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Anyone living in or lived in Tucson?

Travel Info
I'm hoping to attend the UA next year. Can you tell me about the city- shopping, weather, crime, employment, food, housing. Feel free to talk about anything else.
Thanks!!!

Travel Tips

I have lived in Tucson as a college student for the last 4.5 years. Generally, the weather is warm and sunny except for the monsooin season during the late summer where it rains a considerable amount compared to the rest of the year. A good place to know the details is Yahoo weather for Tucson ( http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/usaz02... ).

The shopping here isn't too bad, but I don't go to the three (technically 4) malls in town. The two larger ones are Tucson Mall and Park Mall which are pretty packed during the weekends, but I haven't go in them in years. Most of my stuff comes from the 4th Ave district which is close to the UA and caters to the artist community with organic foods, coffee houses, and vintage clothing stores.

Employment here is dismal if you want to get a decent job without a degree. If you are going to school, there are plenty of jobs that will cater to your schedule, but don't plan to be making $15/hr. A good place to find work for students is on campus as office help or working for a department. Don't work for the food places unless you want to be busting your butt most of the time. At least if you are sitting at a desk, you get downtime where you can do homework or something while still on the clock.

Crime is generally not too bad. Property theft is a big one here, but it is all dependent on where you live. Plenty of my non-student friends live in the ghetto, and there are many of them. Generally, most places around the UA campus are good unless you go too far south of 22nd Street or just north of Grant Rd in many places. The best thing to do is go to the Tucson Police and talk to them about crime rates. They can't say that one place is better to live than another, but they can tell you where crime is high and what areas of town have had the most complaints. After being at one of the largest off campus student apartment complexes (near Wetmore and 1st Ave), I have to say that I would never live in that situation again because I am way past the drinking and partying stuff that went on there. It was very cheap, but spiritually, it was draining. Living on campus can be bad, and I would only do it if I was a grad student, but it is also a good way to meet people. Figure that the further you live off campus, the more time it will take you to get on campus. The bus system in Tucson is great, but it still takes time if you live 6-7 miles away.

That brings me to traffic which is horrible in the winter. Rush hour in Tucson is very bad because the city was never designed for a million people and there have been no real large improvements since the '60s except the Aviation Highway. Getting anywhere from about 3:30PM-6:00PM is a chore unless you take the backroads or lesser streets like Pima Rd. This is one of the reasons I stay off the roads around this time.

Food is abundant just outside of the UA campus. The cheapest food is at Fry's on Grant Rd and 1st Ave. There is also a Safeway on Kino Pkwy and Broadway and an Albertson's just north of Glenn and Campbell. For dining there are many ethnic places on Fourth Ave and the downtown area. Cafe Milano is good for authentic Italian sandwiches, Casbah Teahouse has loads of tea and Indian food, The Grill has an old fashioned American diner feel, and there are many others. If you like clubs and bars, 4th Ave and Congress St have a dozen or so places to go. Heart Five is my favorite dance place I have gone to, but I am going to check out Asylum later because it is the only bar/dance club that is specifically into Electronica music (Industrial, Synthpop, Etc.).

To sum up Tucson, it is nice here most of the time. I enjoy where I live, it is a cozy house that is away from crime, tourists, and college students but still accessible to campus, 4th Ave, and many grocery stores. The cold is horrible for me, but anything below 60 is bad in my mind.; when it is warm, Tucson is great for hiking and roadbiking. I don't think I would want to spend the rest of my life here, but for a half decade or so, it is bad at all.

Others
I just visited there this winter. All I can say is plan on driving - a lot. Everything was really really spread out in every direction. I don't know if this will restrict you at all as a college student, and if you'll be able to have a car. Then again U of A is the only real attraction in Tucson, so there's probably a lot of stuff right near the campus.

Also, it's not as hot as you may think year round. Winter is still winter (they had snow this year!)