Turista Libre | Americans enjoy Tijuana without death, plague, theft, obscene intoxication

I could attempt to assemble the Encyclopedia Britannica tribute to Tijuana and slather the Web with photos. But nothing compares to properly living it firsthand. Which is why I've decided to start Turista Libre.

Turista Libre is a series of atypical day tours in Tijuana that are geared toward -- but certainly not limited to -- Americans, a caravan that trounces around the city in search of the overlooked and underrated. No narco warfare. No strolls down hooker row. No donkey shows. No gringo stereotypes.

Itineraries take their inspiration from various iconic TJ pastimes. Wasting pesos on dog races and slot machines at the Hippodrome. Screaming with the hooligans at a Xoloitzcuintles game, Tijuana's pro soccer team. Screaming with little old ladies at a lucha libre match. Parks. Record stores. Architecture oddities. Piñata factories.

Each excursion includes a food stop and a bar stop, both relevant to whatever the tour's theme happens to be. Soccer game, sports bar. Wrestling match, tackier sports bar.

We wind up experiencing pieces of TJ the average American rarely sees -- a bullfight, a back-alley swap meet or a locals-only dive bar buffet -- and everyone goes home wondering (border waits, the language barrier and secondhand fears aside) why they don't visit this city -- the second largest on the West Coast, outsized only by Los Angeles -- more often.

The original vision was to have different themed expeditions as if they were different packages. "Jock 'n' Balls" goes to major league athletic sporting events. "Daddy's Little Shopoholic" goes to the swap meet, markets and to boutiques and stores like HAHA, Naco, Retro and Data. "The Big Winner" goes to the casino/race track. "Smackdown in Stretchy Pants" goes to lucha libre matches. "Adventures in Babysquatting" goes to the bowling alley, Mundo Divertido (Tijuana's chintzy amusement park) and Parque Morelos, aka the closest Tijuana comes to having a zoo. "I Heart Mexi-Art" goes to CECUT, galleries, public art icons like La Mona (the giant naked lady statue), the finer of the city's countless murals and of course the infamous wax museum.

All of these are recreational activities that locals enjoy, the goal being to offer outsiders the chance to live for a day as a local in a city that was built for tourists. To get young Americans away from Revolucion at all costs whatsoever, to introduce them the side of the city their local counterparts live on a daily basis.

And, in the spirit of the journey being the destination, the car trip is the meat and potatoes of our fun. One day I'd love to see a 1990s Vanagon painted up like a taxi libre, but for now we're renting calafias, short buses, by the trip. I have yet to track down a megaphone. And start making 1990s Mexipop mixtapes.

This isn't necessarily be a complete throwback to the golden days of Tijuana, when it served as Hollywood's playground. Few know that Rita Hayworth got her start here by dancing when she was 13, but those days are long gone, and I'd be an idiot to even try to pretend that Revolucion's seediness doesn't play a major role in the city's overall personality. But it's obviously the most overrated.

In total, 12 turistas turned out for Chapter 1.1 in mid-October. We saw some sweet graffiti art in a convertible tour bus. We browsed cheese and piñatas at Mercado Hidalgo. We mastered the reigns of public transportation and traveled from point A to point B for 75 cents. We without a doubt set a record for largest group of gringos to invade Mariscos La Cacho. And we drowned our sorrows that the HAHA Store was not open (like it was supposed to be) with weird vegetable-flavored ice cream at Tepoznieves. To those who hung around long enough to find themselves on a hijacked short bus full of Mexihipsters armed with a communal bottle of warm Jägermeister, en route to some unsuspecting birthday party, you have Sergio aka Mr. Mezcalera to thank. Gracias, Serg.

Round 1.2 is set for Sunday, Nov. 22. We're bound for La Mona. Wanna come?

And now for the drill. Drumroll, please: Turista Libre on Facebook and Twitter.

Rechazadas de Nylon | Nylon rejects

In the November issue of Nylon you'll find a three-page spread of an extremely atypical American take on Tijuana, written by the one and only Maya Kroth. Go buy it.

