Visiting the Tijuana dump is no different from visiting a friend at work. It is, after all, a factory. And the trash-pickers are busy — too busy to worry about lazy gringos wandering about.

The Golden West Hotel, at Fourth and G Street. a historic Gaslamp Quarter site with spacious lobbies and stained-glass skylights, offers private rooms with sink and telephone beginning at $75 a week or $255 a month.

Dear Matthew Alice: My husband’s sport jackets have three buttons on the sleeve that seem to serve absolutely no purpose. One of his jackets has something that looks like a flap that the buttons are …

“We use our pen, put a little mark on the tire, and if you don’t know exactly where to look, even if you do and the sun hits that place wrong, you can’t see it.”

Dear Matt: On the news tonight, 1 listened to the announcers going on about how this was the only day of the year when you can stand an egg on its end without having it …

Dear Matthew Alice: Now that cherry season is here, I have to know where those “Siamese twin” cherries come from — the ones that have a single stem but two cherries stuck together. — J. …