Cover Story
The Activist Question
This is a place of ghosts. Ask anyone who walks these trails, in the bare-knuckle desert. Here among high scrub, south of Arivaca, sunlight glances off water bottles, candy wrappers, tennis shoes, rosaries and a tiny picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe in yellowing, cracked plastic. Such things are hastily abandoned in the headlong passage…
Rialto Update: When They Kick Out Your Front Door, How You Gonna Come?
The fight between the Rialto Theatre Foundation and Don Martin and Scott Stiteler, the owners of downtown’s Rialto block, is slipping closer to the brink. Martin and Stiteler have filed papers in Pima County Superior Court to evict the foundation from its green room, offices and storage space. The theatre itself, which is owned by…
Lots of Pot
The U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson sector has set a record for pot seizures, and they still have more than two months to go until they finalize the numbers for the end of their fiscal year. What’s crazy is they seized a million pounds of pot in the Tucson sector alone, which begs the question: What…
Those New Hampshire Tobacco Taxes Are Getting Out of Control
The Associated Press reports that the price of a pack of smokes is getting pretty steep in New Hampshire: A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars. Josh Muszynski checked his account online a few hours…
New Eastside Nimbus to Replace Italia
Nimbus Brewery is joining up with Metro Restaurants to open a new brewpub on Tucson’s eastside. The new pub and eatery will occupy what is currently Ristorante Italia at 6464 E. Tanque Verde Road, according to a press release put out by Dan Multhup, director of operations for Metro Restaurants. Ristorante Italia will close Saturday,…
Put Up or Shut Up
On one of the Sunday chat shows, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl suggested that the United States just stop spending all the stimulus money and put it toward health care or deficit reduction. That led to Obama administration officials asking Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer if she wanted to see the stimulus money go away. And that,…
The Party’s Over?
State Sen. Jonathan Paton was delighted to hear Monday that Gov. Jan Brewer had signed a bill eliminating partisan elections in the city of Tucson. “I am very happy because I feel like in 2011, candidates are, for the first time, going to have to appeal to everyone in their wards instead of just a…
Rialto Is Moving Up
The Rialto Theatre, which remains tangled up in a battle with would-be downtown developers Don Martin and Scott Stiteler, got some good news today: Pollstar’s mid-year rankings showed that the theatre was ranked No. 42 on the list of Top 100 Worldwide Club Venues, based on ticket sales. That’s a jump from the venue’s previous…
Hot Dog!
July is National Hot Dog Month, and if you haven’t been celebrating by shoving hot dogs down your cavernous maw like a Sonoran version of Joey Chestnut, then you can redeem yourself by heading over to your local Weinershnitzel tomorrow, Tuesday, July 14, for “Free Chili Dog or Small Cone Day.” It probably goes without…
Fiction: The Last Draftsman
I was the last real draftsman. Now they all do CAD, a lewd acronym for “computer-aided design.” I never learned CAD; refused to learn CAD. I know this attitude ruined my life, but I don’t care. I’ve watched CAD remove the soul from buildings, replace flesh-and-blood people with scale figures, and reduce neighborhoods to parking…
Poetry Event Moves to Mat Bevel’s
We just received word that the Tucson Slam Team Fundraiser/performance/dance party featured in City Week has been moved. Here’s that word, from the event organizers: Okay, y’all know that no poetry event is complete without something going horribly awry, so here it is: Solar Culture Gallery has been temporarily shut down by the fire marshall,…
The VA Hospital Gets Its Green On
Tucson’s Southern Arizona VA Health Care System — aka the VA hospital over on South Sixth Avenue — is getting hip to the greener side of things thanks to some federal stimulus money. Here’s the press release with more info. WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords today welcomed the announcement that the Department of Veterans…
Soul Food
Soul food has returned to Tucson. So says Pat Freeman, one of the owner/operators of Tucson’s new — and, to my knowledge, only — soul food restaurant, Auntie Dora’s Porch, which has set up shop at 903 E. Fort Lowell Road, in the old Molly G’s location. Auntie Dora’s Porch is a family run eatery…
B-36 on Display at the Pima Air and Space Musuem
A Convair B-36J Peacemaker, the largest bomber ever built by the United States, was slowly rolled out onto the grounds of the Pima Air and Space Museum on Wednesday, July 1 at 9:15 am. The plane has been secured in its new site, enabling visitors to walk directly under and around the massive plane. The…
Chocolate Soldiers Overrun Gorman, Arizona
State Sen. Pamela Gorman appears to be the victim of her battle against chocolate soldiers. Senate President Bob Burns finally exercised the nuclear option and booted Gorman from the Senate Rules Committee. It doesn’t exactly sound like a dramatic moment, but here’s the underlying meaning: Every bill in the Senate has to come through the…
Rialto Update: Moving Day Coming Soon?
