Border Towns: What to Do and Where to Do It
Texas offers a wealth of restaurants, bars, shopping, sightseeing, and pleasures of the flesh along the 1248-mile Mexican border that stretches from El Paso to Brownsville. It's close, it's different, and it's fun.
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George's Le Club on the square near the Hotel San Carlos is where, as a hopeless nightclub junkie, I finally got my fix. A tight, ambitious Latino rock band with a fine singer played to a full house—almost all locals—in a room that vibrated with good feeling. Avoiding the chrome and bright lights, owner Henry Garza has kept the place chic without turning it to chaff.
Downtown is Dutch's Lounge, highly recommended for an evening's final liqueur. A noble little bar, it has a low ceiling and plastic tulips sitting in small, recessed windows along with Mariachis and good drinks.
PROGRESSO-NUEVO PROGRESSO
SINCE NOVEMBER, 1956, ARTURO'S RESTAURANT has been a comfort station for the hungry traveling between Matamoros and Reynosa. Manager Vicrilio Garza offers you an enviable selection of Mexican food. Try the "California Tacos," (avocado sauce over crisp chicken tacos) or the "Chicken Envuelto" (tomato sauce over soft chicken tacos). It's open daily at 11, with a band upstairs except on Mondays.
BROWNSVILLE-MATAMOROS
WITH THE DETERMINATION OF HANNIBAL, my red VW bus and I rolled toward the trip's denouement. Fasting will begin in two days when the trip is over. Reflecting on the tour, I am again impressed with the dazzling variety of Texas geography; with the graciousness and politeness of Mexicans I have met. I am reminded once again of the beauty of the two cultures that live together in language, food, music, and architecture.
Ahead, skirting the Rio Grande, lay Matamoros, a town I knew well. I had been coming to South Padre Island, 22 miles away, for 15 years.
Matamoros remains a mediocre industrial city: not much humor, no verve, rather leaden and sluggish despite the heavy tourist influx from Brownsville. If the town were milk, I'm not sure it would boil over fire.
Brownsville is waking up and is enjoying a boom unparalleled in its history. Long the largest shrimp catching and processing center in the Western Hemisphere, it is enlarging its industrial base at a rapid rate. Big business is finally realizing the benefits of cheap labor and a near-perfect climate. Work begins soon on Amigoland, a 620-acre amusement park similar to Disney World, to be built near the old bridge.
Despite itself, Matamoros has one winner and several close also-rans in the restaurant field. Best-of-show is the Santa Fe Restaurant, for 12 years, a Chinese exotic ornament on the border. Inside is an arresting interior of quiet, Chinese ornamentation: bamboo columns and paper lanterns that provide the perfect amount of light: dim enough for seduction, bright enough to see what you are eating.
The menu is challenging, an extravagant variety of 175 offerings. Here are a few of the best: the Peking Roast Duck May ($2.80); Chow Fang Fried Rice (fried rice with bean sprouts, green onion and meat of your choice: $1.60); Chow Sup Kim (diced meats and seafood with Chinese vegetables: $2.80). They have excellent egg roll and sweet and sour dishes. The Santa Fe also serves Mexican food, breakfasts, sandwiches, steaks and has an extensive bar that includes Mexican wine.
Adjacent to each other on the square are the U.S. and Texas Bars. The Texas Bar has been at its present location for 45 years. It features a beautiful dining room with French chandeliers imported from Mexico City. Try the game dinners and the excellent hard Mexican rolls. In the bar, you can see the only solid white, stand-up bass fiddle on the border.
The US Bar must have been feeling old and self-destructive. It modernized, reached for the vinyl solution, and ended up looking like the women's room at The Forum of the Twelve Caesars. But the lobster tail ($6) imported from Baja California is still good.
A wonderful place to meet the locals is Matias, around the corner from the Santa Fe. For 30 years, Senor Matias has continued the tradition of providing free botanas (appetizers) with beer or drinks. Stay long enough and you will try some of everything. The best is the guisado (moist, tender stew meat wrapped in a soft tortilla).
Across the street, the Piedras Negras Restaurant does the same thing in slightly fancier (they have a TV) surroundings. Remembered as the place Pancho Villa's son was shot during a smuggling dispute several years ago, it is a favorite noontime haunt for businessmen. Try a tiny glass of liqueur called Angel's Kiss.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: The Drive Inn, long a border legend, is in reality excruciatingly au courant, a restaurant-bar that is self-pollinated with excess. An insipid band of four violins contributes to this nightmare, along with high prices, watered drinks, and fellow tourists.
Open for two years, the Chale has nothing distinguished except three quail broiled or au vin ($2.75). It's located two blocks south of the Texas Bar.
If you spend the night in Matamoros, there is the Hotel Ritz ("A Grand Tour of the Gulf," TM, October, 1973), or the Holiday Inn, near the new bridge and arts-and-crafts center.
Matamoros has the finest market on the border, rebuilt after a disastrous fire of a few years back. Across the street on the east side is Dos Republicas a gift house of the highest quality and the best in town.
