God rest ye, merry gentlemen

Tijuana c. 1970

All the Christmas treasures are set up in the lighted china cabinet again, and it looks magical at night. Nova is old enough now to enjoy hearing stories about old family things.  Everything, including Celluloid Santa, survived another year in the attic crawl space.

The only minor casualty among the nativity sets was a donkey's ear.  The white Mexican crèche is as perfect as it was 40 years ago when I bought it in a Tijuana souvenir store on Avenida Revolucion.

Speaking of that, while wasting time this weekend Goggling "vintage Tijuana photos" I pulled up pictures of street scenes I remember like it was yesterday.  If that doesn't make a person feel like a walking antique, nothing will.

Living in San Diego back in the 1970's, Tijuana was a popular day trip for us.  It took a lot of energy, but we were young. Southern California cities were not so uniformly Hispanic yet, so everything was still more exotic right across the border: the food, language, cheap prices and non-stop hustling to buy stuff or get lured into the bars.  If you were daring you ate street tacos. If not, you drank beer or had soda at the Woolworth's lunch counter. No one was in Tijuana for the fine dining--it was all about partying and shopping.

And oh, that wonderful shopping!  It seems impossible, but I still have some pottery and crumbling flower pots from the 70's, now called "vintage Mexican tourist-ware."   The traffic was insane and we never drove across the border, so everything had to be hand-carried.

I think a nice trolley line will now take you to the border from downtown San Diego.  Back then we parked a long way off in San Ysidro (the further the lot, the cheaper) and trudged up, over, and then down a  grimy, spiral concrete ramp across the highway below.

 I imagine that pedestrian bridge is still there. Along with the street vendors, hustlers and begging children. Believe me, it was a long walk back to the car with all those flower pots, statues, huaraches, leather purses, baskets and nativity sets. It helped to have (grumpy) men along to carry the stuff.

Last but not least, there are some new Mexican kids on the block. Thanks Dan and Becky, for the charming folk art nativity set you sent us. The more the merrier!