We had to wrap The Skinny this week just after the Tucson City Council meeting ended, so we couldn’t get in the rather important fact that Don Martin rejected the proposal that the Rialto Theatre Foundation be allowed to remain in their offices for three months while working out a deal to trade or purchase…
Maybe Sylvia Allen Was Bitten By a Radioactive Moron
Arizona Sen. Syliva Allen’s comment about the earth being 6,000 years old, posted on YouTube by the Arizona Guardian, is breaking into the MSM, with Keith Olbermann naming her the worst person in the world. It’s also bouncing all over the blogosphere, with references on sites such as Daily Kos and Andrew Sullivan’s blog at…
Pete Yorn: Back and Fourth (Sony/Columbia)
Pete Yorn’s fourth album, aptly titled Back and Fourth, is a series of conundrums. Conundrum one: It was produced by Rick Rubin and Mike Mogis, and despite Mogis’ indie-rock influence, Back and Fourth is definitely Yorn’s most commercial-sounding record. Conundrum two: The songs are gorgeous, with glistening guitars and Yorn’s voice nearly cracking with sorrow…
Now Showing at Home
The State: The Complete Series, Two Lovers (Blu-Ray), Eastbound and Down: The Complete First Season
Lots of Stories
Some notes and news this week … • If you want to enter our Fiction 84 contest, and you haven’t … well, depending on when you read this, you’re either 1) out of luck, or 2) almost out of luck: Entries need to be sent to mailbag@tucsonweekly.com no later than Thursday, July 9. My sincere…
Jeremy Michael Cashman and Jason Fisk: Trapped Within Myself: The Village Library Interviews (Brown Bottle/Homespun)
In this anybody-can-make-a-record era, it’s always refreshing when artists do something different, and do it well. Take Trapped Within Myself: The Village Library Interviews, by local musician Jeremy Michael Cashman and his brother-in-law, Chicago’s Jason Fisk. It’s a collection of song-poems—the music by Cashman and the words by Fisk—about a made-up character, Walter Sloke. The…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why is it that ever since the United States/California let you people immigrate, tunnel, weasel or whatever into this country, nothing good has happened and/or come from it? California’s welfare program is burdened with low-life Hispanics. The prison system is 70 percent Hispanic and 45 percent gang-based. Real estate values have dropped sharply;…
Sonic Youth: The Eternal (Matador)
Sonic Youth, a band of shifting sounds and endless influence, has gone about things ass-backwards. Sonic Youth started out releasing spiky tunes awash with dissonance and fractured beauty; now, nearly 30 years in, the group’s music has become more ebullient and digestible—if no less strange. The Eternal, the group’s 16th full-length album, is a singular…
Match Game
The Clean Elections program might not be dead, but it sure looks like it’s lying in the corner and coughing up blood. An effort to reform the voter-approved program—which provides candidates for state office with public funds for their campaigns as long as they agree to certain spending limits—collapsed in the final hours of this…
Mailbag
Want Tucsonans (and Americans) to Give a Crap? Dump the Cell Phones and iPods Tucsonans don’t give a crap about city elections (“Who Gives a Crap?” June 25). Actually, Tucsonans are too stupid and lazy to give a crap. The problem with American people is we’ve dumbed ourselves down over the years to the point…
Live
Mothfight, Peachcake, Seashell Radio
Art Alive!
Over the past five years, downtown’s historic Warehouse District has been involved in a fight that resembles a rugged boxing match. A series of recent blows to the district threatened to knock out the artists’ enclave—but a new proposal just might put the district back on its feet. If approved, the proposal would transfer ownership…
Attempt at Optimism
Jay Farrar has one of those voices. Either it sounds to you like fleeting white lines on a dark highway, or muddy water flowing endlessly along a tree-lined riverbank, or you don’t get it at all. It’s an embodiment of his songs: rustically beautiful, and accepting of life in all its mottled, even damaged, yet…
9 Questions
Margaret Haddad
Forced Submission
On Oct. 15, 2004, Mary Elizabeth Schipke entered the Oracle post office to buy a 47-cent stamped envelope. When she got frustrated with the clerk behind the counter, she told her: “God, I pray a bomb falls on your stupid, fucking head.” Almost a year later, Schipke was convicted of threatening a federal facility with…
Top Ten in Music
Zia Records top sales for the week
Police Dispatch
IN SHED WITH ANOTHER MAN NORTHWEST SIDE JUNE 8, 12:08 A.M. A couple got into a domestic dispute when the boyfriend caught the girlfriend cheating on him—in a neighbor’s shed, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report stated. The boyfriend told law enforcement that earlier that night, he had entered a neighbor’s backyard and opened the…
The Future of TV
I have seen the future of television, and it is Melissa Cushman Banczak. The Tucson writer-producer is not by any means well-known; she has yet to make money from her projects; her work has attracted only a small audience; and it isn’t even on television—it awaits viewers online. And that is the future of television.…
Media Watch
Mooney banks on Tucson being a military town
Slamdown!
