Story and photographs by the author.
On the side of a brick building, at the corner of E 7th St and North Arizona Ave, a mural greeted me. This particular block of North Arizona was more of an alley than a street. It was open to cars, with a few parking spaces at an angle to the alley, but the short block was better experienced on foot.
Beginning at the mural — Greetings from Tucson, it said — any aimless drifter could wobble dreamily down the alley, past streams of ants, weeds, splotches of motor oil and a yard of broken air conditioning parts toward the best speakeasy pizza joint anywhere. Street art and ghost signs were included in the pilgrimage.
One block, this alley. That’s it. No more was necessary.
I started at the mural, a tourist attraction painted in 2017 by Greetings Tour, an outfit started by muralist Victor Ving and photographer Lisa Beggs, who traveled across the country painting postcard-style murals in various cities.
Across 7th St, a sprawling sports restaurant with a thousand televisions, a huge patio and pickleball courts blasted “All Star” by Smash Mouth-an unsettling hellish combo of everything I didn’t want to experience. Instead, I needed a dingy, hidden side street that nobody would possibly write about, or even think about. My speakeasy pizza waited.
I shuffled up the alley, inspired by a passage from the foreword to Tucson Salvage, a book by local columnist Brian Jabas Smith. Tucson was an outpost for the lost and weary, a sanctuary for misfits, miscreants and misers. These days, even tourism professionals used phrases like “Don’t Fit Right In,” branding the city as a place where people just don’t fit right in. However, Smith was better than anyone else at capturing this original desert slacker town, his home town, a place to which he never wanted to return, but did. Tucson Salvage, his anthology of alt-weekly newspaper columns, was the definitive guide to the gritty underbelly of the whole sweltering mess.
On one hand, it was only 92 degrees, manageable for Tucson. The concussive blast-furnace weather had not yet arrived – this was May, after all – yet the heat became part of the experience. The sun-parched asphalt was cracked in a hundred places. To my left was a dumpster. Along the opposite building, yellow weeds grew at the bottom of a chain-link fence topped with circular barbed wire, bent in several places. Streams of large ants crawled in single-file fashion toward some unidentifiable destination beneath the weeds. Steps later, I saw more dumpsters, along with cars, all of which seemed haphazardly dropped onto the asphalt from above. They sat in front of another gorgeous monochromatic mural, a black and white image in a pulp southwestern style.
Opposite me, right where another back alley came off 6th Ave and ran behind brick buildings, I spotted a yard of broken equipment. Air conditioning ducts. A pallet of bricks. Ripped fiberglass. It was a glorious view. I sensed beauty in the mundane, the Zen of the forgotten and the discarded.
Just as Phil Cousineau wrote, “the art of pilgrimage is the art of reimagining how we walk, talk, listen, see, hear, write, and draw as we ready for the journey of our soul’s deep desire. Try and see your next journey as more than an itinerary, to see it rather as the slow accretion of details.”
And that I did, as the sun continued to fry the pavement. Throughout my visit, locals told me to carry a water bottle. Some janky storefronts even kept a multi-gallon water receptacle out on the sidewalk, perhaps on a chair, just for homeless people, or anyone, to walk up and fill their bottles. The sense of community-people looking out for each other-was prominent. I loved it.
At the end of the alley, as it dumped onto East 6th St, I arrived at the Promised Land, my new favorite speakeasy pizza restaurant. A cozy joint offering wood-fired, sourdough-crust pizzas with an emphasis on local ingredients, Anello was its name. The best thing? Anello did not have a sign. Nowhere. This was intentional. Just look for the red light above the window, I was told. I arrived before dusk, so the light wasn’t on yet. But I found the place.
Oddly enough, Tucson was the first city in the United States to become a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. Wait, what? Yes, it’s true. In 2015. So now the food scene was something to brag about.
Inside Anello, there was room for maybe 25 people, half of which were at a long, community table in the middle of the tiny space, where I plopped down right next to several others I didn’t know. A great idea. Within seconds we were talking about all sorts of stuff. Behind the counter, employees toiled away at a classic wood-fired oven from Italy. Waitstaff answered questions about the wine list. A takeout window opened up into the alley, which I had completely missed.
‘The Verde pizza came with smoked mozzarella, a parsley puree and tons of pistachios. I added pepperoni. It was perfect. Just perfect.
Anello was small. Very small. In all the right ways. The bathroom included a small bookshelf where food tomes held court. Another great idea.
The Promised Land of Speakeasy Pizza was worth the short stroll through the garbage, the ants, the dirt, the grime and the weeds. UNESCO knew what it was doing. My longing was fulfilled.
