Whoa, new blog!!!!
Hey everybody! Not sure if you noticed, but this blog is ugly and boring and I never update it. I’ve got a new blog (a Tumblr, actually, and it’s not really “new” because I’ve been updating it for several months now…but you get the idea) and you can check it out here. That’s http://iheartgoatmeat.tumblr.com/ in case you don’t like clicking links.
WOWOWOWOWOW
WOW! It’s been like a million years since I last updated this thing! I promise I’ve been working hard all these years, plugging away at San Diego CityBeat, where I serve as Music Editor (and in-house bruiser). Want to read my articles? Click here.
I don’t really have time to repost all my articles on this blog. But isn’t that obvious? Just read CityBeat, ‘kay? Thanks!
Buckle up: An epic itinerary for North Park Music Thing
This article, printed in the Aug. 11 issue of CityBeat, won’t be any use to you now, of course. But it’s worth keeping for the record books.
If this year’s North Park Music Thing is notable for anything, it’s sheer ambition. Just look at the numbers: 153 bands, musicians and DJs; 15 venues; two nights.
Now in its third year, the festival (organized by the San Diego Music Foundation, whose president is CityBeat publisher Kevin Hellman) is the biggest local music showcase of the year, featuring two days of seminars with music-industry movers and shakers and two nights of music in bars in North Park, South Park and Normal Heights, featuring small acts, local favorites and a handful of touring bands mostly from California.
But who’s worth seeing? I’ve come up with an epic itinerary to get you through the weekend:
Friday
8 p.m.: This one’s a toss-up. Brother duo Writer (at U-31) makes unique, roughly hewn indie rock. Neon Cough (at The Office) offer up jangly pop with saccharine melodies. Street of Little Girls (at Whistle Stop) play epic gypsy-rock with biting lyrics and sugary-sweet vocals.
9 p.m.: If you’ve seen Jamuel Saxon (Bar Pink) more than once, you know that Keith Milgaten’s solo project is never the same twice. Whether he’s manning a laptop as guys covered with white sheets drum ominously on floor toms or he’s playing keyboards with a full band, expect a fevered brand of pop gold with hypnotic synths, Auto-Tuned vocals and dance-y beats.
10 p.m.: One of the best jazz singers in the city, if not the best, Miss Erika Davies (Claire de Lune) has a magnificent, mature voice that flutters fragilely, soars confidently and bends smoothly across registers, augmented with her ukulele and Jon Garner’s lithe guitar. It’s enough to make you wonder why she’d bother playing a local-music showcase when she could be touring Europe.
11 p.m.–midnight: Kadan Club has a hip-hop showcase with plenty of quality MCs, among them the dynamic duo Parker and the Numberman (9:20 p.m.) and the freaky Lady Xplicit (10:40 p.m.). But the highlight is Deep Rooted (11:40 p.m.), local hip-hop mainstays who serve up inspired, cutting rhymes. There’s also an MC battle kicking off at midnight.
12:35 a.m.: Known as much for their sharp suits as their spirited take on folk, gospel and Americana, the gentlemen of The Silent Comedy (U-31) seem to come straight from an older, weirder America. Their latest album, Common Faults, won a San Diego Music Awards nomination. But their live show is another story—one CityBeat writer compared it to a Pentecostal tent revival.
Other highlights: Tape Deck Mountain (U-31, 8:45), Jhameel (The Office, 8:45), Lights On (Whistle Stop, 9:50), Sister Crayon (AC Lounge, 10). John Meeks (Lestat’s, midnight)
Saturday
4 p.m.: Stop by Tin Can Ale House (1863 Fifth Ave. in Bankers Hill) for a free pre-party with performances by Chairs Missing and Vegetarian Werewolf, two great new local acts. Chairs Missing plays radiant acoustic indie rock, while Vegetarian Werewolf dissects the universe with a keyboard and a boom box.
