Haven't in several years. What is it like now that there several agency operating in TJ

They stepped up their music because Hong Kong was killing it, now the music is great.  There are babes galore and if you happen to find one who likes you - its all good.  HK is great as well.  All in all great times to be had.  I've been around the world visiting many clubs and the zona bars rank fairly high.
Enjoy

Are you asking about agencies or bar/street life in TJ?

any info appreciated.

Bars in some cases will have more attractive women there than agencies.  If you're into conversation then you'll probably find that most the women in bars are usually blazed off their ass from ice or cocaine.  It's entertaining sometimes, but you wouldn't notice if you're in to the English-with-hand-symbols combination.  Speak their language and you can tell.

As far as the environment goes, I don't like the bars for several reasons.  Number one, there are many drunk fools acting like we're mates because I speak English.  This gets on my nerves.  They're almost as bad as the women are asking me personal questions about where I live, what I do for a living, etc.  Second thing is the music.  The music is usually a combination between Mexican-cowboy ballads (so the women can cry about the relationships they've pissed away) and 1980's glamour rock music (mainly for the men from the United States who used to listen to that music in their cars while they were in college when the songs were new, back 30 years ago).  Take any respectable night club in California and now single out the worst losers who couldn't get a date if their life depended on it.  Take about 500 of them and throw them together in one place.  Welcome to Adelitas/Chicago/Hong Kong etc.  Add a little super-masculine male dominance issues with some low self confidence and general inexperience with women outside of prostitutes and mercy sex and you get the idea.

When you want sex, it will usually involve going to a completely run-down horrible motel-like place while the front desk hands the prostitute a towel, a supposedly clean sheet to have sex on, and her purse that is full of lubricant, hand sanitizer, narcotics, and condoms of assorted colours.  In the room, you get the pleasure of listening to above said Mexican-cowboy ballads or 1980's glam rock hits.  Profanity is constantly yelled in the hallways as people tell other people what they can do with their mothers while the cackling and rolling of the laundry cart is near deafening.  Now you get to enjoy usually 30-60 minutes of a woman who has more than likely never held a real job in her life, has stories of family abandonment (usually caused by their own drug use and/or promiscuity), and is very accustomed to being worshipped, but instead of it being by normal men, it's by the above mentioned loser-class club rejects that make men in general look like pigs.  Now have sex while listening to above said noise.  That's the bars.

With agencies, you still get the lowest of the low (public transit, pre-paid phone, close to illiterate when it comes to reading and writing, drug habits, alcohol abuse, unemployed, etc.) but at least you don't have to listen to the screaming of profanity in public, the cowboy music, the glam rock, or the American men trying to be your friend, ask you questions about where you're from, or try and 'high-five' you for whatever they find entertaining.

I don't have any experience with bar/street scene  but Kadjevic's description sounds very accurate and believable.

As for the agency, I can add this:  The so-called reputable agencies are run by either pimps, perverts, drug addicts, former whores or combination of all of the above.  Their model is:

1) Trap a helpless and hapless, sex starved, low self-esteem gringo, who speaks no or almost no Spanish.
2) The owner pimp of the agency responds promptly to email/phone calls, promising the now trapped gringo to provide GFE with a girl of his dream.
3) The pimp survives on repeat business so he/she makes the trapped gringo feel as if he is the king.  The pimp saves gringo's information on his/her computer.
4) The trapped gringo goes home, worships the pimp and comes back.  It is like a pig going to the butcher.

95% of the girls of these agencies are either ugly or over weight.  And almost all of them are trashy, uneducated creatures who can only survive in this world with the help unscrupulous pimps.

If you speak Spanish, come to TJ, go to places like Zona Rio. You will find very pretty, attractive Mexican girls who are classy and educated.

If you don't speak Spanish, don't come to TJ. Stay home and eat some popcorn.  You will be happy you saved money.

Final word: Beware of the pimps and their pushers on this board and others.

I liked this post.  Was hilarious.  To add to that, this is similar to one type of business model there is.  I wouldn't say necessarily that agencies trap people, but there is clearly a surcharge for English ability.  I've pointed out before, on local messageboards like this one, but basically for Baja California, they call them the "gringo agencies".  I think that's very tacky sounding, but that's what they call them.  Price is usually a 50-80% increase over the local going rate, but it comes with the English ability.  Conventional wisdom would tell you that the quality is universally better for a higher price, but I don't believe this.  From what I can tell, it's the English ability and nothing else that is consistent anyways.

I agree with the 95% ugly/overweight thing.  It's really unfortunate around here that this is the truth, but that's the way it is.  Let's be honest - they marry pretty young around here, so there's two types of attractive single women in Tijuana over the age of 20:  First is the prostitutes/drug addicts that are very hot but the only relationship they can keep together is one where the guy doesn't mind that his woman jerks people off for a living, and 2, is the college-educated career-type woman who doesn't have a whole lot of time, or sees no use for a man.  The first type of woman you can see sometimes in the agencies and they are somewhat common in the bars.  If you speak their language, you'll be able to tell in about ten minutes why they do what they do for a living.

The local factories, mainly in Otay, pay about 60 pesos per hour, or something like that if my memory is correct.  That's a little over $4 USD.  If you lack a high school education and you live in Tijuana, you can either sell hot dogs & tortillas, work in a factory, sell drugs, or become a prostitute/stripper/massage expert, etc.  Factories won't allow you to be late for work more than about 2 days a week, and the tortilla selling requires some initial capital investment and some type of recognizable routine.  So strike those two out.  Selling drugs will wind them up dead or in jail, so prostitution is usually the most lucrative bet when you have a low self-image to begin with.  Eliminate the attractive women who get hitched & pregnant at age 19, and now you get the women that are too overweight and tacky to get a middle-class local, but they've got just enough to get LA-nightclub-reject to give them the $200 he just cash advanced off of his credit card because hey, she does look better than his wife who is pushing 40 and doesn't give BJs any more.  But judging from the type of guy we're dealing with in the first place, the wife was never that much of a prize in the firs place.  The girl might have had all the boys when she was 16, right around when she dropped out of school, but now, 5,000 cheeseburgers later, it doesn't have the same effect for some reason.

As for the second type of woman, it's mostly off-limits to the usual American sex tourist.  It's more money and more hassle than most are willing to spend, and I don't blame them.  Yes, you can find them around zona rio, but unless you speak about 3 languages (like they do) and have money, chances are slim with getting sex from the elitist-type Mexican woman without maxing out that ATM limit repeatedly.  There is a lot of competition from the local rich men who are all trying to have a strike at that.  Powerful, influential, and sometimes just plain wealthy people.  This eliminates most of your American sex tourist types because if they were on that level, well, they'd have plenty of women in California and wouldn't go to Tijuana in the first place.

Kadjevic.. you're killing me
I love your last two posts. In my 30 years of TJ hobbying, all true, and well written.

Cheers.