El Tri Sodas 3X 1.00
Commentary by Border Blog Editor
El Paso Street in El Paso. It’s the first block of America. Or the last block of America. It depends on which direction you’re headed.
Going north it’s the first. Going south, it’s the last, the next block is Mexico.
This is a street of life, bulging with people, an array of goods from school and household supplies to clothes to audio stuff to high heels to T-shirts with everything from Revolutionaries to cartoons on them. It’s juicy, alive and has texture and odor.
It’s 3D street.
El Paso Street is one of the last blocks of America in other ways, too. 
North of here the perpetual “Development” of the city goes on. One might as well crash into a wall for excitement because El Paso is not an exciting city. It’s a typical “western city,” a sunbelt city a city of suburban homes and suburban people. But there is no “Urb” to the Suburb.
There are a couple of “entertainment districts” where 18 to 25 year old entertain themselves by drinking themselves into a state of comatose adolescence, convincing themselves they’ve finally arrived at adulthood. There are some others, long past their young hipster stage, but hanging ion for a little longer, hoping to stay in the game or get lucky or just not knowing where to go. The downside of El Paso is that there aren’t a lot of guidelines to tell its young what’s next.
The upside of El Paso is that it is such a zero that most of the things that attach to “entertainment districts,” and cities in general don’t happen here. Panhandlers, street people, criminals have better destinations that have better prospects. Why get off of I 10 to mooch around in a town that is virtually closed at 10pm? Keep going. Phoenix is better, Tucson or L.A.
All of this and the endless sprawl of one story suburbia beyond is far away from El Paso Street. All of that is closing a noose around what’s left of El Paso’s border inner city but the loop hasn’t closed yet and down here, on the First Block of America (FBA) there is still odor and texture and noise, there are people heading back to a real urban environment -Júarez- and there is a pulse of life, a throb a swag.
This is a city in transition, going from a city that had a border beat that was Mexican into a city that it takes an RN or better to find a pulse, one that is now not Mexican, but, rather has all the soft edges of being Latino, empowered, bland, its naturally-evolved real culture being nibbled away by the hour.
For now there’s this little sliver of what El Paso/Júarez was, complete with the odor and texture and noise. Viva!
For now though, at least, there’s El Tri SodasX1 and I’m going to ride it to the very end.
