This last week was sort of shit. No tours. I would like to have two tours a week, please, so I can be happy with my finances.
Not only that, but I also received several messages and emails requesting a tour. A bunch of follow-up questions. Even agreeing on a meeting time.
And then… nothing.
Not even a message saying “I’m sorry I had to cancel.” Nothing.
This is why I charge a reservation fee. But a lot of the messages were last-minute casual tours. So I agreed and helped with whatever information they needed about Tijuana and the border… and not even a fucking thank you. I should be more strict on my reservation fee.
Like fuck man.
Support my Patreon. And now my Substack. And all the shit I have at least.
I’m too nice sometimes. I come across as an asshole, but I’m way too nice.
Hi, and welcome to my Substack!
My name is Matingas, and I do a shit ton of content in both English and Spanish. I live in Tijuana. I’m almost forty years old.
I’ve been blogging since 2012. It started with my life as a paparazzi, then it developed into a word vomit. I later started writing for publications until I got a handful of cover stories. In 2015, I started writing 2,000 words a day just for the sake of it. I wrote over 200 blog entries about my life in one year. I wrote a book before the pandemic and then another during. You can find both books on Amazon. Publications died. Books dwindled. Everything became internet content, so I started doing videos. In the year 2025, I decided to blog weekly about my life again. Just for sanity’s sake. Halfway through the year, someone said I should open a Substack account (gracias, Cosette) and here I am.
I also run Tijuana Adventure, private tours in Tijuana. I get a lot of support through that, and a lot of people often offer suggestions on what I should do to grow. The basic one was more SEO. And since I can do that myself, I started writing a Tijuana weekly Newsletter.
All of that and more, you can find on my Substack or on all my social media. I close this blog with the links, but I’ll put them right here for now:
Buy my books on Amazon. I’m sure you’ll enjoy them if you enjoyed this. If you didn’t enjoy this… then… what are you doing still here?!
Subscribe to my YouTube channel. The more subscribers, the more money, the more time I have to upload cool shit.
Follow me on Instagram and book me for a photoshoot!
Follow me on TikTok just because it’s the thing we do in the future.
Book a Tijuana tour with Tijuana Adventure! Still doing exclusive tours in 2025. Let’s see how much longer I last.
Read all my articles on the Reader. It is no longer printing! 148 covers and a dozen cover stories in print are now history.
Subscribe to my Patreon to support me and to get full-size galleries and photo albums!
Subscribe to my Substack, HERE! This blog makes me no money.
You can buy all my merch, books, prints, and more. You can hire me to be your tour guide in Tijuana or Ensenada. Or you can hire me to be your photographer. Or a guitarist. Or a writer. I can do it all. Well… not really. Just a lot.
I read rags-to-riches type of stories on Substack. People who write for the sake of writing, just like me, and the algorithm somehow goes from having 2 subscribers to 2,000.
Maybe that will happen to me.
I have over 50,000 followers in total across all my social media. Every time that it seems I’m going to make it big, it slows down and it goes to nothing. It’s my fault. I realized I get scared. I get antsy. It’s too much pressure. It’s too wild to have thousands of followers. And I stop… Criticism is hard.
Yet, I continue. Mostly because I don’t want to get a real job, though many times I think about it.
August has been shit. My bank account is better than it has been in years… but I want more. When I’m not producing money, I get depressed.
I’ve been keeping myself busy. I’ve been writing a lot and creating content every day. I get tons of new followers and likes. It translates to money. But like droplets of water trying to fill a big glass.
I need more tours. More paid subscribers. I need more people to give me money. Give me money. I give you content and/or merch.
At least the weekend was moderately good.
I spent it with my girlfriend. We didn’t do much. But the little we did was great. Except the mornings. She wakes up early. I do not. But once we are doing shit. We are great.
We went out on Saturday and it was a lovely evening.
We stayed home on Sunday and ordered pizza and watched The Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers) and Robot Dreams, and had a lovely evening.
I played DotA at night and sucked at it like always. Fuck that game. But also. Love that game.
And soon… New York.