RED LIGHTS AND FAST WOMEN
IF YOU ARE A MALE over 16 and in a group of one or more, sooner or later you will be asked if you would like to find "some gorls." Prostitution is legal in Mexico, and in most cities, plays as vital part in the local economy as the grocery store. In a country of great poverty, it is the only way many girls survive and support families. Albeit, it is not a nice way to grow old.
The girls in most bordertowns work in two distinct areas: at the top of the ladder are nightclubs or casinos, usually advertised with Las Vegasesque neon signs, plus interiors, and perhaps a floor show. The aristocrats of the border bordellos work these places, where the staff is checked by the doctor once a week for v.d.
At the bottom of the ladder is Penny Lane, generally a row of doors opening onto a dirty, dusty street. The lady sits in the doorway shouting encouraging suggestions as you approach, darker advice as you pass. Looking inside you see the bed, a basin, some chest of drawers and the inevitable cross and picture of Christ on the wall above the bed. Penny Lane does not enjoy the benefits of modern medical technology. Prices in the nightclubs begin around $10 and go up according to whims, quirks, and requests. On Penny Lane, the action starts rolling at $2.50 but this doesn't include additional medical bills a few weeks later.
It is not a good idea to take wives or girlfriends into boys' towns, unless you are in a very large group, and only then, in Nuevo Laredo. Better not to try at all.
All boys' towns are well patrolled by police and to fight or refuse payment may mean a trip to jail. I strongly urge that you avoid Mexican jails.
A catalog of border boys' towns:
Juarez. Unlike all other towns on the border, boys' town in Juarez is in the middle of downtown, along Mariscal Street one block over from Ave. de Juarez. It's a street lined with nice, dark bars; the rooms usually are on the second floor. Here I saw the ideal bar floor plan: as you enter, a bedroom on each side; narrow passageway to the cool dark bar and jukebox in back. The girls are not pushy. A simple, "no quiero" will suffice, and you can just order a beer.
Typical is the White Lake, which is a very casual, laid-back place with a good juke box. Other places nearby are the Palmira Club, Green Lantern, and Chava's Club. Irma's is the famous Juarez whorehouse ten to 15 blocks out of town. Its prices are steeper than in town, and the cabbies will try to take you here to get a higher fare.
Ojinaga. Boys' town is made up of adobe buildings thrown up on the desert floor on the road to the railroad station. Inside the B-29 Lounge the aura is one of goat stink and cheap perfume. Girls are tough and sarcastic. For grizzled prospectors only. Prices are rock bottom. Go see the Red Windmill to believe it.
Ciudad Acuña. Boys' town is ten blocks or so off main street, between downtown and the Los Alpes motel. The Penny Lane is the most downtrodden on the border. The 2500 young women working in the town's electronic assembly plants give professionals stiff competition. Gold Palace is most expensive Capri or Cameliaare best bets.
Piedras Negras,. Located out of town, this boys' town has a quiet, studied nonchalance. Any of the fancier places will do, but there is nothing to rave about. The best bet is to drive back to Ciudad Acuña.
Nuevo Laredo—The Broadway of Boys' Towns, it is all behind a great brick wall outside of town on land provided by the government. Never drive your own car out. Smaller cars have fallen into chuck holes and disappeared for days. The one entrance and exit is carefully supervised by Nuevo Laredo's finest. Girls come from all over Mexico to work in the four or five nicest places. This is the best on the border.
Most unique and pleasing structurally, both in building and in clientele, is the Tamyko, a huge Japanese pagoda with outside patio and fishponds spanned by arched bridges, surrounded on two levels by bedrooms. The girls are almost all between 14 and 18 years old. The architecture is eclectic to say the least: the ceiling is covered with egg cartons that look down on modern chairs and tables. Cigarettes thrown in the outside ponds killed all the fish. Look for the 50-foot pagoda.
The Merabu has a huge circular room lined with booths that reminds one of a paddock. The 60 girls work the 30 rooms behind the showing area until about 5 a.m. Look for a legendary six-footer named Solanda Martinez who sports the most incredible makeup job ever.
The best-known place on the border—Papagallo—has fallen on hard times. Clientele is way below average and surprisingly surly. It still has the best boys' town kitchen. Go back and order a steak and soup and visit with the girls that are off-duty. The meals are safe and cost only about 75¢. The One-Two-Three is a sentimental favorite. The original fixtures were lovingly and carefully transplanted to the present location. Nice girls. Good music.
Be prepared in all the above places for a once-a-night police frisk. Ten or 15 policia will move through the clubs, politely pat you down, and move on. If you are foolish enough to carry a gun or knife into boys' town, it will be confiscated and earn you a heavy fine.
Reynosa. Boys' town here is very popular during bird hunting season but is undistinguished, however, in almost every way. Occasionally there are good shows. Your best bets are the Texas Cabaret or El Bastam
.Matamoros. This is strictly low rent. Turn around and go back to Nuevo Laredo.
Americans sensitized not only to the traditional objections to prostitution but to the more current ones that have come out of women's awareness will find a totally different attitude toward the world's oldest profession across the border. Neither Puritanism nor women's awareness are present. Instead there is a kind of controlled free enterprise which, whatever its effects on the people involved, is a part of the border scene that cannot be ignored.
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