Their big band jazz style drifted across the street and came in to greet me while I wrote of Moctezuma and the first Spanish boats. I finally decided to get out and come to the park and listen closer, but now they're going....
Tonight I'll meet Maria at the towers on Agua Caliente Boulevard. Will tell you tomorrow about tonight. Probably going to walk there, across the center of town, across what used to be all there was of Tijuana, until the boom of the late 20th century.
I called her from a pay phone. You remember Augustin bitching about his phone bill? well, with good reason. Seems the whole world comes in and helps themselves (helps itself?) to his restaurant phone while he's not looking. Such balls! Walk right up to the register while he's in the kitchen and beep beep beep they dial. I swear if he didn't have the register locked they'd "borrow" money from him, too!! Part of it's his fault, cause he tends to be generous, and let people use when they ask, but that's exactly when he's watching and they make it short, no?
He was gone this morning so I bought myself breakfast, and paid. He always tells me no, it's his pleasure, and well, that's a little embarrasing for me, 'cause I know he's got a business, and, I mean, well, it's one thing for him to regale me with leftovers from the day, late at night, when he's closed, before I go to bed, but I don't like him giving me free meals in front of other customers who pay. Yeah, yeah, I pay him too much rent, but just the same I feel bad for the others who see this. So today, since he was gone, I bought and paid for a breakfast, except, well, they gave me extra, I think, cause they know me. Couple of guys who work here, and a younger woman. Good guys, all of them, hard workers, put up with Augustin bitching at them, and work hard. Course, he pays them, they get free meals, and he even gives them each a free apartment in the building upstairs. Damn good deal. Of course, they still don't make as much as they'd make in the U.S. But then, everyone pays more for everything there, too. Life is a bitch, both ways.
But the phone... why should he tell me, "You might go out to call her back, Miguel..." when he is so generous with his food? I'll tell you what I think: the phone bill bites hard, but the food he's already bought and paid for. Yeah, that's gotta be it. Or am I just a gringo and don't understand, anyway...?
Change the subject.
Last night Maria and I walked up and down Revolution and looked into some of the shops -- some of them have some very nice items, others are pure curio shops. Junk. I shouldn't say junk. If my fellow tourists didn't buy it, it wouldn't be there, right? But the street... man, I've got to tell you more about it someday. It's a mad house! "Calle de la locura" Maria calls it. Street of the madness. It's a magnificent, strange, wonderful, weird, ugly street, unlike anything else... except in all the other border cities, I guess. But this is the cliche, the quintesential, THE Tijuana. Heh heh heh. I like living in a world famous city. Yeah. Ugly reputation, re "puta" tion, but everyone knows the damn name.
We walked down to one of my favorite little pedestrian-only streets, Callejon del Travieso, runs from 2nd to 3rd between/parallel to Revolution and Constitution. It's the street where Cheech Marin got beat up in Born In East L.A.; believe it or not they actually shot some "real" places in that movie.
There's some places for rent there, both storefronts and apartments, and I'm thinking about moving. Dreaming of opening a tour guide shop. As if. Anyway I pulled out my plastic flute and proceeded to massacre La Paloma, right there on the sidewalk. Marie laughed and laughed. "You're killing the poor dove!" she sputtered.