Art and Music

Tucson has a vibrant art scene and we’re lucky to know some of the artists here and to have exhibited here in the past. The Centre for Creative Photography (CCP) http://www.creativephotography.org is here at the University of Arizona (Uof A). This is a massive archive of Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Gary Winogrand and many more; to clarify this is THE archive of these and other major photographers – the collection of all of their negatives and a huge number of their prints and writings etc. We’ve managed to see a couple of shows on this trip including the current ‘Debating Modern Photography: The Triumph of Group f/64’ with a lecture by Susan Ehrens on women photographers involved in both the pictorial and straight photography movements. This City is full of galleries in the downtown area but, like North Devon, it has a lot of creative people but not a lot of buyers of art.
The things they do better here than in the UK are; 'The Tucson Weekly', a free newspaper that is art, culture, music, food, politics and environment-centred; it has great listings and everyone uses it, there’s even a listing of gallery openings. Shows change all of the time so there’s an opening or three every weekend but the first Saturday of the month there is a coordinated late opening of most of the downtown galleries with drinks and nibbles thrown in. We’ve been to 2 openings at Bohemia (arty shop come art/craft gallery) where there was wine, a keg of beer and live bands at both of them; this live music feature is common at art openings, and the arts and music communities obviously have a lot of crossover here.

Art in Tucson isn’t just framed pictures on a white wall; art is all around you and is a far greater part of the American psyche than it is in the UK. Downtown’s 4th Avenue is lined with litter bins and bicycle racks made from recycled metal including bicycle parts welded together as practical sculpture; this kind of urban sculpture is also seen as decoration for suburban rotaries (roundabouts). There are artist-designed bridges over major roads, one a giant rattlesnake. The pop art of urban neon signs our favourite being the Lucky Wishbone (fried chicken and shrimp) three colourful jagged circles on top of a pole lit from the outside in with a climax of a flash in the centre (Tucson has nothing on Vegas though). And pop art sculpture -a giant pink bull outside the Copper County Western antiques centre, the blue coyote on top of Speedway Outlet – pieces of Americana which could well get ripped down in Bideford like the post boy sculpture was recently. A bus stop seat in downtown is made from a vintage car.

Art as decoration is big here, maybe through the influence of Mexico with it’s colourful ceramics and flamboyant carnivals. We witnessed an Easter celebration by the native American Indian tribe, the Yaqui, whose masks were made out of tin, fur and paint, sadly photography was prohibited. They spend all year making the costumes and masks and then these are ceremoniously burned. Houses are decorated, you can get away with (lets call it) outdoor sculpture here because of the dry climate, things seem to last longer – there’re really into ‘rusted’ metal here, perhaps because it takes so long, naturally. Cars are sometimes decorated with plastic figures and other junk and made into shrine like objects, I don’t think there’s an American translation for MOT. We’ve mentioned bicycles in the past and here is a picture of our friend Rafael on his custom wooden bike!

We helped out with an art installation of a piece that we called ‘Art Trees’ as we don’t know if it had a name. It was made by an artist from San Francisco and it had been to the Burning Man Festival. A group of folks met on a Saturday morning at another artists’ studio and yard space- Mat Bevel. It was here that we erected 6 of the trees, all made of wood with ‘arms’ coming out of the central trunk at the top. We were helping our friend Dan and we got quite a method going to get the tree up. It was fascinating to go inside the studio afterwards and see all of the kinetic sculpture that Mat produces. He also does performances with them and has quite a collection. See his ‘bevel vision’ at http://www.matbevel.com/

What they don’t have is the supportive network that we enjoy in North Devon through North Devon Arts and had through Devon ArtsCulture. The NDA website has been researched by the Tucson Pima Arts Council's Community Development Officer and used as a good example to work towards. You can’t do an internet search for Tucson Artists!