I need to make more money and spend almost no money. I finally have new bags and shirts with La Ballena design on them. I’ll pick them up today and start selling them this week.
But I need more tours. More merch. More money.
Baggie of goods!
La Ballena Bag with a book, shirt, stickers, and a print! $59.99!
That’s my idea.
There’s not much to blog about. So I’ll finish this later.
The Tijuana Newsletter part of the blog.
The food and drink part.
I did a top 5 burgers in downtown Tijuana. I hate doing lists; it was content for the sake of content. People asked for it. But I need to try way more burgers in the city before a final consensus. There are too many suggestions, and a lot of them are now looking good. I have too many burgers to eat.
In the top 5, I added La Republica de Hops because they have a delicious new smash burger. They have other types of burgers as well, and they call both the chicken and fish sandwich a burger… which, hey… DON’T! But they also have sliders and regular burgers that are filling and tasty (albeit a bit on the pricey side, but everything is expensive now).
Beers are also great there. But again… 120 pesos for a pint is pushing it. Let’s go back to when it was 80 pesos, please?! Or at least don’t break 100 because that shit is ridiculous.
I know it’s expensive for all, including the service industry. Everyone is battling with costs. But there is also too much competition. And that should drive prices down… in theory.
There is too much Tijuana, and Tijuana is going to keep going wild.
I’m almost done with the Tijuana La Horrible book. It has a lot of great paragraphs, but with a ton of technical scholarly fluff. It is, after all, a book for studying, not a book for entertainment. It is a dull book filled with great information. It helps with my tours and for my future book. More information about this city.
Tijuana Adventure 2 book coming at some point in 2026.
Let’s hope.
There wasn’t much money to be made from the first book… but now I’m that guy who wrote a book about Tijuana. Now I can be that guy who wrote two books about Tijuana.
Somehow, the second book has to be better. And it will be.
And I’ll still make no money. But that’s what writers do. Write. Right?
More Tijuana Adventure Newsletter.
La Ballena shirt information:
Did you know that the longest bar in the world used to be in Tijuana? It was nicknamed “La Ballena.”
The original name of the building was Liquor Palace and Mexicali Beer Hall, but it was also dubbed “The Long Bar” and “La Ballena.” The bar was over 100 yards long. It was built in 1923 by American businessmen and gangsters during the Prohibition era (like most of Tijuana). The building now houses pharmacies, a market, curio shops, coffee shops, and more. Beers used to be around 25 cents, which equals $5 nowadays.
The bar closed in 1960, and it was moved across the street from the original spot and was less than half the size it used to be. Then it was moved from place to place. Several bars in Tijuana claimed to have been a part of La Ballena. But none could come close to what was the original longest bar in the world.
The legacy of the place now only exists in stories and distorted memories. And in this shirt and tote bags!
GET YOURS NOW!
I’ve done a lot of research about this, and like everything in Tijuana, there is conflicting information. A lot of people in the 60s wrote about visiting the longest bar in the world, but it was closed by then. And their description of the bar is that it was a nasty place with a rancid bathroom and a ton of drunk people. But back in the 20s, it was a classy joint where famous people (matadors) would hang out.
More Tijuana Newsletter.
New speakeasy bar. Border Bloom Bar. BBB.
Bueno Bonito but not Barato…
And it’s more than bueno.
Border Bloom is the baby of a bartender by the name of Alberto. He told me all about his life and inspiration. And you can tell it’s a labor of love. He has worked in some of the most competitive cities for bartenders (DC, Mexico City, Beijing, New York, etc.). He knows his craft very well, and he wants you to have a unique experience with every sip.
I fucking hate speakeasys.
Like… Despise them. The first time I encountered one, I loved it… But it was back in 2011 in Seattle. Then I saw another one in San Francisco, and I didn’t know the correct password for the day, and they told me to fuck off. Another great one was in Minnesota, it was hidden behind a dumpster in an alley, and the vibe in there was jazzy and sublime. The first great Tijuana speakeasy was (and still is) behind Oryx Restaurant. The bar is called Nortico.
