Lost Barrio: cacti faces and AirBnB furnishings

Tucked away in Barrio Antonio to the southeast of downtown, the Lost Barrio is a 3 block long, old brick warehouse that’s been converted into (mostly) furniture stores. And–Tucson being Tucson–there is unique art throughout, including prickly pear cacti with faces drawn on them.

Most of the furniture is imported, or old, or newly-made to look old. It struck me as a great place to shop to furnish a home (or the house you’re converting into an AirBnB rental) in a colorful, semi-historic style. For whatever it is worth, buying houses to convert to short-term rentals is adding fuel to the rapidly rising prices for real estate in Tucson. But Tucson is still a bargain when compared to Los Angeles.

I was with my niece and her husband who were astounded at how low priced everything was–well, compared to L.A. where they have just moved into their first home. So we shopped our way through several of the stores before the sweltering heat got to us.

Here is some of what we saw:

Old bricks with brilliant blue gussy up a warehouse

Love that shade of blue. I always think of it as “Frida Kahlo Blue” because her home (now a museum) in Mexico is painted that color. Before house paint was created digitally, it was impossible to buy that color and many others in U.S. paint stores. If you wanted Kahlo blue or Tijuana turquoise, you had to cross the border into Mexico to buy your paint.

Note the faces on the prickly pear cacti. Each store has a separate entrance. There is no long hall connecting one shop to the next so we had to go out into the 105F temperatures between stores. Too hot!

Look like you are well-traveled with vintage furniture

This store had a lot of imports from Asia and elsewhere. I think the theme was British Colonial imports, but obviously not all were from old British colonies. Interesting stuff, though. Buy a chest or interesting basket and you can pretend you picked it up on your travels.

In another shop imports from Mexico were arranged by color. Here is the blue section.

Oh oh. Another renewal project

Then I looked out of the back of one of the stores and saw this. Looks charming, doesn’t it? Hand-painted benches on a porch with birdcages above. But behind is yet another renewal project in Tucson. Is this where the name Lost Barrio comes from? Whatever was there is gone now!

This project, however, may actually make a little bit of sense because the area used to have old crumbly warehouses. I’m not sure if the warehouses were vacant or if there was housing there, too. The sign back by those trees read that it was about to become a “Business Center”. Not sure what that means either.

Tucson being Tucson there is commissioned art on the street

Across Park Avenue from the Lost Barrio are commissioned works of art to enhance what was originally a utilitarian warehouse district. Someone wrote that there was a café nearby for lunch, but we couldn’t find it and went to the HUB downtown for lunch. I’d recommend their French Toast!

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The monsoon may arrive this week in 2021. The intense dry heat of last week (up to 115F in Tucson) has gone down to around 100F (43 celsius) and clouds are in the sky. It rained yesterday south of here near Nogales. Gardens all across Arizona have died in the heat.

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