Arts

Son Volt Comes to 191 Toole

January 14, 2022 |

“Pandemic blues again, life in lockdown / Don’t let your hope, your driving force / Drag on the ground.” So writes Jay Farrar in “These Are the Times,” two years into a worldwide plague that, he adds, has us “walking backwards.” One of many highlights on the new Son Volt album Electro Melodier, the song speaks to Farrar’s guarded optimism that, as he puts it elsewhere on the album, “the worst will soon be over.”

Electro Melodier began as a classic Covid album, assembled, as so many are these days, with musicians recording in different studios, one Son Volt member from as far away as New York, most of the others closer to Farrar’s home base of St. Louis. But something was missing in the distance, he says, and as time went on and the album inched along, “we all masked up and played together.” There’s an agreeably live feel to the album, one that hits the ground running with the upbeat, aptly titled “Reverie,” which encourages its listeners not to “stop dreaming on a distant star.” The album continues in a similar spirit, though with a couple of more pensive moments, one of them the song “War on Misery,” which, Farrar says, “I wanted to sound something like Lightnin’ Hopkins, with a low-tuned guitar and some quiet spaces.”

In a sense, Farrar tells Zócalo, the pandemic was a boon, if in just one regard: by taking the band off the road and constant live performing, it gave him and his bandmates the time to work hard on crafting an album that holds together as a piece. Even so, he allows, he’s glad to be going out on tour again after nearly two years away, a tour that will see the band’s return to Tucson after several years on top of the pandemic-born hiatus.

Electro Melodier, says Farrar, came together well overall, though one song, he says good-naturedly, was a little like pulling teeth. A slow march with pensive lyrics about the big lies in the face of the “truth we all know,” it “started to veer off in a direction that was sort of like the band Rush. We had to dial it back a bit to keep it from going off into prog-rock territory.” It’s now safely back in the Americana pocket that Farrar helped pioneer, another standout in an album that never falters.

Son Volt at 191 Toole, Wednesday, January 19, at 8pm. $25 via Ticketmaster or at the door. Proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test within the previous 48 hours is required for admission, and masks must be worn.

James McMurtry Performs at the Hotel Congress

August 29, 2021 |

“You can’t be young and do that.” So writes James McMurtry, closing in on 60, in the first song on his new album The Horses and the Hounds. You can’t be young only because it takes decades to live up to the vision of that song, “Canola Fields,” which takes in dozens of years and thousands of miles, speaking of love, fear, mortality, and wandering, among other things, and that has a stoic feel to it, as if to say, sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don’t.

McMurtry’s expansive vision comes naturally: he’s a Texan who looks out on a big horizon, after all, and his father was the noted novelist and part-time Tucsonan Larry McMurtry. Many of the younger McMurtry’s songs have a 30,000-foot view of things, whether he’s writing of the country folk who wind up going off to fight America’s secret wars—we don’t know about them, he notes, because they’re not on TV—or of a border rider who shoots his best friend for reasons we can only guess at. The songs are evocative of dusty, windy places, sometimes bitter, sometimes sardonic, always memorable.

The Horses and the Hounds, McMurtry says, isn’t exactly a COVID album. Most of the tracks were laid down a couple of years ago. COVID, of course, got in the way of everything all the same. “I couldn’t go out and play for more than a year,” he says, “so I worked on the recording some more.” The result is a richly layered work that often sounds like—well, a horse trying to kick down the gate and head for the field, impatient and onrushing. Listen to “What’s the Matter,” a song that answers its own question, and its blaze of guitars and stomping drums, and you’ll get a sense of his impatience to get the show rolling again. (“Oh, yeah,” McMurtry adds, “and I had five different keyboard players, all of ’em on B-3!”)

James McMurtry will perform songs from his new album on September 5 at the Hotel Congress Plaza (311 E. Congress). For the vaxxed and masked—others need not apply, and proof of vaccination is required—McMurtry’s solo show will begin at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20 in advance or at the door. 

The Only Nutcracker in Town

December 18, 2020 |

This December all live theater and dance events are canceled in Tucson, but you can still take in the Nutcracker at El Toro Flicks drive-in theater (198 S. Granada Ave., 520 449 4468).

