Where is this mural?

If you enjoy Tucson's murals from the comfort of your home (or office, or wherever you see this blog), you can just read and scroll down. Once you see a mural you'd like to enjoy in person, though, you need to be able to find it. When I snap a mural photo, I jot down information that I hope will help you. Since most murals are on buildings, I can give the address — or so I believed until after I snapped this photo of a wall of the former El Rapido restaurant downtown:

When I shot this, I was on West Washington Street — no question. The numbers to the right of the door say 77. So, the mural is at 77 W. Washington, right? That's what I thought until I typed that address into Google Maps... and it put the location pointer a block east of the actual spot. I searched for El Rapido and people quoted that same address: 77. What to do?

Luckily, I could ask Melo King for advice. (She created the mural maps that you really should check out if you haven't already.) The bottom line is that the address of a piece of land can change — especially if the streets are close together, so the parcel could "be on" one of several streets. Pima County has online GIS (Geographic Information System) to help you find a current address — and an amazing amount of other information. (See http://gis.pima.gov/maps/mapguide/ and click on "Main MapGuide Map".)

There doesn't seem to be a 77 West Washington Street anymore. I can tell you that the mural is on the north side of Washington in the middle of the block between Meyer and Court. To get a more precise location, I opened a satellite view of the area from Google Maps, clicked on the front of the building, and chose "What's here?" from the pop-up menu. It says the mural (actually, a spot a few feet north) is at latitude 32.224539 and longitude -110.974388. Here's that view.

What we do for art! :)