Tucson Parks

There's a bit I once saw on Family Guy in which Peter takes a helicopter tour of Tucson. "Oh look, it's a park that's been paved over!" he says as he looks down, bored, from the helicopter. A few seconds later he passes over the same "paved-over park" again.

Family Guy makes fun of Tucson a lot. I think it's because they've made fun of everywhere else, and all the other places got offended. Tucson, on the other hand, seems self-aware enough to know that it's a town in the middle of the desert, so it doesn't seem to have a terribly high opinion of itself. I'm sure the town isn't universally humble but, come on, it's Tucson.

That said, last week I started riding my bike from one park to another in town for research. In the end I discovered that, holy crap, Tucson's parks are kind of great. Peter doesn't know what he's talking about.