On December 21, Danswest Dance Company presents a new, original staging of the classic ballet. Written and directed by Danswest owner and professional tap dancer Megan Maltos, Not Your Ordinary Nut features dancers aged 7–18, plus a few courageous dance dads. NYON is entirely choreographed by Tucson artists, three of whom grew up dancing at Danswest.

The show incorporates elements of all of Danswest’s styles—ballet, yes, but also acrobatics, tap dancing, jazz, even hip hop, and plenty of heart. The dancers had six weeks to learn the choreography before it was filmed in October. Danswest will offer two screenings at 6:00 pm and 9:30 pm. Tickets are $40 a carload. For more information, contact Megan.maltos@gmail.com, (520) 240–2476.

BLOOD WIDOW is a Halloween Treat with a Supernatural Twist

October 23, 2020 |

by Jennifer Powers

Fall is when our movie watching fancy turns to the scary and unsettling. Shadows grow long in the late afternoon, and the extended nights summon us to explore the dark side of our imaginations. The chills are extra-special when the action takes place close to home.

In Blood Widow, filmed in and around Tucson, young women are disappearing. Detectives Valentine and Stokes suspect a serial killer and soon pick up a trail from terrifying events across the city. Unbeknownst to the detectives, the last survivor of a mysterious clan is feverishly searching for the same person, with dark plans of her own. Should she reach the killer first, the detectives will be dealing with an evil unlike any they have experienced.

Blood Widow was directed by Brendan Guy Murphy, who co-wrote the script with Dominic Ross. This is the third film for production company MurphySpeaking Films, founded by Brendan in 2007, the same year his first film, Limbo, was released. Story Time Fables came out in 2010 and was featured in the Arizona International Film Festival and the Stepping Stone Film Festival in India, and it was a semifinalist in the Oaxaca Film Festival in Mexico.

Recipient of the 2008 Buffalo Exchange Arts Award, Brendan says he was inspired to make Blood Widowwhen he began to wonder what would happen if a malevolent supernatural evil encountered a morally evil madman. “The idea turned into a treatment, the treatment became a script, and as the right cast of characters came off the pages, it was time to make the film,” says Murphy.

Shot on location in Southern Arizona, Blood Widow taps into some of the psychic power embodied in Hotel Congress, El Rancho Diablo, and the Slaughterhouse—all of which have infamous stories in their histories, from gangster hideouts to murder. The three are also long rumored to be haunted. Danny’s Baboquivari Lounge, Petroglyphs, and Gentle Ben’s Brewing Company generously agreed to allow their businesses to be used by the filmmakers as well.

“Tucson and its surrounding areas are filled with wonderful filming locations,” says Murphy. “We were fortunate to have been granted access to numerous settings that created the unique texture and sense of place that anchors the film.”

As an actor, Murphy has been featured in many films, commercials, and music videos, including Lucky U Ranch, Wastelander, and the Alex Italics award-winning short film Sheltered Love. In Blood Widow, he surrounds himself with a diverse cast of players, primarily from Tucson, who bring an authentic Southwest feel to the movie. Melissa Alejandra, born in Sonora, Mexico, and raised in Tucson, is a dancer/singer/choreographer who has performed nationally and internationally. Dallas Thomas has acted in film, web series, commercials, and onstage, including multiple appearances with the stellar Rogue Theatre Company. Hector Ayala, a native Tucsonan, has appeared in several films and made numerous appearances with Borderlands Theatre.

Veteran actor James Craven, whose resume includes a long list of television and movie credits, has appeared on Broadway and in the European tour of Gospel at Colonus with Morgan Freeman. The Minneapolis-based actor is a long-time member of the Penumbra Theater Company there, where he has appeared in more than 35 shows.

There is a wealth of local talent behind the camera, too. Art director Cori DiSimone and makeup artist Sonia Campbell work their dark arts to magically eerie effect. Director of photography Antonio Villagomez and sound mixer and editor James Wan came to Arizona from Ecuador and Hong Kong respectively. They combine to create a thrillingly atmospheric cinematic chiller. Dan Singleton composed the film score.

Blood Widow was produced by Brendan Guy Murphy, Sergio Kardenas, Antonio Villagomez, and Scott Hellon and is distributed by Indican Pictures through Lionsgate Studios. It is available for streaming on Amazon Prime and for rent and purchase on Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube, Apple TV, Fandango Now, Vudu, and Microsoft.