8 p.m.: Make sure you catch up-and-coming indie rockers D/Wolves (Soda Bar). Lead songwriter Joel Williams happens to be the little brother of the dude from Wavves, but don’t expect irreverent lo-fi from these accomplished young musicians. Their melodious, unpredictable songcraft is undergirded with a killer rhythm section that has the expressiveness of a jazz combo.
9:25 p.m.: If you’re looking for folk music with that indescribably magical feeling, you’ll find it in San Juan Capistrano’s The Union Line (Sunset Temple Room, 2906 University Ave.), with their glistening guitars, rolling drums and haunting choruses. But let’s not forget about the wonderful Chairs Missing (Ruby Room), for whom a clone would come in handy.
10:30 p.m.: There’s nothing quite like the Beach Boys-meets- Captain Beefheart mindfuck of Heavy Hawaii (Soda Bar): disjointed lo-fi arrangements, dissonant rock riffs, ghoulish oohaah vocals that sound like a parody of Animal Collective. I can’t help but feel that they’re on to something.
11:30 p.m.: New Mexico (Bar Pink), the new incarnation of much-beloved rock band Apes of Wrath, has a new set of songs that’re pared-down, hard-driving and so awesome that somebody at a recent show felt compelled to pick the guitarist up mid-song and carry him around the room. Seriously.
Other highlights: Hyena (U-31, 10:35), Sleep Lady (Eleven, 10:45), Sleepwalkerz (Queen Bee’s, 11:15), Abe Vigoda (Soda Bar, 11:30), Lord Howler (Kadan Club, 12:30), The Screamin’ Yeehaws (Ken Club, 12:50).
Lineups are subject to change. Double-check schedules at northparkmusicthing.com.
Interview: Mark Mothersbaugh
Mark Mothersbaugh (bottom left) and his Devo brethren.
Devo, the legendary new-wave band famous for herky-jerky pop hits like “Whip It,” adheres to the theory of “de-evolution”–the idea that humanity is regressing rather than evolving through societal dysfunction and follow-the-pack mentality. But when the industrial suit-wearing oddballs made Something for Everybody, the band’s first record in 20 years, they did everything they could to appeal to the masses: its twelve subversively catchy synth-pop tracks, which contain references to things like the Taliban and the infamous University of Florida Taser incident, were cleared through an extensive focus group approval process.
Appealing to the masses might sound counter-intuitive to Devo philosophy. But mass appeal is the point, says Mark Mothersbaugh–a Devo co-founder and prolific composer of movie soundtracks, T.V. show theme songs and music for commercials–who maintains that the only way to change society is through subversion. In a recent phone interview ahead of Devo’s performance in Balboa Park on Sunday, July 18, as part of the San Diego Pride Festival, Mothersbaugh talked about the focus group process, humanity’s continuing de-evolution, and how he inserted subliminal messages into commercials.
Tell me about this focus group process. How did that work?
We hired Mother LA [an ad agency based in Los Angeles, who list Devo as their only client on their website], and we talked about the things that changed a lot in the world for us as Devo. Back in the ’70s, if you asked people if they believe in de-evolution, they would say, ‘You’re insane! You’re an asshole! You’re a cynic!’ and now, you say it and people go, ‘Yeah-hoo, let’s party! Things are devolved, let’s go!’ We felt it was time to ask people what they thought about Devo and de-evolution, and we took it to heart.
What kind of feedback did you get?
Well, we did a color study and people decided that the Devo red hat was too aggressive and thought we should change it to blue. And we did.
Did they pooh-pooh any songs you were really into?
Yeah, there were songs that we were surprised they didn’t choose. There was a radical mix of “Don’t Shoot.” I still think that’s going to come out because that’s so radical. It’s maybe the most radical thing that we did in the last three or four months—the last six or eight months, I mean. During the whole time of this record, the last couple years.
What was radical about it?
A band called Polysics did a remix. They really took out a lot of it. They sped it up. Some of the part in the middle where it slows down and there’s a speaking section—they took half of that out. They took out a lot of the “I’m a man”s. It’s a lot of [voices fast rock groove] “Don’t shoot!”, “Don’t shoot!”, “Don’t shoot!” It sounded more like “Uncontrollable Urge” from our first record.
