New Crowd Bellying Up to Tijuana Bars--Americans Under 21

It’s midnight Friday and Avenida Revolucion is throbbing. Head-splitting disco and rock music blares from upscale cafes, trendy discotheques and raunchy strip joints. The street is lit up like a giant pinball machine. Balconies are jammed with exultant young Americans, revved up on cheap beer, tequila and the liberating realization that they are in a foreign country.

“I’m 20 years old, and I can’t get beers or anything in the bars back home,” says Bill Fox, who drove to Tijuana from Palos Verdes with a friend. “Besides,” adds Fox, shouting over the din at a flamingo-pink outdoor bar, “there’s all kinds of girls around here!”

Different Crowd

Is nothing sacred? The Tijuana night crawl, a hallowed institution of sleaze for generations of good-time seekers, is just not the same anymore. Cantinas, once famed for acts of bizarre if not illegal indulgence, no longer cater exclusively to a largely male crowd of servicemen and adventuresome carousers with a predilection for the unsavory.

Instead, each weekend evening, Tijuana and Ensenada, the harbor city 70 miles to the south, welcome the latest wave of invaders from el norte: College students and other youths from the United States in search of exotic thrills and some respite from that most onerous of California laws--the 21-year-old legal drinking age.

“In the old days, you’d never bring a girl down here,” mutters one disgruntled 40-year-old, a veteran of many low-life jaunts south of the border, now appalled by the teeny-bopper takeover.

To be sure, the bawdy clubs, boasting “Girls! Girls! Girls!” still are thriving, and roaming prostitutes still offer their favors, but it is now the under-21 crowd that dominates the scene. The youths’ behavior is not always exemplary: Ensenada officials were recently contemplating the posting of signs with an explicit message: No Sex on the Streets. (“We’ve found that Americans tend to pay attention to signs,” explained a mayoral spokeswoman.)

Sensing where the money is, club owners who once pitched sleaze have successfully molded their image to attract the young revelers.

“I just moved out here from Indiana, and this is so different,” says Kelley McDermott, 18, who was winding up a recent evening on the town. “Just all these lights in Tijuana. I mean, believe me, you don’t see this in the Midwest.”

Enter on Foot

The young Americans generally enter Mexico on foot, passing boisterously through two squeaky, battleship-gray revolving gates at the border after having parked cars on the U.S. side. (Most choose not to drive into Mexico.) There is no passport or identification check. One of their first sights is a billboard advertising Ralph Lauren’s Polo line, another sign of Tijuana’s maturing self-image. By 10 o’clock on a Friday night, the pedestrian walkway to Mexico has more teen-agers than a beach scene in an old Annette Funicello film.

Why do they come? “It’s real social--and you can drink,” explains Pam Huebner, 18, one of four freshmen from San Diego State University who has just passed through the revolving doors on a recent Friday evening. “It adds some spice. But I wouldn’t come down here alone, without a guy. Some friends have had some heavy experiences.”

“People talk about . . . how bad the federales are,” says one of her friends, Joseph Gardner. “But, really, they’re not that bad. You’ve just got to pay them off sometimes, that’s all. One time a federale put some cuffs on me down in Ensenada. But nothing happened.”

Little Spanish Spoken

While all are clearly exhilarated about being in a foreign country, few speak any intelligible Spanish and the majority spend most of their time chatting in English with fellow Americans. “I don’t feel prejudiced against Mexicans,” Huebner says, “but I don’t think I’d dance with them.”

Once across the border, the youthful throngs amble past vendors and begging women and children, headed for the big yellow taxis that deliver them to local hangouts.

Near the taxi stand, two Navy corpsmen accompany their dates for the evening, 18-year-old twins named Michelle and Tara, dressed like vamps.

Both sailors requested that their last names not be used, as their mere presence could trigger disciplinary action. The Navy has declared Tijuana off-limits to lower-ranking servicemen between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. after reported police shakedowns and fights. Tijuana officials say they are cracking down on alleged extortion by officers, but such complaints are still common, by American and Mexican citizens alike.

“All of Tijuana is just one big bar,” says Joe, his expression suggesting a grand gesture. He wears a ring in his left ear, a bolo tie and combat boots. “Just one big bar.”

Head for the Bars

Most youths head first for a six-block swath of Avenida Revolucion, the main tourist drag, which in recent years has sprouted many balcony-bars and instantly fashionable clubs for the younger set. On weekend evenings, the street is a jarring, neon-laced fusion of reverberating sound, flashing lights, frolicking teen-agers and local beggars and vendors trying to make a buck. A small army of municipal police patrols the streets, occasionally whisking away troublemakers.

