Best of Tucson 1996: Best Place To Soak Up Urban Ambiance

Best Place To Soak Up Urban Ambiance

Fourth Avenue

READERS' PICK: Back when cartoons had some integrity, every so often you might catch a classic Warner Bros. episode framing the adventures of City Mouse and his visiting cousin, Country Mouse. The latter was constantly confounded by the former's thriving urban lifestyle. We know it's a stretch, but we're gonna go out on a limb and say if City Mouse got drafted by the Toros and moved to Tucson, Country Mouse would find him living somewhere along Fourth Avenue.

Just a short walk north from downtown, the avenue supports restaurants, cafés, nightclubs, smoke shops, galleries, salons, countless shopping playgrounds and a functioning (usually) trolley system. Fourth Avenue offers a taste of urbanity, Tucson style: street musicians whiling away the hours, scruffy punks pestering you for spare change, a steady flow of low-speed traffic, and a pervasive pulse of energy. The eclectic charm of this once-declining downtown artery brings you out of the desert, down from the mountains, and in from the suburbs for a vigorous sample of city life and entertainment--a most enjoyable glimpse of the American cultural rat race.

READERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: Downtown Saturday Night. See Best Place To People Watch for details.

STAFF PICK: Breakfast at Tiffany's offers one vision of urban life. The Out-of-Towners offers another. Blade Runner offers still a third view of what a city can be. But nowhere else can you catch glimpses of all three than Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. The art deco lobby, the airy Cup Café next door, and the venerable Tap Room provide the perfect settings for the fine, ongoing human pageant that reminds us just how varied a species we humans are.