This year, make Blood Widow your Halloween date for a good, frightening time in Tucson. Death will never be the same.

Blood Widow trailer:

Tucson Mask Makers

July 12, 2020 |
Camouflage mask by NAK

Mask up and shop local! Tucson mask makers and shops are helping to keep our community safe by offering face coverings in a range of designs and styles. Here are a few makers and places that caught our eyes.

ADIA JAMILLE

Adia Jamille is a textile artist who explores heritage and self through embroidery and quilting. In addition to home textiles and hand printed items such as baby blankets and hand dyed silk scarves, her triple layered face masks come in a range of modern prints. Her masks are 100% cotton and washable and they feature a pocket for a filter and a wire in the nose for a tighter fit. There is an option to purchase a mask and hand sanitizer duo (the hand sanitizer is made by Latina owned, Medicine Nuestra). 

Cost: Child $8, Adult / Large $10. Shipping is available. 
IG: @JamilleTextiles
FB: Jamille Textiles
www.AdiaJamille.com/face-masks  

Mask by Adia Jamille

DESIGNS BY MW

One night in between studying for finals, Michelle Willis stayed up and taught herself how to sew masks using her mom’s sewing machine. Inspired to give back to her community, she donated over 700 masks in Sahuarita and Tucson while balancing nursing school and parenting. Now her masks are available to purchase through her Facebook page and on Etsy.  

Cost: $10 for adults and children. Custom orders available. Local pickup available or $5 flat rate fee. 
FB: Designs by MW
www.Etsy.com/Shop/DesignsMW  

Masks by Michelle Willis

LAURA TANZER ATELIER

Her first series of masks were made from scraps from her own garment production. She uses natural fibers such as cotton and instead of elastic, uses two pairs of ribbon, one you tie behind your head and the other you tie behind your neck.

Laura makes sure small droplets are not coming in from the sides or below the chin or around the nose, so she has engineered her masks to include some insulated copper bell wire across the top of the mask so you can fit to your nose, eliminating the gap that can let in droplets, and also great for glasses wearers. She sews in Filtrete 1900 air filter material, between the interior cotton layer and the exterior cotton layer. The result is not medical grade N95, but it is much better than cotton by itself.

Learn more at https://lauratanzerdesigns.com/we-are-in-this-together/
410 N. Toole Ave
520-981-9891

Laura Tanzer, right, in her shop.

MILDRED AND DILDRED 

This popular toy shop offers stretchy cotton face masks for toddlers and kiddos in a range of kid friendly prints, made by their local seamstress team. 

Cost: $8.50 for all sizes. Offers delivery, curbside or store pickups.
520-615-6266
IG: @MildredandDildred
FB: Mildred & Dildred
www.MildredandDildred.com

Space Dinos mask by Mildred & Dildred

NAK MASKS 

Shauna Smith had recently opened Needles and Knots, a sewing and design school when the shutdown occurred. Soon customers were requesting masks and so within a few weeks she developed a mask with a unique style, the NAK M820 and a lighter weight version, the NAK M1720 “Swoosh”. With a minimalist design and modern prints, her masks are comfortable and use a sliding bead to easily adjust the fit. 

Cost: $15 for adult and kid sizes. Free local pickup is offered as well as priority shipping. 
520-261-9548
NAKMasks@gmail.com
FB: NAK Masks
www.NAKMasks.com

Cactus Stubble mask by Needles & Knots (NAK)

POP-CYCLE

This women owned shop is a beloved favorite for gifts, featuring locally made art and goods, often with recycled or quirky elements. Recently their team has been busy sewing masks with fun and gender neutral patterns available to purchase or donate one to someone in need. Over the last several months they have donated masks to the Navajo and Tohono O’odham Nations. Their masks are made with 100% cotton and elastic straps and available in two styles. One style has 3 layers with a wire sewn over the nose but a string can be added if a tie on mask is preferred. This style is a tad wider and can accommodate a bigger nose or face. The second style has two layers with an opening for a filter. 

Cost: $14 for adult and kid sizes. Shipping is available.
520-622-3297
IG: @PopCycleShop
FB: Pop-Cycle Shop
www.PopCycleShop.com

Pop Cycle Masks

QMULATIVE 

Known for his hand crafted pocket tees, Quinlan Wilhite has turned his Phoenix Fashion Week Designer of the Year sewing skills towards masks. His masks are cotton with a filter pocket, elastic hoops and they are washable. When you purchase a mask, he will donate a mask to an individual in need. 

