Arizona Day 1- Outlaws, Open Mics, and the OK Corral
My first day in Arizona started with a trip to Cartel Coffee Lab because of all the local coffee shops in Tucson, I thought they had the best and most questionably tasteful name. What was undoubtedly tasty however was their coffee and their particularly excellent cranberry-walnut scones.
After my very healthy breakfast, I set out to see the town of Tombstone, home of the famous O.K. Corral and just about every Western famous gunslinger on either side of the law at one point or another. It was little bit out of the way, but I wanted to see it and I wasn’t sure I’d get another chance.
When I got there, I was stoked to see that they’ve made an effort to preserve the old west aesthetic, claiming that it’s the town that was “too tough to die”. While the town center was all located along one dirt road, you couldn’t call it a one horse because there were at least four horses there to pull the carriages that gave tours of historic places. I know that it might seem sort of cheesy and touristy, but I loved that they leaned in to their historical reputation, and it really is just cool to get actually interact with a place you felt like you’d only read about in books and see in movies. Plus the people that live there and work there are real modern people not historical reenactors (not that there’s anything wrong with that), so while many of them are happy to teach you about the history, if you want to actually have real conversations with people without feeling like you’re in a simulation you can.
My first stop in Tombstone was the original Bird Cage Theatre, one of the buildings still standing in town. This unassuming building saw a little bit of everything as it was the unofficial hub of gambling, drinkin’, prostitution, as well as the arts with traveling musicians and theater companies swinging through from time for a little taste of outlaw country. If those walls could talk, they’d probably be screaming.
Inside the theater was a veritable curiosity cabinet of different artifacts from Tombstone’s heyday. These ranged from items belonging legendary figures like Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and probably most unexpectedly president William McKinley to everyday objects like chamber pots, wash basins, and cannonballs (all the essentials). The things I liked best were old photographs of gunslingers because I always forget that photography goes that far back and it’s cool seeing what people actually looked like (turns out Wyatt Earp wasn’t actually much of an Owen Wilson lookalike) and some classic hoax fiji mermaids, which were actually monkey skeletons sewn to fish skeletons which somehow fooled lots of people for years despite looking absolutely horrifying. The Little Mermaid for sure would have been a very different film.
I really enjoyed these displays but the coolest things to me where the things that were original to the building such as the stage and piano that performers used to use, and the original faro table where Doc Holliday used to deal cards and occasionally get into duels. I have no idea how Faro works as a card game, but I guess it got pretty intense. Then again maybe everything got a little rowdier back then, because there were still bullet holes in the wall next to the stage where an angered theater fan chose to voice his displeasure with a performance. I’m very glad none of my open mics have stakes that high. Behind the curtain of the stage was the most highly valued item in the theater’s collection, the original Black Mariah hearse that used to transport bodies up to the (in)famous Boot Hill Cemetery.
Down the stairs behind the stage was a window into the more nefarious dealings that went on in the Bird Cage. They had poker tables and “back rooms” where sex workers would have taken customers set up just as they would have been in their prime, though I suspect the Cryptkeeper playing the role of dealer was a bit of creative liberty calling to mind the place’s current reputation as a very haunted building. My favorite things I learned here were that the longest running poker game to take place lasted 8 years (!), and that one of the sex workers there named Josephine “Sadie” Marcus was in a love triangle with the town’s sheriff and none other than Wyatt Earp, who was married at the time himself. She ended up running away from the sheriff with Earp after the shootout at O.K. Corral, and she stayed with him in common law marriage until his death. I was very surprised to see that theater had a print of a nude daguerrotype that Sadie had taken that became highly circulated making one of the first virile celebrity nudes in America. I think it just goes to show you that whenever a new form of media comes out one of the first things people always do with it is make dirty pictures. It’s the human condition.
After the Birdcage Theater, my next stop was the Rose Tree Museum, which is not a museum about rose trees, but rather a pioneer museum that happens to have a very famous rose tree. The museum portion was founded by the children and grandchildren of James H. Macia and Ethel Robertson-Macia, a couple each encompassing two of Tombstone’s founding families. The museum featured a mix family artifacts and general memorabilia from pioneer days. Both the Macia and Robertson families had ties to silver mining and other local businesses, so the museum sought to tell the story of the everyday people in Tombstone who usually get lost among the gunslingers. I really loved the spirit of the museum, and the idea that history didn’t just happen to the names we remember. I was especially excited to see all the artifacts and photos from the Chinese families who helped found Tombstone, because they were very important to the burgeoning Western town’s community and economy and they get left out of the movies and stories more often than anyone. Other items in the first room included family photographs of the Robertson and Macia families going back to 1880 as well as a case full of antique guns, including some teeny tiny Derringers that always strike me as so impractical, because even if you weren’t an outlaw you didn’t want to be the only one in a town of ‘em to not have a gun.
