Even More Freaky Tucson Landmarks

And now for more funny/unusual/admirable things a person can find just sitting around in the city of Tucson.

This giant Easter Island head used to live at Magic Carpet Golf on Speedway Boulevard until that place closed several years ago. Now it stands in front of The Hut, a bar on 4th Avenue. It's nice that somebody found a use for it beyond smashing it into gravel-sized chunks and tossing it in a landfill. Also, for people with sentimental memories of that particular miniature golf course, this huge head (which everyone insists on calling a “tiki head” in spite of the fact that it doesn't bear any resemblance to actual tiki designs) will serve as a permanent reminder—provided The Hut doesn't close—of a bygone time in Tucson, now serving as a landmark for a place where U of A students can get tipsy on beer and cocktails while trying to get laid. So really, not all that different from miniature golf.

All hail this weird thing! I have no idea what this is or who put it there. It's quite a thing, though. You can find this on 1st Avenue just a block or so south of the Pima Library. Metal sculpture isn't uncommon in Tucson—there's a place called the Sculpture Resource Center near downtown where projects like this sometimes come into being. Maybe that's where it's from. I don't know. I like it because it's a jungle gym with metal flowers on it—how often do you see that? Not every day, I can tell you that much.

Paul Bunyan. So what, right? Lots of towns have a big Paul Bunyan standing outside of a business, especially if it sells timber or pre-cut log cabins or something. I have to admit I have a soft spot for this kind of thing. Don't ask me why, but I like cheesy Americana. It's not like I'm a big flag-waving, truck driving, red-blooded patriot in the Toby Keith vein, but if I go into a mom-and-pop diner with antique farm implements on the walls alongside varnished circular sections of logs painted with airbrushed bald eagles and American flags, I'm positively tickled. Again, I can't even begin to tell you why that is. And big Paul Bunyan statues fit right in there. I think I like the idea that they embody a piece of American folklore, a part of our storytelling history that we've kept alive. I feel the same way about chainsaw art of Bigfoot.

After somebody stole my bike seat, I took off for BICAS to buy a new (used) one. For some reason, I couldn't find it, even though I've been there several times. While riding around the neighborhood seatless, I came across this metal sculpture. Judging from the weathering, I assume it's bronze. The dual fish were the first thing to catch my attention. Then I changed angles and saw this:

There's a horned toad hiding between the fish. I really like this piece, but I find it a little confusing. I get that the horned toad represents the desert, but what do the fish symbolize? The only place you'll find fish in southern Arizona is at a sushi restaurant. Do they refer to the now-deceased Santa Cruz and Rillito rivers, that maybe once had fish in them before they turned into dry riverbeds? I suppose it's possible. No matter what the sculpture is trying to communicate, I like the design. Animal sculptures are the best.

So what's the best animal sculpture in Tucson, after the Snake Bridge? Maybe it's this Tyrannosaurus Rex next to a McDonald's on the corner of East Grant and Tanque Verde. Up until recently, I thought this was another remnant of the same miniature golf course our booze-purveying friend from Easter Island came from. Not at all; the owner of the McDonald's has a son who was a huge fan of Jurassic Park, like any healthy child. So he commissioned a T. Rex from a company that had a connection to the construction of the animatronic dinosaurs from the movies, for $55,000. Some kids have very charmed lives. I like this thing for two reasons: first, as I think everyone can agree, dinosaurs are cool. And second, it's nice to see a McDonald's do something to set itself apart, considering McDonald's restaurants come in about two designs, the exact same ones you see all across the United States. A dinosaur statue such as this one adds a personal touch you rarely see at chain restaurants, or chain businesses in general. So kudos to you, wealthy McDonald's owner who buys his kid super-expensive presents. You've given us something we can all enjoy, even if we go out of our way to avoid McDonald's greasy, weird-tasting food.

An Empty Building Makes Me Want To Write About Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting

I was on a bike ride and hastily snapped this picture of the building that once served as Gabrielle Gifford's Tucson offices. That was, I assume, up until about a year or two ago. Now that she's left the House of Representatives, the building has a For Lease sign out by the sidewalk.

I first heard about the shooting while we were in Hawaii. We were at the Starbucks in the town of Waimea because we needed to do laundry and the laundromat there was the one closest to us (only a 30-minute bus ride away from our little shack out in the sticks). I happened to look at the rack of newspapers and saw the headline on the front page. I cracked open the laptop and sure enough, there were a slew of stories about how the Arizona representative and a number of other people had been shot by a gunman armed with a 9mm. pistol and an extended clip, some of them fatally.

The story shocked me for two reasons. Most obviously, because there had been a mass shooting in the city we had left only months before; and also because there was this weird feeling that some of the city's cross-eyed lunacy had reached halfway across the Pacific Ocean to touch us in a coffee shop in the middle of a small, sparsely populated Hawaiian town.

There was a lot of talk in the aftermath about how the hyper-conservative political atmosphere of the time led to the tragedy. I have to admit that's exactly how I felt when I first heard about it. Obama hadn't been in office a week and the Tea Party was calling him Hitler. Fringe right-wingers were getting semi-serious consideration in the media, when ten years earlier they had to be content with handing out self-published pamphlets at gun and knife shows. At a time when people were muttering things about secession, the overthrow of a “tyrannical” government, and an allegedly socialist Democratic party, it didn't surprise me that a Democrat had been shot by a wacko. The way that left-leaning news outlets and opinion-makers charactarized the event as a real life manifestation of the violent eliminationist fantasies of the extreme right proved to be premature in light of the gunman's obvious schizophrenia. What the shooting seemed to prove was less that the radical right wing poses a real danger to life and limb (as far as I'm concerned, they're just noisy and obnoxious) and more that background checks on firearm purchases are a great idea, along with better medical care for the mentally ill. Guns and crazy people go together like jackhammers and dynamite.