Cost: $15 for ages 6 and up. Shipping is available.
IG: @Qmulative
FB: Qmulative
www.QmulativeBrand.com

Masks prints by QMULATIVE

SWEET NOLA BOUTIQUE 

What started out as making masks to donate to frontline workers in Tucson evolved into an effort to make over 4,000 masks sent to the VA Hospital, Banner, Emerge Women’s Center and other facilities and community front line workers across the country. Now masks are available to individuals for purchase or by donation to organizations and facilities that need them most. Their masks have 3-layers with 100% cotton face covers and 3 styles are available: pleated, face conforming or rope tie. Custom requests for wording, logos or embroidery are welcome. Random prints are sent for online orders. If a donation is needed please email riapatino09@gmail.com for consideration and pick up arrangements. 

Cost: $7 for adult and children sizes. Shipping and local pick-up is available.  520-260-0271
FB: Sweet Nola Baby Boutique
www.SweetNolaBaby.com 

Sweet Nola Baby Boutique

TINY & TOOTHLESS 

Tiny and Toothless was started in 2015 by Ruth Latona, a high school art teacher and mother. She primarily makes baby bibs and bandanas, but when the pandemic shutdown occurred, she quickly pivoted to where the need was strongest and started sewing masks. Her masks are contoured with three layers of 100% cotton and ties. Custom made for small children up to larger sizes. 

Cost: $10 regardless of the size. Shipping is $2 to anywhere in the U.S.A, no matter what quantity is ordered.
Tiny&Toothless@gmail.com
IG: @TinyandToothless
FB: Tiny and Toothless
www.Etsy.com/Shop/TinyandToothless

Tiny & Toothless cactus mask

WHY I LOVE WHERE I LIVE 

This popular gift shop celebrating our city, offers a range of fun local goods from clothing and jewelry to stickers, books, toys and games. Their face masks are cotton with elastic hoops and a filter pocket, and are created by their in-house seamstress and for every mask sold, they will donate to a local organization in need.  

Cost: $15, for ages 6 and up. Shipping is available.
520-422-5770 
Info@WhyILoveWhereILive.com
IG: @WhyILoveWhereILive
FB: Why I Love Where I Live 
www.WhyILoveWhereILive.com

Tucson Together mask available at Why I Love Where I Live

WORST WESTERN 

Known for handmade lingerie with an artistic flair and ready to wear garments, Diana Williams, designer and seamstress of Worst Western, believes that learning a trade like sewing not only empowers you but allows you to be of service to your community. She began offering free masks to encourage their use to those who may have been resistant to the idea or for those who are not able to afford one. All masks in the shop are hand printed and pieced together at a sewing machine by Diana. Her masks come in a range of materials and feature elastic straps. Strings can be added. 

Cost: $8 to $25, adult and kid sizes available. Free shipping. WorstWestern@gmail.com
IG: @WorstWestern
www.ShopWorstWestern.com

Black & White Dust Mask by Worst Western

An Excerpt from Tucsonan Lydia Millet’s New Novel

June 1, 2020 |

A Children’s Bible

Lydia Millet has lived in Tucson since 1999, a year before her second novel, George Bush, Dark Prince of Love, appeared. In the years since, while working as a writer and editor for the Center for Biological Diversity, she has published 16 more books of fiction for young and adult readers. Of her latest, A Children’s Bible (Norton, $25.95), Washington Post books editor Ron Charles writes, “I swear on a stack of copies that it’s a blistering little classic: ‘Lord of the Flies’ for a generation of young people left to fend for themselves on their parents’ rapidly warming planet.” Alternately dark and comic, it’s told from the point of view of a young woman who grows to maturity in a time that, like our own, is full of threats and terrors—but also great beauty. Copies of the book are available at Antigone Books (411 N. Fourth Ave.); call 792-3715 to reserve your copy for curbside pickup. Evoking a world of missing things that is all too recognizable, here’s a glimpse inside the covers. —Editor

By late winter all the vegetables we ate were coming from the hydroponic nursery and the indoor garden in the basement (what used to be the squash court). Fresh produce could no longer be ordered online—no refrigerated trucks were running, at least not for the average rich person in our neck of the woods—so we had to eat what we grew.