Contrary to the images that one may conjure up upon hearing the word “slam,” poetry slam does not involve wrestling mats, shiny unitards and/or mouthpieces. Rather, poetry slam, which started in the mid-’80s, is competitive performance poetry that focuses on creating a community between the artists and the audience, says Lindsay Miller, one of the…
The Skinny
THEATRICS ON CONGRESS The Rialto Theatre saga took another twist this week, with the City Council voting to move forward with a plan aimed at finding a compromise to resolve the differences between the Rialto Theatre Foundation and developers Don Martin and Scott Stiteler, of the Downtown Tucson Development Corporation. The downtown theater, which is…
Feeling the Heat
This could be the start of something big. Or not. Dove Mountain Grill is operated by the same folks behind the now-on-hiatus VinTabla. The dining room is bright and open, thanks in part to high ceilings and large windows. Black, brown and beige tones dominate. Funky lighting fixtures and exposed piping give the room a…
Noshing Around
Caipirinha! All hail the caipirinha (pronounced kai-purr-een-yah)—the potent national cocktail of Brazil. The muddled lime and raw sugar obscure the flavor of the main ingredient—high-proof Brazilian cachaça—so well that you might as well be sipping limeade … until the buzz-bomb drops. Sur Real (3001 E. Skyline Drive; 529-2644) pours caipirinhas (and martinis) for $5 starting…
Our Souls’ Potential
When he was 18, having just graduated from high school, Jonathan Ellerby went on a road trip. Camping one night on a California beach, he encountered two inebriated prospectors who told him about a remote area in the high Sierras, a place of stunning beauty and almost mystical silence. His curiosity piqued, Ellerby went looking.…
Top Ten in Books
Mostly Books best-sellers for the week
T Q&A
Cathy Jacobus
Lunar Loneliness
The French word for “film director” would translate literally as “realizer,” i.e., one who makes something real. That’s accurate in many cases: The director takes a script and then turns words on paper into images on a screen, choosing how long to hold a shot, what to point the camera at, what sort of music…
City Week
Concentric Controversy Crop Circles: Quest for Truth 7:30 p.m., Friday, July 10 Tubac Plaza Main Stage 29 Tubac Plaza Road 398-2542;globalchangemultimedia.org For decades, crop circles have mystified the world, but in a documentary from director William Gazecki, the various clues we have start to fall into place. As part of the Cinema Under the Stars…
Comedy Role Model
Since the early ’90s, writer-director-actor David Wain has been one of the premier ambassadors of absurdist, intelligent, random comedy on TV and in feature films. A founding member of The State, whose comedy show aired on MTV from 1993 to 1995, he is also a member of the comedy troupe Stella (with fellow The State…
Danehy
A man for whom I have great respect sorta sideways called me a Republican the other day. I get this every now and then, as the Democratic Party to which I have belonged for decades continues to drift—not just to the left, but also sometimes in a yz direction on the coordinates, toward a place…
Style and Substance
Crime-film maestro Michael Mann goes back to the ’30s for his latest film, the characteristically hypnotic and moody Public Enemies. Johnny Depp does amazing things as John Dillinger, the infamous bank robber who should’ve opted for a nice summer drive rather than a movie on a hot night in 1934. Mann continues to be a…
O’Sullivan
I had the misfortune of landing at Los Angeles International Airport the day Michael Jackson died. I called a friend and told her I’d be there in an hour. She said, “I doubt that. Michael Jackson died. People are pouring into the streets.” When people in Los Angeles “pour” into the streets, they do it…
Soundbites
HARLEM, FROM TUCSON TO AUSTIN Anyone out there remember a local band called Harlem? Well, they moved to Austin a little while ago and scored themselves a record deal with Matador, the label that brought you Pavement, Liz Phair and Yo La Tengo, among dozens of other great bands. Since my computer is currently without…
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
Guest Commentary
Federal Judge James Munley recently took the near-unprecedented step of preventing local prosecutors from bringing child-porn charges against several teenage girls who took and sent pictures of themselves and each other in states of undress. The girls are just the latest example of the sexting epidemic, which has been addressed kind of like termites in…
Red Star Goes Out
It’s a sad day at Weekly World Central. Red Star is no longer Tucson Weekly Top Commentor. Food Diva Rita is in the lead. I hope she knows how to handle this responsibility.
A Little Dali, A Little Disney = Destino
An animated short that began in 1945 (but didn’t premiere till 2003) will finally make it to DVD by next year, along with a documentary about Dali and Disney’s history together. The film, Destino, began as a collaboration between the two artists and ended as a seven-minute long love story of Chronos and his ill-fated…
