3048 North Treat Avenue

I was on the Heart of Tucson Art open studio tour April 14th when, as I turned onto Treat Avenue, I saw this box topped with two birds.

The lighting made it tough to get a photo, so I spent a couple of minutes under the tree trying various things with my cheap cell phone camera.

I've never understood why some homeowners are concerned or confused when someone (me!) takes photos of their artistic mailbox. But they came out to ask what I was doing. I told them, and I asked if they'd made the mailbox. They said it was there when they bought the home. I thanked them and left as soon as I could — with some blurry photos that I've tried to fix before I posted them here.

I think they wrote down my license plate number as I drove away.

I hope you appreciate the trouble I go through to show you great mailboxes. :) :)

Bubbling Box in Oracle

Along the route of the Oracle Artist Studio Tour on April 6th, I came across this mailbox outside Michael Carroll's place.

What can I say? I had to go in to visit his studio. :)

P.S. I've changed the posting date from Tuesdays to Mondays — so you can start your week with a new box.

3236 East 24th Street

This simple box has butterfly decals on a red background. I spotted it in February and noticed that one side had only one decal. I came back on April 5th to see if it had changed… it hadn't:

3302 East 24th Street

I pulled over to check my map near dusk on the evening of February 26th. Near the car was a plain-looking mailbox in a cinder-block box partly filled with dirt. The post looked special, though, as if it had a faded design painted on it:

Sure enough, the design was some kind of climbing vine. I'm guessing that the post had a vine, or the cinder-block box used to hold some kind of plants.

Clever idea, eh?

9319 East Anne Place

Just next door to last week's "Golfbox" (you can see it closer in the entry 9311 East Anne Place) is this wild-looking box that David Aber named "Snakebox.

Below is a closeup of the head.

9311 East Anne Place

For obvious reasons, David Aber named this "Golfbox". It has been modified to resemble a golf bag and clubs. He sent it on February 27th.

I've zoomed in for more detail:

(There's another unique mailbox next door. It'll be online next week.) Much appreciated, Dave.

1934 South Avenita Planeta (is this a manufactured mailbox?)

David Aber finds phenomenal mailboxes. Even by his usual standard, this one (a castle on top of a dragon?!) seemed too good to be handmade (which is one of the criteria for showing a box here). I'm sure there was no hint of that commercialization; if there were, he wouldn't have sent the photo. Still, I wondered: Was this mailbox really handmade?

You may not be aware of the online search services that will find similar images. For instance, you can go to one of those services, upload a photo of the mailbox in someone's front yard, and see whether the service (for example, Google Images) finds a photo of a similar mailbox somewhere else in the world. That kind of capability is used for businesses to find you, via one of their “security” cameras, in an aisle, shopping for some item, and add to your customer profile that you’re (for example) interested in baby toys.

I decided to try searching for this amazing mailbox: Is there a photo of a similar mailbox somewhere online? If I didn't find a similar photo, that doesn't mean the mailbox wasn't mass-produced, but it cuts the chances. Because the vegetation, concrete, rocks, and house number probably won't be in other photos of the same mass-produced mailbox, I used my favorite free photo editor, GIMP, to remove all of those things from the photo Dave sent. This photo is what I sent to Google, Bing, and a couple of other image-search sites. (I used the “Intelligent Scissors” tool to remove the background and the Clone Stamp tool to replace the house number with the white areas of the sign.)

I didn't find a mailbox like this anywhere else. Even if it is mass-produced, it's pretty incredible, isn't it?

Thanks, Dave, for the fun and for the puzzle.

7440 North Benet Drive

Driving along Silverbell on February 2nd, I ended up taking a wrong turn and winding along a road between a bland-looking subdivision and some land that was much less developed. As I was about to turn around, I spotted this mailbox. It was for a home back in the less-developed land. (The development had honeycombed stacks of plain Postal Service mailboxes.)

Next, I'll zoom in to just the south and west sides of the box. I like the eagle carrying an envelope across the mailbox end:

319 West Pennsylvania Drive

David Aber calls this mailbox “Pony Express” after the long-ago service that delivered mail and etc.

He emailed the photo September 25, 2018, after a nice talk with the homeowner. The mailbox was made by the previous homeowner while he recovered from a stroke!

Next, a closer view:

Bucking Betty coming soon to a home near you?

I found Bucking Betty out in the desert earlier this month. There was no sight of her owner. The steel sculpture artist Pat Frederick might know something about where she is by the time you see this. Pat hopes Betty can find a new home…

(Pat is one of my favorite Tucson sculptors. I was short of mailbox photos to post online, so I asked if I could show the photo here. Maybe you'll see Betty along Pima County roads sometime soon?)