There are some great places to see and hear music in Tucson and four venues were involved in an off shoot of Austin Texas’ South by South West (SXSW) festival. Tucson’s 3rd WXSW festival caught bands on their way to Austin and again on their way home or as a warm up gig for the main festival. SXSW is for the ‘buzz bands’ of the year and so these bands are ones to watch out for. The first venue experienced was The Hut on 4th Avenue, the shape of a small aircraft hanger with curved corrugated iron ceiling. We saw our friend Blaine play drums in a heavy alt country band, The Family of Light.
Hotel Congress, in the heart of downtown, has it’s own club where we saw Ingrid Michaelson who did a classic version of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ - solo with a ukulele. Club Congress is a great small venue, with clear, clean sound and a capacity of only about 200. It’s small stage has heavy velvet curtains and modern gothic metalwork, it would fit well in any David Lynch film. Plush, back on 4th Ave, seems slightly bigger but may not be, is also Lynchesc with heavy flock wallpaper, bar that has micro brew beers for $2.50 a pint on Monday’s all night and a great sound. We saw some interesting acts here, Brian Finney from Fresno was a wild drug induced comic playing a single neck guitar, with both bass and standard 6 strings on it, played through various effects including a digital recording device that he used endlessly to build up rhythm, beats, tunes and play sing along to them. He used an OHP to enable the audience to sing along – they didn’t really get it though – we thought he was hilarious, but we’re probably a bit strange! Another band we caught at this venue was ‘Headlights’, stereolab-like with a good female singer on keyboards. Shannon Curtis, from LA kicked off on this night, wonderful voice and very appreciative of the audience who actually listened to her singing/guitar and keyboard. The most amazing part of her act was the unmanned case of CD’s at the back where punters were trusted to leave $5 in the case and take the merch. Would you get away with that in England? We’ve only ever seen this trust on the Scilly Isles. The last venue, Solar Culture, is a kind of house (well it’s lived in) come art gallery, come venue. High walls full of suspect art, a long narrow room – we saw local band and winners of last year’s best new band, Mostly Bears, like spinal tap but without the humour; could have been so much better with another beer!

The Dining Experience

Tucson is an eclectic City and its food is as varied and exciting as the City itself. It is a culinary delight, a foodie’s dream. There are plenty of places to eat and buy food and plenty of different cuisines to choose from. There are also a variety of types of places to dine out – breakfast/lunch diners (open 6am-2pm); restaurants for dinner; cafes; places for food ‘to go’; and ‘all you can eat’ buffets.

Every week in the free City guide, the ‘Tucson Weekly’ www.tucsonweekly.com there’s a Chow Scan, which is a guide to eating out in the City and contains ads with special offers for diners to save money with a coupon, offering 10% off or promoting a lunch or evening when something is a special price. The Chow Scan is also broken down into categories of cuisine – Chinese, Asian, Middle Eastern, Americana, Mexican, Italian, Greek, Thai, vegetarian friendly, and more. Different places are listed each week with name, address, a description of the place and typical menu with a price guide: one $ symbol for the cheapest places to 4 $ symbols to the most expensive. We tend to get to the $ or $$ symbol places. Its good fun to read these pages and plan to get to a particular place that we don’t know is reachable by bicycle or bus and offers what we want to eat.

Eating out in the US generally is a regular, daily event for the whole family and is certainly not a once a week privileged affair at the end of a busy Friday like it is on the UK. Americans eat out all the time and can be seen clutching a coffee cup and drinking from it wherever they go. There are some good value meals which have plentiful portions - Yes some Americans eat it all, and some, and then get fat, but not everyone does and leftovers can easily be taken home in a ‘to go’ box which makes tomorrow’s lunch all taken care of.

Service is very good, as your waiter/waitress’s income relies on it. They call themselves ‘servers’, often give you their names and are at your beck and call throughout your meal. Drink orders are dealt with immediately as you are seated, coffee is continually topped up and hot water is added to tea, iced water is always made available. We’re sometimes amazed at how much our server remembers without writing anything down. The customer is always right and everything is done with a smile. Your part of this very enjoyable ritual is to tip 15-20% on top of the check. This tip is often the only wage they earn and they accept it gratefully and wish you a nice day.

