A much nicer city than I remembered
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4/4/2020
I just moved back to Tucson after 15 years, and it's surprisingly nice. The roads are a disaster, let's get that out of the way. More like wagon wheel ruts. But the people have been, for the most part, friendly and on the ball except for some East Coast jerks that are rude, loud, uncultured and all about themselves. Not people from NY city, I'm talking about the NY state people.
My old memories of Tucson were that it was a good city to do business in, and that's still true. Coming from New Mexico, where things were so messed up on every level, it's refreshing to finally find a city that is "normal".
Yes, there's crime in bad areas, but it's nothing compared to New Orleans or Albuquerque. The food is still really good, and there's lots of variety. Drivers are bad, but again, they were worse in NM. Right now the weather is gorgeous, and should stay that way until Sept or June, when the town becomes an oven. Well, it's the desert. Surprise! I am always amazed at people who write on here about how hot it is in the summer. These are the same people who move to Florida and complain about the humidity. Yes, the desert is hot in the summer, and the deep South is buggy and humid. Who knew?
The houses are neat here. In many neighborhoods, no two are alike. Lots of big, big back yards, and the cost of housing and the cost of living is dirt cheap, especially considering what you get. Spend some time getting to know the areas though, because the bad ones are ghetto for sure, and you can be going on Broadway and things are all yuppie and clean, then around Swan it tanks and there's bands of riff raff, mostly at bus stops, who are truly sketchy. So knowing where things drop off will save you a lot of trouble later on. Even having lived here before it's taken me a month to get a feel for things because of the way the city sprawls.
I don't much care for downtown or the cookie cutter area out on Oracle, and the city bus terminal downtown is more like a refuge camp, but 4th Ave is still neat. The low cost of living means there are still "characters" here, the type of folks like musicians, artists, etc that were priced out of places like San Francisco eons ago. I like it here. It's liberal (for Az), and you get all the good NM stuff like beautiful sunsets and mountain views w/o being overwhelmed by drugs, criminals and trigger happy cops.
steve | ,