The Real McCoy

A vintage vision filled with art and nature in Tucson, Arizona

Metal flowers front a shiny Thunderbird setting the mood for the vintage feel inside the McCoy Hotel.

Nothing distracts the eye so pleasingly as vibrant colors and imaginative art. The 1960s candy-apple blue Thunderbird greeted my arrival at the artsy Hotel McCoy in Tucson, Arizona. Then came one friendly Amanda, shimmering and masked, to check me in at my car window in the arched entryway. Her magenta hair and golden-shadowed eyelids were offset by velvet-black liner and mascara, a perfect prelude to the lively murals and evocative art throughout this lucky find of a lodging where each room is a gallery.

“Retro meets contemporary,” boasts the McCoy, Tucson’s first art hotel. The plethora of art you see in rooms and throughout the cafe-bar and commons is for sale, with 100 percent of proceeds going to the artist—any of seventy, all local. You wish the many murals on exterior walls could be purchased.

I loved the vintage vibes and, notwithstanding strict adherence to Covid guidelines and hygiene, a friendliness and laid-back feeling that characterized bygone days when youth backpacked across Europe cheaply and hitchhiked (more or less safely) across America. Amanda gave me a token good for a drink…