Best Unusual Place To People-Watch
Fourth Avenue
READERS' PICK: To many long-time Tucsonans, Fourth Avenue is the true pulse of our artistic Old Pueblo. It's busier now than at any time in the past 20 years, with the requisite retro-punks now rubbing shoulders with more cookie-cutter frat types. Other college-age artists also mix with older street performers, hippies, the curious and the homeless, giving Fourth Avenue a human mixture that is both vibrant and occasionally disturbing.READERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: As far as people-watching goes, L.A.'s Westwood is not even in the same league as Tucson's Downtown Saturday Night. Park yourself at the Ronstadt Transit Center and observe the human kaleidoscope that spins itself before your eyes. Girls clad in plaid skirts, thigh-highs and knit tops mingle with the pierced and tattooed set; preschoolers licking ice cream cones and sporting balloon hats confidently weave their way toward Yikes! Toys; middle-aged dads in polo shirts and khakis stroll by the row of Harleys and their owners parked in front of the Crescent Smoke Shop; and street musicians, clowns and homeless people compete for whatever cash this crowd is willing to part with. Some hopeful entrepreneur makes a few bucks giving people rides on the human gyroscope. Free entertainment doesn't get any better than this.
STAFF PICK: Sitting in a gleaming new building atop a little hill all its own, the Arizona Division of Motor Vehicles northside office is the local analog to the Pearly Gates: Whether you've been good or bad, one day you'll have to stand tall before the chief inspector, and this one wears a blue shirt and a frown. Make the most of the experience: In the limbo of a DMV line, there's not much better to do than people-watch, and there's no more representative sampling of Tucson than the rich-poor, old-young and otherwise diverse lot sharing that line with you. For newcomers, getting to the northside branch, at 7330 N. Shannon Road, which, we hear, is more efficient than most, can be a challenge (see Best Map Store). Now, if you want to really miss some time from work (like four to seven hours) and study human nature stalled on hard plastic chairs, we recommend going to the southside DMV office, 3565 S. Broadmont. Don't be misled by the new huge building with the ample parking lot, inside you'll be rubbing shoulders, literally, with folks from all walks, er, drives of life. On a recent trip, we arrived before 11 a.m. and were given Number 205 (we do not exaggerate!). We sat with the hordes to wait patiently. A woman in curlers and a moo-moo told us she was Number 81, had been waiting since 7 a.m., having arrived an hour before opening to get a good spot in line. First bad sign. At that point, The Voice came over the public-address system, announcing the state employees on their spiffy new computers would now serve Number 48. Second bad sign, very bad sign. But you'll have lots of time to study your fellow humans as they all watch you, too. Here's one strategy for passing the time: Spend one half-hour comparing and contrasting tattoos, the next half-hour seeking the head with the most hairspray, another half-hour imagining what's hidden in the pockets of each person, and so on. Another strategy: Leave after and hour or two, and like us, drive on an expired license until you get caught.
CAT'S MEOW: All clichés--and Tom Danehy--aside, baseball is truly America's sport. One look around a Toros game will attest to this: Everybody goes. Plop yourself down anywhere in the stands and start watching--a group of die-hard baseball fans keeping track of statistics sit right in front of a group of die-hard beer fans trying to recall what inning it is. A mob of children swarm around a beleaguered Tuffy the Toro as a man with a Darth Vader tattoo walks by. You will witness sublime acts of generosity one moment and then see a child nearly trampled by his own father as they both go for a foul ball the next minute. The beautiful and the ugly meet head on both in the stands and on the field, but the overwhelming spirit is just plain fun, from the look in a child's eyes after getting an autograph to the ecstatic fan doing a celebratory "booty dance" to cheer in a run. Get to a Toros game, root for the team and, also, find out who we are in the process.
