Bazar de Mexico is TOPS for TJ Shopping
Written: May 15 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quality artisanal works and nice people
Cons: Av. Revolucion is a bit beat
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Tijuana |
Millions of gringos cross the border at Tijuana for a day of shopping, dining, drinking, or maybe just for a brief glimpse of the largest of Mexican border cities. Yet Tijuana -- with its sometimes grim, mercenary population of transients and its atmosphere of frontier lawlessness -- is undoubtedly the worst example of a Mexican city that exists in the republic. Nobody goes to Tijuana for natural beauty, historical monuments, or for the great tourist attractions.
Countless buses of tourists come to shop the seedy tourist shops that line Avenida Revolucion.
Most of the stores along Revolucion are pretty much clones of each other, selling trashy souvenirs to anyone with a dollar and a certain lack of taste. You can get just about anything in Tijuana that you'd find in typical souvenir shops elsewhere in Mexico, but at higher prices and sometimes lower quality (often still relative bargains though). Some people come for the forbidden: maybe to smoke a cuban cigar, visit a brothel, or pick up a bottle of Havana Club rum.
Merchants stand on the sidewalk, imploring passersby to take a look at their wares -- "Just look, senor, nothing more." You can find talavera pottery, wood carvings, leather goods, silver jewelry, and lots more, as well as the usual tacky T-shirts, printed baseball caps. The sturdy cotton saddle blankets that sell for 70 pesos throughout much of Mexico are commonly 100 pesos in Tijuana. Of course, you can bargain and get the price down, and if you bargain like a Mexican, you can probably get that blanket for 50 pesos (which is about as well as you can expect to do even outside Tijuana).
I generally don't like the Revolucion strip, and I don't care for most of its tacky shops. But there are exceptions. A few of the shops are extremely nice and upscale, carrying top quality merchandise -- often things that you seldom (if ever) find north of the border. Some of these are definitely worth seeking out. The trick is to be discriminating...
In my opinion, the best place to shop on Revolucion is Bazar de Mexico.
Bazar de Mexico is located on Avenida Revolucion at 7th -- smack next door to the huge Jai Alai Palace (the huge, ornate building that looks like an Atlantic City casino). The Bazar is a nice contrast to many of the tacky shops on the Avenida in that it's attractive, roomy, and clean. The real treat comes when you start walking around.
The Bazar is set up as a series of small shops or studios, each about the size of a 2-car garage, and each operated by a different person. While some of the people selling wares are simply retailing products that they bought elsewhere, a good percentage of them are true artisans, selling their own handcrafted products. These products range from intricate silver jewelry to handmade ceramics. The merchants are all friendly and will gladly talk about any of their products that interest you. Many of them can arrange shipping of large items to anywhere in the U.S.
In some shops, you'll find excellent quality rustic pine furniture. I've visited places in Jalisco that make this kind of furniture, and I've always been fascinated by the rugged good looks of these pieces and their very affordable price tags. People in San Diego who are looking for good solid furniture at reasonable prices (and who have a pickup truck) should probably take a couple hours to zip across the border to check this place out!
Another vendor that I was especially interested in was selling wrought iron furniture. He had a stunningly beautiful headboard and footboard for a king size bed that I was thinking seriously about trying to have shipped back to Houston, but in the end I hesitated, thinking I could probably find the same thing in Texas border cities -- I haven't (yet).
There were tons of other booths with all sorts of good-quality items, from leather to wood carvings. If you find yourself passing through Tijuana, and you're looking for some good quality stuff rather than just the tacky souvenirs sold in most of the Revolucion shops, stop by Bazar de Mexico and try out your bargaining skills!
Recommended:
Yes
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