Dressing the piece are my photos, which had up until now been virgins in the arena of mass-produced national gloss. Needless to say, I'm grateful. So grateful, in fact, that I'll stop short of stumbling into a complete bitch fest over my discontent with the shots the magazine chose from the 60 or so that I submitted. This is no doubt my perfectionism talking, but in short, Tijuana wound up looking like Taiwan. Not that there's anything wrong with looking like Taiwan. But Tijuana is not Taiwan.

All I can say is I'm sorry, Tijuana. I'm sorry for the goldfish. I'm sorry that CECUT's magically floating atop the arch. I'm sorry that everyone in the official First World will no doubt assume what they were probably thinking all along, that we all live in crumbling shacks shoved into a trash-heavy hillside.

I would have chosen differently:

En los viernes mexicanos se pinta el pueblo rojo | On Mexican Fridays one paints the town red

Srta. Centro gana Miss Tijuana | Miss Downtown wins Miss Tijuana

"Fancy-naca beauty pageant" was the theme of this photo exhibit I did for the HAHA Store, Tijuana's new one-stop-shop for locally made art and apparel. Naca means tacky in Spanish. Well, Mexican Spanish. Everyone knows how intensely I love the tack, and no one does tacky as tastefully as Tijuana. The material I used as backdrops, all of which came from local fabric stores, prove this much.

At first there was really no rhyme or reason to why I paired these particular eight Mexican ladies with the eight particular Tijuana neighborhoods that I did. They're all friends of mine, and I really enjoy taking photos of my friends. None are the pageant type (most are actually well out of pageant age range), and I suppose aside from having lived in Tijuana at some point in their lives, that was the only prerequisite. All eight hoods are without a doubt iconic characters of the city. Shiny, prissy, dusty, poor, rich, trampy, tranny. Tijuana answers to all of the above.

But it would be wrong to think that the girls didn't slip into some sort of character when modeling for these photos. The shoots for the most part started out similarly: me calling for bigger hair and heavier makeup, them confessing their fears of looking like drag queens or hookers. One by one they stepped out of reality and into the game of pretend, and all apprehension eventually gave way to laughter and pouty lips galore. That's when I realized that I was giving grown women, two of whom are mothers, a chance to play dress-up and drink too much chardonnay. So if I have to come up with some sort of reasoning for taking these photos, I'll go with that.

The crowd voted and it wound up being a close call between Miss Centro and Miss Zona Norte. The former won. Her prize was a 24-pack of Tecate. Miss Federal took third.

Metallic prints mounted on foam board that measure 30 by 20 inches, they'll be on the walls at the HAHA Store through mid-November.

La carcel | Jail

No masks allowed in public? Even lucha libre masks? On Halloween? What a stupid fucking law. So stupid, in fact, that everyone completely forgot to tell me about it before I wound up in jail. That’s right. I spent Halloween in not one but three Tijuana jails, wearing little more than a gold sequined cocktail dress, fake mustache and gold luchador mask.

Little did I know, Halloween in Mexico is thought of as an open invitation for vandals to slip into disguise and tear the place apart. Hence the "no masks allowed" mandate. (Never mind the rest of my tranny attire.)

Happily trotting down the main drag, I was en route to see buff men removing their clothes at El Taurino, a gay dive that’s smack dab in the epicenter of the city’s seediest bars, when my visions of bare beefcake were slaughtered by the sting of cold steel around my wrists. Thus began my five hours in the Tijuana penal system. Along for the ride were my two roommates, who did nothing but try to talk some sense into the cops.

Jail one was more or less a holding tank on the far side of the arch. We laughed, we sang, we took photos. We were told we had to wait for the judge to arrive, and I immediately thought of some Vicente Fernandez type pissily changing out of his velvet pajamas. I joked with the guard about seeing someone from the consulate and did what I could to bide my time until it was time to head back to the party. The judge never came.

