Driving into Tucson I used the roadtrip-enabling device (iPhone) to find a place to stay. The Hotel Congress was built in 1919 across from the train depot. It doesn’t have TVs in the rooms; instead it has crackly vintage radios which match the vintage furniture well. The entertainment (if you’re not reading) comes in the form of two bars downstairs: the bar-bar, pictured from its patio, and the rock-club-bar, which had 80s night dancing that night (I passed on that — I was reading).
Not long after I got back to LA I was talking to a total stranger about Tucson and told him I stayed in the Hotel Congress. He was thrilled — did I go to the cafe? And yes, I had. The hotel also has a cafe, and it has a big wide lobby with chairs and another bar and wifi, all of which I guess count as more entertainment. Anyway, the Cup Cafe’s breakfast was delicious. Did I notice the floor? Why yes I had: layers of pennies below a hard clear surface. Did I know how many pennies were there, he asked?
Um, no.
Something like 180,000.
Apparently they were counted before being embedded in the floor.
Tonight Howe Gelb is performing in the cafe with Wolvenhand. Howe Gelb was (is?) the main guy behind Giant Sand. Wolvenhand is David Eugene Edwards, who was the lead singer of 16 Horsepower.
Really wish they’d been on the bill when I was crashing upstairs.
But I guess I’ll just have to go back to Arizona (especially now that they have Martin Luther King Day, I can do so without guilt).