It wasn’t until 1912 that Arizona became the 48th State in the Union AND Tucson became American rather than Mexican. Many Mexican/Americans have a family line here going way back before this date, and because of it’s 60mile closeness to the Mexican border today, Tucson is particularly good for Mexican food. The area of South Tucson is an Hispanic one with a large Mexican population. This is the best place to go for Sonoran Mexican food in restaurants, which will always be frequented by Mexicans and will inevitably lead to a wait for a table unless you go early or late – everyone eats at 7pm in the US. You can, however, find good Mexican food all over the City. La Indita in downtown on 4th Avenue is a treasure, also serving Michoacan Tarascan Indian food. We have also been to Frank’s at night where it becomes Francisco’s and morphs from an all American breakfast diner to a Michoacan Mexican cantina – it’s a very meaty menu but does good hot shrimp and free help yourself black beans and salsas ranging from very hot to hot, with one cooler one that’s green and looks avocado based. Last night we went with our friends Dan and Barb to El Sambroso just West of downtown. Here we tried ceviche for the first time – a cold appetizer with salsa, chopped up avocado, shrimp (prawns) and cilantro, or coriander. We had a great meal with me having grilled fish with salsa and peppers served with refried beans and seasoned rice. Dave had fish tacos – 3 folded corn tortillas containing small pieces of fish with salad and salsa on top, with beans and rice also. When you sit down at the table, you get a basket of tortilla chips and salsa to dip into whilst you are waiting for the rest of the food to arrive. When the basket’s empty you can get more! The leftover ceviche and some chips came home with us in a ‘to go’ bag.

Most bars serve Mexican influenced appetizers such as guacamole, chips (tortilla chips, not as in fish and) and salsa and Quesadilla - 2 flour tortillas sandwiched together with cheese, onions, tomatoes, hot peppers and salsa. A lot of the bars also do really excellent happy hours, typically from 4-7pm where these appetizers are ‘half off’ making them around $3 or $4 with 1$ off beer to match. Old Pueblo Grille is one of our most frequented places for happy hour – they serve ‘Raptor’ ale on tap, a good deal at $3.50 a pint and 8% alcohol. We like to go there with our friend Sally, it started as a Friday thing but has become any day is happy hour day (but not everyday!).

The all-you-can-eat buffets are a great American invention – pay one price and once you are in you can keep eating ‘til you can’t eat any more. Maybe just one more wafer thin mint! A lot of places are run this way in Tucson and indeed all over the States. If buffets ever came to Bideford or further afield, the place would probably not last long as everyone would go there all the time and eat them out of house and business. Yes, we have sat in our favourite Chinese ‘Super A buffet’, where we go for late lunch ($7) as they serve tofu at this time but not in the evening for dinner. We have watched people there, who are very fat, go up and fill their plate time and again but not all customers eat so much. There’s also a soup, salad, pizza, pasta place called ‘Sweet Tomatoes’ which is best for salads – a long line of different cold things (olives, beetroot, raw veg chopped up, red onion, kidney beans, bacon bits, sunflower seeds, to name a few) to load on your plate with about 6 different dressings, blue cheese being easily the best and a firm favourite with the Greens. In fact there always seems to be a salad option as if it’s subsidised as a way of keeping people healthy.
What about the pie? – apple, blueberry, cherry, razzleberry, Lemon Meringue, Chocolate, Pecan, need I go on. Always served ‘a la mode’, with ice cream, rather than with cream. There’s no real dairy cream here in Tucson and probably in the whole State, but that’s another blog! To return to an earlier blog mention, we did make it to Marie Callender’s February pie sale and we did get around to purchasing 2 pies, each were $5.99 plus 60c for the pie dish plus tax (usual price anything between $9 and $12). The blueberry is in the freezer – we did leave it a little late in the month - and the Lemon Meringue is about finished, most excellent. Pie is made on site at some of the breakfast places, and where this happens, they also tend to make their own bread as well to serve up with eggs and potatoes in the morning.
We still have a few places to try or re-visit before we come home to Devon: Govinda’s Natural Foods Buffet ‘come enjoy our courtyard with waterfalls, peacocks and parrots’; India Oven for curry – this we voted the best Indian food in Tucson when we lived here and we haven’t eaten enough curry on this trip (but still no match for Imrans in Northampton); Garland, where we have only been once (now twice!), who serve up wonderful omelettes for breakfast with fillings such as broccoli, sundried tomatoes and asiago cheese or feta, spinach, artichoke and eggplant (aubergine).

