Cover Story
Tucson Salvage: Meet Sidney Finkel, Holocaust Survivor and Newly in Love
It is a hot Thursday morning in May and a 7th-grade social-studies class from Dodge Middle Magnet School gather around Sidney Finkel, a living, breathing survivor of the most merciless mass genocide in history. His partner, 83-year-old Barbara Agee, stands near him, one moment attending to his appearance, tucking into his trousers the tail of…
Get Ready To Rock in Rocky Point
If you like sand, cerveza and Sergio Mendoza, you’ll want to be in Rocky Point at the end of September. Orkesta Mendoza featuring Quetzal Guerrero will join Mariachi Nuevo Azteca, Salvador Duran, Puerto Peñasco band Agua de Coco and DJ Los Esplifs for a concert benefiting CEDO Intercultural, the longtime research lab on the shores of…
UA women’s softball team headed to College World Series
The University of Arizona women’s softball team returns to Oklahoma City for a chance at a ninth championship title. Arizona will play Oklahoma State University, Thursday, June 2, at 6:30 p.m. local time on ESPN. The unranked and unseeded Wildcats clinched their ticket to the Women’s College World Series after beating the Mississippi State Bulldogs…
Comedy for the People: What’s next? The Tanque Verde Swap Meet? The Pennington Street Garage?
Connor Hannah may have been the first to lead Tucson comedians out of bars and into wide open spaces. Late in the last decade he started an open mic in the alcohol-free Kava Bar. In the Tanque Verde area, 420-friendly Harambe Café & Social Club hosts a couple of regular open mics and has begun…
City Week: Weekly Picks
Drag Queen Story Hour at MOCA. Drag culture is fun and boisterous and fabulous. So are the best childhoods. These two worlds come together this weekend when Lil Miss Hot Mess does a special reading of her latest picture book, “If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It.” This sing-along book with a drag…
Dig In: Spoon’s Britt Daniel breaks down five of the band’s essential songs ahead of Tucson show
On the eerie closing title track to Spoon’s latest album Lucifer on the Sofa, frontman Britt Daniel sings “Now you’re thinking ‘bout turquoise.” Is that turn of phrase a nod to Bob Dylan? After all, Dylan’s 1976 travelogue “Isis” features the lyric: “I was thinkin’ about turquoise, I was thinkin’ about gold.” “Maybe,” Daniel says…
XOXO: Mark Your Calendars
Mark your calendars… Thursday, June 2 Bearing scars they won’t allow anyone to see, Phoenician electric folksters The Senators write a manifesto declaring aims in “This Old War.” To which, Sonoran soul singer Carlos Arazate opines. “Sometimes I want to break glass, instead of the glass breaking me.” He adds, “Democracy is ugly, and broken…
A Mighty Resilience
This week, Tucson Salvage columnist Brian Smith profiles Sidney Finkel, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor who now lives in Oro Valley. Finkel’s childhood was one of horror, seeing his family torn apart by Nazis and surviving a concentration camp. Finkel has written books about his experience and now talks with schoolchildren about the experience. As Smith…
Danehy: Kids these days sure do like Tupac
I remember the day when we all found out that Elvis Presley had died. It was shocking, really, because he was relatively young and had regained a measure of success and prosperity. We wondered what could have happened. It couldn’t have been drugs because Richard Nixon himself had given Elvis a drug-fighting badge. And no…
Dispensary Wars: After winning an administrative battle, Downtown Dispensary can expand its operations
The latest chapter of a long-simmering feud between two local cannabis heavyweights in Tucson played out in Tucson’s Board of Adjustments last week, as a previous zoning decision was successfully appealed by Downtown Dispensary owner Moe Asnani. Now that the board has decided that the dispensary falls within its recently updated Unified Development Code, Downtown…
Gag Order: GOP ‘critical race theory’ ban would outlaw teaching about the alleged Buffalo shooter’s racist motivations
Under legislation approved last week by Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives, teachers would not be allowed to explain to their students that the mass murder in a Buffalo grocery store was allegedlly committed by a white supremacist who targeted and killed Black people in a largely Black neighborhood. The bill would punish teachers…
Shredding Sisters: Yasmynn Lopez is getting more girls on skateboards
Yasmynn Lopez doesn’t feel happy until both feet are on a skateboard. If it wasn’t for the Walmart skateboard her dad bought for Lopez when she was 15, she isn’t sure where she would be today. Lopez, now 32, is hoping to open that same door for other girls interested in skating. “When I skateboard,…