We didn’t have fruit, of course. We’d planted apple trees, but it’d be years before they were fruit-bearing: that planting was a Hail Mary. No citrus at all, and we missed our orange juice and lemonade. The parents missed their slices of lime.

And we had dry and canned goods, a trove far more extensive than the one in the silo. We had made sure of that.

When the day’s work was done we got into the habit of preparing dinner for everyone, with the help of some mothers whose highest-rated skills were cooking. We’d all sit around in the vast sunken living room of fake Italy, with its wall of glass that opened onto the patio and the pool. We held our plates on our laps, eating and talking about the things we missed. The peasant mother was allowed to recite a blessing. Nondenominational.

She’d turned out to be no one’s mother at all. All she had was the cat. But I still thought of her as the peasant one.

Then we’d go through our missings. That was what my little brother called them. We figured it was healthy, for the parents especially, not to try to deny the fact of what had been lost but to acknowledge it.

Someone would mention a colleague or an ex, a grandparent or a bicycle or a neighborhood or a store. A beach or a town or a movie. Someone would say “ice cream” and someone else would say “ice-cream sandwiches, Neapolitan,” and we’d riff on it, go down a list of favorite ice-cream novelties that couldn’t be had anymore for love or money.

“Bars,” a parent would say, and they’d rhyme off the bars they’d been to, the dive bars, the Irish bars, the cantinas. The hotel bars, the bars with jukeboxes, the bars with pool tables or views of parks and rivers. The bars that revolved. The bars at the top of glittering skyscrapers far away. In the once-great cities of the world.Excerpted from A Children’s Bible: A Novel by Lydia Millet. Copyright © 2020 by Lydia Millet. Published with permission of W. W. Norton. All rights reserved.

Zócalo Magazine – March 2020

March 4, 2020 |

Zócalo Magazine – January 2020

January 3, 2020 |

The (Re)Birth of Downtown

December 4, 2019 |

Revisiting Steve Farley’s Broadway Tile Murals, 20 Years On

There’s not much in our city’s history that can be pinned down with a precise date—not the time the first O’odham people settled here, not the week when someone thought it might be nice to build an adobe hut within sight of the Santa Cruz, not the hour when a bureaucrat released the funds to destroy the barrios that lay under what’s now the community center. But it is possible to put a date to the day when, for better or worse, a long-declining, somnolent downtown took the first step toward being reborn: May 1, 1999.

To understand that claim, we need to step back a couple of years before then. Steve Farley, a native of California, was fairly new to Tucson, a transplant from his native Southern California by way of a stint in the Bay Area, where he’d worked for a few years for the weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian and then started his own graphic design business. He wanted to get back to drier, hotter country, but Southern California was expensive and crowded. Enter Tucson, a welcoming community for an artist—and Farley was soon right at home here, doing art photographic and graphic design.

Somewhere along the way, not long after he arrived, opportunity came knocking. Farley and his then-wife, Regina Kelly, were working on a public history project with teenagers on the west side, immersing themselves in local lore. Hearing of the project, a resident, Gilbert Jimenez, came to a meeting with a stack of photo albums dating back half a century. The first image Farley and Kelly saw was of a young, purposeful-looking Jimenez striding along Scott Avenue, a pile of books riding on his right hip, headed toward school. Other photographs followed, taking from an angle low enough that the subjects of the portraits appeared to be superheroes out of a comic book, men, women, and children on their way to meet destiny. Jimenez was one, the future his. The pose was much in the vein of the social realist art of the time, but in the half-century since it had fallen out of fashion—and now here it was, with numerous examples to point to.

Farley, who about that time had come up with a new process for printing photographs on ceramic tiles, resolved that one day he was going to figure out a way to incorporate those images into some project or another. Opportunity knocked again, just a few weeks later, when a “call to artists” arrived in the mail from the Tucson Pima Arts Council. Four walls, the call announced, were going to be made available for public art at the new terminus of the Aviation Corridor with Broadway at the underpass under the Southern Pacific railroad bridge, the eastern gateway to downtown. Farley’s idea was to use that space to erect a tile mural highlighting the street photography of the sort he had seen in Gilbert Jimenez’s album. He set about writing a proposal detailing that vision and the processes he would use to print the photographs, a process he calls “more biological than technical.”