Jail two was a different story. Larger, darker, more dismal and literally within pissing distance of the border fence, pastimes included smoking crack out of a broken light bulb. But did I quiver in my Jockey bikini briefs? No, not really. I shoved my phone in my shoe, kept a stiff lip and thought to myself, "Better to be thrown in jail on Halloween than Christmas, I suppose." Much to my luck, there was an actual tranny dressed as Gloria Trevi, and so my time in the spotlight was much less intense than it probably should have been. Here is where I was made to explain myself to a judge. In Spanish. Alone. Wearing little more than a gold sequined cocktail dress. You'd be surprised at how many officers -- female officers -- asked if I was a woman or just dressed up. Four.

"You speak pretty good Spanish," said the judge.

"Thanks," I replied.

"And you didn't know about the mask law?" (As if speaking decent Spanish means I should have known.)

"No." Because it's a fucking stupid law. That's what I wanted to say, and I'm sure I could have, but at this point it was 4:30 and I just wanted to go home.

Finally, at 5 a.m., after the evening's second spin in the back of a pickup truck, I arrived at jail three. My $20 bail had been paid. My pants had magically made their way back to me, thanks to my roommates who by this point had been released and were kind enough to run home to grab them. I was charged with "bothering people," signed some papers and was sent on my way.

My observations after spending the night in a Mexican jail were many, but the most telling was that not once over the course of the entire evening did I see a computer. Plenty of monkeys with pistols shuffling and stamping papers, shouting, surrounded by crumbing concrete and the occasional fan to keep down the smell, but not one computer. With all its societal dilemmas -- narco warfare, swine flu, corruption, etc. -- this is how the government carries out the most basic correctional business on the ground level?

"But it's Mexico," you say. "Of course there are no computers." Yeah, sure. It's Mexico. Not Zimbabwe. Internet cafes are on every corner. You'd think the cops could score a few PCs from the Chula Vista Goodwill.

Anyway, I'm told everyone here gets thrown in the slammer sooner or later for whatever ridiculous reason. Basically, going to jail is a Tijuana bar mitzvah. So I'm officially part of the gang.

Furthermore, I was the star of the evening. They called me Shakira and told me to dance.

'Hermelinda Linda' | Guadalajara Halloween 1984

Happy Mexican Halloween.

Tiempo de descansar en el sitio de construccion | Breaktime on the construction worksite

"Genital Esthetics: They Don't Need to be Beautiful to Give the Most Pleasure" is the story of Marina, a Guadalajara lingerie model who's losing work because of the offensive size of her labia. Run out of auditions by redheaded tranny casting agents for the last time, she consults a diabolic doctor with the mother of fu manchus in Mexico City about female circumcision. Despite the efforts of Dr. Manchu to remind her of the bounty of nerve endings she'd be sacrificing, Marina can't shake the words of her colleague Lora. Lora's already undergone the knife and swears everything is still in full working order. There's only one way to find out, Marina decides. A threesome, naturally, to see how hard Lora moans, kicks and screams. And of course it's no surprise that upon learning of the fleshy dilemma, it would be Marina's boyfriend of all people to nominate himself for the role of stud of said threesome. Talk about self-sacrifice.

Pocketsize porno cartoons with the most ridiculous story lines ever, this is almost too cute to count as sexy, or even to be taken seriously. Amazonian women whose femininity rides on little more than colossal breasts and their lack of a penis? Men in high-cut, low-rise bikinis? Chinese Satan as the voice of reason? All for sale at the corner magazineria (above) for about a $1? Sold.

¿Quien Quiere Ser Miss Tijuana? | Who wants to be Miss Tijuana?

This is what I've been working on lately, and is to explain for the hushed blog.

"Fancy-naca" describe las nuevas frutas de la cámara de Derrik Chinn, un concurso de belleza tijuanera que se realizará en the HAHA! Store. Quien de nuestras ocho reinas del barrio ganará la corona? La provocativa Srta. Centro? La exquisita Srta. Chapultepec? La sensual Srta. Zona Norte? La brillante Srta. 5 y 10? Tu decides. Los votos serán contados puntualmente a las 10.