It’s been twenty years since Devo last released an album. To what extent do you think society has de-evolved in those twenty years?
It’s a Mike Judge movie now. It’s like the whole world’s kind of turned into Idiocracy, in a way. People make decisions based on anything but the facts. They have access to more information than ever, but yet they’re filled with more misinformation than ever. Just look at where the last twenty years have taken us, you know, with our own government. Things have just gone downward. Education is last in line for funding and bombs are first in line, once again. I think the dumbing-down of the planet is not hard to recognize.
Have you ever worried that maybe you’ve succumbed to de-evolution yourself?
Oh, I know I have. Certainly physically. It’s like—you know, sitting at a desk writing music for the last twenty years and [I] went back on a stage and realized it was a good thing that those yellow suits were so big. I’ve been losing weight for the last year or two and it’s hard when you’re old. It’s easy when you’re twenty.
I was listening to an interview with you and you were talking about how you were at the protest at the Kent State shootings in 1970. I see a parallel between the shootings and the Tasering of the guy at the University of Florida, which you make a reference to it in your song “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man).”
I think what we learned and took away from being idealistic young people–who said, “You don’t have to napalm humans in my name over there in Vietnam! I don’t really think you need to napalm them and pay for it. I don’t think I want to be doing that. I don’t think I want to be represented like that. I think there’s other ways to do things”–we found out that rebellion could only go so far in a democracy. The ideal is that you could speak your mind. But in reality, it was given limitations.
What I think we took away from it was that rebellion was obsolete, and that the only way you really change things in our culture is through subversion. So we looked around and came to the conclusion that maybe Madison Avenue was the best at influencing people indirectly.
In terms of advertising?
Right. Unfortunately, most of Madison Avenue was for bad stuff. But the techniques were valid.
I heard you talking about that on NPR recently. You said you guys were inspired by commercials.
Yeah. When we were kids, we listened and watched everything. It wasn’t just like we listened only to, you know, radio—either FM or AM or pop or alternative, if there was such a thing, which I don’t think there even was back then. We listened to everything. We listened to film soundtracks. We listened to music when we were at the mall. We listened to music in elevators. We listened to music on TV commercials. And understood the validity of all of it.
What about commercials in particular interests you?
I just like the creativity that’s involved. I ended up working in commercials for a long time, or at least writing music for commercials just out of curiosity about the media. There was a commercial in the early 70s that I really liked, and I paid attention to, because it made me laugh. It was Burger King and they took Pachelbel’s Canon and turned this beautiful piece of music–one of the most beautiful pieces of music in the classic music world–and they turned it into, “Hold the pickles / Hold the lettuce / Special orders don’t upset us / All we ask is that you let us serve it your way.” That was successful. And then they proceeded to change that into a country-western version, and a folk version, and a rock version, and a funk, Motown kind of version.
Early on in our career, we made this movie called The Truth About De-Evolution. The Akron Art Institute showed our film. It’s seven and a half minutes long, it wasn’t very long. I remember this woman coming up being really upset, going, “I know what you’re doing! I can see what you’re doing!” And we were like, “Uh, what? What’s that?” She says, “I know what’s going on here! I saw subliminal messages. I saw the word ‘submit’ and I saw the word ‘obey.’” And she was really upset. She was agitated. And I remember Jerry [Casale, a founding member of Devo] and us going, “What a good idea! That’s great!”
When I started doing commercials, I used to put my own messages in them—and did it for twenty or thirty of them before I finally got bored with it because it was too easy.
Could you give me an example?
I got hired to do music for a soft drink that I thought was absolutely terrible tasting—and it was like almost pure sugar, anyhow. I put the subliminal message, ‘Sugar is bad for you.’ And in other commercials, I put messages like, ‘We must repeat,’ ‘Question authority.’
How would you do that?