“There were a lot of entries,” says downtown art gallery owner Terry Etherton, who was on the advisory board of TPAC at the time. “We narrowed it down to five. I didn’t know who Steve was, only that he was new to town and that he’d never done any public art before. But his proposal was so well grounded in history that it seemed like he’d been here all the time, and it was so well thought through, down to the tiniest detail and the last penny. Really, it was the smartest proposal I’d ever seen, and nothing honored Tucson’s history like his did. I supported the project from the get-go. Twenty years later, I’m glad I did.”

The other judges for the competition were unanimous in agreeing with Etherton, and they awarded Farley $171,000 to complete the project—a sum that sounds comfortable until you calculate the costs of making the art and spread it out over the number of hours required to make that art, at which point Farley might have done better to take a straight job.

He didn’t, but the race was on: From the time he started in earnest until the unveiling wasn’t much more than a year, and in the meanwhile there were photographs to find and tiles to make. The word went out that Farley and Kelly were on the hunt for street images from downtown’s golden age, back when all the city’s barrios were alive and the city center was where you had to come to buy shoes or a soda and see a film. Images began to turn up. One photo of an impossibly thin, impeccably dressed young man, a young god whose shoes gleamed whiter than the sun, turned out to be beloved musician Eduardo “Lalo” Guerrero. He joined in the cause, performing at a benefit concert at which Linda Ronstadt made an appearance. Consciousness raised, the word out, people from all over the community began to turn up with images, and where there had been a desert before there was now a flood.

Meanwhile, Farley, Kelly, and the budding researchers with whom they were working began to find out more about the street photographers themselves, who freelanced for a downtown druggist with a charmingly simple operation: They’d snap a photo of an approaching pedestrian, give that person a card with a number and an address at which to pick up the shot, then develop the film and deliver it. A package of eight prints went for a buck and a quarter. The work was artful, capturing downtowners and visitors in midstride as they went about their day. The ploy worked, too. The photographers took as many as a thousand shots a day of the people whom Farley called “heroes and neighbors,” doing a thriving business until downtown slowly began to board up in the late 1950s and early ’60s, as shops moved to new centers such as El Con and Casas Adobes and the north and east sides exploded.

(Steve Farley at the mural dedication in 1999. Photo by Andrea Smith.)

Anyone who’s listened to Steve Farley make a political pitch in the years since knows that he knows that the devil truly is in the details—and that he’s a detail man par excellence. Finding those street images was a monumental undertaking in itself, one fraught with difficulties, for, as Farley says, “There’s always a risk of putting real people in public art.” No one ever complained, he adds, and as it turned out, it was just as difficult to narrow the number of images down once a mountain of them had been assembled as it had been to find and identify them.

In any event, rounding up all those images involved coordinating the efforts of many people and reaching out to many more, making cold calls, knocking on doors, talking and talking, fundraising, meeting, planning, delivering—in short, doing politics. Farley completed the project on time and under budget, but, as he says, “the bug had bit.” It wasn’t too long before he was running for public office, serving as a state representative and later senator, mounting runs for governor of Arizona and, this year, mayor of Tucson.

Working with longtime partners Rick Young and Tom Galloway, Farley has since gone on to do public art projects in cities all over the country. (See www.tilography.com for more on them.) Fifteen years after the Broadway Underpass mural project, the modern streetcar came onto the scene in Tucson, something that he’d been promoting—and scrapping for in the legislature—for years. That added a whole new layer to the downtown he envisioned as a newcomer, one that, at least in its better manifestations, is the one we have today.

As for the murals themselves, Farley points out that, unlike most available surfaces in this town, they’ve never been seriously vandalized. That might be the luck of the draw, but more likely it’s a sign of the respect that everyone in the community has for the army of ghosts and elders who inhabit those walls. A few tiles have been damaged here and there, and the city hasn’t done much to correct it, about the only downside that Farley finds in the whole project. The city, he says, has long since fallen down on its contractual obligation to maintain the project, a matter of some caulk and a few hundred dollars.