I was in no way surprised, though, that such a thing had happened in Arizona. Mass shootings happen all over the place these days, but it took Arizona for a politician to get shot. This place is so libertarian people deliver their own mail. It's no secret that politics here are totally batshit. What did The Daily Show call it, “The Meth Lab of Democracy”? Yeah, that's what the state is known for, that's its claim to fame. Stuff like SB1070 (the Show Your Papers law for those of you who weren't paying attention then), Sheriff Joe Arpaio tormenting prisoners for his own amusement and racially profiling random brown people, the Tucson Unified School District banning Mexican-American studies from the classrooms, as well as making it illegal to mention any texts that present a pro-Chicano point of view, all of that goes a long way toward making Arizonans look like a bunch of assholes. Plenty are, and a disproportionate number get elected to the legislature, but most are sincerely decent human beings. But does anyone hear about the good stuff? No, it's all racism and attempted political assassinations. If it wasn't for the sunshine and medicinal pot, no one would want to move here.

Public Art on Tucson's 4th Avenue

This is part one of what I intend to be an ongoing series on this blog showcasing interesting sculptural work, graffiti, miscellaneous objects of interest, and other trippy stuff around Tucson.

All up and down 4th Avenue, a commercial district/tourist trap emphasizing small boutiques, bars and restaurants, and resembling in some ways a miniturized version of the Haight in San Francisco, you find lots of sanctioned, professional graffiti art—or is it considered graffiti when it's not illegal? I don't know. Some of it might not even be done with spray paint, but it all adds the kind of bohemian vibe businesses on the avenue like to present.

Some of these have been around for years, others went up in the last year or so.

I'll start with this great collection of images just off of 6th Street and 4th. This is some of the coolest mural work in Tucson right now. I don't know the name of the artist or artists, though some of the work is signed with the crew names.

 

 

 

Here's a rattlesnake and a Day of the Dead-style skull on the outside of a place called Creative Ventures.

 

 

These Spy Vs. Spy guys guard one side of the Magpies Pizza.

 

 

Did you love the 60's and 70's?  Do you wish you were born earlier than 1991 so you could have seen classic rock before it was classic?  Hippie Gypsy knows how you feel.  The exterior of the building is a love letter to an era.

 

This mural has been on the southeastern corner of 4th and 6th Street for a long time. I think it depicts local characters from over the years. It's shown in two parts here, top picture the left side, bottom the right.

 

A medusa head stares from the wall of Medusa Kabob House (side comment: this place used to be a terrible restaurant called The Casbah, where the staff was stoned and the food was the worst kind of vegan).

This would make a great tattoo. It's on the upper wall on the south side of ZOE Boutique.

These patriotic images are on the side of Miller's Surplus, naturally.

This is on a wall on Stone Avenue, just before the downtown underpass.

Here's a woman worshipping produce on the side of The Tasteful Kitchen on Stone (I seem to have wandered away from 4th Avenue).

And finally, this stuff on the side of an art gallery on the northeast corner of Stone and Speedway.

 

Some of these are better than others, but isn't that true of everything? It makes for a better urban environment, as far as I'm concerned, and there's a bunch of it all over town. I'll post more as I collect more pictures.

A Short Meditation On Bike Theft In Tucson

What's missing?

Over seven years of living here, I've had one bike stolen and the wheels stolen off the bike that replaced the first one. I've had the battery-powered lights pulled off and shattered on the pavement. Someone tried to steal the seat by pulling the seat post out of the frame, but stopped midway through and decided not to go any further for some reason, maybe because they were afraid of being caught. On all of these occasions I had left my bike unattended while working a shift at my job. Tucson is many things, and one of those things is a nest of bicycle thieves.

A lot of people in the Tucson metro area ride bicycles. Many are students, some are enthusiasts, and others are too poor or too previously-incarcerated to own a car or a license. In my case, we don't own a car because we are a) too poor, b) too cheap, and c) too environmentally conscious (in a certain light you can actually see rainbow colors refracting through our halos). After a year of riding the bus and finding it to be a stressful and unreliable way of getting around, I switched to bicycles, and they've remained my chief mode of transportation around the city of Tucson. The bicycle I own is important to me, it gets me to places I don't just want to go but need to go, and without it I'd find life in the city much more challenging than it already is.

Which is why I've been in a foul mood for the last few days. On Sept.2, some asshole stole the seat off my mountain bike, including the seat post. The bike was locked to the metal rail right outside our apartment door, meaning the thief was passing by and happened to see a bike with a removable part he could run off with, or worse, is someone currently living in the same complex with us. It doesn't matter either way, I'm just as pissed that I have to replace the seat. On top of everything else we've been dealing with in the last month (trouble getting a land line installed in our studio apartment, an apparent bedbug infestation, difficulty finding jobs) this is the shit-flavored icing on a big crap cake. At least as far as the seat goes, there's a great used bicycle collective called BICAS that sells parts. I've purchased a new seat, but still need a seat post that fits my frame. Most of the stuff I need will cost less than ten bucks all together, much less than I would pay at most bike shops.

I hate to keep harping on the crime in Tucson, but there it is. I've just been the victim of a property crime. What I hate is that, for the person who stole the seat, that part means nothing more than a couple more bucks toward buying drugs. It's not like they're going to get a lot of money out of it. But for me, it's a part of my single best means of transportation, my wheels, something I use daily to live my life here. It was a petty crime, and I can easily replace the part, but it sucks to be a victim. And the incident serves as a reminder that to live in Tuscon, you have to tolerate chronic, consistent theft. That's just how it is here.