Sometimes people who complain about the Old Pueblo annoy me. These haters say Tucson is too hot, too dry, too boring, has too much crime, not enough crime — whatever. I will silence these critics by putting on my Nostradamus hat and predicting a bright future for this city — exactly 26 years from now.
Some people assume that global warming will make Arizona go from hot to uninhabitable. But there’s a factor these detractors have not considered: Global warming could cause the polar ice caps to completely melt, drastically changing the coastline of the oceans. While this would be slightly unfortunate for California, let’s set that aside for a moment. I give you three words: Tucson beachfront property. How awesome would it be to not have to drive all the way to Rocky Point or San Diego to splash around in the Pacific Ocean?
Besides public beaches, future Tucson will also benefit from the high property values that coastal communities have. Millionaire snobs might be somewhat annoying, but let’s set that aside for a moment, too. I give you three more words: property tax revenue. The city coffers will be filled to the brim with cold, hard cash. The city may not be able to pave its streets with gold, but it might be able to fill in our thousands of potholes with gold.
In this future prosperous Tucson, Fourth Avenue will be a lot like Park Avenue in New York City. Our Broadway will be just as good as the one in Manhattan, if not better. Actual Congress will want to move into Hotel Congress. But don’t worry; we won’t let them. We have to have some community standards, after all.
The Tucson Streetcar will be a huge success, surpassing the London Underground and the New York City subway as the most famous city public transportation system in the world. It will completely solve our traffic problems. In fact, we will have so little traffic that Speedway Boulevard will finally live up to its name and increase its speed limit to 75 mph, or maybe follow in the footsteps of the German Autobahn and have no speed limit at all.
Of course, the UA will benefit from the rise of Tucson. With our warm weather, convenient beaches and spectacular lack of traffic, we will attract the top athletes in the country. Our men’s basketball program will go from very good to downright elite. We’ll go to the Final Four every year and win several championships. It will be like Duke with fewer preppies or like Kansas with fewer tornadoes or like Kentucky with some players who actually stay past their freshman year.
Our football team will finally win the Rose Bowl. The game will technically be played underwater because of the whole California-global-warming thing, but Arizona players have enough experience throwing around the football while hanging out in swimming pools that they will easily adapt to this aquatic environment.
Our academic reputation will also skyrocket. We’ll surpass the slightly submerged UC Berkeley as the top public university in the country. The entire faculty of Cornell University will leave that Ivy League school’s cold, depressing location for the exotic UA.
But college reputations are a competitive business. As our academic reputation rises, the reputation of ASU will decline. Eventually, the Arizona Board of Regents will have to demote it back to its original identity as Tempe Normal. A few years after that, it will be demoted even further and become known as Tempe Abnormal.
I can’t wait until we see how many of my awesome predictions come true! So much so that if even one thing I predicted with my psychic powers does not actually happen, I will begrudgingly disown this column. We’ll talk about this in January 2040. Meet me on campus, on the ivory steps in front of the diamond-encrusted building they used to call Old Main.
Disclaimer: As a general rule, nothing in Logan Rogers’ columns should be taken seriously. He does realize that the actual effects of severe climate change would not likely be positive.
Logan Rogers is a second year law student. Follow him @DailyWildcat.
