Tijuana, Mexico. August 15, 2006.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — This Mexican border city is planning a fashion makeover for its throngs of street vendors by giving them an ultimatum: Wear brightly colored, traditional garb or leave.

The new dress code initially took effect June 25 in a popular pedestrian mall in time for the busy Fourth of July weekend — although most vendors ignored it and wore jeans and sweat-jackets.

But it will gradually be extended to other streets, including Avenida Revolucion — the bustling main tourist drag where one vendor donned a giant sombrero with the words “Mr. Viagra” written on it. He beckoned tourists to be photographed for $5 in a donkey cart.

The new decree, ordered by flamboyant Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, is designed to showcase the city’s melting pot of Mexican cultures to the outside world. He said the fashion mandate will allow visitors to “feel Mexico.” Those who disobey will be given two warnings and then forced to leave the area where the dress code applies.

The dresses “are very nice, very clean, very colorful, very happy-looking,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday in his City Hall office, which he shares with a caged parakeet, a parrot and a python in a glass tank.

Excerpted from ‘Tijuana orders fashion makeover for street vendors,’ published July 4, 2005, in the USA Today.