The centerpiece of this room was a big diorama of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, where the brothers Earp and Doc Holliday squared off against an outlaw gang called the Cowboys. This did not actually happen at the O.K. Corral but somewhat near it, when the Cowboys refused to give up their guns to Virgil Earp who was the town marshall. To this day the question of who shot first is almost as hotly debated as the case of Han Solo and Greedo. The thing that I never knew was that Wyatt Earp was not the sheriff at the time, as he had recently lost a local election to John Behan who, interestingly enough, was also married to Wyatt’s lover Josephine Marcus. Classic small town drama, but with gunfights instead of passive aggressive comments.
The next room mostly contained furniture and artwork that had belonged to the Roberston and Macia families, including some oil paintings made by Alice Robertson, Tombstone’s first Roberston, and a beautiful handmade wooden calendar clock. The real star of the room though was the mesmerizing red and white wallpaper. I don’t remember if it was original to the house or not, but I like thinking that people in 1880 had that much pizzazz.
The other big ticket item in this room was another diorama this time of the Lucky Cuss Silver Mine, the first mine to have a big strike that kicked off Tombstone’s lifeblood industry. I did not know that silver was mined in the US before, since it doesn’t get talked about as much as the gold in them hills. It looks like backbreaking labor based on the diorama, but I’m incredibly impressed that pioneers figured out how to so many complex mining procedures given their technological limitations.
The next room in the house was mostly domestic items, bringing together different ceramics and pottery that would have been common in Tombstone households. The most shocking item here was something called a scolds bridle or gossip bridle, a metal lock and harness that was put over women’s faces if they talked too much. The little tag said it was from 1632 which still feels way too recent for how insanely not okay it is. The other big ticket item here was a flight jacket that belonged to Col. James H. Macia Jr. that he wore during the Doolittle Raids, the first successful US air raid on mainland Japan during WWII. There’s even a tear on the shoulder from when Macia, had to bail out over China after the raid. The fact that he survived to bring that jacket home from China was pretty incredible, and it was a nice non-pioneer addition to the Macia-Robertson family story.
The last room of the house was dedicated to Native American artifacts and stories from Tombstone. These included different tools , moccasins, ceramics, and weaving. There was also a photograph of the surrender of Geronimo that Gen. Charles Roberts had been present for as a young boy and gave to Mrs. Macia later in life. Other notable photographs included two of Mrs. Viola Slaughter, wife of the incredibly named Tombstone sheriff John Slaughter, demonstrating the proper and improper ways to carry a baby in a papoose using her adopted daughter Apache May. Apache May was found by John Slaughter abandoned in the woods of Mexico, and he took her back to Arizona with him raising her as his own daughter. Photos of the adorable baby became very popular and widely circulated, making Tombstone home to one of the first viral cute baby photos as well as the celebrity nude from earlier in the post. I guess people don’t really change all that much in what media they love.
The museum is not called the Pioneer House Museum however, so it was time to see the eponymous Rose Tree. In 1885, a resident of the boarding house that would eventually become the museum named Mary Gee planted a rose tree with some seeds from her native Scotland. The Scottish rose tree ended up thriving in Arizona, and it has since been dubbed the world’s largest rose tree. When the Macia-Robertson family took over the property they set up a trellis system so that the tree could keep growing while also providing shade for courtyard visitors. It was really something to see. The trunk of the tree is about 14 feet in diameter, but the branches filled the entire courtyard, and this seemed to be the perfect time to see it because it was just starting to bloom with white roses. It was really beautiful.
The last thing I learned was also my favorite thing to learn about which was that one of the oldest churches in Tombstone, St. Paul’s Episcopal, was also the only church that allowed a sex worker to be buried in their plot because she had donated so much money to the church over the years that they couldn’t say no to her. The man working at the museum was very gleeful in telling this story.
