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Baja California
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| Tijuana |
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Tijuana is the largest city of the Mexican state of Baja California, situated on the U.S.-Mexico border adjacent to its sister city of San Diego, California. Tijuana is the westernmost city in Mexico, however, the westernmost population center is located in Isla Guadalupe.
Currently, the Tijuana metropolitan area is the sixth-largest in Mexico, with a population of 1,483,992 and as the San Diego-Tijuana Metropolitan Area it is the 14th largest metropolitan area in North America, at 4,922,723. It is one of the fastest growing cities in Mexico. Culture The Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT) is composed of a theater, lecture rooms, video rooms, a library, an exhibition hall, the Museum of the Californias, a futuristic planetary movie theater that displays IMAX films, and a restaurant. Since 1992, the CECUT has hosted the Orchestra of Baja California (OBC), it headquarters the Center of Scenic Arts of the Northwest (CAEN) and the Hispanic-American Center for Guitar (CHG). Since 2001, the CECUT receives about a million visitors per year, making it Baja California's most important cultural center. Another important culture center is La Casa de la Cultura, comprising of a school, a theater, and a public library. Dance, painting, music, plastic arts, photography and languages are taught there. The city also has the Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (Municipal Institute of Art and Culture), the Tijuana Wax Museum, and the Museo El Trompo (The Trompo Museum).
Tijuana also has a very active and independent artist community whose internationally recognized work has earned Tijuana the title of "one of the most important new cultural meccas", according to Newsweek. Strange New World, an exhibition of Tijuana's current art scene, is being curated by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and is traveling across the USA in 2006 and 2007. Art collectives like Bulbo and film production like Palenque Filmaciones explore the use of film like the award winning Tijuana Makes Me Happy, media like television bulbo TV and print "bulbo PRESS", to show different realities of Tijuana out of Mexico. In 2004, Tijuana earned international acclaim for an art exhibition displayed on the cement banks of the Tijuana River and along the Mexico/U.S. border fence in Otay Mesa. Graffiti is widespread in Tijuana. It can range from free-hand writing in spray can and marker form, often carrying social or sexual commentary in English or Spanish, pictures in wheatpaste and stencils, consisting of stenciled renderings of personalities crucial to Hispanic culture from past and present eras, such as television news announcers or stars, but also extending to images of artists like Salvadore Dali. Graffiti in Tijuana may seem at first to consist largely of simplistic tags and thus not as technically evolved, colorful, or accepted in the mainstream as the "pieces" of graffiti scenes of the United States, Europe, or Japan, but large, colorful graffiti murals adorn walls from both native Tijuanense artists as well as visiting graffiti writers, especially from California. The Tijuanense art pieces show as much prowess and skill as those made by their more renowned U.S. counterparts, although illicit graffiti is strongly discouraged by the Tijuana government, as in other major metropolitan areas.
Tijuana is home of the Nortec, a fusion of Norteñas or typical northern-Mexican music and electronic music, such as the music of The Nortec Collective and other electronic music artists, and Murcof, which have placed Tijuana in the international eye of specialized magazines and forums in recent years. Additionally, Tijuana also enjoys a large base of support in many other musical scenes, such as hardcore, punk, black metal, Tijuana Brass and house music. Famous musical acts from Tijuana include the world known singer Julieta Venegas, and bands like Delux. Musical clubs in the Avenida Revolución area and others often cater to a diverse range of tastes by offering nightly variations on musical fare, such as New Wave music one night, and punk rock bands on the next. Interestingly, some metal bands from Europe whose members cannot perform in the United States due to prior felony convictions in their own countries will play music festivals in Tijuana so as to attract fans from both Mexico and the United States. Entertaintment Tijuana's most prestigious entertainment center is the Club Campestre de Tijuana golf club, but the Agua Caliente Racetrack would be the most notable that is open to the general public. Parque Morelos has a small zoo and park space; Parque de la Amistad has a small pond, and a running and dirt-bike track. Parque Teniente Guerrero is a park located downtown with a public library and weekend entertainment by clowns. El Foro was an attraction for being a jai alai venue, but now is a concert venue commonly used. The most popular tourist attraction is a nightclub show. Many foreigners travel there to drink and dance, buy prescription drugs, illegal drugs (especially in and around dance clubs), purchase bootleg brand-name clothing, timepieces, and other personal accessories found globally, as well as manufactured and hand-crafted local curiosities. There are many night clubs, including over a dozen gay clubs but locals and regular tourists avoid touristic hassle over at the clubs at Plaza Fiesta or other areas of the Zona Río Tourism Tijuana also relies on tourism as a major revenue. About 300,000 visitors cross by foot or car from the San Ysidro point of entry in the United States every day. Restaurants and taco stands, pharmacies, bars and dance clubs are part of the draw for the city's tourists. Transportation The General Abelardo L. Rodríguez International Airport is the city's airport, with eleven airlines serving destinations across the nation and Asia. It is one of the busiest airports in Mexico. Aeromexico introduced intercontinental air travel between Tijuana and two major cities in Asia, Tokyo in 2007 and Shanghai in 2008, respectively. With several private road lines, U.S. and select Canadian destinations can be reached via the busy San Diego International Airport, located about 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of the international border. Mexico is served by a network of bus transportation, reaching virtually all parts of the country. The city's main bus station is in its eastern area. There is also a small terminal downtown which serves a few Mexican bus lines and US-based Greyhound Lines and Crucero USA. Another bus station is near the border, with frequent services to Ensenada, and other Mexican states, like Sinaloa, Sonora, and Jalisco, to major cities like Mazatlan, Culiacan, Hermosillo, and Guadalajara. Local public transportation in Tijuana is run by semiprivate companies, and has one of the most complex, or perhaps unorganized networks There are as many bus lines (the companies) and routes as fixed-route taxi ones or calafias, and new routes for buses, taxis or calafias are frequently created, due to high demand of public transportation. Public transportation service is cheap, with bus tickets at $8.00 Mexican Peso (about $0.75 U.S. dollar) the maximum; fixed-route taxis are somewhat more expensive, depending on the taxi route, reaching $15.00 Mexican Peso. Bus, taxi and calafia lines and routes are distinguised one from another by their vehicles colors. All means of transportation within the city accept both Mexican Peso and U.S. dollar as payment currencies, but no other foreign currencies.
Road Tijuana is home to the world's busiest border crossing with about 300,000 people crossing the border between San Diego and Tijuana every day. Queues take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more to cross to the United States, on non-US holidays, with wait of a few hours on US national holidays or some Mexican holidays. Expect street vendors during the wait. However, after clearing customs and immigration formalities, Interstate 5 is a major 8-10 lane freeway from San Ysidro to downtown San Diego, Los Angeles, and north to the Canadian border. Interstate 805 branches off from I-5 just north of the border, and takes a more easterly route which bypasses downtown San Diego, rejoining with I-5 in the northern part of the city. From the Otay Mesa border crossing, Otay Mesa Road takes drivers west to connect with both I-805 and I-5. Two important Mexican federal highways end in Tijuana, one of them is Federal Highway 1, which runs south through the Baja California peninsula, ending in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur. From Tijuana to Ensenada, most travelers take Highway 1-D (scenic road), a four-lane, limited access toll road that runs by the coast starting at Playas de Tijuana. Mexican Federal Highway 2 runs east for several hundred kilometers near the international border, currently as far as Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
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