#18 - Riding through Tucson

Every morning Monday through Thursday I ride my bike from my boyfriend's house in South Tucson to campus - about a 3 mile ride. The ride to campus is mostly uphill, which isn't any fun, but the ride home is downhill, and absolutely lovely. It begins more or less on University Avenue, a street that can be found in some form on every college campus. There's a American Apparel, and an Urban Outfitters, and a Chipolte, and, at any given time, about one hundred sorority girls. It can be a little overwhelming.

From University, I turn onto Fourth Avenue, a street with an entirely different personality. Fourth Avenue is a college hipsters paradise, a long, sloping road lined with bars, restaurants of every imaginable ethnicity, tattoo parlors and smoke shops. The late afternoon/early evening hours when I ride home are ripe for hipster-spotting. They tend to congregate in two areas - one group smoking American Spirits and drinking fair trade coffee at Epic Cafe, and the other smoking American Spirits and drinking hemp beer at Sky Bar. In both cases, they make the landscape much more entertaining.

My favorite part of the ride, however, is on Fourth Avenue south of Congress Street, and the entrance to South Tucson. South Tucson has an entirely unique flavor. The majority of the people living in South Tucson have been in the Tucson are since before Arizona was Arizona. They are Hispanic, or Indian, or some combination of the two, and although in other cities this might mean a slightly-less favorable neighborhood, South Tucson is my favorite part of the city.

Part of the charm, undoubtedly, stems from the dogs.

The first time I went to my boyfriend's house in South Tucson, a chihuahua ran out in front of my car about three blocks from his (my boyfriend's) house. It wasn't wearing a collar, and seemed perfectly happy dashing down a side street after I swerved around it. I thought it seemed strange to see a stray chihuahua - and not a mutt, for example - but my boyfriend was completely unperturbed. There are stray dogs throughout South Tucson, he explained, and they usually roam in packs of two or three. Later that night we saw what I assumed was the same chihuahua trotting down the street with - I swear to God - a Shih Tzu. Or at least something that looked like a Shih Tzu. Ever since then, I've kept an eye out for the Dogs of South Tucson. This morning, on my way to school, a chihuahua chased me for no fewer than five blocks, seemingly for the pure joy of running. It made me laugh - a great way to start the day.