After the museum, I decided I had to see the O.K. Corral for myself. Every day they do a reenactment of the famous gunfight, but I was just in between stagings so all I could do was hang out in the gift shop. I didn’t mind this though, because I saw a family of other tourists visiting and they had a young daughter with Down Syndrome who was getting pulled around the O.K. Corral in a little red wagon filled with snacks and I don’t think anything could have made me happier. My little cousin with Down Syndrome can walk perfectly fine, but one summer he hurt his foot and needed a wheelchair, but now that he doesn’t need it he still insists on using it when he doesn’t feel like walking anymore so I hope he never learns what a sweet deal this little girl has. She was like a little queen, it was awesome.
Also in the O.K. Corral building was Tombstone’s Historama, which is a series of dioramas about the town’s history with narration by the great Vincent Price. I also was just in between showings of this, but I loved that they had this big poster of Vincent Price’s face made entirely of drawings of other people which was fittingly spooky and macabre.
After the corral, I went to Tombstone Art Gallery. It wasn’t a large gallery, but they had some great works by local artists including paintings, woodwork and photographs. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to take photos or not so I just captured my three favorite pieces below.
After all that gunslingin’, I decided to get some lunch at a place called Big Nose Kate’s Saloon because it had a great name, it was in a historic building, and they were supposed to have the best burgers in town. Big Nose Kate was one of the first sex workers in Tombstone, a business woman, and the girlfriend of Doc Holliday so she was Tombstone institution, and the saloon continues that legacy. I got a burger called the Mother Load, which came with mushrooms, swiss, a dollop of garlic butter, and some sprinkled parmesan cheese. It was phenomenal, with a whole lotta flavors all mingling together. It came with a nice side of fries, and I washed it all down with a black lager from Tombstone Brewing Company. It was a great lunch, made even better by the fact that there was live music the whole time. It was a bit country-ish for my tastes, but that felt like what you wanted out of an old west saloon.
After lunch, my last stop in tombstone was the famous Boot Hill Cemetery. A cemetery for gunfighters and lawmen and others who “died with their boots on”. The graveyard has about 300 graves, though only 205 were recorded. Many of the unrecorded dead were Chinese or Jewish which plays a big role in why they were omitted, but part of the omission is also just pure laziness. Still to make up for these oversights, there are now different memorials to the Jewish and Chinese settler of the area which I thought was a nice touch. The big tourist draws though are the three Cowboys that were killed at the O.K. Corral, Sheriff John Slaughter, and other famous outlaws. Most of the epitaphs were simply “killed”, “hanged”, or “shot”, though there were a few that bit more clever, my favorite being “Here Lies Lester Moore/ Four slugs from a 44/ No Les, No More”
After leaving Tombstone, I stopped back in Tucson for some coffee which was very much needed. I stopped at a place called Epic Cafe. I had a great iced coffee, but my favorite part of the cafe was that they had a little art exhibition of all chair themed artwork by an artist named Mark Mignerey. It’s such an odd theme, but I found it strangely compelling.
Before I left Tucson fully fueled to get to my open mics in Tempe, I made one more stop to see Diamondback Bridge, a pedestrian walkway over a busy highway shaped like a giant rattlesnake with the actual path looking like a long serpentine tongue. It was honestly a little creepy looking, on account of the eyes and exposed fangs making it look so angry, but as far as bridges go I like that they chose to do something out of the ordinary.
Walking back to my car from the big snake, I noticed another public art piece made to look like broken railroad tracks (possibly made out of railroad tracks, but I couldn’t find that out). It was a nice sculpture, but I actually liked the little poem that accompanied it even more, entitled Train: Abstraction by Genevieve Taggard. I like that because it was chiseled into the iron it was both writing and a sculpture all at once.
When I arrived in Tempe, I had some time before the open mics so I stopped at a classic Arizona establishment, Four Peaks Brewing. It was a lively little brewpub, with lots of folks hanging out, chatting, eating, drinking, and enjoying being out of work on a Monday. I ordered a flight of their oatmeal stout, their kilt lifter scotch ale, Sirius Black barrel aged stout, and a special cherry porter. The porter was a little bit too fruity for my preferences, but I really enjoyed everything else especially the Kilt Lifter which is their award winning flagship brew. I guess I was enjoying them a bit too carefully for the tastes of one of the women at the bar, who mistook me taking my time and enjoying each beer as me not really being much of a beer drinker so she reached over and put a straw in my porter and started drinking to rush me a bit. I think she thought I wasn’t even old enough to drink, but I showed her my ID and she and her boyfriend got a bit embarrassed, but I thought it was funny. For food, I was still pretty full from that monstrous burger I had for lunch, so I just an appetizer called Arizona Chicken Rolls which were a bit like egg rolls, but with thin strips of chickens, chile, cheese, and sweet jalapeno sauce. They were great bar food, with just enough kick to be tasty without overwhelming by bland Irish palette.
