Tucson was good to us last night. Club Congress, beautiful old hotel and bar, old for Tucson anyways, where gangster Dillinger was once chased down and arrested in prohibition days and there once were bullet holes in the wooden paneling of the bar but not any longer and this is not a place that just trades on history, but is full of good music. And still has liquor. Of course.

I’ve seen Justin Townes Earle play here, one of my all time favourites though he was drunker than he should have been that night. But tonight it was Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears and they were amazing live. My brother said they were, and he didn’t lie. Old time blues with some funk and some Jimi Hendrix, some rawness and some rhythm and dude plays the harmonica as well as guitar and so much energy and two saxes and a trumpet up on stage, and that Joe Lewis born in Tucson and his family all over the place and it meant that crowd was most diverse and I loved Tucson.

Fourth avenue too, full of young beautiful things (but oh, such a relief from the more contoured and sculpted, more predictable beautiful things of LA and London), and us older things, and even some much older folks. All of us out tonight, living life well. We headed to Shay’s after, and then to the R Bar to meet an old friend of my brothers’, dude went to elementary with T and plays soccer with Dan and his family owned the liquor store on 22nd and the freeway–I don’t know how many times we have driven past that liquor store. Now he’s getting his PhD on arid land ecologies and I almost waxed lyrical on Masanobu Fukuoka whose final philosophical manifesto of sowing seeds in the desert I just finished reading. But I didn’t wax too much. He’s a bit out there I guess from some of the the hard science points of view, and this PhD is all data. I think we talked too much about economics, racism and police brutality, but a good night because we were all on the side of the righteous. And there was cider.

Walking down under the bridge and along 4th, behind some cholos walking their walk with their tube socks pulled up and long shorts pulled down and then past some large women wearing very little and damn they were pretty impressive and  you know, you got it flaunt it, and a whole mix of everyone wearing whatever the hell they felt like from long skirts to short skirts, jeans to short shorts to little black dresses to hippy dresses, stupidly high heels and flip flops and cowboy boots, all ages and races and degrees of sobriety and I was pretty happy here in my home town. I realised I been missing cholos walking their walk. Been missing walking too. If only Tucson had a public transportation system that worked well enough to get us the whole way home (or anywhere else we needed to go). But this little piece of this sprawling unsustainable city feels like a real place, it has everything you need to bring different people together, get people walking, talking, meeting. So many people out and about walking and laughing it feels safe, so many different kinds of people it feels vibrant, it feels good. American cities are so segregated and Tucson isn’t that much different (though it’s got nothing on LA), but here everyone was out enjoying themselves. Together.

The planner geographer side of me could tell a lot of that had to do with this old core of an old walkable downtown, its mixed use and cluster of bars and the old Rialto theatre (with Michael Franti playing) and restaurants and taco trucks and the redevelopment of 4th avenue bridge with its purple lights and wide sidewalks and art making it no longer a scary-ass place to walk into so you can get from the vibrance of 4th Ave proper to that awesome strip along Congress and everyone is on the move between them. I like seeing the streetcars too, though I know they were hell of controversial.

Gives you a bit of hope. All except for the clusters of cops on a few of the corners, but they mainly seemed to be breathalizing people before they were anywhere near a car, and there was some laughter and people were talking to them voluntarily (though that confuses me and cops generally make me feel the opposite of safe), so it seems maybe they were just on a mission of prevention. But the crowds just flowed right around them.

A great night with my brother.