You just put it right below the threshold of what people hear. They’re already listening for something when they listen to a commercial. Once you put lyrics or a melody on it, they’re following that. And so you can turn it up pretty loud.
So you would slip these lines into the jingle?
I put it underneath a cymbal or a horn riff or a guitar line or something, or a synth part that you would not right away go, ‘Oh, I just heard lyrics.’ You would be, ‘Oh, that was interesting,’ but not even recognize it. It’s not that hard to do, that’s the funny thing.
I know Devo has redone songs for commercials—like the “Swiff It” commercial for the Swiffer. Did you do anything with those?
We didn’t have to. To me, just redoing the lyrics on a Devo song was subversive enough. Because what it meant is, a kid who likes the song would go, ‘Lemme hear that.’ And then they’d hear the real song and then the real lyrics would become much more resonant. I always loved the idea of like taking our lyrics and distorting them for a commercial. Actually, “Whip It”—we have “Strip It,” “Slip It,” “Zip It,” “Swiff It”… There were like eleven or twelve different “Whip It”s out there, where you put them on a reel and you have a really crazy six minutes of viewing pleasure.
Do you ever worry that, instead of subverting these commercials, you’re actually subverting Devo or losing sight of the de-evolutionary vision?
I’m not that worried about it. I know what you’re saying. I learned to deal with that a long time ago and never felt that way. I always felt like what we were talking about, if it had any meaning at all, it would be relevant when people came back to it.
And you’re right. People can say, ‘Oh, Devo! They’re not Devo—they’re De-ho. They just let anybody use their music.’ I’m sure there’s people that think that way.
I think of Andy Warhol, who was my hero when I was a kid. If he were still alive, I think he would get a kick out of our marketing focus groups that we did with this new album. I think he would love the idea of taking a pop song and turning it into a tool to sell stupid, conspicuous crap. Maybe it does make some people interested in Hershey’s chocolate or something else, but we’re taking a ride on that, too. Because the Hershey’s chocolate people have just embedded our virus into their product. That’s how I see it. I see the Devo virus has just been further insinuated into our culture.
And, I mean, you know what? On some level, kids will never think of Devo as anything other than a kick-ass band to dance to, or to skateboard to, or to make-out to or something. They might think of it just as that, on the lowest level. But there’s a percentage of kids, somewhere along the line—it may not happen the first time they hear the record—somewhere along the line, they’re going to be saying those lyrics, singing those lyrics at work in their head or something. And they’re gonna go, “What does he mean when he says, ‘We’re pinheads now / We are not whole / We’re pinheads all / Jocko Homo’? What’s that mean? What’re they talking about?” I’m patient. I think that’s the way you change things—I think it’s through subversion.
This interview originally appeared on CityBeat‘s blog, Lastblogonearth.com.
Theocracy bites: Indie-rockers Hypernova won’t return to Iran any time soon
Raam (second from right) cut his teeth in basement shows - Photo by Jeffrey Grossman
If you think making it big here is hard, try being a rock band in Iran—where rock music is officially considered a decadent vice of Western imperialists.
Alcohol is banned and music venues are nonexistent in Iran, so the rock band Hypernova spent seven years in Tehran’s underground scene, playing basement shows and birthday parties. There aren’t any legal recording studios, so they recorded their 2006 EP, Who Says You Can’t Rock in Iran?, in their friend’s crappy home studio. They’ve been doing much better since their move to the United States in 2007—they’re living in Brooklyn and touring nationally—but they still hide their real identities to protect their families back home.
“The problem with the underground is there’s only so much you can do there,” says Raam, the band’s 29-yearold lead singer and guitarist, in a recent phone interview. “You’re either going to end up in prison or you’re not going to make any money. You’re not going to be able to pursue that other career unless you’re rich enough to just play in your own basement for the rest of your life.”
They don’t have any plans to return home any time soon—in part because it’s a foregone conclusion that they’d be thrown in jail for a song like “Viva la Resistance,” the second track on their debut full-length, Through the Chaos. Over a muted guitar and a bouncy bass line reminiscent of The Strokes, Raam sings, “Your theocratic, neo-fascist ideology / is only getting in the way of my biology.”