That would be money wisely spent, for the Broadway Underpass mural project is among the best known and most heavily visited sites of public art in the state, framed by Simon Donovan’s striking Rattlesnake Bridge on one side and a growing, constantly evolving downtown on the other. Great-grandchildren come to see their great-grandparents enshrined in tile, standing ten feet tall. Their great-grandparents oblige, looking like demigods—more than ordinary mortals, at least—in their crisp new blue jeans, their Stetsons and fedoras, their nearly pressed wool dresses and brilliant white shirts. Abuelas look at themselves as young girls, old men as boys out for a lark on a hot Saturday afternoon. Developers walk alongside artisans, cotton farmers, and window shoppers, lost and now refound in time. As Farley said in his speech marking the opening of the mural, “we have enough monuments to lizards and ocotillos. We have too few celebrating the everyday Tucsonans who built Tucson.” 

Call it May 1, 1999, then, the day when Tucson, with a wall of art 18 feet tall by 158 feet long, took a giant step toward remaking a moribund downtown into the space it is today. “The murals were an intentional way of reminding people that downtown was and can be the heart of the community,” says Farley, 20 years on. “And they honor a past that we should always remember.”

Famed Filmmaker John Waters Brings His Christmas Cheer to Tucson

December 3, 2019 |

(Photo: John Waters, by Greg Gorman)

“Merry Christmas? How about an angry Christmas?” So says John Waters, filmmaker, raconteur, writer, traveler, and bibliophile, who’s on his way to Tucson to deliver what he describes as “70 minutes of me talking about politics, culture, and everything that has to do with Christmas. How do you go back home when it’s a civil war out there? Some families are very tense, knocking over the Christmas tree—just like what happened in Female Trouble, only about Trump and not cha-cha.”

Waters is no stranger to Tucson, though it’s been a few years since he was last here. He’ll be presenting his show A John Waters Christmas at the Rialto Theatre on December 9 at 8:00 pm, fast on the heels of his new book Mr. Know-It-All (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Always on the go, always in an airplane bound somewhere far away from his hometown of Baltimore, he writes there, “Sometimes I feel like a low-rent Oscar Wilde touring the coal-mining towns of America as he did in the 1880s.” One of those coal-mining towns is ours, just one of 16 to which Waters will bring his Christmas cheer over a period of three weeks. Tucson figures early in the tour because, Waters notes after years of hard experience on the road, you want to do your shows in cities where the weather is likely to be rotten last—and that means the final stop is Chicago. But, no matter how clement the weather here, Waters isn’t likely to notice. “I go from the airport to the hotel to the theater to the hotel to the airport,” he says. “I’m almost never found in real life.”

The book is vintage Waters, a blend of his hallmark sardonic humor with reflections on his work as a filmmaker and guerrilla fighter in the culture wars. On one page he’s taking on Pope Francis, writing that when he becomes the first man to get pregnant, then he’ll be worth listening to on what women should do with their bodies: “Not until he’s given birth to a female transgender Christ child of a different color will we indulge him with a little queer mercy of our own.” On another he’s dissing Madonna for stealing Blondie’s shtick, though not without good cause: Dare rest for a minute on your laurels in show biz, and someone will come along to make it theirs. And on the matter of religion, ever a Christmas-worthy topic, he throws his lot in with the nonbelievers, though in no organized way: Put them in a room, and atheists will drink too much, he says. “Plus atheists dress badly, too. It’s unfortunate, but they are a dreary lot.”

The best parts of the book are his recollections of making his films, of which he names the little-seen Cecil B. Demented as his favorite. “I guess all directors have a soft spot for one of their films that did the worst at the box office,” he notes. Even Serial Mom had its difficulties, he allows, while films like Cry-Baby and Hairspray have entered the mainstream, if improbably, while the films that earned him the sobriquet “The King of Puke” have been enshrined as cult classics, plate-licking, scratch-and-sniff horrors, and all. On the mainstream front, he’s even become a spokesperson for Nike, which, he says, is “ludicrous and ironic.”

But, notes Waters, there are only so many theaters out there and only so many bookings, so in order to keep an act alive, you have to keep putting out new material. “This is a whole new show,” he says, talking with Zócalo a few weeks before the curtain goes up. “I’ve written about three-quarters of it, and I haven’t learned a bit of it yet. But it’s all new stuff—I try not to put anything in the show from the book, since if you’ve bought the book you already know it. I try hard to give you your money’s worth.” Angry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!