I'm glad to tell you that last year's Rock the Spot mural painting celebration downtown wasn't the last. November 30 to December 3, artists from around the country repainted most of the murals around this parking lot.
The parking lot stretches between Congress Street on the south end to Pennington Street on the north end. There's also a narrow space that runs between the middle of the east side of the parking lot to Scott Avenue. (If you'd like to see a map, look for 61 E Congress St Parking on this Google Map.) I started photographing at the southwest corner, close to Congress. Then I walked clockwise, including a narrow “notch” between the parking lot to Scott Avenue and back. That is:
Along the west wall
Walked along Pennington (the north side)… there are no murals here
Halfway along the east side
Clockwise around the “notch” between the parking lot to Scott Avenue and back
Along the rest of the east wall to Congress Street.
I also took close-ups of some murals. I include the close-ups after the overall photo. A few murals were here before this year's (2023) Rock the Spot; I've labeled them.
I haven't edited these photos to straighten, crop to only the mural, etc. There are just too many!
Bashful Bandit is re-opening tomorrow, December 27, after a long makeover from a biker bar to a unique barbecue restaurant. The December 23 Arizona Daily Star article Tucson's iconic Bashful Bandit is now home to a new barbecue joint, for subscribers only, has a lot of history and background. In case you don't subscribe to the Star, here'a a bit of info from the article:
The new owners — Toby Kyte and his sibling partners, brothers Terry and Trevor and sister Leslie Frost — wanted to celebrate the existing Bashful Bandit name.
2½ years after buying the 76-year-old building in June 2021, the partners will officially open the restaurant on Wednesday, Dec. 27.
They kept the old bar that likely dated back to 1947, when Bertha Lester built the 2,875-square-foot building to house Rio Rita Bar. Under the drywall, they found the original aqua-colored wall from Rio Rita — and some 1960's wallpaper that will be preserved. One wall has lots of memorabilia.
The food has its roots in Texas but is Tucson-style with menu items like green chile pulled pork and chile relleno sausage made with poblano peppers.
I stopped by during renovations — on April 6, 2023. The blog post Bye-Bye, Bashful Bandit? shows the repaired front wall with two murals. It also shows a photo of the best-known old mural, originally shown in a 2009 blog post.
The biggest difference you'll see outside is a new patio behind. I took two photos while the patio and outdoor fire pit (cooking) area were still being touched up on December 17th:
They actually opened, for lunch only, on Christmas Eve. Though we usually don't show photos inside a business or someone's home, why not? 😁
Their regular hours start tomorrow, from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Their website, BashfulBanditBBQ.com, currently has almost no information — not even a link to their Instagram page www.instagram.com/bashfulbanditbbq, which tells a bit more.
It's been more than a year since Joe Pagac painted a mural for El Tour de Tucson 2022 on the patio wall at The Monica downtown. (So many murals to post here, so little time!) On October 31, 2022, Joe posted a photo on Instagram by Randy Metcalf.
I stopped by on April 29, 2013 to snap photos. Unfortunately, the light wasn't good… there were shadows and reflections:
The caption at the bottom, Aventure dans le désert à vélo! is in French. It means Desert adventure by bike! You can read more about why on The Monica's web page Who was Monica?. It's an interesting story!
The (very) short version is that Monica Flin was a Tucson restaurateur (a person who runs a restaurant professionally) from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. “Monica was the daughter of Jules and Carlota Brunet Flin, both early settlers of Tucson who hailed from France. She grew up speaking French, English, and later Spanish.” The family home was on Court Avenue; it's now the site of El Charro Café downtown — which Monica opened there in 1922.
A mural on the west wall of the former AccessTucson TV studio downtown was there for years. If you drove through downtown on Broadway, you couldn't miss it:
That photo is from our May 29, 2009 post AccessTucson.
After AccessTucson moved away, the building stood unused for quite a while. On March 12 of this year, I noticed that it had changed:
Now the VIP Loft Apartments are behind bits of the original mural. Here are more photos:
My graduate studies classmate Dr. Jessica N. Pabón-Colón coordinated the artists working on that mural for her studies at UofA. I coordinated with Vikki Dempsey to get permission for the space…All credit to her. There's more to this, but Dr. Pabón-Colón is a brilliant activist/academic and you should learn more from her.
Kat replied to me when I asked to use her comment here:
… I have just coordinated their efforts along the way.
Corbett's is a restaurant that opened in August of 2023. Among other things, it has five pickleball courts and a beer garden. It also has numerous murals painted by several of the finest artists in Tucson. Here, I am including three of the murals. The others will have to wait for another day.
Subject not known.
By Sean Cannon
Memorial to Denis Francis (Papa Ranger). Inducted into the Tucson Musicians Museum Hall of Fame in Novermber of 2022.
Painted by Ignacio Garcia
Roadrunner
Artist not known
Click on any photo for a slideshow of larger and sharper images.
Arizona Palms Tinting has appeared in The Tucson Murals Project three times - 11/30/2011, 05/18/2018 and 01/19/2021. Each time with a different paint scheme. Here is number four:
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