page_title: Zona Norte, Tijuana
section_title: Prostitution
hierarchical_section_title: Zona Norte, Tijuana / Prostitution
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of a bar in Tijuana, Mexico.
context_page_description: Zona Norte is an official neighborhood, as well as a red light district located in Tijuana, Mexico. It is among the largest red-light districts in North America known for its brothels, which present themselves in public as strip clubs and bars, similar to gentlemen's clubs in the United States.
  Many bars and strip clubs in Tijuana's red light district in which women are the feature entertainment also operate as brothels, which offer attached hotel rooms for short intervals of time. Many other bars, styled "lady bars", function as less explicit social clubs where prostitutes and nude sex shows are not accommodated on site, but fichas are offered at elevated prices, and freelance prostitutes look for clients.
  These compare in most respects to the hostess bars in Japan. The red light district in Tijuana is also known for street prostitution, particularly behind the main strip clubs on Calle Coahuila, in a large high-traffic alley named "Primer Callejón Coahuila".
  Illicit drug sales are also common to the red light district, but they occur largely out of the public eye. Heroin use and theft, not common elsewhere in Mexico, are rampant here.
context_section_description: Prostitution is permitted in Tijuana's red light district, designated a zona de tolerancia, or "tolerance zone." Legal prostitution within the city requires sex workers to obtain a permit and be subjected to monthly health checkups. Brothels in Tijuana, many of them modeled on strip clubs and hostess clubs, must also conform to certain health regulations, such as standards of cleanliness, fixed operating hours, and be placed a regulated distance from schools or day care centers.
  In addition to established brothels, there are prostitutes who work outside on the callejones or alleys and are referred to as paraditas, Spanish for "the standing girls", for their practice of standing on the street to advertise their services. Paraditas have been regarded as part of Tijuana's cultural history, and attempts to force the women off the streets to curb such public advertising have proven unpopular and unsuccessful. These street workers are legal prostitutes who simply prefer the relatively quiet environment of the street to the loud music and smoky atmosphere of the bars.
caption: Interior of a gentlemen's club in Zona Norte.
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