"Fancy-tacky" describes the most recent fruits to come from Derrik Chinn's camera, a Tijuana beauty pageant that's set to take place at the HAHA! Store. Which of our eight neighborhood queens will walk with the crown? The provocative Miss Centro? The exquisite Miss Chapultepec? The sultry Miss Zona Norte? The tinseled Miss 5 y 10? You decide. Votes will be tallied promptly at 10.

Fiesta naca | Tacky party

I fucking love you so much, Mexiland.

Dentro de la Mona | Inside la Mona

This 55-foot, 18-ton concrete statue of a naked lady is La Mona. She lives in a valley of lean-tos, palms, dust and garbagefalls on the side of Avenida Cuauhtémoc, the road that leads to the airport. Urban legend has it that local sculptor Armando Muñoz Garcia had hoped to offer her as a gift to the city of Tijuana in honor of its 100th birthday in 1989. But when he pitched the idea to city hall, they looked at his plans, swore she would collapse, called him crazy, denied him the land and turned him away. So he built her in his own yard instead, complete with a hatch in her ass that connects to his house and a window between her boobs. Twenty years later, she ranks as the town's most iconic piece of hidden public art. Notice how she resembles the Statue of Liberty, if the Statue of Liberty had birthing hips and stripper tits.

I visit her every now and then, usually when making the rounds with someone who's never seen the outer rings of Mexico's Most Misunderstood. The above shot is the closest I've ever been able to get because la Mona doesn't live in what you'd call the glitziest part of town, so outsiders are rare, the neighbors scare easily when white folk near and even the stray dogs scurry away whenever I stroll up to the fence to say hey. So it was a surprise that during my most recent visit a passerby who claimed to be Muñoz's neighbor asked if my Short Round del día and I would like to meet the man responsible for the Amazonian.

Sure, it's anything but a smart idea to leave one's car on the side of the road to follow a stranger into a ravine of pitbulls, trash and potential torture chambers made of splintered plywood. But sometimes red flags must be ignored, especially when he's wearing a Wilson tanktop. That's the true golden rule of journalism. And it was well worth it, too, because now I, Derrik Chinn, have entered the hatch in La Mona's ass, waved from that window between her boobs and come to find that Muñoz isn't the aging LSD victim that I'd pegged him to be, even though the artist statement I found in the bowels of Google when researching the statue a while back led me to believe otherwise:

"I decided to build it in the back yard of my house ... using a new building technique discovered by a herd of dam neurons in my head and with funds earned by assorted employment."

Rather, he's more of a star Mr. Misunderstood, a conspiracy theorist who's head-over-heels in love with Mexico's Most Misunderstood.

After following Andres, a Oaxacan who arrived in Tijuana four years ago, down staircases of discarded tires and interrupting several Sunday barbecues, we arrived at Muñoz's front door. Andres knocked, announced the arrival of "unos muchacos quien les gustaria platicar con Ud." and then hit us up for 10 pesos. We paid, at which point he assured us to not worry about the car because "everyone up there are friends." I did my best to ignore how disturbed Muñoz was that I left it on the side of the road, reminding myself that this is why I pay an ungodly amount of insurance in the first place.

While Short Round del día interviewed Muñoz for a piece she's writing for Nylon about Tijuana's cultural reincarnation after its recent tourism Holocaust, I helped myself to the following up-close and personal photo shoot with Tijuana's bastard princess ...




which revealed a side of her that not many see ...

like her spinal cord of a ladder ...

and the view of the neighbors' yard ...

and Muñoz's drying socks ...

and la Mona's surrounding trinkets ...

and her wee court.

Gorro de domingo | Sunday hat

Run Colorado Run

Pick three colors from any frame in this Fussible video about a bunch of narcos crossing the border at San Ysidro, and I'll bet you a whole bag of caramel churros that you'll find them on any random street corner in downtown Tijuana. Jungle-green buses. Cabs the color of strawberry Fanta. Buildings the color of canned pineapple. I probably should have gotten over TJ's random rainbow look long ago. I guess I haven't because during the work week I spend most of my waking hours in taupe plaster central, wondering why the First World considers itself too mature to paint everything in the style of saturation overdose.

The tortas shop across the street is covering its sea-foam walls with red and yellow lettering this very minute.

