Tucson, AZ is smelly.

Tucson, AZ is Smelly and Weird

By Mark Whittaker




Having grown up and lived on the California coast my whole life I became accustomed to the scents that paradisal location has to offer.

My hometown is Carmel, CA on the Monterey Peninsula. With thick pine trees, foggy beaches and wood burning stoves, that little haven smells like a fairy village of yesteryear.

Growing up in Los Angeles had it’s difficulty, what with smog and traffic and Hollywood, but because of it’s sparseness and beaches I never really considered that mega-opolis “smelly”. It was and is too plastic to be so.

College in Santa Barbara had hints of money and stiff skunky weed mixed with ocean breezes and yard beers down on State Street. Great aromas that go well together if I say so.

And for 12 years I lived and prospered in San Francisco, which has a fine spread of DJ lounges, Fisherman’s Wharf, tourism cash, fantastic drugs, dark beer, legendary heavy metal bands and oiled up muscular gay men. Surrounded on three sides by the Pacific, San Francisco was a bouillabaisse of amazing scents and sensory overload.

Then, one day, I fell in love. It came out of nowhere. I met the girl of my dreams but there was one hitch:

She lived in Tucson, AZ.

My part time job that last year in San Francisco was bartending an outside bar as part of a larger establishment down on the Wharf. One night a group of girls saddle up and engage in a night of absolute drunken revelry. Turns out they were all in town for a friend’s wedding shower and they all hailed from different locales. Most of which, though, lived in Arizona.

Going crazy from a long distance relationship I decided rather quickly to put the apartment up for rent, quit all jobs and gigs, sell what I didn’t need, pack up the biggest rental car I could muster and drive 13 hours to Tucson, AZ to be with the girl I was madly in love with.

It was dawn when I first hit the highway and dark when I hit Tucson. Once in the city limits, I rolled down the window to shout “Hello Tucson! There’s a new idiot in town!” But once the window was opened, that heavy blast of freeway air careening its way into my face and car and my mouth ready to shout, I was hit with something else unexpected.

A stench!

Once I got to the house that I have never seen with a girl I sort of knew and would now call my own and home, I had to ask.

“Say...what is that crazy smell?”

She didn’t understand at first. Living in a place for almost a decade you get used to all the olfactory notions it offers up. But the California kid here wasn’t used to this. I mean, really, I had been through Tucson three times in my life. Once as a kid and twice on my way to Austin, TX to gas up and grab a burrito. This was new and strange territory for me. And the smell was something I had to get used to.

The overall stink that wafts over Tucson is one of backed-up street gutter. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Right by the intersection of I-10 the smell gets so foul that rolling up windows and diving from the stink is the only intelligent action one can take. Combined with the usual 100+ degree temperatures, the smell overcomes the populace and we all live in a seminal fear and denial that something is afoul in Tucson.

That first week was a rumbling mixture of adjustment, bliss, decompression and joy that I had a garden to work in again. When the lady would go off to work I would be in the small courtyard digging up and planting, all the while with my nose perked up and investigating the hot muck broth of Tucson.

“What is that?”, I would often wonder. “Is that...cheese? Or something? Smells like...grandma’s old vinyl couch.”

Packed tight between Nogales, Mexico and Phoenix, AZ, Tucson is subjugated to air that is all together stale and fiery. No ocean breezes here, the occasional windstorm would fist through and send old newspapers and meth addicts dancing in the air like that bag from “American Beauty”.

Then one day, it hit me. Hard.

Tucson has a combination of smells that will rival any in Detroit or Singapore. Trust me on this one. When you come to visit just stick your nose deep into the Southern Arizona air and see, well smell, for yourself.

After a month of living in Tucson the smells began to take form. I was able to single out the odors with some aplomb, much like the educated palate of a wine snob or food critic you read in the local paper. Everyday I would be out and about exploring this new homebase of mine; walking and driving down the various nooks and crannies, delving into different neighborhoods, discovering strange shops and eateries, drinking in dark and dive-y bars and most of all uncovering the mystery of that distinct aroma that is Tucson, AZ!

Here’s what I came up with. Follow along on these 5 easy steps.

1) That “smell” I discovered upon entering the city? It comes from the sewage treatment plant by the highway. All of Tucson’s foul waste and excrement goes there to be dealt with and it resides right off the off-ramp towards downtown. That’s the odd account of this town. They don’t even try to mask the flavor and death hold that a sewage treatment plant will provide. It’s not fifty miles off somewhere in the arid desert, something that Arizona has plenty of by the way, it’s just off of the I-10 welcoming visitors from the north with a diverse cavalcade of rot that smacks your nose like an angry prize fighter.

