The lit sign, like the hotel itself, has become a Tucson landmark. (Photo: Tom Nachtrab)

Tucson percussionist Glenn Weyant, who “plays” the border wall between Arizona and Mexico by rapping it with a cello bow and drumsticks, once told me that “when you step into the Congress, you’re stepping into a river that began long before you arrived.”

And so I step in. Like many times before, I occupy a stool in the Tap Room, the 92-year-old bar at Hotel Congress, which opened in Tucson in 1919 to lodge rail passengers arriving from the station just across Toole Avenue. The hotel has since served as Tucson’s cultural epicentre – live bands and art shows included – and the grandfather of the city’s downtown core. Everyone, from hipsters to Vietnam vets to shiny fashion models, eventually ends up at the Congress for a bite at Cup Cafe or a cocktail at one of the hotel’s four bars. The Congress has become a mirror of Tucson itself: Both are unpretentious and slow to change. Both exude a sort of eclectic democracy, welcoming all with a handshake that can feel a little rough.

As I lean against the Tap Room’s polished wooden bar top, the desert sun is illuminating a stack of pint glasses piled beneath framed sketches of cowboy scenes. Tiger, who’s tended bar here for half a century, grabs a glass and fills it for me when he’s not distracted by Judge Judy on the television. A leather-clad biker couple lumber in and ask for tequila but leave when they can’t find a single song they like on the jukebox. Now the bar is quiet, and Tiger likes it this way.

For a taste of the Southwest, head to the Cup Cafe for tortilla soup or sweet-potato plantain tamales. (Photo: Basil Williams / tucson-infonet.com)

He tells me that 77 years ago, members of bank robber John Dillinger’s gang stayed here. There was a blaze in the hotel, and the fireman who retrieved their luggage recognized them from the pages of a detective magazine, leading to Dillinger’s arrest. I already know this story; the Dillinger capture is part of the lore that first drew me to the Congress. What keeps me coming back, though, is not the history, but the sense that this place is Tucson.

That reminds me of the weekend when a passable Michael Jackson impersonator was grabbing his crotch for red-ribboned fundraisers on the patio while I was drinking beneath flourishes of Southwestern decor in the lobby bar. The barman, a San Francisco transplant, mixed me a too-sweet Sazerac, then a Bakon Vodka Bloody Mary that deftly combined highbrow with low. I told him that I used to tend bar, and he seemed as impressed as I would be if he had said he used to be a writer. I couldn’t fault his heavy pours, though, and I drank bourbon until a pretty woman from Michigan asked me where I was from. She laughed at my jokes, emptied her glass, then left to rejoin her friend on the dance floor at Club Congress, the raucous live performance space. As she walked away, the bartender said, “There’s something to write about.”

For all its nocturnal amusements, though, my Congress is best enjoyed on weekday afternoons with Tiger. As he slowly pours another pint, I glance at my fellow drinkers and remember something else Weyant told me: “Loving Tucson and the Congress is like seeing someone you love first thing in the morning. Their hair might be a mess. They may have taken all the covers. Their breath might be a bit funky. But when you look at that person, you can’t imagine anyone more perfect.”

311 E. Congress St., 800-722-8848, hotelcongress.com

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