In a way, Raam says, they’re better off outside Iran.
“The more success we see over here,” he says, “the more hope it gives to all the kids back home.”
Iranians have always been keen on Western music (on YouTube, there’s an amazing video from 1991 of some Persian dudes break-dancing at a party in Tehran), but Iranian music has gained wider popularity in the year since the birth of the Green Movement, a grassroots civil-rights campaign kick-started by the controversial reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The 2009 film No One Knows About Persian Cats shed light on Tehran’s underground music scene and an adorable indie-pop duo called Take it Easy Hospital. Shahin Najafi, a Persian rapper based in Germany, has become famous for cutting rhymes that attack Iran’s oppressive theological strictures.
But as the Iranian government does all it can to crush the Green Movement, they’ve raised the stakes for artists looking to speak out.
When Raam, who describes himself as “non-religious,” first started playing with Hypernova drummer Kami in 2000, the country was undergoing liberal reforms under the leadership of President Mohammad Khatami. “Holding a girl’s hand in public was almost impossible 10 years ago,” Raam says. “But during Khatami, small things like that became more culturally acceptable.”
But today, the government is reportedly cracking down harder than ever before. Peaceful demonstrators have been attacked by paramilitary youths wielding batons. Bloggers and filmmakers have been arrested and kept in solitary confinement. In December, Iranian authorities detained and intimidated Shahram Nazeri, a respected vocalist who recorded a protest song; he’s been silent ever since.
And don’t even think about holding a girl’s hand.
Recently, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance went so far as to impose guidelines on men’s hairstyles.
“It’s going to take time, but I really do think that struggle is going to prevail,” Raam says. “I think one of the greatest points about the Green Movement, and just the movement of the people, is that they’re demanding that all fundamental basic rights be respected. Everyone should have the freedom to be and follow what they want—but, more importantly, everyone should also be represented equally.”
To its detriment, Hypernova isn’t all that different from countless other bands. Straight-ahead rock songs like “Universal” and “Fairy Tales” may be incredibly catchy, but they’re not groundbreaking or unique. But maybe Raam’s being too harsh when he freely says that Hypernova’s music is “far from good.” To be sure, they’re making headway by introducing synths and live sequencing, dispensing with the tired Strokes formula that defines most of Through the Chaos.
Still, it’s unclear whether they’ll ever reach their ultimate ambition: global recognition.
“For us, the goal is to become so famous and so big one day that when we go back home, we’ll be untouchable,” Raam says. “Like, you know, ‘Do your worst.
Throw me into jail.’ “But, hopefully, it won’t come to that,” he adds. “I don’t want to go to Iranian jail.”
Hypernova plays with The Black Diamond Riders at Bar Pink on Sunday, July 18. hypernova.com
This article ran in last week’s issue of San Diego CityBeat.
Revolucion del Hipster
Antonio Jiménez of María y José; photo by Ricardo Aragón.
This article ran in the July/August issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
In Zona Centro, the downtown district in Tijuana, a city on the U.S.–Mexico border just south of San Diego, DIY-chic is all the rage. La Mezcalera, a mezcal bar and nightclub that’s regarded as the city’s own Studio 54, is decorated with Simon Says consoles and old LPs. Indie Go, one of four bars that sit in the hipster enclave Callejon de la Sexta, masks its plywood décor with deep-red lighting, a wall-sized mirror, and the all-encompassing thud of a techno beat.
As for La Bodega Aragón…well, it’s just DIY.
One Friday night in May, the tiny club’s walls were still sticky with wet paint. Bartenders served drinks in the kind of plastic cups you’d find at a house party. The P.A. system was scratchy; the microphone cut out intermittently. Worst of all, the lighting was installed incorrectly. Instead of lighting up the performers onstage, a machine’s flickering red, green, and blue lights blinded the four dozen college students in the audience.