The first open mic I went to was at a pretty low-key sports bar called the Timeout Lounge. The bar was sort of divey, but all the comics were really solid, and they were all really kind and helpful to me before the mic started, shooting the breeze and recommending other mics to hit up while I was here. One of the guys, Nick Giasullo, also happened to be from Boston, but came out this way for a job. It’s a weird small world.
My favorite comic of this mic was a guy named Thomas Eppolito who did some really good self-deprecating jokes my favorite being “I know I’m out of shape but the other day I got out of breath talking. I felt like Bruce Willis in the 6th Sense ‘Oh god I’ve been fat the whole time"'
Other highlights:
Nick Giasullo- Planet Fitness: For when you’re broke, lazy, and have fitness issues
Eric Sanchez - I thought ahead and just bought diabetes socks.
My own set went okay, but it started out pretty tough. My usual opening few jokes didn’t really get anything, but then I realized that I had to lean into the diviness of the place. I thought that some of the other comics were doing “shocking” material just to do it, but then I realized that you basically had to do that just to get the bar patrons listening. Nobody’s gonna laugh, if they’re not even listening. So I gave up on the jokes I was telling halfway through the set, and just told my dirtiest joke, and then all of a sudden I got some laughs. I had their attention, so I did another kinda dirty joke, but then once they were listening I went back to telling the jokes I wanted to tell and they tended to a lot better than when I started out. It was a good lesson in reading a room and being flexible.
Not long after my set, at some of the other comics’ advice I went to another open mic at a place called Devil’s Advocate. There were a lot more comics and non-comics at this mic, so the audience was a bit stronger, and it was outside on patio with tiki lights was fun. They also had very cheap beers which was nice, because, since I came from the other mic, I was pretty late on the list.
This mic had a really strong bunch of comics, and the bigger audience energy let them get looser and stranger than a divier bar would really pay attention to, which I was a big fan of. I think my favorite set of the night just because it was the most unlike any set I’d seen before was from a guy named Dustin Hadlock. Dustin had some real Sam Kinnison energy, kind of walking the line between you knowing if he was making a joke or having an actual meltdown right in front of everyone’s eyes, which I actually mean as a compliment. He was self-aware though about the unhinged-ness of the performance and my favorite line was “People ask me if I’m doing a character, yeah every character Steve Buscemi ever played!”
Other highlights for me:
Trejon Dunkley- I have to go to a christening for some family friends who voted for Trump. The baby only has a few more months before he learns what a libertarian is.
Matt Walker - I don’t know if I prefer a meaty guy or a beefy boy
Avery Jhingtree (who is much too funny to only be 16!) - People make fun of Korean people for eating dogs, and it’s offensive, but you just know that if black people ate even one emu we would never hear the end of that shit.
I went on towards the end, so the audience and I were both pretty tired but I think I did pretty respectably all things considered, and I was impressed by how many people who weren’t comics stayed all the way to the end. Between the good audience and the great comics at both mics, I definitely had a solid first impression of the Phoenix/Tempe scene and I was looking forward to the week to come.
Favorite Random Sightings: Fat Ron’s Neat Stuff Unlimited; Vintage tokens that cowboys used to give to sex workers that said “Good for one Screw” (who says there wasn’t poetry in the old west?)"; The Shady Lady
Regional Observations: The streets in Tuscon have all kinds of statues of animals and plants on median strips, by the sides of roads, and in parks. It’s a great city for public art!
Albums Listened To: RWW by the Reggae Workers of the World; Ry Cooder by Ry Cooder; Sailing the Seas of Cheese by Primus (probably the Primus album that has held up the best on relistening); Salad Days by Mac DeMarco; Samples for Handsome Animals by Lady Lamb and the Beekeepers; San Patricio by the Chieftains (an amazing and strange collaboration between traditional Irish and traditional Mexican musicians to tell the story of a bunch of Irish immigrants who were drafted into the Mexican-American war, thought it was unjust, and deserted to help defend the Mexicans against the US becoming known as the San Patricios. They all died, but it’s a great story)
People’s Favorite Jokes:
Two pretzels walk into a bar. One was a salted.
Songs of the Day:
I love this song
I like that Tom Waits agreed to be the voice of the Cat
what a goofball