We analyze the UBVI color-magnitude diagrams towards the Galactic bulge in a relatively low-reddening region of Baade ’ s Window . The dereddened red giant branch is very wide [ \sim 1.0 mag in ( U - B ) _ { 0 } and \sim 0.4 mag in ( B - V ) _ { 0 } and ( V - I ) _ { 0 } ] , indicating a significant dispersion of stellar metallicities , which by comparison with the theoretical isochrones and data for Galactic clusters we estimate to lie between approximately -0.7 < [ Fe / H ] < +0.3 , i.e . spanning about 1 dex in metallicity , in good agreement with earlier spectroscopic studies . We also discuss the metallicity dependence of the red clump I -band brightness and we show that it is between 0.1 - 0.2 mag dex ^ { -1 } . This agrees well with the previous empirical determinations and the models of stellar evolution . The de-reddened ( V - I ) _ { 0 } color of the red clump in the observed bulge field is \langle ( V - I ) _ { 0 } \rangle = 1.066 , \sigma _ { ( V - I ) _ { 0 } } = 0.14 , i.e . 0.056 mag redder than the local stars with good parallaxes measured by Hipparcos . It seems that the large “ color anomaly ” of \sim 0.2 mag noticed by Paczyński & Stanek and discussed in many recent papers was mostly due to earlier problems with photometric calibration . When we use our data to re-derive the red clump distance to the Galactic center , we obtain the Galactocentric distance modulus \mu _ { 0 ,GC } = 14.69 \pm 0.1 mag ( R _ { 0 } = 8.67 \pm 0.4 kpc ) , with error dominated by the systematics of photometric calibration . We then discuss the systematics of the red clump method and how they affect the red clump distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud . We argue that the value of distance modulus \mu _ { 0 ,LMC } = 18.24 \pm 0.08 ( 44.5 \pm 1.7 kpc ) , recently refined by Udalski , is currently the most secure and robust of all LMC distance estimates . This has the effect of increasing any LMC-tied Hubble constant by about 12 % , including the recent determinations by the HST Key Project and Sandage et al . The UBVI photometry is available through the anonymous ftp service .