But I didn’t come for the ambiance. At the invitation of Derrik Chinn, an American who lives in Tijuana, I came to see the Guacamole Music Fest, a two-day festival put on by the University of Baja California that played host to electro bands from across Mexico and Latin America, including some of Tijuana’s best up-and-coming acts.
Colorful lasers shot into the crowd. Gray smoke was ejected from a machine. Santos, an electronic dance outfit from Tijuana, broke down the musical formula invented by Nortec Collective—a world-famous assemblage of D.J.s and producers who mix techno with norteño, an accordion-driven genre popular in northern Mexico—to its basest parts: over a humongous four-to-the-floor beat, a young man used a laptop and a USB keyboard to fire off triumphant rave synths and snippets of accordion and tuba looped ad nauseam. As if that wasn’t enough, a live drummer added fills to the relentless groove.
When it comes to dance music, Tijuana’s claim to fame is Nortec Collective. Their mashups perfectly capture how the city’s disparate cultures often sit side by side, feeding off each other. On the opening track of Corridos Urbanos, a new album by Nortec’s Clorofila, the interplay between honking accordions and glistening synths mirrored the scene at La Bodega Aragón. In the club, young people played dance music on laptops. At the Hotel Aragón bar next door, guys in cowboy hats played tunes on guitars and accordions. Drink in hand, I freely traversed the two spaces.
But in the 10 years since Nortec first emerged, their romantic sound hasn’t evolved the way Tijuana has. Ten years ago, navy boys and college co-eds would flock here to get plastered at gaudy balcony bars. But since the September 11 attacks, tourist traffic has gradually waned. In 2008, at the height of the city’s drug violence, tourists deserted the city completely.
In their absence, locals have reclaimed the area as their own. Tourist bars have been colonized by hipsters. Shuttered gift shops and old storage spaces have turned into vintage clothing stores and bars. And venues like La Sexta House of Music and La Bodega Aragón are supporting a burgeoning local music scene, with bands like Santos capturing the rawness of it all.
By all accounts, the hipster transformation began with a mezcal bar.
In 2008, rival drug cartels were fighting a savage war on Tijuana’s streets. Victims were being decapitated or castrated. Their tongues were being cut out. The really unlucky ones would be stuffed into vats of acid.
The violence had a chilling effect on the city’s thriving nightlife. High-priced clubs and restaurants became magnets for kidnapping and violence. Locals would stay home. Or they would hang out at bars in the city’s red-light district, where they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves. Along Avenida Revolucion, the main tourist drag downtown, there were no gringos to be found.
As the months wore on, Tijuanenses eventually grew tired of staying cooped up inside, club owners and residents say. When La Mezcalera opened its doors on Calle Sexta near Revolucion in January 2009, it hit a nerve. The bar quickly took on a diverse clientele. When more and more patrons began asking for drinks besides mezcal and beer, the bar’s owners emptied out an old storage space adjoining the front room, painted the walls, added a disco ball, and opened up an incredibly chic, if modestly-sized, nightclub.
Within a year, according to Sergio Gonzalez, a co-owner of La Mezcalera, over a dozen bars opened in the area.
“Without realizing, I think they began a revolution in Tijuana’s nightlife,” Lorena Cienfuegos, the co-owner of Indie Go, told me. “We started consuming music from our country, rather than importing it. We started going out—that was something we were [previously] afraid of because of the violence.”
Tijuana may be a vice city, but musicians and club owners say it’s a conservative one.
“In general, Tijuanenses tend to play it quite safe when deciding which shows to attend,” Moisés Horta, who plays in the band Los Macuanos, told me via e-mail. “It’s never really been an issue of musical quality so much as production value. The undecided spectator will more often than not lean toward the party with the biggest budget, the glossiest flyer, and the swankiest venue.”
When I visited, La Bodega Aragón was anything but swanky—and the very antithesis of big-budget. On the second night of the Guacamole Music Fest, Antonio Jiménez of María y José, a solo electronic project, sounded like a lo-fi Panda Bear as he sang casually over sample-driven Latin grooves and simple synth melodies playing from—what else?—a computer.
