An "interesting" place
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12/9/2019
I've lived in Tucson two times. The first time, the city had a 1% for the Arts fund, and there were some creative, interesting people living in there. The second time, that had disappeared, and so did a lot of those folks. I have mixed memories of it. The positives were: the cost of housing, whether you rented or bought, was low and there was plenty available. People were pretty friendly, although too conservative for my tastes. Tucson is seen as a liberal city, but that really means liberal by Az standards. The university was OK. Not as nice by far as UNM in Abq, but you didn't have to dodge bullets and worry about your car being stolen, so it was far safer than UNM. The Tucson college football team was pretty good too. The desert is beautiful there! Just amazing. The air is clean, and for some reason my allergies didn't kick up. The ersatz hippie area of 4th Ave had good eats, good coffeehouses, some music, and an outdoor vibe. Nice place to hang out. Food could be very good in Tucsonl. Lots of diversity, and you could find Thai, Vietnamese, etc, in addition to the delicious local Southwestern foods. There were a lot of bike trails, and you could get to a lot of the city on them. Winter weather was great.
The negatives were: the summer heat, of course. It gets really, really hot for a loooong time. So consider this in a time of global warming, because it is just going to get hotter. The bus transportation is pretty ghetto. Quite a few transplants from Calif live in Tucson. Not sure if this would be considered a negative, but you need to know about it. Downtown is just lost, as is the city leadership, if you can call it that. So just ignore all that and avoid downtown. The police can be very aggressive, and you have a lot of cowboy border patrol types around. I had one that kept trying to monitor my internet activity at the downtown library, even to the point of standing right behind me. Why, I haven't a clue. When I finally went to the desk to complain I was told that this happens all the time, and I should have told the guy to back off. Sorry, that's YOUR job bucko, not mine. They also had a ton of security people running around in that library, all w/ loud walkie talkies going. I finally just stopped going downtown unless I absolutely had to, and went to some of the neighborhood branch libraries, some of which were very nice. South Tucson is really ghetto, as in I felt nervous as an Anglo there, and had a number of run ins w/ young punks on the buses. So I stopped going there as well. Avoiding downtown was no great loss, but I liked south side. It just didn't like me. Biking could be dangerous, but that's everywhere.
I may move back and try it again because Las Cruces is too expensive for me. This is the tightest housing market I have ever seen, even tighter than Portland. So to get a cheaper cost of living, I have to move to someplace less desirable. If, and this is a big if, I can find the right neighborhood and the right housing, Tucson might be OK. Would I recommend anyone else moving to Tucson? If I go (and I may go for just a 2 week "look see" before making a decision), I'll report back. Just be mindful that the place has some serious downsides, along with some positives.
steve | ,