Mexico

I finally decided to check out the bad part of my neighborhood. Yelp has been telling me to check it out for a while but I've been too scared to go alone. It's only a mile away so I felt silly driving but too scared to walk. Then I thought of a good driving excuse: a quick way to scope out what it has to offer.

Now as I've said a few times already - I was scared. Not sure exactly why, but I think it had to do with poor people and more likely, homeless people. Also, fear of the unknown. I was so naive! It was way scarier than I thought, and way cooler. I live next to the famous Balboa Park, on a golf course. These people live next to the largest cemetery I've seen in California. The plus side is that they have a view of green grass? The shacks on the side of the cemetery are awful looking - like the inhabitants have accepted poltergeist.

Besides the cemetery, there are shack-y looking Mexican restaurants on every block. They all look like they're probably cheap and delicious and have a side of rat feces. Yelp tells me the best places are a Salvadorean spot, a Soul Food spot, and Jamaican spot. The thought of food from each of those scares me - lard, cow feet, pork, things called "jerk"... you get the point. But it still looks really good. I'll ned a partner in crime to try any of them, and maybe start with take-out.

After driving past a modern looking market a couple times I finally decided to pull in and check it out. The sign said Farmer's Market so I assumed fresh/cheap vegetables and probably some flies. I walked in and saw that there were a few fruits and vegetables (and flies) but that was just the beginning. It was an enormous warehouse with different shops inside - exactly like you'd find in Tijuana. There were several Mexican food shops, a fish market, a few jewelry shops, a cowboy boot shop, a CD shop (?), a nail salon, a hair salon, a cheap gifts shop and a ton of people who may or may not have been looking at me like I was in the wrong place. The food looked great and the gifts/boots looked fun. If it were a camp field trip I would've bought a fake gold ring for every finger. I can't wait to bring my next tourist visitor there and pretend like this is what I do every day. I got out fast, though, because I had no idea what I was doing. My neighborhood always seemed a bit Mexico-like but now I realize it's Minnesota compared to the rest of the area.