Chow down Tucson!

Thrift Stores

We’re writing this blog listening to Al Perry over lunchtime coffee at La Placita in downtown Tucson. Al’s a local singer/songwriter/guitarist who has the Tucson sound. Check him out at www.myspace.com/alperry and listen to his version of ‘We got Cactus’, he’s also a DJ on Tucson’s excellent community radio station KXCI which broadcasts live on the web: www.kxci.org

To compare thrift stores to our charity shops would be an injustice. They are more comparable to a TK Max superstore but selling isle on isle, rack on rack of second hand clothes, shoes, furniture, books; just like TK’s but usually bigger. Here in Tucson on the East side, where we reside, is ‘Arizona’s finest…’ Speedway Outlet, a couple of blocks nearer downtown is Goodwill; Sadie’s favourite ‘Savers…the thrift department store’ is on Broadway and on downtown’s 4th Ave is Value Village. These are the major ones near us, where you can loose ½ a day without trying. There are many smaller ones; every church denomination seems to have one.

Prices are very cheap compared to the UK even without the good exchange rate. T-shirts are usually $1, shirts $2-3, jeans $1 and up. There will often be deals like all red tags 50% off or a coupon worth 30% off with our $1.99 Savers 2008 calendar. I found some good black western shirts, with plenty of ‘snappers’ (press-studs); nobody wears black in Tucson, it’s too hot, so they’re always a good price. Should I be concerned that total strangers greet me with ‘Howdy’?

Americans have a different relationship to clothes than we do in the UK. Buying and donating to thrift stores is a regular pastime of a large percentage here. People like to change their wardrobes frequently and there isn’t the stigma that we attach to charity shops. Clothes are often good quality with lots of life left in them, washed and pressed similar to the kind of vintage shops you find in London etc.

Our best bargain was a Dualit, 4 slice toaster, bright red and chrome, in excellent condition – fortunately here there is no law against selling used electrical equipment so more of it gets recycled – there’s a prize for you if you guess the price of our, closest guess wins. The problem we have now is finding a thrift store suit case, big enough to fit the toaster in, to bring it back to Devon.Sadie and Sally at the Salvation Army Thrift Store - where we found the toaster!

Butterflies at the Botanical Gardens

All winter, for the last few years, Tucson Botanical Gardens has had a special butterfly exhibit. This is a ‘live’ show of tropical butterflies hatched in an on site incubator. These insects live and die in the glass house maybe 20x50ft and made to feel really hot and humid inside. They’re fed a kind of sugar water and fruit as the plants in the greenhouse are not species they can eat. They’re not allowed to escape (by law) and when they die, they’re frozen for three days (just to make sure). Now that all sounds kind of cruel but it isn’t – these butterflies aren’t native to Arizona and it would be wrong to introduce them to the desert. Evidently in the tropical countries they come from there is a big industry in breeding caterpillars, in the wild, for this kind of exhibit; which is keeping large amounts of rainforest from being cut down for the beef industry.
The heat and humidity in the butterfly house was similar to the experience at the Eden Project in Cornwall. It felt very authentic, like you were in another place; there was even a small CD player on the floor piping out tropical bird song.
We were told, as we entered through the two door system, to keep an eye on the floor too as it was easy to tread on one of the beauties. And as we left we were checked thoroughly for stow-a-ways.
Inside, it was like a Victorian English orangery. There was a small stone fish pond in the middle, windows all around, a glass roof and creeping, leafy plants up the walls. The butterflies were everywhere, hanging on the walls, doors, the plants and trees and the air was full of them flying. They ranges from very small 1 inch across to some, like those Sadie is looking at, which had a 6 inch wingspan and were a wonderful electric blue in flight. I had one land on my leg and Sadie had one on her shirt, one lady seemed to be wearing a huge butterfly earring. The incubation room could only be viewed from a window, but looked like a scene from a science fiction film, in miniature, with all of these cocoons hanging from the ceiling in rows waiting to hatch. Occasionally on of the sacks, often looking camouflaged like leaves, would twitch with life. For the whole time we were there a half butterfly was emerging from it’s chrysalis but never got out, and I wondered if it ever would.