El grito 199º de independencia y la mujer lagarto | The 199th cry of independence and the lizard lady

Mexico declared independence in a glorified act of domestic dispute just before midnight on Sept. 15, 1810, when Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, so pissed off at Spain, gave the following speech to the townspeople of Dolores, Guanajuato:

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen 300 years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will not you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!

What followed were 11 years of war, after which the Spanish crown officially recognized Mexico's sovereignty. Now, 199 years later, the mayor of every town repeats Hidalgo's speech, known as "el grito" or "the cry," from the balcony of city hall on September 15, including the president in Mexico City. But the 30-second reenactment pales against what goes down over the course of the rest of the month. From the stroke of midnight on September 1, cars, homes, stores, telephone poles, wrists, bandanas, backs, backpacks and even trash compactors bear some form of the mighty Red, White and Green, all of which fly in anticipation of what happens immediately before and after all the suits reenact Padre Mike's rant.

Carnie fun galore.

Autorretratos en la farmacia vieja en el centro| Self-portraits in the old pharmacy downtown

"La primera cita | The first date"

"Brinca (por mi amor) | Jump (for my love)"

"Amigo de seguridad | Safety buddy"

Self-portrait was the theme of these 50-by-30-inch shots with Speedy Gonzalez, the Rey Misterio twins and Chavo del Ocho. The plan was for the camera to catch us in the act of BFF activities in various spots around the city. Enjoying coconuts to a live "Camelia la Tejana" serenade with Speedy outside Marsicos Colima in Playas. Hanging out with the wrestlers behind the municipal auditorium, Tijuana's house of lucha libre. A pool party with Chavo on my roof. All were taken using the self-timer. Ten seconds sure fly when wearing flippers.

The photos will be on the walls of Farmacia Guadalajara, at the corner of 10th Street and Avenida Constitucion, through September.

Gracias a Damian por invitarme a participar. Gracias a Koko por tomar estas fotos en la noche de la expo. Gracias a equipo Gomez-Ledezma por todo.

'Me & Yo' | 'Me & I'

"Me & I," una exposicion de autorretratos por Derrik Chinn, Franklin Collao, Damian Gastellum, Ieve Gonzalez, Yave Lobsang y Esteban Velazquez, se realizara en la Galeria "Sin Titulo" (una farmacia vacia), ubicada en la esquina de la Avenida Constitucion y Calle 10a en el centro de Tijuana, a las 8 de la tarde, sabado, el 12 de septiembre.

"Me & I," a self-portrait group photo show by Derrik Chinn, Franklin Collao, Damian Gastellum, Ieve Gonzalez, Yave Lobsang and Esteban Velazquez, will take place at Galeria "Sin Titulo" (a vacant pharmacy) at the corner of Avenida Constitucion and 10th Street in downtown Tijuana at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12.

Estuario de Tijuana | Tijuana Estuary

Remember thinking as a kid how strange your yard looked when seeing it from the neighbor's? That's because it was from a viewpoint to which you had less frequent access. Staring south from where the sidewalk ends in Imperial Beach is sort of like that, but on a binational level. There's Mexico in them hills.

La Chuleta | The Pork Chop

I gave up my ban on eating things that bleed warm blood a few months ago. I managed to pull off a decent run of some four or five years, and I accredit it to keeping me on the thin side in these days of increasingly delayed metabolism. But you'll never know how difficult it is to survive in a place like Mexico until you've ordered your 500th quesadilla at some street taco shack at 4 a.m., at which point you've realized that doing so basically translates to presenting the entire puesto with your ballless crotch. The true point of pathetic humiliation comes when you ask with puppy dog eyes if they have beans, the one food item of true substance that can accompany your cheese (if you ignore the fact that they've been soaked in lard), which they often do not.

I'm sorry. No matter how strong your vegetarian pride, no matter how endearingly you explain that you don't feel you deserve to eat the flesh of an animal unless you took the responsibility of slaughtering it yourself, here, you're thought of as an insulting moron. Trust me, I've tried. No one understands. Morrissey would hate me for even considering the fact that the air constantly reeks of barbecue as an excuse for ultimately giving in. But whatever.

