Tijuana
— — a city the border draws a line through.
Not only on a wall.
“The fence runs straight into the Pacific, and the city wraps around it. North of the line, San Diego goes quiet by ten; south of it, Avenida Revolución is just getting up. A Caesar salad was invented here in 1924, in a hotel dining room a few blocks from the crossing. Now the kitchens of Colonia Cacho are some of the most written-about in North America, and Valle de Guadalupe vineyards are forty minutes east. from the studio
Tijuana, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tijuana sits at the northwestern corner of Mexico, on the Pacific coast of Baja California, directly across the line from San Diego. The municipality holds about 1.9 million people, the largest city in Baja California and the sixth-largest in Mexico. The San Ysidro Port of Entry, on its northern edge, is the most-crossed land border in the Western Hemisphere, with more than thirty-four million northbound crossings a year. The city sits at the mouth of the Tijuana River and rises into the Cerro Colorado hills inland.
Avenida Revolución runs about twelve blocks through the Zona Centro and remains the spine of the downtown, with the Arco Monumental at its north end, raised in 2001 to a height of 62 metres. The Caesar salad was first prepared at Caesar's Restaurant on the avenue in 1924 by Caesar Cardini; the room still serves the salad tableside. The food scene the city is now known for sits east in Zona Río and Colonia Cacho. Valle de Guadalupe wine country lies about eighty kilometres to the southeast.
Tijuana sits in a Mediterranean climate softened by the cold California Current offshore, with summer highs near 25°C and winter lows around 10°C. The marine layer pushes in from Playas de Tijuana on the west, and the Pacific arrives at the city's edge at Friendship Park, where the border fence runs into the surf. From the hills above Colonia Cacho the city reads two countries deep on clear afternoons, with downtown San Diego visible to the north.