La Fiesta de los Vaqueros

Tucson doesn’t have Easter holidays like the rest of the western world it splits it in half so that the populace can celebrate Rodeo. This year was the 83rd Annual Rodeo, highlighted by the Tucson Rodeo Parade on Thursday, Feb. 21. We had been to the rodeo in the past, full of wild stallion riding, bull riding and children riding sheep; but this was the first rodeo parade for us. And it doesn’t get any bigger than this, the longest non-motorised parade in the world with 200 floats and 200,000 spectators. See if you can spot Sadie in the movie below!

We travelled the 15 miles to the rodeo ground by ‘Sun Tran’ bus, who did a special return journey from our local ‘Park Place Mall’, for $1. We were both in western costume and wearing cowboy hats borrowed from our friends Jeff and Sally respectively. Interestingly though, there are probably more cowboys on New Years Eve in Bideford. This year the parade was quite an ‘organised’ event with strict marshalling to prevent the public from crossing the road as a young girl had been killed last year when a the horse she was riding bolted. The wide roads that the parade took were lined with big pickup trucks, nose in, on the large dirt edge or ‘sidewalk’ of the roads. The crowd was predominantly Mexican, and extended families gathered on and around the trucks, whose beds were often lined with food. For Sadie and me, people watching was more interesting than the actual parade which moved quite slowly and had many gaps between floats and posse’s of horse and riders. We spent most of our time in front of a mobile Mexican café where we ate breakfast burritos to the sound of excellent piped Mexican music; there was a real friendly party atmosphere.

Walk-a-bout

Walking is an acceptable form of transportation in Bideford and, what with the lack of parking, is often the only way to get around. However in Tucson and most American cities it is the hobby of the bum or at best school children, dog walkers or enthusiasts. But we find that most neighbourhoods everything you need is within walking distance; ½ a mile to 1 mile away. Our house is within a mile of 4 major road intersections, where there is always a cluster of businesses.

We have 3 breakfast diners; Wags, decked out in John Deer tractor memorabilia, Café Ramey which does a great eggs Florentine with hollandaise sauce, and Franks (…elegant dining elsewhere…eat up, pay up and get out…) where we went this morning for the pre 9am Early Bird Special, with our friends (neighbour) Dave and Angela. For $1.50 + all you can drink coffee ($1.60) + tax it’s a real bargain or ganga, as they say here. 2 eggs any style, we went for over medium (fried and turned over mid-way through) potatoes either hash or home fried, we had the latter and 1 round of toast, white, wheat, sour dough, rye, raisin (add 25cents) or biscuit (like our scone), we both had rye. This was a good cure to the 3 bottles of zinfandel we got through last night at Jeff and Meredith’s, ancient vine, vine and old vine was the order of drinking.

Back to the hood; people are very friendly as you walk around, greeting complete strangers is commonplace there seems to be a bond with people who are on foot. We even find as we sit out on the front porch for our 4pm tea and cake that car drivers will wave.

There’s a Fry’s supermarket 10 minutes away for all the basics, Trader Joes for slightly healthier food and their famous 3 buck chuck wine, Sadie’s favourite and only 1 mile south is Sunflower Market where most of our groceries are bought (except for the massive shop we did with Sally to Cost Co, a warehouse style membership store selling everything in bulk).

This photo was taken just 1 minute from our house on our way to Fry’s – hands up all of you who thought we were staying in the desert.

Another place we go, maybe 1.5 miles is Ike’s café. This hike takes us through a colourful neighbourhood of rented property, trailer parks, rusty vehicles and wall art. I get a good coffee there with a real caffeine kick for $1.60 and Sadie can get her absolute favourite, a chai tea latte with soya milk. They have fast, free wi-fi here and it’s used by many students, of the U of A, as their study room. The guy in the photo seems happy to lay out his desk on a table made for 6 people as he nurses a coffee for hours on end. But the advantage of this kind of café is that there becomes an integration of students over a far greater area and in fairness there’s always somewhere to sit – the Brits always opt for outside as we always fear that tomorrow it may be cold and rainy.

