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Pride 2021: G Is for GGG: Why being Good, Giving and Game makes for a better sex life
Good, giving, and game for anything—within reason. That’s what makes someone a good sex partner. It seems obvious to me. Well, it seems obvious to me now, after reading three decades’ worth of mail from my readers about their sex lives. (Snail mail then, email now.) If you wanna have a good sex life (and…
Chronicling The Origins Of Desert Rock: Get a Taste of “The Whole Enchilada”
The Whole Enchilada Trailer from R&R Press on Vimeo. This weekend’s Tucson Film & Music Festival will include the premiere of The Whole Enchilada, a documentary that explores Tucson’s music scene from the late 1970s through the mid-’90s. Local filmmaker Maggie Smith captures the origins of desert rock through the words and sometimes fuzzy recollections…
Education advocates file signatures to force vote on Ducey’s tax cuts in 2022
Education advocacy groups on Tuesday filed hundreds of thousands of signatures to block Gov. Doug Ducey’s sweeping income tax cuts, the largest in state history, from going into effect and forcing a public vote on them. For that to actually happen, at least 118,823 of the 215,787 signatures the Invest in Arizona coalition submitted must…
Marana School District set to hold special meeting tonight over mask mandate
After Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper struck down several laws wedged into the Arizona Senate budget reconciliation bill, public school systems are now free to mandate masks on campus. The Marana Unified School District Governing Board is hosting a virtual meeting tonight on Zoom to discuss extending the district’s mask mandate on all…
New estimates show Colorado River levels falling faster than expected
WASHINGTON – New projections show that Lake Mead and Lake Powell could reach “critically low reservoir elevations” sooner than expected, spurring experts to say that “bold actions” will be needed to change course. The Bureau of Reclamation report released Thursday shows an 88% chance that Lake Powell could fall below 3,525 feet by next August,…
Court strikes down bans on mask mandates, critical race theory and more
A Maricopa County judge struck down a ban on public schools imposing face mask mandates and a host of other policy changes that lawmakers inserted into the state budget, and with them, may have forced a fundamental change in the way the legislature does business when it passes its annual budget each year. The ruling comes…
Homebuyer ‘love letters’ risk fair housing violations, but some feel risk is worth it
Nadia and Ernest Saco of Gilbert already had been searching for a new home before the pandemic hit in 2020, but when schools and offices closed across Arizona, their quest became more urgent. “I was working from home all of a sudden,” said Ernest Saco, a senior product manager for a software company and a…
Pima County El Tour Loop de Loop set for Saturday
El Tour de Tucson will hold the fifth Pima County El Tour Loop de Loop on Saturday, Sept. 25, and will conclude with an after-party. The activity, which helps promote the more than 20 nonprofit partners involved in the El Tour event, is the official kickoff for the Banner – University Medicine 38th El Tour de…
Foreign Exchange: Three young London artists bring fresh new art to Pima College’s Bernal Gallery
Way back in 2019, in the carefree days before the pandemic, David Andres flew all the way to London to see art. Traveling with members of the Contemporary Art Society of the Tucson Museum of Art, Andres scoured art studios all over the old town and hit gold in the warehouses of south London. He…
XOXO: Mark your calendars
Mark your calendars… This week sees John Legend, Rickie Lee Jones, Jack Russell’s Great White, Zoé, Waxahatchee, Metalachi, and more, pass through town. Read on… Thursday, Sept. 23 “Honky-tonk ain’t what it used to be. Somewhere along the way the lines got blurred.” Guitars ablaze, Ryan Chrys & The Rough Cuts dole out their…
Danehy: Lessons to remember 20 years after 9/11
When the definitive history of this era is written, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, will loom large, but perhaps not in the way many people might think. It is a widely held misconception (there’s a lot of that going around these days) that participating in sports builds character. It had correctly been pointed…
Ending in Tears: It’s remarkable that movie legend Clint Eastwood is still making movies, but Cry Macho is a mess
