ROSARITO BEACH, MEXICO — The music thumps, the lights flash, the shot glasses wait for willing lips. But the bouncers are reduced to kicking at the curb, hoping somebody, anybody, will round the corner. Friday nights are slow lately in Rosarito Beach's party zone, and everyone knows the drug war is to blame.
Hundreds of corpses discovered in and near Tijuana. Some of them headless, others dissolved in barrels of lye. People hear that, and they stay away.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 37 words Type of Material: Correction
Rosarito Beach: An article in Monday's Section A about visitors to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, said Dan Pejakovich of Sacramento left his job as a construction manager and inspector late last year. His current contract runs through July.
At least, most people do. But on this recent Friday night, just before 9, two men and a woman come striding up the street. Americans, young and thirsty; buddies since undergrad days at UC Santa Barbara. They bypass Papas & Beer. They sidestep Club Vibe and Coco Beach. They eye Iggy's and its sole customer. And then they hop on stools and order shots.
"If you're not doing drugs, you're not gonna get in trouble," explains Josh Davis, 24, of San Diego. "As long as you stay on the well-lit paths, you're OK. But then again," he adds with a grin, "my night's not over yet."
It may not be surprising to hear that as bodies accumulate in Tijuana (843 homicides in 2008, compared with 376 in the much larger city of Los Angeles), Rosarito Beach's hotel occupancy rates spiral downward. On Feb. 20, the U.S. State Department issued a 12-paragraph "alert" on the perils of travel in Mexico, especially near the border.
On March 2, the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went a step further, warning American college students to stay away from Tijuana and Rosarito Beach during spring break. Despite deep discounting and a peso that has lost a third of its value in the last six months, this night (shortly before the ATF warning) reveals about 450 empty rooms at the Rosarito Beach Hotel.
Those who dare
But there's another side to this equation. What about the 50 rooms that are occupied? Who are the Americans who have never stopped coming down to Rosarito? What are they thinking?
In six hours of Friday-night circulating in Rosarito, a reporter and photographer come across several U.S. tourists, ages 23 to 60, none of them newcomers to Mexico.
A few of the Americans fit the traditional description of a Rosarito reveler -- college students or recent grads -- and one of these revelers is an alumna of the reality show "The Bad Girls Club." (That would be Andrea Sharples, 24, of Los Angeles, raising a glass in Iggy's with her friends Davis and Reed Clark.) But several of the other visitors are retired, and some have been driving down here for decades.