“My dad would shoot me if he knew I was here,” confesses Gary L. Clevenger III, 18, of Mission Viejo, a student who is seated on a bar stool on the green-tiled balcony of the tropical-style Jorongo Beer Garden & Grill, just across the avenue from a club known as Banana.

“My first time down here was last weekend,” says Clevenger, a strapping, clean-cut, happy-go-lucky sort, shouting above the clamor. “It was great. . . . I was drinking tequila shooter after tequila shooter. . . . Then I got up and took a few steps, and fell down the stairs. On the street I fell down every five steps or so. I had a great time. The best time I ever had.”

“I eat at Jack in the Box before I come here,” says his companion, Michelle, 17, who appears to be feeling the effects of strawberry margaritas.

Alcoholic Ritual

Down the terrace a bit, several employees are treating a young American to a singular local ritual: The tequila popper. In this frenzied ceremony, the customers are provided with bibs, and skilled, whistle-blowing barmen--some dressed as firemen and doctors to heighten the effect--funnel tequila and juice into recipients’ open mouths until they can take no more. In one variation, the popper recipient is tossed into the air.

“They did that to me on my 21st birthday last year,” confesses a disheveled blonde. “I passed out right on my friend.”

“Wasted,” adds Bill Fox of Palos Verdes, bug-eyed following his popper initiation. “Just wasted.”

One young man, his conversation drifting toward career talk, says he is angling to land a job at his father’s firm, which makes surgical gloves. “With this whole AIDS thing,” he confides amid the din, “the business is doing really well.”

Don Templeton, 30, a Navy petty officer, is one of the oldest customers at the bar. “I’ve been here about 40 times,” he says, surveying the roisterous balcony. “It reminds me a lot of overseas, of the Philippines.”

High-Profile Disco

About a mile or so to the east, in Tijuana’s newly remodeled river zone, former site of a shantytown, the picture is quite distinct. Here is the city’s most high-profile nightspot: the Laser Club OH!, kind of the Studio 54 of the Tijuana set, where long lines are commonplace and not-sufficiently-cool patrons are often refused entry by scowling bouncers packing walkie-talkies.

Officials of the 300-employee club, who love to boast of celebrity patrons, from Tina Turner to Clint Eastwood to the Chicago Bears, offer no apologies for their selective entry policy.

“If we see people who are rowdy, or who are dressed as bums, we’re not going to let them in,” says Antonio Ortiz, an English-speaking spokesman for the club, where 90% of the patrons are from the United States and most of the rest are “rich Mexicans,” in Ortiz’s words. As he speaks, Ortiz stands on a catwalk above hundreds of dancers, who are entertained by a deafening sound system, dozens of video screens, live fireworks and green and red laser beams.

Bikinis Draw Cheers

On this particular evening, the club is hosting one of its periodic spectacles: a bikini contest, preliminary round, complete with an announcer providing vivid play-by-play in Valley Girl English as the scantily clad contestants, all American, are paraded on the dance floor before bulging eyes, raucous cheers and salacious catcalls.

It is past 4 a.m., and the bacchanal is winding down. The Denny’s on Avenida Revolucion, familiarly decorated in red vinyl, is a favorite place for many of the young crowd to begin facing up to the future.

“We’ve got a few rules in Mexico: Don’t drink the water. Be careful with the food. Don’t sit on the toilet seats,” explains Kris, 18, a chatty blonde whose mother thinks she’s at a friend’s house in San Diego, as she sits in a plastic Denny’s booth with two others.

What’s the attraction of Tijuana? “When you’re young and horny, what else can you do?” asks Phillip Harrison, 18, of San Clemente. Soon, they will join the exhausted stragglers--some staggering, some near-unconscious--who are heading back north, passing Lelo Morales, a 4-year-old boy who sings for coins at the international exit, and crossing into the United States as the morning sun faintly brightens the eastern sky. On the U.S. side, the San Diego police occasionally post officers who seek to intercept inebriated youths before they can do any damage in their vehicles.

‘Revolting’ Scene

“The whole scene is revolting,” concludes Deborah Zahn, 19, a Nebraska native now living in California, who is approaching the border in the faint light. “You have all these people chowing down while kids are starving on the streets.”

But her friend, a tall, sandy-haired blond, appears to disagree. “I’d come back,” he says. “I thought it was fun.”