At 90+ years of age, Clint Eastwood has cemented his status as a very good filmmaker. He’s made a lot of movies, some great, some good, and some truly bad ones. Cry Macho, his latest directorial effort, is one of the truly bad ones. Again, the man is over 90 years old. It’s AMAZING that…
Pride 2021: Finding Their Voices: THEM Youth Ensemble moves beyond the binary
Mikah Rosanova wanted to sing tenor in high school. Their choral director told them they’d need to stay where they’re at—as a mezzo soprano. “Choir was the space where I felt like I belonged, simply because there were other queer people there. But I felt like I didn’t belong because I wasn’t singing the voice…
Pride 2021: Cross Purposes: Drag shows continue at IBT’s
From Wednesday to Sunday, full glam entertainment is bringing Tucsonans out of their pandemic fatigue and into a world of sass, class, and smart ass. We’re talking about IBT’s drag shows. IBT’s gay bar on Fourth Avenue opened in 1985 and touts itself as being the No. 1 gay bar in Tucson. “Since the inception…
Pride 2021: Savage and Sage Advice Columnist Dan Savage has a new book to guide you through your sex life
Syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage has teamed up with illustrator Joe Newton to create a new book, Savage Love from A to Z: Advice on Sex and Relationships, Dating and Mating, Exes and Extras. The book is filled with essays covering all the letters of the alphabet, from A (anal sex, of course) to Z (Zilch, which…
Pride 2021: In the name of love: Pride isn’t just about sexuality—it’s about who we are
For many of us, our orientation is much more than our sexuality—it’s fundamental to every part of our being. And our pride is in much more than the people with whom we sleep—it’s a pride in who we have become, our way of living, having created a reality where we can be ourselves and live…
Sprouting Anew: Rachel Eckroth returns to her jazz roots on The Garden
As the absurdity of the last 18 months would have it, it took musician and singer Rachel Eckroth returning to the desert to release an album titled The Garden—admittedly, it’s not a standard album, either. So the story of how The Garden came to be might actually make sense in its own scattered, jazzy way.…
Editor’s Note: A matter of pride
Tucson’s annual Pride parade and festival have been postponed to next year, but COVID can’t stop our Pride issue from coming out. We’ve got an interview with America’s best sex columnist, Dan Savage, and an excerpt from his new book, Savage Love: From A to Z, a delightful read that sums up much of the…
Maintaining the Roots: Mission Garden still growing, despite weather and world extremes
Being one of the longest continually inhabited and farmed areas in North America, it should come as no surprise Mission Garden on the flanks of Sentinel Peak was well-poised to survive both pandemic and drought. Mission Garden is one of the main projects of the nonprofit Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace, which works to preserve and…
Fit for an Emperor: JB Smoove welcomes sports betting, Caesars Sportsbook to Arizona
The Emmy Awards, HBO and sports betting in Arizona have one thing in common. JB Smoove has a hand in them. Earlier this year, Smoove received his first career Emmy nomination for Best Actor in a Short Form Series for his performance as Chief Billy Bills in the “Mapleworth Murders.” The nomination was a long…
Beaten Path: Desert Doves carries on mission of Peace Corps
Frank Zappa once famously asked “Who needs the Peace Corps?” but apparently a lot of people have needed it in the decades since the 1968 release of the Mothers of Invention album “We’re Only in it for the Money.” Founded by President John F. Kennedy in March 1961, the iconic organization that has helped developing…
Animal Attraction: Vineyard bottles Wine of the Wild to benefit Reid Park Zoo
Have you heard the one about the African elephant, squirrel monkey, giraffe, flamingo, white rhino, and anteater that walk into a bar? A wild time was had by all. Ba-dum, bump. But in this case, premium wine is the foundation of the festivities, and whenever a love of animals and passion for wine intersect, Rancho…
City Week: Weekly Picks
Editor’s Note: While we are delighted to see Tucsonans once again gathering for fun events, we are also aware that the new Delta variant is circulating and case counts in Arizona are on the rise. Please consider getting vaccinated against COVID if you haven’t yet and following CDC guidance, which includes wearing masks at crowded…
