Sep
04
2010

Tucson Bound

PhotosSaturday, September 4, 2010 - 05:00:00 pm
(Posted Under: This Desert Life This Desert Life, Travel, Road Trips)
Photobox ImageBig rock show tonight, Gentlemen Afterdark tonight in Tucson for the Hotel Congress 25th Anniversary. I knew last week that this weekend was going to hurt once we realized the Strange Young Things pre tour benefit was on Friday night.

Despite the best laid plans to crash earlier, get up early and leave for Tucson earlier, it was virtually impossible given last night. Such is the rock n' roll life. But we finally got out on the road to Tucson.

We stopped at the Picacho Peak travel plaza. Katie was in heaven. [smile] Found a lot of great deals, and spent more money that we'd planned on, but it was worth it. Among the purchases was a cool Kokpelia door mat. Once we have the house to go along with it, we'll be sorted. [smile]

Photobox ImageAfter a reasonably stop there, we headed onwards to Tucson, through the Saguaro National Park, which was beautiful as always. Stopped briefly there, and then headed back to Tucson. First stop was the one Zia's location we hadn't yet hit up. Katie found a Record Store Day 2010 tee that we missed out on this year, so we had to get it. A pretty sweet find, and makes up the valley locations running out of them back on Record Store Day.

From there we set out to find the Long Wongs we ate at years ago. With absolutely no memory of where it actually was. We first went to the other one (which was no longer there), before setting Bueller to the other location. Only to find that it was no longer there either. Not only was this a huge disappointment, but we were also starving and weak from hunger at this point. [smile] So we just went back to downtown Tucson to see what we could find.

We decided to park at O'Malley's and walk along 4th Ave to see what our options were. It was all pretty convienent given that it wasn't far from Hotel Congress. Much like the last time we were in Tucson, it was reminding me a lot of Melbourne funnily enough. I didn't have that reaction my first time in Tucson at all, but the last two times in the 4th Ave area, it's really hit me. And to that end, we saw a trolley/tram tonight, which looked remarkably like the old Melbourne trams. Certainly there was something very "Brunswick Street" about walking down 4th Ave. While I wouldn't actually want to live in Tucson, that area definitely does have a very cool vibe that Phoenix, as far as I can tell, is missing.

Not finding anywhere else we'd rather eat, we decided to head back to O'Malley's to eat. With the duel purpose of seeing whether Chalmers Green showed up, who were scheduled to play. Our plan was to maybe see some of them before heading to Hotel Congress. Not neccesarily the best food we've eaten, but I felt like I was going to pass out from lack of food, so it was quite good to be eating either way.

Leafing through the local papers, there were no shortage of press about the Hotel Congress anniversary, the old Tucson venues and bands that were playing this weekend, including some cool stuff on Gentlemen Afterdark. Which highlighted how much of a waste the Phoenix New Times is these days. Reading through a lot of this stuff reminded us both of how New Times articles were 10 years ago.

By about 8:30, we decided to give up on the hope of seeing Chalmers Green and walked down to the Hotel Congress. It was only a five minute walk, which made our choice on where to park the car perfect.


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