In the evenings Frank’s transforms into Fransisco’s, a Mexican with no American alternatives, where we ate Shrimp (like our king prawn) fajita’s with our friends Ruth, Raphael and little Ving. There’s another Mexican we have to try, Casa Molina, and just on from there is Crossroads Cinema where we saw another $2 movie last week Sweeny Todd. Walking at night though is a little scary. The black sky policy here means the suburban streets are very dark and we usually find ourselves walking in the road because the pavements (sidewalks) have been taken over by the residents as part of their own property by planting trees, bushes or laying down ‘gravel lawns’; this is probably through lack of public use. The better lit major roads with names like Speedway and Broadway are worse to walk along; imagine walking along the side of the Atlantic Highway or the A45 with nothing between the pavement and the road.

We are borrowing our friend Sally’s truck for a few days while she is out of town, she leaves on Thursday. We’ll be sure to wave at folks on their porch and those walking about while we have a change of pace and scale to explore beyond walking and cycling distance.

A Day at the Races

Last Saturday saw us at Rillito Race Track for what is now a tradition for us to go to, as it was our second visit there with our friends Dan and Barb. They have a time honoured tradition of going along and we sort of do too – this time we travelled over with our friend Angela, she hadn’t been before and was keen to see what it was all about.

Those race horses sure are magnificent animals – the racing starts at 1pm and there are two areas to access, the Grandstand and the Clubhouse. Our first mistake was buying a ticket for the Grandstand - $3 – as once inside we saw Barb and learnt that they were all in the Clubhouse, only another $2 to go in but we were told we couldn’t upgrade and we would have to go out of the Grandstand and into the Clubhouse entrance and pay another £5! Gambling already, we put on our best British accents and said we were new to the event and didn’t understand the layout and that our friends were in a different section, sob sob. Anyway the lady stamped our hand – for ease of going in and out – and let us through for not one cent more. God Bless America!

Once inside we could get into the swing of things – lots of betting going on and groups of people with reserved tables overlooking the racetrack. There’s an entrance to the Paddock, where you can go and view the horses and jockeys (they sure are tiny people and all with very bright, alluring jockey jackets on, in fetching lime green, pink, red and yellow) preparing for each race and is an excellent opportunity to select your favourite and then place a bet if you so wish. There is a programme and a ‘tip sheet’ for much study and contemplation – or there is the Sade method of looking at a horse and deciding its going to win or at least finish in the top 2. Knowing nothing about horses or horse-racing it’s an interesting method of approach. This did manage to win $2 on one race, a $2 bet (minimum amount you can bet) netted $4!

And here’s a photo of Sade with her winnings. She actually picked out a winner and a second place horse in 2 races – the third one she picked the horse that came in 6th, so some beginners luck in there somewhere and obviously don’t take her word for it!

It’s fascinating watching the crowd as much as the racing and Dave spent most of his time wandering around with the camera, capturing all those cowboys in their cowboy gear. It was a lovely warm sunny day and felt cooler in the shade so it was good to shift into the sunny places and then go back to the Clubhouse for a drink. There’s bars there and plenty of food for when you get the munchies, good Amber Bock on tap. It was Sade’s first beer after her week of flu and it tasted great! We did say no to going out for dinner after to a Greek restaurant as that would have been too much excitement for one day. So we sauntered over to Angela’s car and drove off into the dust, happy and content to have seen some wonderful horses and some tiny, but colourful, jockeys riding them.

For those who need a bit more information about the racing here Sadie got a bunch of stuff from various websites:
In operation for more than 50 years, Rillito Downs Park Racetrack is a five-eighths mile racing in Tucson, Arizona. This recently remodeled track offers Quarterhorse, thoroughbred and on occasion, even Arabian horse racing. This famous track was also the birthplace of many racing innovations that are still in use today. Rillito Park's racing season lasts from January to March, with a live racing schedule on Saturdays and Sundays. The property has two restaurants, grandstand, barns, training area, special events, soccer/multi-use fields, picnic areas, ramadas, restrooms, and drinking water. All with a beautiful mountain foothills back drop.