Tucson; The Somewhat Impressive City & Highspeed

[Wildstyle K]

Wow! So far, mixes on the hour, every hour IN THE MORNING on Hot 98.3! Since when did this start? This is the best thing to happen since.... well, the July 4th Spindependence Mix Weekend! I must also say that I've become hooked on Mojo in The Morning. I don't think there's any morning show in my home town of Phoenix where I'm actually feeling a little disappointment when they start to play music instead of continuing to talk more in the mornings!

I must say I'm pretty impressed with Tucson! I also would've never expected certain songs to hit here first before some major markets, either. How does "Novacane", "Far Away", and "Marvin Gaye & Chardonnay" get play on KRQ and KOHT BEFORE WHTA and WVEE even picks them up?

Anyway....now, maybe we could just get a full Friday night mix show on KOHT and a Saturday night mixshow that does not end at midnight on there, too! I guess also a 12 o clock midday mixshow would be great, too. In addition to that, maybe some better mixes on KRQ. No reason for the Saturday Night Online syndicated show with 15 minute mixes once every hour to be "edgier" than the entire 8 hours of Planet Q. Besides, Backa Boyz AllStar Hitmix is much more fun than Saturday Night Online, especially on a Saturday Night!

It's also shocking how similar Tucson is to L.A. rhythmic radio, even more so than Phoenix radio. Pretty much the same exact songs. Only difference is that here in Tucson, they managed to only use two dial positions to do what LA does with (seemingly) an incredible amount of different stations that all pretty much have a super tight rotation for the type of market LA is. Also, KRQ plays more pop rock that's in the top 40 than KIIS, KAMP, and whatever other chr's you can pick up in LA. People here may complain about Tucson (chr) radio (completely oblivious to the fact that LA, a #2 market, isn't much different), but don't complain until you go to LA and see how not much is different in the chr world.

Anyway, I'm pretty impressed. I'll just have to get used to listening to music at a normal (or slower rate of) speed once I get back to Phoenix after being here for two months and listening to the super-pitched music at a high rate of speed and cruising down Speedway with Dj Highspeed in the mix. By the way, in somewhat of an unrelated note, Speedway makes absolutely no sense because the whole street seems to be set at 35 miles per hour. I try to use Grant instead if I really need to get somewhere at a high speed! Tucson; the (Michael Savage obsessed) city of High Speed (chr) songs with super slow speed limits... and Speedway being one of the slowest. It's funny to me.

 

[landtuna]

By the way, in somewhat of an unrelated note, Speedway makes absolutely no sense because the whole street seems to be set at 35 miles per hour. I try to use Grant instead if I really need to get somewhere at a high speed! Tucson; the (Michael Savage obsessed) city of High Speed (chr) songs with super slow speed limits... and Speedway being one of the slowest. It's funny to me.

OK....listen up Pilgrim. Speedway was never intended to be "high speed". It has always been lined wall-to-wall with businesses (long before there was anything like strip malls). It is intended (probably not formally) as a "cruising" street where in days of olde you could plop your honey du jour in the passenger seat and style along at a moderate pace catching the eyeballs of your friends along the way. A u-turn at the Johnnie's Drive In at Tucson Blvd and another at Craycroft and do the circle again. If memory serves Speedway was the original three-lane-in-each-direction road in Tucson.

My personal nickname for Grant Road was the GRE (Grant Road Express) in the 60's. For Tucson's much slower drivers it was the faster cross-town route (in addition to 22nd Street on the south side). Too many traffic lights now though so the 'express' part is history.

I am always amazed at how s-l-o-w Tucson's drivers are compared to Phoenix. For a town only ten miles wide it seems to take forever to cross it. Perhaps that is due to the more relaxed pace of living in the Old Pueblo and the number of great taco shops along the way. ;D

 

[awsherrill]

When I lived in Tucson a few years back, my house was in the Casas Adobes area in the northwest part of town. We were going to the Pima Co. Fair one day, and I decided to take surface streets instead of I-10 to get to the fairgrounds on the southeast side. It took nearly an HOUR for a trip that would have taken about a third of the time on the Interstate.

 

[Wildstyle K]

Just to be politically correct here, it's Dj Hospe, not Highspeed. ;D But I like "Highspeed" better, and it sounds close enough. His 7 o clock Morning Scramble mix is on now. I find it interesting how they arrange these mixes during the Mojo morning show because I believe that Channel 95.5 in Detroit does not have morning mixes, and that's where the morning show is syndicated from (as far as I know). I guess that if it's not live, they could arrange the show segment times however they want as long as there is nothing in the show to indicate to the listener that the time sequence has been rearranged.

Speaking of interstates, it seems like there are very few interstates here in Tucson, because when I watch the Tucson weather on the news, there seems to be a shocking lack of freeways on the radar map. I'm used to seeing a lot of freeway lines going all throughout the weather city map!

Last night I traveled down Grant at a whopping 45 miles per hour! I ended up passing a cop and got nervous since I was traveling a few miles above the speed limit. If I was on Speedway, I surely would've had the cop swiftly turn on his lights, pull up from behind and whip out a ticket at high speed.

 

[landtuna]

Speaking of interstates, it seems like there are very few interstates here in Tucson, because when I watch the Tucson weather on the news, there seems to be a shocking lack of freeways on the radar map. I'm used to seeing a lot of freeway lines going all throughout the weather city map!

There has been only one freeway in Tucson's history (the I-10 which follows the original route of what is called either the Casa Grande Highway or the Benson Highway depending upon which direction you are headed).

The so-called "city fathers" have repeatedly turned down plans for cross-town freeway(s) instead trying to ease the traffic jams with ill-thought out "solutions" like the reversible lanes on Broadway. Virtually all the main thoroughfares in Tucson are essential identical to what they were when I learned to drive there in the 50's.