A Beer or Three in Tucson

We arrived in Tucson in the early afternoon and used our finely honed sense for finding decent places to free park on our map. Our first priority when looking for a place to park in a city is finding a park or green space marked on our map. A park not only gives us a place to walk Boris, but it also has the double advantage that it often gives us some shade from roadside trees. In addition, nobody cares if we park outside a park; if we park outside someone’s house or business, there’s a good chance that we’ll piss them off. Parking in the car park of a municipal park can be risky business, as most have bylaws preventing camping and overnight parking, and there is always a chance that a policeman or warden will move us on. Parking alongside a park has always worked well for us. Once we’ve located a few parks we choose one which is close enough for us to walk into the town centre, but not so central that we’ll make a nuisance or spectacle of ourselves. If there is still a choice of appropriate parks, independent coffee shops and bike shops usually indicate that an area is amenable.
We quickly found a quiet and central place to park in Tucson, but the dry climate and poor soil means that shade trees are in short supply and so we had to settle for a spot in the sun.

The cloud cover had increased as we’d driven towards and over the border, and the temperature was barely 30°C by the time arrived in Tucson. Consequently shade was not a critical issue when we had more pressing issues at hand. With the truck parked we immediately went into the centre, in search of a beer emporium.

Mexican beer ranges from terrible to fairly good, but the problem for us is not the quality, but the limited choice; for 3 months we had been drinking the same few acceptable but uninspiring lagers. Whether you buy Modelo, Tecate, Pacifico, Sol, corona, dos equis or Indio, you are essentially getting the same thing, a low strength, low taste lager. Many of the Mexican beers are better than their American counterparts such as Miller or Coors but in general they are not up to European standards such as Kronenberg, Stella Artois, or Lowebrau. Mexico does produce two decent beers, namely Negra Modelo and Bohemia Obscura, but even these get boring after 3 months, and we only found them infrequently. Imported beers are expensive and hard to find in Mexico, and are usually limited to more uninspiring lagers such as Heineken or Budweiser. Finding decent stouts, porters, IPAs or dark ales is almost impossible.

After a ten minute walk into central Tucson we hit gold with World of Beer, where we ordered a triple hopped IPA and a 9% ABV Imperial Stout, both on tap. It’s easy to criticise American beer in the UK, where pretty much all we import are the watery domestic brands, but in many of the states that we’ve visited, the choice of awesome craft beers is better than you’d find at equivalent pubs, bars or off licences in England. With our thirst quenched we walked up 4th Avenue, unable to choose from the multitude of restaurants that were not serving tortilla based meals. We settled on Pizza and the rest of the day was spent in a joyous delirium or corn free food and strong, tasty beer.

In a thinly veiled effort to prevent US citizens stocking up on cheap and good quality food across the border, America has made it difficult to bring any fresh food back into the US from Mexico. Consequently, our second day on American soil was spent filling our fridge. As is the case across the US, we found nowhere to buy food except at a major supermarket chain, but thankfully one has a wide choice of independent liquor stores at which to buy wine and beer. We quickly found a store with a huge choice of local and national ales. Not only did we get a crate of beer, but we also made a friend and got given a shady place to park for the night. Unfortunately the clouds of the previous day had lulled us into a false sense of security, and with clear skies the temperature quickly rose above 40°C.

We moved the truck to the shady front yard of our friendly local liquor store manager, and waited for him to finish his shift and show us around central Tucson. That evening we were given a tour of central Tucson’s beer drinking establishments, and at last we were able to fill the pint glass shaped hole which had diminished our quality of life so drastically since leaving Texas in February. The following morning demanded a slow start, but with the thermometer at 44°C for much of the previous day, we were adamant that we should continue our crawl north in search of cooler weather.