There are good days and bad days with this sewage place. Some days they seem to have shut off the stink valve and go off for a coffee break. The air is once again filled with the honeysuckle beauty and dense smoke from the bar-b-que pits. Then, on most occasions, the plant is running full force, possibly to keep up with a heavy poop delivery and the city once again lingers under the looming hate of backed up potties.

2) The sewage plant is one thing. That’s an easy one. But like a fine pinot noir, you have to subtle out the various flavors that tickle the hairs in your nose.

Mesquite Trees line most of the streets and courtyards here. Mesquite Trees alone are a doom of sorts. They have long sharp thorns that stick out of gangly branches and catch many an eye and jugular of passers by. This is only the mask it wears to let everyone know that Mesquite Trees harbor a molasses-meets-moss scent that hints towards wet dirt a dog may use as his outhouse. And we have one right outside our garden. In the spring blooms of daffodils and jasmine, the stinging tree shags over the walkway and releases a pungent ambiance that does not go well with our outdoor grilling. Mesquite bar-b-ques are the way to go man...but that’s after they have been dried and packaged. In the raw wild, these trees let you know who’s boss by excreting a rotting syrup flavor to top off the sewage plant we already learned about.

3) Being so close to Mexico gives Tucsonians a flavor of that country like no other. The food here is amazing, especially the “Sonoran Hot Dog” vendors. A Sonoran Hot Dog is regular hot dog done South of the Border. It’s bacon wrapped and served with hot chiles, cheese, beans and mayonnaise. They’re good. Sloppy, but good. Yet the downfall of these stands are the fact that hey pump out a greasy smoke log into the air that covers the surrounding area in a warm blanket of bacon slop and farts. And Sonoran Hot Dog stands are everywhere here. The perfect treat for a lunchtime snack or severe hangover, Sonoran Hot Dogs not only taste good but will invite hungry jackals from miles away with the combing sick breath of overdone beans, crusty grills and the exploding gas of its patrons.

They are a sight and smell not to be missed.

4) Lastly, the cakey air of Tucson is wrought with one disaster I had yet to fully foresee. California is so strict with its smoking laws that it is almost criminal to light up anywhere within 100 yards of human contact. This is great for me because I don’t smoke, never even took a puff, due to the fact that cigarettes just absolutely appal me. But the thing is...I like to drink. So going to bars, especially in Nevada, I am usually met with a smelly cloud of smoke that sticks to my skin and clothes for weeks after.

My first full night in Tucson was a bar crawl and I almost died. Not from the overload of beer and Jager shots, but from the bars themselves and the smoking that goes on in them.

Only recently has Arizona passed the “non-smoking” law for public places but currently, the bars here are stinkholes from eons of toothless bikers, mullet haired yokels and douchebag college kids chain smoking as they chain drink Bud Light. In most metropolitan cities, a “dive bar” is a fun and curious place to find. No pretension, no top shelf anything and no boloney, dive bars are the way to go for those who just want to tie one on and have no intention of being seen or making connections. Unless, of course, you like motorcycle mamas with jacked up grills that tug job you in the front seat for a pack of Marlboros and a shot of Jack.

Tucson is nothing but dive bars. Per square acreage, throwing a dead cat will most likely result in hitting a bar filled with the downtrodden, all smoking and making me move the air in front of my face like a tight sphincter’d society woman dramatically swishing away in front of her nose with her hand when anyone that makes less than six figures walks by.

The bars here just stink. Period. When you walk in you’re suckerpunched by stale beer, heavy smoke and those who think deodorant is a mythological invention. And due to the large volume of dive bars, usually with the doors open because of the heat and high cost of air coolant, the mordant reek climbs and is soon a part of the already fragrant air.

Tucson on a whole is a fantastic city. The mix of U of A students, immigrants, wealthy land investors, hippie artists, frustrated rockers, vagrants, transients, elderly Jewish folk and guys like me, you are met with a whirlwind of cultures and ideas all put on the back burner because it’s usually too hot to move.

This clash of the mighty is under the scope of a smell that only the few can appreciate and even fewer can decipher. Now that I have lived here for a year the smell of Tucson is one to savor and study.

But sometimes...sometimes!...that sewage treatment plant gets backed up and I long for the soft wisps of the California coast. All that is but a memory now.

The smell of Tucson, AZ though, will always be burned in my brain..

And most important, my nose!