In the same way that downtown’s DIY-chic runs in the opposite direction of the gaudy bars that used to define Avenida Revolucion, acts like María y José are running away from the overblown raves that have defined electronic music in Tijuana. Three years ago, Jiménez and the guys who would later become Los Macuanos—Moisés Horta, Moisés López, and Reuben Torres, all in their early 20s—started throwing “No Rave” parties in Tijuana and Chula Vista, a U.S. city just south of San Diego, where they played minimal house, funky no-wave, and “random noise,” Horta said.
“At that time, electronic music in Tijuana consisted of massive cash cows masquerading as raves, with D.J.s you’d never even heard of and music you couldn’t care less about,” he wrote. “So our response, naturally, was to create our own scene.”
María y José’s song “Espíritu Invisible” brought their scene to a new level. The song’s hypnotic groove and darkly spiritual lyrics—“And where did your great God go? / He took everything and left you the pain,” Jiménez sings in Spanish, as I’ve roughly translated—inspired them to be more personal and regional. The results show in El Fin Mix, released online by New Other Thing, in which Los Macuanos offer up danceable yet dark grooves laden with Afro-Cuban horns and Latin rhythms.
At this point, whatever they’ve created is still in its infancy, Horta says. But with homey electro bands like Tijuana’s Ibi Ego and Aguascalientes’s Capullo on the scene, something refreshingly un-electro-trash seems to be growing.
It certainly helps that there are new venues downtown.
“The proliferation of venues has definitely afforded more options, not to mention the fact that you have a large cross-section of your potential audience cramped within a relatively tiny radius,” Horta wrote to me. “There’s a high possibility that drifting spectators might accidentally come upon your show and become hooked as a result. Of course, there’s an equal chance that people might just wander out in the middle of your show. But in general, I think the possibilities are more beneficial.”
Calle Sexta, a bustling street that cuts through Revolucion, forms the center of Tijuana hipsterdom. At the corner of Revolucion and Calle Sexta, La Sexta House of Music books bands and D.J.s. Just down the street, La Estrella, one of the city’s oldest and most cherished clubs, sits right next door to La Mezcalera. Across the street, there’s the longtime hotspot Dandy Del Sur. A short walk away, the cozy alleyway Callejon de la Sexta is always overflowing with young hipsters.
Tijuana’s violence has dropped significantly since January, when federal police captured Teodoro Garcia Simental, a ruthless crime lord responsible for much of the violence. Now, hipness is expanding beyond Calle Sexta.
One sunny Saturday in June, I walked around the area surrounding Avenida Revolucion with Jason Fritz, a graduate student at San Diego State University who lives in Tijuana. A pitiful donkey painted with zebra stripes was lounging on the street—as it has been for as long as I can remember. At pharmacies, salespeople in white lab coats hawked discount drugs. Aside from that, though, this wasn’t the same Avenida Revolucion I remember from my childhood.
We checked out vintage clothing stores. We ate at a gourmet hamburger joint. At a cavernous mall once filled with indistinguishable gift shops, a painter worked in his studio, a graffiti store had designer spray cans on display, and a barista at a quaint café was making cappuccinos.
On the corner of Revolucion and Calle Sexta, La Mezcalera’s Gonzalez and his business partner, César Fernández, were overseeing the construction of a ’60s-themed diner. Construction workers were putting up posters of Andy Warhol–style Campbell’s Soup cans labeled “Pozole,” referring to the popular Mexican stew.
Around the corner we ran into Tony Tee, a local promoter, who showed us around a sleek new club he was designing called Revue, which was quite the departure from the garish balcony bars of tourist-era Revolucion. Inside, I admired a spacious D.J. booth that was under construction.
Tee was feeling optimistic.
“Instead of trying to attract the tourists, we’re gonna attract locals,” he said. “But you know what’s going to happen? The tourists are going to come, too.”