But then it became a social media trend, and it went to shit. They opened so many shitty speakeasys with absolutely no concept except “look, it has a shitty hidden door.” There was a speakeasy behind a fake fridge door (that looked very obviously fake). There was a speakeasy behind a very obvious bookcase that was a door. There was a speakeasy that didn’t even try to be a speakeasy; they just said it was. There have been so many ridiculously stupid speakeasys that… they killed the vibe. They killed the concept.
And now… Border Bloom.
The speakeasy is behind a somewhat obvious mirror. The facade is that it’s a simple shitty bar on the front serving shit like licuachelas and garbage cheap drinks. And the classy speakeasy is behind the mirror. Somewhat obvious. Not my favorite entrance to a speakeasy. I wish they were more creative with the entrance, like in an alley or something, but the choices are limited. And once inside, a classic fancy bar: all black with some gold highlights and marble. Great art made out of garbage and some okay nude prints by some photographer that is supposed to be the tits, but for me it just looks like a dude that takes nudes in black and white of chicks with tattoos. Not my taste and sort off-putting for the bar, but not bad. It is a great location for a boudoir photoshoot.
The bar is somewhat tight but manageable, and it displays all the herbs they use in the drinks. There are a few tables perfect for dates. And to the main part of a bar… the drinks.
They are inspired by everything Baja, especially the native communities of Kumiai and Cucapah, and the herbs that they use. The two cocktails I tried were complex and well-balanced. The signature cocktail is made with bacanora, which I rarely ever find in a cocktail. Very herbal, and it goes down well, especially for having a liquor that is very strong.
The second cocktail was pink! My girlfriend’s favorite color. And it contained gin, and she’s been loving the gin and tonics. It was fantastic. Wonderful aroma followed by a nice sour and sweet combination. I liked it better than the signature. Yet there are MANY more cocktails to try.
Drink 1: Yumanos del Desierto – Bacanora, bellota tostada Kumiai (roasted acorn), miel silvestre (wild honey), cordial de gordolobo (great mullein), and tintura de moronel.
Drink 2: Clover Bloom – Ginebra infusión de bugambilia (gin infused with bougainvillea), jarabe de frambuesa (raspberry syrup), emulsion con manzanilla (chamomille), perfume de artemisa (sagebrush), limón, and pollen.
Soon I’ll do a list of the best cocktail bars in Tijuana. Cocktails, just like burgers, have skyrocketed in quality in this city. It used to be okay stuff that was passable, but it couldn’t seriously compete with other cities. But now… There are more than five cocktail places that are doing superb stuff. And Border Bloom might be on that list.
Speaking of others that could be on the list… Casa Ocampo.
I said I would write a full review… but I haven’t gone back to try their cocktails on a regular day. All I tried was a martini and a limoncello drink that I couldn’t fully appreciate. But the place… Oooo, I appreciate the place.
This is a speakeasy without calling itself a speakeasy and/or trying. It is nowhere near any other bar. It is situated in an old warehouse near all the fish markets. It doesn’t look like a bar from the outside… and the inside… they did a magnificent job. They have garbage art by the same artist. I call it garbage art, but what I mean it’s that he uses recycled materials. But it truly is just great garbage art.
That could be another one on the list.
And so could be Aruba Day Drinking Bar, Illuso Cocktail House, Malbouche, and Nortico. I still need to try Minimal…and go back to Nortico… and that pretty much sums up the top 5.
Except I mentioned 7…
It is going to be a difficult choice. Cocktail bars in Tijuana can finally compete with other cities, but the prices are also as expensive. In all of these places expect to pay $12-20 per cocktail…
I got an email for a tour. They wanted the same day that I’m already booked. All of August is open except that one Saturday… and they wanted that Saturday.
All of September is also open!
No… I lie!
I’m in New York from September 11th to the 17th!
Early and late September open! I need New York money. Book me now!
Buy my stuff.
I already posted links. This blog post has a picture. More pictures will be posted on my other blog. I’m now on Substack… LET’S GO!!!!
Matingas 
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