. She's got on black leg warmers and shiny patent leather ankle boots. A wasted looking prostitute in a tank top and jeans walks by and winks at Francisco, who's quite the celebrity here, having been asked to pose twice for pictures, his growing dredlocks being petted once as if he was a zoo animal.

I'm ready to go. There are stories here but they're not mine to tell. Tijuana's not our destination and we're not here to immerse ourselves. I wouldn't want to and I'm not even sure I could. We're headed for the border. We're just passing through.