Postcard from Tucson, Arizona

1. Fuzzy Postcard from Tucson, 2. DOÑA mural in Tucson, AZ, 3. Pima County Courthouse, Tucson, 4. Tucson Rainbow Parking Garage

Mosaic made with FD's Flickr Toys.

Postcard (and notebook entry) from Tucson:
It is colorfulcolorfulcolorful here, in both business districts and residential areas. Purple and orange stucco apartments with lime green tile roofing! A skyscraper with one solid wall of navy blue, turquoise, and aquamarine bricks! (They look like sparkling ceramic tiles; maybe they are.) A rainbow colored parking garage, better by far than the entire Disneyland themepark! Even the city courthouse is bright and cheerful--towering tall and made of light pink stucco, it vaguely resembles a gaudily-decorated, strawberry flavored wedding cake (in the best possible sort of way). I plan to haunt it in my afterlife: it is that cool.

In short, the popping colors and slanty, sparse, or Moorish/Spanish-inspired architecture of this city make it look like the artistic lovechild of Dr. Seuss, Antonio Gaudi, and Frank Lloyd Wright. It's not just the buildings that make the city so amazing, either--artists, writers and musicians have made Tucson their own little Arizonan hub, and something intriguing and photo-worthy awaits around every corner. Alleyways and brick walls are embellished with the most intricate and bold murals I've ever seen--some clearly graffiti-inspired, all with a unique, sophisticated twist on the ordinary. On one wall of the Chicago Music shop, a lifelike portrait of Miles Davis trumpets a stream of colorful tags; on the wall of a nearby shop, an airbrushed 1950's-style woman stitches a patchwork of mural around herself (see the mosaic above). Tile mosaics are also common here: they decorate the walls below overpasses and the frames around doors, and in the primarily Latino district of town, tile is often used to create shimmering shrines for the Virgin Mother.

Food and thriftshopping here are also fabulous in the small, non-big-boxish downtown area. A lot of shopkeepers and restaurant staff apparently take a standard siesta at around 1:00 to 3:00, and re-open later, when the hottest time of the day has passed. This means that many little shops are open fairly late into the evening, which just plain blew my little northwestern mind away, by golly. (Night life? What's that?) At around 8:00, when Andy and I were going to dinner, the streets were literally bustling with shoppers, diners, and early bar-goers. Several excellent, quirky little thriftshops were open, their window displays garish and wonderful, their shelves packed with vintage fedoras, suit jackets, funky skirts, blouses from the 60's and 70's, and outlandish wigs and sunglasses. We browsed through a couple of them before meandering a few blocks down the street to a Guatemalan restaurant (delightful, generously portioned, and affordable, the first Guatemalan food that we'd ever tasted). I wish I could remember the names of these places I so strongly recommend. Damn.

In the morning we went to a little cafe called "A Shot in the Dark," which featured magenta and orange walls, exposed wooden ceiling beams, and rough artwork from "the regulars" posted above its funky little dinette tables. The coffee was strong, the omelettes spicy and gargantuan. A friendly dude behind the counter went into an impassioned and well-informed rant about the pros and cons of the Starbucks Coffee corporation, to which I wanted to applaud; meanwhile, a realistic graphite drawing of Harrison Ford, circa "The Empire Strikes Back," smiled sarcastically from one wall near the cash register. As we had breakfast, two regulars came in, either talking about a gay Ball or an in-progress screen production (hard to tell, but interesting either way). Five gold stars to A Shot in the Dark: go there, if you go to Tucson.

We intended to head for Santa Fe following Tucson, but massive desert windstorms (50+ m.p.h. winds) threatened to overturn our tent; it would have been rough going. As an alternative, we decided to head westward to the California coast, driving up Highways 1 and 101 to see what could be seen.
More details with the next postcard.