Introduction

Located a few miles south of San Diego, in the northern corner of Mexico, Tijuana is the busiest border town in the world an average of 90,000 people cross it daily!

The city first earned its reputation for all-night carousing in the 1940s as a glamorous tourist destination visited by Hollywood types who came to try their luck at the Agua Caliente Casino.

The gambling palaces eventually gave way to nightclubs, bars, cantinas, pharmacies, restaurants and craft shops, most of which line Avenida Revolucion, a thoroughfare that embodies Tijuana’s now fading reputation for excess and seediness.

Avenida Revolucion also sums up Tijuana’s history; it is the address of such landmarks as the Caesar Hotel and the old Jai Alai Palace, which helped to popularize the Basque sport. The palace, admired for its kitsch aesthetic, currently serves as a pop concert hall.

Modern-day Tijuana is best represented by the Zona Rio, or River District, with its thoroughly modern Paseo de Los Heroes, and excellent restaurants and hotels. Here, too, is the Centro Cultural Tijuana (Tijuana Cultural Center), home to the Museo de las Californias (Museum of the Californias). Tijuana’s cultural scene has heated up in recent decades, leading to the creation of such artistic projects as the Colectivo Nortec, a group of visual artists and musicians that fuse techno with norteño.

TJ, as it is affectionately known, is home to Mexico’s L.A. Cetto winery, a local brewery, two golf courses and several spas, as well as the odd donkey painted to look like a zebra. It is a place full of disparities, a city dominated by a border that is an ever-present force in the lives of its almost 2 million inhabitants.