I know, I know. If every resident of the world were eating some edible version of the food we're feeding to the animals, the human race would be without hunger. But no one ever stops to think about what a First World concept it is to decide what you're not going to eat, especially when it's cheap and available and delicious. Tacos.

Which brings me to another issue. The American concept of a taco. A lot of people, especially those who don't live in the immediate border region, ask what the food in Tijuana is like. I supply them with tall tales of hotdogs wrapped in bacon outside male stripper joints and tacos that come from stands that by day serve as some sort of automotive hospital. Seriously, the true sign of a good taco is if a stack of old tires lurks nearby. Anthony Bourdain can agree or disagree, but as far as I'm concerned Mexicans have perfected the art of gourmet street food. The funny thing is, we look down upon it unless it's some hotdog cart Seinfeld or Sarah Jessica Parker has christened as "quintessential New York." Then it dawned on me that as I illustrate my new favorite food item to outsiders, I'm unaware that what they're envisioning are the Ortega taco kits in the "Hispanic foods" aisle at the grocery store.

This all came to a head a few weeks ago when I was at a Louisiana Taco Bell with Mom. We'd stopped there on our way from Houston to my brother's wedding in Florida because we were starving and when it comes down to it a Taco Bell bean burrito is the only Interstate cuisine I can stomach. She decided to rekindle the time we spent together in Tijuana last summer by sharing a quesadilla. What we didn't know was that instead of queso we were in for synthetic imitation cheese sauce that her organic gut wound up detesting so much it that it actually reversed her entire digestive tract. Mom vomited ass wind all the way to Pensacola.

After inhaling 500 miles worth of my mother's mouth fart, it became all too obvious that the masses have blindly wandered so far into industrialized complacency that they prefer a bland imitation of the original over the actual original, which doesn't even exist stateside except in areas of town into which most would never venture. I'm so disappointed in my people for not only settling for lab-crafted garbage like fake Taco Bell cheese but actually craving more of the stuff. Fourth meal? What? And people actually wonder why I left.

I'm doing my best to keep my taco dates down to once a week because, yes, it does augment my beer diet a little too pudgidly. But it's hard when around the corner sits La Chuleta ("The Chop"). The place looks like someone hacked off the front walls of the Brady Bunch house, painted all the wood panelling canary yellow and slapped a bowl full of powder laundry detergent atop the pearlized sink counter outside the bathroom, into which we're all supposed to dip our hands for bathroom soap. There's even a jukebox.

Mi nuevo jardin | My new front yard

My lawn ornaments: the national pride store on wheels, a Molson umbrella and the man who sits beneath it, selling $1 burritos out of a cooler that I buy when I'm too lazy to make my own lunch.

La vista de Tijuana desde el piso 29º | The view of Tijuana from the 29th floor

You never truly know a city until you see it directly from above, a difficult task to accomplish here because high-rises are an American invention that have only begun to slowly infiltrate Mexican skylines in the past 30 years or so and are therefore rare. Grand Hotel Tijuana is the town's celebrity throwback to 1982 corporate architecture, a pair of twin concrete edifices sheathed in mirrors that crown the eastern end of Boulevard Agua Caliente. An impromptu meetup with a pair of Americans who were scouting out apartments in Tijuana recently allowed me to dangle my camera outside the window on the 29th floor.

The west tower serves as the hotel, complete with floral print bedspreads, brass fixtures, ashtrays in the lobby, newly remodeled lounge on the ground floor and coppered mirrors in the elevators. Its neighbor houses a hodgepodge mix of stores, dentist offices, a gym that from the outside sounds more like a gay bar and, most memorable, a lobby that visually reeks of the innards of the spaceship from "Flight of the Navigator."

The most fitting word to sum it all up is, well, 1982.

The straight row of lights far right corner of the fourth photo marks the border.

Quirúrgia robotica de ensalada | Robotic salad surgery

Pepe Mogt aka Latinsizer's "Celofán" is nowhere near new, but I love it and want you to see it.