2525 East Helen Street

David Aber found another in his series of “Butterflyboxes” September 17, 2018.

Let's look a bit closer:

8005 East Speedway Boulevard

On August 9th, David Aber stopped by the Mesquite Valley Growers Nursery — where he spotted this mailbox in the midst of a bunch of other greenery.

The other side has the same box and post design
but also has a flag

.
Thanks, David, for this lush treat!

5000 East Grant Road #126

This mailbox extravaganza is inside the Far Horizons Co-Op Estates, a mobile home facility for ages 55+. There's not a "No Tresspassing" sign, and it's a nice and inviting place, but I'm guessing that residents wouldn't appreciate a parade of mailbox-lovers. (This one is close to the entrance from Grant Road, at least…)

I found it after I visited a friend in another home on July 26, 2018.

3142 East 25th Street

Mmmmm…

Cherries, anyone? I spotted this juicy box on July 20, 2018.

3234 East 23rd Street

This clever box seems to be mounted on two round metal posts that come out from the bottom. But, if you look more closely, the posts are actually attached to the top of the prickly pear cactus…

Just underneath the mailbox

And, the amazingly lifelike cactus is actually made of metal (or maybe wood?). Look closely at the “pads” above and you'll see that they have square sides and edges.

Closeup of quail near bottom of
prickly pear “post”

I spotted this masterpiece (“masterpost?” sorry.) on July 20, 2018.

Mexican mailbox heaven: Palacio Postal

The last few months of 2018 were challenging for me. I haven't been able to take mailbox photos or post them. But things should be back to normal soon! I've pre-posted mailboxes for the rest of January, and I'm hoping that I'll be back to posting photos weekly.

After my life settled down last month, I spent two weeks in Mexico City — which, by the way, the city government now calls CDMX (it's short for CiuDad de MéXico). Though I'd been there before (the photos below are from February, 2016), I stopped in again during a tour of the city center — where our guide told us the building was constructed in the early 20th Century by president Portfio Diaz. He, she said, built grand things to celebrate his power. I believe she also said that it was the first public building in Mexico City with electricity. (With all of its ornate lights and the elevators, it must have needed a lot of power!)

View from outside

Here are a few postal-type photos of things I spotted in 2016 — when I had time to look closely. (By the way, until now I've been putting captions before photos with a colon at the end of the caption. From now on, I'm going to start putting the captions underneath the photos — assuming I remember to, that is. :)

(The wording says, literally: 1580 1st major mail;
I think it means something like 1580: first national mail)

Behind the scenes, through the bars:
a woman sorting mail

A place for third-class machine-franked mail
(Franking is mail that's sent for free)

By the way, today's entry on the Tucson Murals Project blog is of a beautiful building address in the Roma Norte neighborhood of CDMX.

If you click on the Location below, you'll see Palacio Postal on a map. Happy 2019!

4234 E Kilmer Street

This mailbox has more color than any other I've seen in a long while!

David Aber emailed them on June 26th.

P.S. I'm sorry for the month-long break in mailbox posts. It was a perfect storm of problems. I'm aiming to get back to one post every two weeks for the next month or so, then go back to weekly.

8212 East Victoria Drive

In our July 11 entry, you got a look at a butterfly-covered box in front of 8201 E. Victoria. Across the street on the same day, May 10th, David Aber caught a photo of this:

As always, thanks, David.

5718 East 30th Street

What makes this mailbox unique is that the “post” isn't plain: It looks like two legs — with shorts and socks, no less. The man's two arms hold a mailbox and a tube labeled “FedEx.”

The home is for sale — or it was near May 10th, which is when David Aber mailed me the photo. Who cares about the house… this amazing piece of art should close the deal! :)

8201 East Victoria Drive

David Aber calls this “Butterfly Box” — for obvious reasons:

He flew by (and stopped) (apologies, Dave :) on May 10th.

4834 East Glenn Street

Wow! This mailbox has a bit of everything!

David Aber sent the photos on May 7th.

2510 East Richards Place

David Aber saw this beauty out of the corner of his eye as he was traveling along Tucson Blvd. between Ft. Lowell & Prince. (It's on the east side of Tucson Blvd.)

The camera's EXIF data says the photo was taken March 28th. (Blogger removes EXIF data.)

Thanks, David!

2821 North Orlando Avenue

I found this gem, after a long hunt, on May 17th. (I'd seen it on the True Tucson blog.)

3226 East 24th Street

As I was driving to a friend's home on April 26th, I spotted a woman painting a mailbox. I stopped immediately, of course. :) She was a homeowner brightening her (boring) black box with scenes of mermaids and fish:

She hadn't finished. Here are two photos at that point:

I rolled by again on May 13th to find (what I think is) the finished mailbox: