Cover Story
Best of Tucson® 2009
We really wanted to make this Best of Tucson® something special. For one thing, it’s the Tucson Weekly’s 25th anniversary year. For another, as you know, the economy as of late has been … well, I’ll just say challenging, and leave it at that—and therefore, we feel it’s more important than ever to highlight the…
Greed State USA
I’m so proud of our Grand Canyon State. Yes, proud! Seems we have more to boast about than uncontrolled growth and friendly retirement. According to a series of maps on Wired Magazine, we are now a great place for Lucifer to retire—or we must be a vacation destination for him when it’s just too hot…
New Cost Estimates for Public Safety First Initiative
The city of Tucson’s Independent Audit and Performance Commission will be reviewing a report on the potential costs of the Public Safety First Initiative, aka Prop 200, which voters will decide Nov. 3. The prop would require the city to hire more police officers and firefighters. City officials had earlier estimated the costs to be…
Republican Council Candidates Have TV Spots
Republican City Council candidates Ben Buehler-Garcia (who is facing Democrat Karin Uhlich) and Steve Kozachik (who is facing Nina Trasoff) have put together 30-second TV spots. Both are basically biographical pieces meant to introduce them to Tucsonans.
Most Arizonans Confident in Obama’s Economic Plan; Local Conservatives Bad At Math
It’s like pollapalooza around here these days. Phoenix PBS affiliate KAET and the Cronkite School of Journalism up at ASU have awakened their polling operation from a long dormancy to bring us a new survey of Arizona attitudes. The big takeaways: • President Barack Obama has an approval rating of 53 percent and a disapproval…
Planned Parenthood Arizona Got Preliminary Injunction
When we reported on Planned Parenthood Arizona’s lawsuit, Patti Caldwell said she hoped a Maricopa Superior Court judge would issue a preliminary injunction. Well, according to the local daily, it looks like Planned Parenthood’s chief operating officer for the most part got her wish: A state judge has blocked implementation of key parts of a…
Even French Debate Polanski
Despite some French folks beating the drums of freedom for Roman Polanski, including the country’s own president, not every French national is wearing a Free Polanski badge this week. Polanski has citizenship in Poland and France—but it was interesting to read that his fellow French citizens, according to this piece in today’s New York Times,…
Rasmussen: Goddard Beats Brewer
Rasmussen is the latest polling outfit to reveal that Attorney General Terry Goddard is leading the 2010 gubernatorial race at this early stage. The Rasmussen release: State Attorney General Terry Goddard has an early lead over embattled incumbent Jan Brewer in Arizona’s 2010 race for governor. The first Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 survey in the…
Munger Leaves Face-Off, Prepares for Governor’s Race?
Local attorney John Munger is retiring from his gig on the monthly Political Face-Off on KUAT-TV’s Arizona Illustrated. Munger evidently has a big announcement to make in the near future. Does this mean he’s ready to jump into the gubernatorial race and challenge fellow Republican Gov. Jan Brewer? Stay tuned. Munger said goodbye last night…
Hassled By The Man, Con’t: UA Backing Down on Prosecuting Chalk-Wielding Students
An update on the great chalk crackdown of 2009: After a second chalk-wielding criminal was apprehended today by the UA Police Department, administration officials decided to back down on pressing criminal charges and will instead deal with them through the Dean of Students. We suppose that means that this outrageous infraction will go on their…
Friday Roundtable: Public Safety First Initiative, Brewer’s Lousy Numbers & More!
Topics on Arizona Illustrated’s Friday Roundtable: The costs of the Public Safety First Initiative, aka Prop 200; Gov. Jan Brewer’s lousy poll numbers; State schools chief Tom Horne’s latest TUSD dustup; and more after the jump.
Huckelberry on Public Safety First Initiative: Police Ratios Don’t Mean Much
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry stopped by the Friday Roundtable last night. He says Prop 200 is going to cost county taxpayers a bundle and suggests the City Council shouldn’t be trying to hire 2.4 officers per 1,000 Tucson residents. Watch it after the jump.
Katie Couric Nails Beck: What Is “White Culture”?
Glenn Beck, in one of his many rambling lunatic statements earlier this year, said the President Barack Obama had a “deep-seated hatred of white people or the white culture.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t know what he means by that—or at least he doesn’t want to explain it to anyone outside of Fox News.
McCain Vs. Giffords/Glassman
Public Policy Polling has been dropping Arizona survey numbers all week. Yesterday’s installment, on Sen. John McCain’s numbers, had an interesting twist: He was set up against two Southern Arizona Democrats.PPP tested McCain against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and City Councilman Rodney Glassman because those are the Democrats whose names are dropped as potential challengers. (They…
Primary Trouble For Brewer
Public Policy Polling has released numbers for a potential GOP primary in next year’s gubernatorial race. The news is not good for Gov. Jan Brewer, but a crowded primary could work out well for J. Fife Symington III, our former governor: In a head to head contest with Treasurer Dean Martin, Brewer trails 37-26. She…
Hassled by the Man!
If you’re going to protest at the UA, you better not be messy about it! Tim McDonnell and Hank Dean Stephenson (who labored as an intern for us earlier this year) bring us the news that UA cops arrested a student for writing on buildings in chalk to highlight a protest about university funding issues:…
Correction: Beck Didn’t Kill A Frog!
He punk’d us! But he’s still a nutbag. Best line: “Look how eager people are to smear!”
Miss Yvonne? Is That You Miss Yvonne?
Oh please, please bring the Pee Wee’s Playhouse stage show to Tucson, along with Miss Yvonne, Cowboy Curtis, Reba the mail lady, the King of Cartoons, Tito the lifeguard, Ricardo the soccer player, Pteri the Pterodactyl, Conky the Robot, Globey the Globe, Chairy the Chair and, oh yes, Pee Wee. Amen.
Water on Mars! Can We Pipe It To Tucson?
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona NASA/JPL/University of Arizona More beautiful photos of Mars from the UA’s HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The latest news: HIRISE has helped scientists spot ice below the surface of Mars halfway between the north pole and the equator, thanks to photos of craters that had been recently created by meteor…
Need Good Health Insurance? Run For State Office
When I talked to Representative Matt Heinz last week for my story on Planned Parenthood of Arizona’s lawsuit against the state, as a side note, I asked him about the health insurance you get when you happen to be a state representative. Well, the good doctor was kind enough to let me know he pays…
Crime Trends: Police Stats for Your Review
In “Police Action” this week, I took a look at TPD stats. I only included a few graphs about crime trends; you can check them all out yourself at TPD’s Web site.
A Chickenshit Complaint
We reported earlier this week on the attack ad against incumbent Tucson City Council Democrats Nina Trasoff and Karin Uhlich, which was produced by the shadowy Tucson Vision Committee. The Pima County Democratic Party released a statement yesterday complaining that the ad used a dirty word: Why are Republicans so worried about clean streets after…
But It Worked in Rehearsal!
Glenn Beck discovers that if you throw a frog into boiling water, it doesn’t jump out after all. It just boils. What do you bet that a frog in water that is slowly heating up eventually jumps out when the water gets too hot? We think it’s all well and good to disprove cliches, but…
Police Dispatch
ALMOST A COMPLETE BREAKFAST NORTH WHALEBACK PLACE AUG. 30, 7:09 A.M. A northeast-side homeowner awoke one morning to find his home covered in random food items, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report. The reportee said he was jarred awake that morning by his daughter screaming that their house had been destroyed. He went…
The Skinny
FROM THE SHADOWS It wouldn’t be an election in the city of Tucson if we didn’t have some sort of shadowy independent campaign committee out there beating up on Democratic candidates. Now it’s official: The Tucson Vision Committee filed its paperwork with the city of Tucson last week. The first advertisement from the committee debuted…
Mailbag
Antenori: We Cut Gift to Science Foundation Arizona to Help Fund Education The story on Science Foundation Arizona (“Investment Issues,” Sept. 10) covers an important topic: economic development. However, the article does not tell the whole story. When I entered the Legislature in January, the state faced an unprecedented budget crisis brought on by years…
Messina
Sgt. Patrick Stewart, U.S. Army. Born: Oct. 21, 1970, Reno, Nev. Death: Sept. 25, 2005, Afghanistan. In life, Sgt. Stewart, a Wiccan, was a casualty of the War on Terror. In death, he became a symbol for religious freedom. Stewart’s widow was initially denied the right to put a Wiccan pentacle on his headstone by…
Soaring Success
This is something special. Arizona Theatre Company’s stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner is so moving, so well-crafted and so visually stunning that it’s hard to imagine how the rest of the ATC season can follow this act. Theater combines story and language with visuals and performance. It has music, movement and…
Now Showing at Home
The Wizard of Oz: 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Blu-ray), The Hannibal Lecter Collection (Blu-Ray), Shaun of the Dead (Blu-Ray), Requiem for a Dream (Blu-Ray)
On the Road
What does Iowa mean to you? (Putting aside, for the moment, the Wildcats football season.) There’s something about the American Midwest that makes it a potent symbol in theater, whether it’s in the plucky optimism of State Fair and The Music Man, or in the poignancy of Our Town. The symbolism is drawn from images…
Soundbites
MORE LOCAL MUSICIANS PRODUCE MORE LOCAL MUSIC It’s another action-packed week here in the Old Pueblo, so let’s get right to it. To start, three local acts will be celebrating new albums with CD-release parties. With the advent of digital home-recording technology, just about anyone these days can make a decent-sounding album. The Dusty Buskers…
Homegrown Collaboration
It all started with a bench. A few years back, Etherton Gallery hired Tucson furniture maker Scott Baker to craft a wooden bench for its downtown space. Baker is known for his exquisite handmade furniture, cabinets and tables in sleek swathes of cherry and steel. (He also once ran the now-defunct Metroform Limited photography gallery.)…
Fill ‘Er Up
I like everything about PJ Subs T6 Filling Station—except for the name. This comfortable midtown eatery, which serves up sandwiches, sports and cocktails, seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis, no doubt a result of its somewhat turbulent opening. Jay Tolkoff—owner of PJ Subs on Speedway Boulevard, which he closed to open…
Noshing Around
Krispy Kreme Continued A second area Krispy Kreme location opened Friday, Sept. 18, at 7805 N. Oracle Road, and there’s word that another may be opening in the near future. I won’t criticize this new wave of local Krispy Kremes—the doughnuts rock, even though they’re now trucked in from Mesa—but let’s remember to support our…
Guest Opinion
On Aug. 20, Tom Danehy referenced Councilwoman’s Regina Romero’s invocation of the “creative class” as a justification for preserving the Warehouse District. At first, Danehy dismissed Romero’s comment as “stupid,” primarily because he didn’t recall the term. Danehy revisited the “stupid-ass term” and gave it a full thrashing on Sept. 10. As he noted, “creative…
Feather Punches
There’s something in the way that Tucsonans David and Judy Ray transmute grief into powerful art that suggests they’ve endured things the rest of us can only suffer vicariously. Indeed, every poem in Judy’s latest book, To Fly Without Wings, exudes the confident aura of someone who has experienced everything life has to offer—tragedy and…
Media Watch
KOLD dabbles with news on extra digital channel, tennis not for everyone, La Preciosa replaced by Mia at 97.1
From the Ideologues
When Matt Heinz stood on the Arizona House of Representatives floor in March, the Democratic lawmaker could have easily turned his remarks into a pro-choice tirade. Instead, the District 29 freshman representative took the microphone and presented a few facts that perhaps only an internist-turned-politician could explain to the government’s Republican majority. The topic was…
Tough Side of Tap
Six solid men take the stage, looking rugged in their jeans and industrial work boots. They appear ready to hit the construction site to do … some tap-dancing? Clearly, this isn’t a traditional tap-dancing performance. There isn’t a pretty backdrop and a lamppost to sing and dance around. There are no top hats or jazz…
Top Ten in Books
Antigone Books best-sellers for the week
Poorer Than Average
Thanks to the economy, a higher percentage of Americans are now living in poverty. That doesn’t bode well for Tucson, since local residents have typically been even poorer than the national average. “Tucson is like the Ellis Island of the Southwest,” suggests Marshall Vest, an economist at the UA, as to why our metropolitan area…
Prepare to Crawl
Now that we have this year’s Best of Tucson® finished, printed and distributed (and now that we’ve, hopefully, survived our ’80s Karaoke Night/Best of Tucson® Release Party without making asses of ourselves), we can turn our focus to Fall Club Crawl®, which will be taking over much of downtown Tucson and Fourth Avenue on Saturday,…
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
Captive Lifestyle
So you’ve sweated through decades as a working stiff, and now you’re ready to kick back and enjoy retirement. Soon, a bit of scouting reveals the seemingly perfect fit: You’ll settle into a low-stress life at some bucolic RV park. But this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be hunkered in a Winnebago; these days, RV parks…
Ask a Mexican!
In Garfield strips that appeared earlier this year, Garfield is wearing a sombrero and taking siestas. While cute and all, isn’t this the sort of thing that we have been striving to stop? What was Jim Davis thinking? Maybe he needs a refresher course in not making pendejadas. Odio Odie Dear Wab: Garfield is still…
Top Ten in Music
Toxic Ranch Records top sales for the week
Danehy
This being the Best of Tucson® issue, you’ll probably be in skim-read-the-bite-sized-morsels mode, so I’ll take this opportunity to tidy up a few things that aren’t big enough to merit an entire column all by themselves (although, if I were up against a deadline, they almost certainly could be stretched into columns without a whole…
Pearl Jam: Backspacer (Monkeywrench)
With Pearl Jam experiencing a renaissance of late—aided by 2006’s eponymous return to form and a well-deserved live reputation—the group is moving forward with its loosest album to date; at 36 minutes, Backspacer is certainly the group’s shortest effort. A renewed working relationship with producer Brendan O’Brien (back for the first time since 1998’s Yield)…
Smug S.O.B.
Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! playfully tells the true story of a corporate whistleblower who does a miserable yet strangely effective job of helping the FBI investigate an international price-fixing scheme. Soderbergh wants to be more humorous than dramatic with his depiction of the actual corporate crime that occurred in the ’90s. Thanks to an understated…
Little Orchestra
Of his 12-piece band Pink Martini, Thomas M. Lauderdale likes to say, “If the United Nations had a band in 1962, we would be that band.” Since 1994, the Portland, Ore.-based Pink Martini has traded in the sort of lush, beautiful jazz and pop that typified movie musicals and pop standards of the 1930s, ’40s…
The Dodos: Time to Die (Frenchkiss)
Gently layered on top of the Dodos’ pounding rhythms, both from the polyrhythmic drums and syncopated guitar strumming, is a melodic sweetness. That combination, plus some classic California psychedelic touches, gives the band’s pop songs their fuzzy edges—too often at the expense of the hectic rawness of Visiter, the Dodos’ 2008 release. For Time to…
Police Action
When you hear stories about a person stabbed while interrupting a midtown car robbery, or citizens shot to death in southside home invasions, it seems as if we’re all just one wrong step away from a bullet to the head or a knife to the throat. The Tucson Association of Realtors says it has a…
Live
Thrift Store Cowboys with Amanda Shires
Phonograph: Okno (BNS Sessions)
Bands that escape being pigeonholed are often fun and interesting, but in the case of Brooklyn’s Phonograph, perhaps only the latter is true. Okno is the band’s sophomore release, coming two years after a self-titled debut that elicited serious praise from sober, roots-music magazines like Paste and American Songwriter. Indeed, Phonograph has a knack for…
City Week
Guantánamo Melee Screening of The Response 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 29 UA College of Law Speedway Boulevard and Mountain Avenue (602) 650-1854; www.theresponsemovie.com Sig Libowitz was a law student with a fascination for national security and a background in filmmaking. In law school, he came across a transcript from a court hearing at Guantánamo Bay.…
Nine Questions
Chris Gunn
T Q&A
Rick Wheeler
Guitar Heroes
It has been said that someone controls electric guitar. This is clearly true, as electric guitar is incapable of controlling itself. In the subjunctively titled It Might Get Loud, three controllers of the electric guitar meet up in a big room to stare at each other and learn about musicianship and what kind of hat…
Best Art Museum
Last season, the Tucson Museum of Art was the very model of an all-purpose city art museum, covering contemporary, traditional and local art in wide-ranging exhibitions. Chief curator Julie Sasse, who may just be the hardest-working art pro in town, staged Trouble in Paradise, a major show on environmental catastrophes that brought in work from…
Best Contemporary Architecture
Simon Donovan’s Rattlesnake Bridge is a perfect place for a secret rendezvous. You can hide in plain sight while your quiet whispers are drowned out by the sound of the passing traffic below. You’re deep in the belly of the beast, so to speak. This marvelous piece of functional art, or artistic architecture, has become…
Best Gym
Not since Olivia Newton John invited us to get “Physical” has there been a greater temptation to throw on a sweatshirt or leotard and leg warmers: The spacious aerobic rooms at the three local LA Fitness locations have enough hardwood and mirrors to drive the sentimental into a Flashdance frenzy. (LA Fitness was established in…
Best Bagels
What’s better than Winston Smith’s diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with industrial-grade Victory-brand gin? OK, pretty much anything—but what’s a lot better? That would be some really good bagels from Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery. Not too hard, not too soft and never, ever stale, Bruegger’s bagels are preservative-free and baked continuously throughout…
Best Goth/Leather Shop
For the “Karma Chameleon” in you, Hydra offers a variety of clothes as costume. Of course, nothing says “Hold Me Now” like a leather bustier and fishnet stockings under a Shirley Temple-style sailor outfit. Or how about a white vinyl nurse’s outfit—including a miniskirt, of course, with strategically placed red crosses? There’s also the best…
The BOT Interview: Jonathan Paton
Republican Jonathan Paton is the state senator from District 30. Best place to get beer supplies? Brew Your Own Brew. The guy who runs it knows you. He takes an interest in finding out who you are. He’s really excited about brewing beer, and he always has samples of things he’s making and wants to…
Best New Festival
Tucson is a literary town, and it took this new festival to finally prove it—and thank the Book Gods it succeeded. Local writers shined at the festival, as did local publishers, especially the UA Press. But organizers paid particular attention to young readers, with activities and readings from authors of juvenile and children’s fiction, as…
Best Brunch
Blue Willow has long delighted the brunch crowd. The converted adobe house offers a relaxed atmosphere and includes year-round dining on the patio. Specialty items star, such as the fresh fruit crepes and the Blue Willow special (eggs scrambled with chicken, green chiles, tomatoes, chopped corn tortillas, cheddar, salsa and sour cream … wow!). Of…
Best Answer to the Carnivore’s Dilemma
There’s no need to remove the bun to answer the age-old question, “Where’s the beef?” It’s there on Lindy’s OMFG burger—all three pounds of it, spread across 12 juicy, messy, delicious patties. Finish the whole thing in less than 20 minutes, and the $20 burger is free—plus you get a $5 gift certificate and your…
Best Chinese
Got any vegan friends visiting from out of town? This place is a seitan-lover’s paradise, dishing out seitan chicken, beef and shrimp. Guilin says it’s the “healthy” place. Well, that’s nice and all, but this restaurant—located across from the Loft for a before- or after-movie meal—should consider itself a United Nations of good eats. It’s…
Best Buffet
Here’s the deal: You must be sure to arrive extremely hungry, and be ready to take advantage of all that is there. People tend to think of this place as a simple soup-and-salad bar, but that does not begin to describe this buffet experience. Aside from all the usual tossed-salad stuff, Sweet Tomatoes offers a…
Best Plant Nursery
Look, you know you could really use some help. The orange trees don’t bloom anymore. And there are these cool vines with pretty little pink flowers that take off during monsoon season, but you don’t know their name. And there’s an area of the yard that could really use some cactus, but how on earth…
The BOT Interview: Tana Kelch
Tana Kelch has lived in Tucson since 1973. In 2003, she opened the consistently quirky art emporium Bohemia. Dedicated to promoting talented local artists and creating a community around locally produced art, Bohemia has managed to capture Tucson’s unique Southwest style without bringing in the coyote motifs or turquoise Kokopelli designs. Best Annual Festival? My…
Best Margarita Madness
If you’ve never been to the Tucson Culinary Festival because you’re intimidated by all that wine-speak, you may want to check out the Margarita Championship. This will be the championship’s fourth year, and this way-fun event gives you not only an opportunity to sample some of the top margaritas and food from some of the…
Best Public Art
Evidently, there’s some local American Indian belief that crossing a rattlesnake is bad luck, yet here we are in Tucson with a giant metal rattlesnake, made into a bridge crossing six lanes of traffic. You might know a few people who avoid it because of this belief, while others revel in artist Simon Donovan’s contribution…
Best Alternative Health Center
Back in the 1970s, it was not uncommon for master (unlicensed) Chinese acupuncturists to work out of makeshift treatment rooms in quiet neighborhood basements—and people would line up to be needled. Acupuncture has come a long way since then, but with that, it’s also become expensive. Tucson Community Acupuncture is part of a growing number…
Best Painting Exhibition
Two longtime giants of the Tucson art scene—both MFA grads of the UA—had major painting exhibitions over the winter. Tokar Miller had a well-deserved career retrospective at the UAMA. She filled its first floor with her luminous near-abstractions based on landscape, rendered in simple strokes and radiant color that conjured up her Asian sources. Waid,…
Best Tortillas
“Let’s Hear It for the Boy!” Alejandro’s Tortilla Factory has been a local family-owned business for 25 years, featuring humbly made corn and flour tortillas. This is simple, straightforward Mexican soul food, made using a minimum number of ingredients. The fresh, flavorful corn tortillas are nicely textured with a slight tartness. The flour versions are…
Best Car Wash
OK, so why is Capin Car Care Center called a car care center and not just a car wash? Because they do way more than just wash cars. The people at Capin’s four locations in Tucson can wash your car, shampoo your interior seats and even provide free coffee with the purchase of a wash.…
The BOT Interview: Dr. Richard Carmona
Dr. Richard Carmona has led a busy life. Raised in Harlem, he dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Army, where he earned his GED and joined the Special Forces. He went on to become a paramedic, registered nurse, physician, educator, SWAT-team training officer, surgeon and public-health administrator. He was named the 17th…
Best Spot for Some Old-Time Cinema
While the Fox Tucson Theatre continues to search for its soul (and audience)—or wait, maybe it’s that Tucson is still searching for its own soul—the restored theater has become a great destination for old movie serials, cartoons and other old-time fare. It helps parents introduce their kids to Benji or The Rocky Horror Picture Show…
Best Restaurant for Gluten-Free Pizza
Maintaining a gluten-free diet may be one of the most challenging things one can do, food-wise. Those with celiac disease or gluten intolerance reluctantly learn to give up a lot of familiar comfort foods. Although enjoyable gluten-free alternatives to many foods are available, truly fine pizza has never been one of them. Fortunately, this is…
Best Trainspotting
By now, everyone knows that Maynards serves some of the best pizza in town. But its patio holds a special place in the hearts of trainspotters; you can’t enjoy a beer any closer to the trains unless that beer is wrapped in a brown bag. Note that there are two main phyla of trains: Ignore…
Best Diner
Many a Monday ’80s night at Club Congress has ended with a familiar refrain: “Tater tots!” That’s because downtown faithful know they can get the best tots in town just down the street, any hour of the night or day, at Grill. This Tucson institution is everything you would expect from your favorite greasy spoon,…
Best Vietnamese
A casual restaurant in the university area, Miss Saigon serves up delicious, light Vietnamese fare that’s sure to please both students and working professionals. Start off with an appetizer—don’t miss the spring rolls and dipping sauce—and move on to a hearty soup. Choose from pho (rice noodle soup with beef broth), hu tieu (rice noodle…
Best Sporting Goods
Big 5’s catch phrase is: “We Get You Ready to Play.” And whatever sport you are looking to play, Big 5 has you covered. Start off with apparel—T-shirts, shorts, jerseys, swimsuits and more. Then choose footwear—casual, sneakers, boots and water shoes—and there’s enough of a selection for you to easily “Jump” or be “Footloose.” Then…
The BOT Interview: J.A. Jance
J.A. Jance is a best-selling author and has written 38 novels—plus a book of poetry. Raised in Bisbee, Jance had a lifelong dream to become a writer. Before her start at the age of 39, she taught high school English, was an elementary school librarian and even sold life insurance. Jance wrote her first three…
Best Dedication to the Art of Bartending
Tending bar is like selling matches to pyromaniacs and hoping nothing catches on fire. Think about it: Booze makes people crazy, and bartenders manage that madness—and nobody handles it more gracefully than Tiger, the daytime bartender at the Tap Room for more than 50 years. Tolerance isn’t his only virtue, though; he’s also humble, a…
Best Public Garden
Take a book with you one morning and read in the quaint charm of the ageless barrio garden. You can almost hear the sunlight on the mesquite leaves and the rustle of peppers growing in a vintage, industrial-sized tomato can. It feels like the heart of what makes Tucson what it is. A lazy stroll…
Best Day Spa
What with Tucson’s hellish heat and America’s looming descent into dystopia, you may not be feeling too fresh lately. There’s no better way to solve that than by taking a trip to a day spa, and—according to the well-washed masses of Weekly readers—there’s no better day spa in Tucson than Gadabout SalonSpas. From hot-stone massages…
Best Drawing Exhibition
The prodigiously talented Briggs draws as well as Dürer, but her sgraffito medium is unique. She attacks black scratchboards with X-Acto knives to reveal the white underneath, “drawing” with her blades to make drawings as intricate as any old master’s. The violent technique was tailor-made for this year’s work, inspired by the death and disorder…
Best Burrito
There are more Nico’s restaurants in Tucson than there are black helicopters, so you needn’t travel far for the best, biggest and most economical burritos in town! Meat lovers will delight in the delicious carne asada, carnitas and pollo asado selections. Fish, shrimp and vegetarian burritos are also available, along with classics like red chili,…
Best Auto Repair
The first thing you notice when entering one of these homegrown-chain service centers is how well-lit, bright and clean it all is. Walls are also adorned with big, colorful, well-designed placards detailing a menu of the many services, along with the costs. Next to the waiting area (with TVs), there is a workstation where you…
Best Toy Store
Mrs. Tiggy Winkle’s is popular with toy-store lovers, with or without kids—and, yes, we’ve been known to handle the merchandise. And that’s OK, because that’s what this toy store is all about: You can touch; you can play; and if they have some good kiddie tunes on, you can dance. What happens in Mrs. Tiggy…
The BOT Interview: Jeff Yanc
Jeff Yanc is the program director at the Loft Cinema. He was a co-owner of the late, lamented Readers’ Oasis bookstore. Best appetizer? Fried avocados at Pastiche. It’s creamy on the inside and crunchy on the outside. It’s two distinctive kinds of fat: You get the grease fat, which is the bad fat, but then…
Best Free Appetizer
These little goodies come with every dish at this wonderful downtown Spanish restaurant. French fries almost pale in comparison. The potatoes come to the table sizzling hot; two sauces—a tangy aioli and a Tabasco-like red one—are there for dipping. Of course, Casa Vicente also offers a tapas menu which would easily win Best Tapas if…
Best Karma (Chameleon)
The downtown lunch crowd likes to frequent this full-service bistro for its light, healthy and delicious organic fare, but Café 54 is also a unique employment program for adults recovering from mental illness. Trainees work as line and prep cooks, servers, cashiers and dishwashers. Diners can enjoy delicious food—such as a jerk-chicken salad, teriyaki salmon…
Best French
For some damn reason or another, Best of Tucson® has not had a Best French restaurant category. Quel dommage! But now we do, and Le Rendez-Vous is the winner. From hors d’oeuvres to desserts, the food here is très magnifique. Our recommendation is the mignon de veau au Calvados (veal medallions with apples and Calvados…
Best Japanese
Any place that wins a Best of Tucson® category five years in a row is legit. Not only is the food at this fast-casual Japanese restaurant truly fantastic; it’s also good for you. Using the freshest ingredients and organics whenever possible (and no MSG), the staff here creates some damn good grub. The squid salad…
Best Outdoor Recreation Store
Thank the soul of Edward Abbey that there’s a place like this in Tucson. While the powers that be want to continue to make retirement, home-construction and low-wage service-industry jobs the foundation of Tucson’s economy, this ray of light serves as a reminder that we live in a recreation paradise that can help change how…
Best-Tasting Local Brew
Any beer company with a monkey as its mascot and a healthy sense of parody in its advertising has to be good, and our very own Nimbus Brewing Company lives up to the expectations. Nimbus’ varied beers are tasty and memorably named: You may forget what you did after downing a couple of pints of…
Best ‘Ice Water’
This is very grown-up ice water, indeed: a swig of Ketel Citroen, a splash of Tanqueray 10, a blend of citrus and enough ice to chill it all. This is a perfect cooler that even those who don’t drink gin will enjoy. Add an order of the house cheese puffs or a pot of the…
Best Recreation Area in Southern Arizona
Revolutionary environmentalist Edward Abbey said in his 1968 memoir, Desert Solitaire, that all national parks should ban car travel and instead opt for a parking lot with buses to drive the indoors-types around. Sabino Canyon has taken some of that advice. The Sabino Canyon tram is an open-air bus with narrated and non-narrated tours, and…
Best Public Servant
For a teenage girl with her head in the clouds, 1984 was a formative year. Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to run on a major-party presidential ticket, and the first women walked in space. With both ends of the inspirational spectrum available, 14-year-old University High School student Gabrielle Giffords opted to keep her feet…
Best Dancing in the Streets
During weekends last fall, NEW ART sent its dancers careening outdoors, on Congress Street and in the Main Library plaza downtown. A team of writers picked by Kore Press followed right behind, crafting texts inspired by the close encounters between dancers and startled pedestrians. Then there were the dancers’ interactions with Curt Brill’s giant bronze…
Best Smoothie
Unlike some other smoothies you can get in Tucson, the ones at Xoom Juice are actually good for you. Well, at least they’re not bad for you. Rather than using things like ice cream or high-fructose corn syrup, they stick to the good stuff. That includes pure fruit, 100 percent fruit juice, organic soymilk or…
Best Florist
For seven decades, Inglis Florists has been more than just a Tucson flower shop: It has been where the community goes when it wants a helping hand in saying something special. As an example, the large store on Broadway Boulevard provides a total floral shopping experience. Beyond fresh flowers, available items include silk flowers, small…
Best Clothing Store
This spinoff enterprise has the same standards as its Buffalo Exchange parent: If it ain’t stylin’, it ain’t tradin’. In these economic times, especially, it’s the place to go for the most generous gifts for the kids in your circle. They’ll never know you paid less than half-price for those good-as-new Diesel jeans or that…
Best Specialty Foods
Pity the poor cliff-dwellers for whom AJ’s is the neighborhood grocery store. They’ll never be able to savor the delicious indulgence of grinding up the hill in their 1989 Honda Civic for the perfect aphrodisiac dessert for a romantic dinner; or an extravagant assortment of beer and snacks for a 21st-birthday party; or illicit, solitary…
Best Park for Paranoia
What’s to worry about, with pre-teens at their most awkward physical stage hurtling over concrete terra-forms? All this in the environs of a hobo jungle at the lovely Santa Rita Park, where on the second and fourth Sunday of every month, while wearing your ripped jeans and Thrasher mag T-shirt, you can get a free…
Best Bike Ride
El Grupo Youth Cycling (elgrupocycling.org) is a kids’ club for ages 12 to 20 that promotes fitness, fun and camaraderie. Their annual Alley Cat Scavenger Hunt is the most fun you can have on two wheels. It’s an easy mystery tour/treasure hunt on bikes for all ages and fitness levels. Teams solve clues to determine…
Best Greek
Walking into Fronimo’s is like walking into a café in the Mediterranean. With golden-colored walls, ethnic music and framed photographs of Crete, the atmosphere in Fronimo’s is warm and inviting. The menu offers a mix of specials (gyros, moussaka, pastitsio, lamb shank and more) and American fare like hamburgers, tuna melts and grilled cheese. The…
Best Mexican Fast Food/Drive-Thru
But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won victory over himself. And so it was that Winston came to accept his obsession with Nico’s nachos supreme. He had seen all the other people order tacos and burritos and combination plates, but he ordered only the nachos, which…
Best Bike Shop
Yep, Ordinary Bike is just your average bike shop. Really, what bike store doesn’t have brightly colored walls, an intense selection of accessories for both beginners and professional riders, and a staff so friendly and helpful that they could convince a hard-core atheist to believe in God? Their repair shop is staffed with knowledgeable employees…
Best Sports Bar
Everybody may have known each other’s names, but the gang at Cheers never had it so good: bar food from around the world, 75 international beers and a game room that would put Sam Malone’s little dart board and pool table to shame. Forget that pathetic little TV for Red Sox games: World Sports Grille…
Best Place for a Black and Tan
There are many great reasons to go to The Shanty, but if you’re looking for the best of both worlds—a traditional dark beer, like a Guinness, poured just right, combined with a pale ale, like a Bass—then the Shanty is the destination. The copper bar, the pool tables and the patio are nice, and once…
Best Bike Riding
Maybe you want an easier bike path, but something that still gets you close to nature (but not too close), or maybe you’re just looking for a way to get a bit of dirt on your bike. Any way you look at it, those 12 flat miles of the Rillito River Park Trail are a…
Best Local TV Newscast
“When Doves Fly,” you’ll hear about it first on the Old Pueblo’s only 4 p.m. news show. The entire on-air news crew at KVOA can proudly say, “Somebody’s Watching Me.” The station has built a loyal viewership with longtime stalwarts like Martha Vasquez, Sandy Rathbun, Lupita Murillo and Jimmy Stewart. The main anchors are relative…
Best Delicatessen
If the Bubbe is visiting, and you’re thinking, “Great, let’s take her out for good pastrami,” she’ll enjoy, but perhaps she’ll wince when she sees shrimp on that other part of the menu. “What kind of place is this again?” she asks. But then she thinks about her nice Italian friend, and wouldn’t it be…
Best Sonoran Hot Dogs
We’re pretty sure that Calexico wasn’t really singing about this joint in the show-stopping “Guero Canelo,” but the Sonoran hot dog here does deserve some sort of musical tribute. Check out how the flavors complement and contradict each other, from the soft dog to the crunchy bacon, from the hot salsa to the smooth mayo.…
Best Street
It’s still ugly as sin for some stretches, but Speedway Boulevard’s landscaped medians are a big improvement over the situation in 1966, when LIFE magazine named it “the ugliest street in the America.” And what other city street boasts a guest ranch and two mountain ranges? It’s got every level of education; multiple ethnic restaurants;…
Best Catered-to-Kids Restaurant
If you want to treat your kids to some meaningless fun that can create joy and love for a few hours, take them to the rat-and-pizza palace. This isn’t a gourmet pizza kitchen. Wolfgang Puck is in Los Angeles, folks. But the kids like it and seem to want more, so that must be a…
Best Vegetarian/Vegan
“Against All Odds,” Lovin’ Spoonfuls has survived and thrived on Campbell Avenue’s ultra-competitive restaurant row. Featuring a globe-hopping menu, from American to Middle Eastern to multiple Asian cuisines, Lovin’ Spoonfuls offers a food court’s worth of choices—all without meat. Making textured soy and tofu palatable and even flavorful for visiting carnivores takes skill and just…
Best Izakaya Dining
Tucked into a strip mall on the northeast side of town, Ginza gives Tucsonans a chance to experience a trendy Japanese trend—izakaya. You’ve never heard of izakaya? Call it tapas, Japanese-style. Ginza offers a full array of izakaya dishes, along with some of the best sushi in the city. From shumai dumplings to items that…
Best Coconut Curry
Why coconut curry? If you’re a fan, you know why. If you’re not, you need to be. Much like its sister restaurant on Broadway Boulevard (Seri Melaka), Neo of Melaka uses herbs and spices from Southeast Asia, India and China to create a delicate fusion of flavors bursting forth from curries and sauces. Add some…
Best Indian
You can buy a copy of Yamuna Devi’s award-winning cookbook Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, or you can simply visit Gandhi Cuisine of India. There’s a reason Tucsonans choose this place year after year as their favorite Indian restaurant: The food is superb. A sense of peace washes over you when you walk in the door. The…
Best Mexican
“What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Everything, if you’re Café Poca Cosa diva Susana Davila. Her passion for fresh ingredients, and for updating and beautifully complicating traditional fare, would make Café Poca Cosa a top restaurant in New York or Los Angeles—but fortunately for us, Davila likes Tucson. Her dedication and creativity has been…
Best Video Games Store
Button-mashers and studied gamers alike can find everything they’re looking for at GameStop. The knowledgeable staff and the wide variety of new and used games, consoles and accessories can turn you into the kind of alternate-reality-addicted person you always knew you could be. While you may not get as much as you’d like when trading…
The BOT Interview: Ray Carroll
Sometimes we call him Sugar Ray, because Ray Carroll has a certain fighting style that his District 4 constituents have liked ever since he was first appointed to the seat in 1997. However, many folks in Pima County government wish he’d just get along with the Democratic majority. It’s not only Democrats he clashes with;…
Best New Cocktail
Our friend Patrick turned us on to the Beergee’s, a sloshy concoction that involves mixing a cold beer (which you’ll have to procure on your own; eegee’s doesn’t sell beer) with a lemon eegee’s. We’ve done our share of experimenting with the combo at our home during the long, hot summer, and we’ve discovered that…
Best Hike
What’s more romantic than a full moon over Sabino Canyon? How about a moonlight hike up Sabino Canyon with that significant other? Or for the jock/jockette, an early morning run? For you intellectual types, impress your date with geological factoids gleaned from A Guide to the Geology of Sabino Canyon and the Catalina Highway, published…
Best Radio Station for News
The folks at Tucson’s National Public Radio station—now part of an entity called Arizona Public Media—have made sure that all of us in Southern Arizona stay in the news loop, with NPR programs like Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition and All Things Considered; Public Radio International programs like The World, This American…
Best Organic Food Store
So you’ve read the books and seen the movies, and now you’re pissed about the industrial food complex in this country—but you don’t have the income to burn on all those pricey organic fruits and veggies and natural products everyone is telling you will save the world. Luckily, there’s Sunflower Market, where you can find…
Best Fish Tacos
Although Rubio’s fish tacos may not be quite like the ones you’ll get seaside in Mexico, they may help you believe you’re on a beach somewhere, even if you’re actually in a noisy mall in the middle of Tucson. There’s something about those beer-battered fish fillets in a corn or flour tortilla, Rubio’s tangy white…
Best Resource for the Unemployed
Get out of the house, for crying out loud! Meet some folks. Be reminded every day of the value of all that experience and the skills you’ve accumulated. True, looking for work can be a full-time job, but it’s also brutally demoralizing. What you need is an appreciation fix. You may get more appreciation than…
Best Playground
Ever since 2001, you wise readers have picked Reid Park in this category, and there are innumerable good reasons for that. Actually, there’s not just one playground area at this sprawling midtown park; there are several, with all sorts of cool stuff in between (like a duck pond, numerous benches, picnic armadas, a rose garden,…
Best Veggie Burger
Back in the day when Cyndi Lauper was just having fun, and being vegetarian was considered more weird and inconvenient than healthy, most veggie-lovers would have killed for a good v-burger. The problem with Lovin’ Spoonfuls is they have four great burgers on their all-veggie menu (five if you include the portobello griller). Starting with…
Best Way to Get Your Butt Kicked
Local trainer Kirsten Cooper has designed a boot-camp training program that is not for the weak or whiny. She holds her camps at various parks around town (usually at Himmel, Udall and Fort Lowell parks), and from the moment you get there, you’re moving. You’re trotting sideways in circles, doing leg lifts off of bleachers,…
The BOT Interview: Charles Bowden
Charles Bowden moved to Tucson in August 1957 and attended Mansfield Middle School and Tucson High School; he later took a job at the Tucson Citizen. He eventually embarked on a writing life that’s produced numerous acclaimed books, including the recently published Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing. He is also a regular contributor…
Best Italian
Gavi is one restaurant where you’ll be thankful the excesses of the ’80s are still in effect. Chain restaurants may be happy to heap mounds of mediocre fare into your to-go container, but Gavi’s ample servings are the real deal, with perfectly cooked pasta, flavorful tomato sauces and creamy white sauces. You’d expect a matronly…
Best New Bookstore
Unlike a certain major online bookseller, Barnes and Noble won’t delete your copy of Orwell’s 1984 remotely. B&N, even though it sells music and movies, too, is still a real bookstore selling real books. Their coffee shop is a nice place to hang out with friends as you plot to overthrow the government (or at…
Best Musical Instrument Store
Come on, admit it: You’ve been dying to relive your high school glory days of blasting the opening bars of “Metal Health” by Quiet Riot on your sousaphone in band practice. Head to the downtown location of the Chicago Music Store, and rummage through the dusty and dark corners of this 90-year-old landmark. The music…
Best Breakfast
For more than 30 years, this family-owned restaurant/bakery/gift shop has been delighting Tucsonans with great food, fine service and delicious breakfasts. Let’s start with the three-egg omelets: There are at least 13 mix-and-match combinations, including items such as avocado, spinach and chicken. Want a little south-of-the-border spice? Try the chorizo scramble, the huevos rancheros or…
Best Place to Feel Like You Just Snuck Your First Beer
Wasn’t that first pilfered pilsner the best beer … ever? Remember? The boozy warmth and facial numbness took over first. Then the room started to spin, and the only thing your young and very drunk ass could do is curse your parents for keeping such an amazing elixir out of your tiny hands. Well, it’s…
Best Non-Pizza Place to Feed a Crowd
Established in Tucson in 1953, Lucky Wishbone was already a local institution when the Tucson Weekly was founded in 1984. It thrives today in a half-dozen locations. It’s got the same, ’50s drive-in ambiance, sans car-hops, and essentially the same menu it started out with: guilty-pleasure-yummy, artery-hardening fried shrimp, fish, steakfingers and chicken—all are served…
Best Country Music Station
In Tucson radio’s country-music arena, there’s really only one player. KIIM FM 99.5 has dominated the format since it exploded in popularity nearly two decades ago. Sure, the occasional competitor has tried to make headway, only to get inevitably steamrolled by Tucson’s country-radio machine. Toss in a lineup highlighted by Max, Shannon and Porkchop in…
Best Local Activist/Advocacy Group
In 1984, members of Tucson’s LGBT community were opening their homes for weekly meetings to support Tucson youths struggling with issues surrounding their sexual identities. Over time, those meetings evolved into Wingspan, with a charter encompassing all age groups and a wide range of issues affecting the LGBT community. When the recession recently forced draconian…
Best Empanadas
The “girls from Empanada,” Kris and Vicki, have scored their second win in the Best of Tucson®. Their delicious empanadas—baked, light pastry shells filled with meat, veggies or sweets—are the perfect easy meal. Simply take your frozen empanada; pop it in the oven; and bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees. The most difficult part…
Best Place to Have a Haircut Adventure (With Good Results)
We don’t know what this place’s owners were on when they came up with the name, but we’re sure they and their staff are clear-minded (and steady-handed) when they’re cutting hair—and that’s all that matters. The Coyote Wore Sideburns is at the top of the list when it comes to combining interesting, progressive people with…
Best Birthday Party Place
1984 was the year of the rat, which occurs once every 12 years in the Chinese zodiac. To the children of Tucson Weekly readers, though, nearly every year has been the year of the rat: This marks the seventh time in nine years that Chuck E. Cheese’s has captured the hearts of the wee ones…
Best House-Blend Coffee
The guys here do their own roasting, and as a result, they’ve cultivated a following. Sure, this spot off Campbell Avenue is a nice, quiet place for meet-ups, too—there’s no loud music blaring—but this is really a place that’s all about the coffee. The menu isn’t helter-skelter, and the drink menu doesn’t include a long…
Best Eastside Pizza
When people talk about pizza, most of the superlatives usually surround a couple of unnamed Fourth Avenue establishments. It’s not that they’re not deserving, but eastsiders who have been dining on this New York-style pizza since 1984 would readily put Tino’s up against anyone else’s pie in a blind taste-test competition. The crust is crisp…
The BOT Interview: Gary Patch and Darren Clark
Gary Patch and Darren Clark are partners in Patch and Clark Design, a multimedia and interior-design firm which has done work at Hotel Congress, the Rialto Theatre and the Tucson Weekly midtown bureau. Best way to swap and shop with your neighbors? Darren: Brush-and-bulky pickup. It’s cathartic. Gary: You can get rid of your shit,…
Best Middle Eastern
Whether you’re craving shish kabobs, gyros or falafel, your palate will be pleased at AliBaba. The casual dining area offers a peaceful refuge from the hustle of Speedway Boulevard. Service is friendly and helpful, and the folks here seem to genuinely care about your dining experience. Choose from appetizers, pita sandwiches, salads and Mediterranean and…
Best Used Books
This has been the best place to get yourself a copy of Orwell’s classic since well before the titular date on its cover. This place offers the recycling of literature/knowledge in the best possible way; you can pay the lower prices, or you can simply trade in the books (and other stuff) you’ve already absorbed.…
Best Salsa
The salsera (that’s what the salsa-makers are called here) will approach, pushing a plastic cart. On said cart: white onions, cilantro, red-pepper flakes, garlic, roasted jalapeños, salt and the salsa base (containing smashed-up tomatillos and baked red tomatoes). The salsera will start mixing the ingredients into a bowl (and we always recommend requesting more garlic,…
Best Place to Watch a Bartender Burn Off His Eyebrows
This is the place that supposedly invented the drink called the Harry Potter. The only reason to order a Harry Potter would be to watch the bartender bravely make the drink in the first place. You see, it’s green, and it involves fire. But forgo the wizard drink for one of the good beers on…
Best All-Night Mexican Food
Say you have this band staying with you, and they need to have something solid to eat at 2:30 a.m. Or your farming cousins are visiting from Iowa, and they’re used to breakfast at 4 a.m. Count on Viva Burrito for rib-sticking goodness, 24/7, at musician-friendly prices—see the $2.59 breakfast burrito with free coffee. Any…
Best Pop Music Station
Sometimes, while listening to KRQ, one can feel like it’s still 1984, because, really, not much has changed in the world of pop music. The artists may have different names and wear tighter clothing (and less of it), but a pop song is a pop song, regardless of the vintage. KRQ knows this, and plays…
Best Caterer
This is the third year in a row that Blue House has won the prize (and they won back in 2002 as well). The unassuming building on busy Stone Avenue is easily missed, but the meals that come from here shouldn’t be. The online menu reads like a gourmet bible, and the names they’ve given…
Best Guacamole
Let’s be honest: If you make your own guacamole, no one’s version will ever be as good as yours. That said, it still stands to reason that a great Mexican restaurant would have great guacamole. Such is the case here. The secret, of course, lies in three distinct areas: the perfectly ripe avocado, texture and…
Best Place to Go Around in Circles
European in concept, this traffic roundabout isn’t some wimpy little circle that serves as a supplement to neighborhood speed bumps. Instead, it’s a true traffic-calming device. The large circle is enclosed by red concrete and contains small but growing vegetation along with numerous decorative rocks. The circle draws vehicles—from three directions—that slow down considerably because…
Best Fun for the Whole Family
It’s hard to believe that miniature golf, a fad from the ’60s, has managed to survive and flourish in this age of post-Nintendo computer games, Hannah Montana and YouTube. Amazingly, Golf ‘n’ Stuff continues to parlay its two 18-hole putt-putt courses into an entire miniature amusement park, complete with go-karts, bumper boats and a climbing…
Best Backpacking Trail
Speaking of Edward Abbey: He opposed the future as articulated by Dwight Eisenhower (“the military-industrial complex”), George Orwell (1984) and Ridley Scott (Blade Runner). The movie Lonely Are the Brave, featuring Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau and Carroll O’Connor, and based on Abbey’s classic novel The Brave Cowboy, was recently released on DVD. In this movie,…
Best Restaurant Row
From Broadway Boulevard to a point just north of Sunrise Drive, Campbell Avenue (plus the close-by areas on both sides) is Tucson’s premier restaurant row, offering some of the city’s most noted high-end eateries and a number of chain joints. You are bound to find whatever you crave. Burgers? Italian? Asian? Do you mean Chinese?…
The BOT Interview: Jack Dykinga
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Jack Dykinga has lived in Tucson since 1976. He merges large-format landscape-art photography with documentary photojournalism and is a regular contributor to Arizona Highways and National Geographic. An advocate for protecting the natural world, his books include The Sonoran Desert, Jack Dykinga’s Arizona and Images: Jack Dykinga’s Grand Canyon. His work will…
Best Seafood
Kingfisher’s menu speaks for itself: littlenecks, chowder, trout, squid, mussels, salmon, shrimp … from simple fish and chips to macadamia-nut-crusted Hawaiian fish, all the seafood bases are covered here, and the sides ain’t too shabby, either. Try the fried sweet potatoes! Live like jetsetters and start with baked oysters Rockefeller. Exceptional service and ambiance complement…
Best Retail Music Store
In 1984, record stores were like video stores or McDonald’s: They were everywhere. Looking for a copy of Thriller on vinyl to replace the one your little sister scratched up? A cassette copy of Like a Virgin to listen to in your car? You had options: the mega, national music retailer; the mom-and-pop joint; the…
Best Pet Supplies Store
PetSmart offers all things pet-related. You can purchase a bird, reptile or fish, and dog and cat adoptions take place regularly. Dog owners can attend pet-training classes—puppy, beginner, intermediate, advanced and click-a-trick—and even get Rover groomed. All pet owners can choose items from a vast selection of food, toys and essential pet supplies. The knowledgeable…
The BOT Interview: Richard Elías
Democrat Richard Elías serves as the chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Elías, a fifth-generation Tucsonan, worked as a housing activist for Chicanos por la Causa before being appointed in 2002 as the supervisor for District 5 when then-new U.S. Congressman Raúl Grijalva left for Washington, D.C. When asked about his favorite place…
Best Chinese Buffet
Although it may not be as big as some other buffets around town, the lunch buffet at Dragon View restaurant offers some great choices. Unlike at those other Asian buffets, you won’t find pizza or enchiladas or pasta. The focus is pure Asian, and that is a good thing. They do mix it up; there…
Best Rock Music Station
If you want to start your day old-school with Van Halen’s “Jump,” or contemporary with Kings of Leon, KFMA pours it on. What you won’t hear is Lionel Richie singing “Hello,” but you might catch the latest dirt on his daughter during The Frank Show in the morning. Matt Spry mans the microphone midday, and…
Best Desserts
The choice of desserts from the case at Beyond Bread is beyond abundant. The selections are so varied that it makes decisions difficult. There are artistic looking 4-inch fruit tarts and huge, scrumptious cookies, including chocolate-chip and ginger-snap varieties. In addition, cakes, lemon bars and two types of crème brulee are available. On a recent…
Best Tamales
Tucson Tamale Company’s win here is pretty amazing, considering the store only opened its doors last November. Since that time, Tucson Tamale Company has made quite an impact on the Tucson dining scene. The tamales are plump, filled with both traditional and not-so-traditional goodies. The Arizona, for example, has slow-roasted sirloin and chipotles; the Naples…
Best Prep Sports Rivalry
A nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans. Twice a year, these two teams meet up, and it’s always explosive. It’s private-school Salpointe Catholic, the former undisputed local hoops powerhouse (back when Brian Peabody was the coach), against public-school Ironwood Ridge, the…
Best 25 Cents You Could Ever Spend on Your Kid
Ever wonder why the city is going broke? Look no further than the Quincie Douglas pool, where a mere 25 cents on a hot summer day will buy your kid more fun than anyone could possibly imagine. Actually, this is a miniature water park, with water guns and splash toys flying out in all directions.…
Best Campground
The 24-mile, two-lane blacktop road through the Santa Catalina Mountains to Mount Lemmon provides access to year-round camping for outdoor lovers. The U.S. Forest Service maintains easily accessible campgrounds ranging from Molino Basin, barely above the saguaros, to the pine trees of Rose Canyon. In addition to a campground, Rose Canyon has a small manmade…
Best Trashy Education
It should be a requirement of municipal citizenship to visit the Los Reales Landfill at least once, to give everyone a healthy respect for what happens to trash after it gets picked up by your friendly neighborhood sanitation worker. Everyday, 1,500 tons of solid waste are dumped into the landfill, and then smashed and packed…
The BOT Interview: Dmitri Bartlett
Dmitri Bartlett (also known as Mr. Free), of Tucson’s eclectic Mr. Free and the Satellite Freakout, knows the Old Pueblo like the back of his microphone-gripping hand. Born and raised in Tucson, Bartlett has been in the music scene for almost 10 years and has toured the country on the band’s vegetable-oil-fueled school bus. He…
Best Modern Cuisine
A tie between two favorites! How lucky are we to have both of these restaurants in our town? At Feast, Doug Levy continues to dazzle with his new creations on a menu that changes every month to take advantage of the freshest ingredients available. Whether it’s a salad, a classic like beef Wellington or an…
Best Video Store
Sure, you can order videos online, if you don’t mind waiting for snail mail while some government agency hacks your records to find out you are renting Revenge of the Nerds. But what about when you want a movie, and you want it now? Or you just want to browse your favorite director’s body of…
Best Junkyard Shopping
A friend once said describing Gerson’s inventory is like describing a standup comic’s jokes: You know there was a lot of good stuff, but you only remember a few gems. The place covers several acres, and there certainly is a lot of good stuff—whether you’re looking for that perfect treasure chest, indoor/outdoor furniture, scrap metal…
Best Place to Dance
Club Congress is the sexy grandfather of Tucson dance clubs. The dance floor is tight enough to allow for some accidental body contact—if you’re lucky. Join cheerful Optimist Club members busting a move to the finest ’80s dance music in the place where a generation of Tucsonans have gone to “Get Into the Groove” and…
Best Place to Get a Hangover Breakfast
Corporate bagels are fine, but mom-and-pop bagels are better. The Bagelry proves it with its chewy-on-the-inside, crisp-on-the-outside bagels and its freshly made cream cheese, whipped up onsite. This is infinitely better than that chunky white spread and those dinner rolls with holes you’ll find at the grocery store. Not only is the Bagelry’s service great;…
Best Radio Personality
Tucsonans still revel in the morning-show antics of Johnjay and Rich, even though they packed up and vacated the KRQ studios a few years back for fancier digs in Phoenix. In some ways, they’re the adopted hometown tandem that did good, and they’ve managed to make the locals feel at home while expanding their scope…
Best Custom Cakes
“Time After Time,” for that special occasion, Nadine’s comes through. Be it for an anniversary, graduation, wake, first communion, winning lottery ticket, bris, wedding, lucrative court settlement, near-death experience or birthday, Nadine’s can bake and decorate a truly unique cake. These are artists who happen to work with flour, milk, sugar, eggs and butter. They…
Best Huevos Rancheros
One bite of Franks’ savory huevos rancheros could give even the biggest night owl a reason to wake up. Two eggs, any style, come piled on top of a tortilla-bean-and-cheese stack, with fresh salsa to drizzle on top and your choice of home fries or hash browns. Frank’s, which opened in 1972, has earned Best…
Best Way to See Big League Baseball
The Interstate 10 drive to Phoenix has always been boring—and sometimes dangerous. However, for baseball lovers, an enjoyable, affordable and efficient alternative to driving exists. At only $18 for adults, or $15 for kids 2 to 12, fans can travel to Chase Field to see the Diamondbacks play—for the final times this season on Sept.…
Best Summer Camp Experience
When parents think of summer camp, it’s often within the context of a 4- to-6-week experience. At Fenster, however, it’s amazing how much can be packed into a single week. Longtime director Matt Nelson and his staff developed an affordable program that offers various courses in ropes, horseback-riding, environmental awareness, hiking, climbing, music and water…
Best Café Hangout
Epic sits at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and University Boulevard, and the inside of the café is also a meeting point—of flavors, colors and atmosphere. For hungry patrons, there are sandwiches, breakfast items, soups, salads and bagels to nosh on. For thirsty patrons, there are various coffees, teas, juices and ice cream floats. Those…
Best Romantic Setting
The fact that Maynards Market and Kitchen is located in the railroad station is romantic enough. But at night—with the warm glow of tableside lighting, the slight murmur from other diners and the occasional train that chugs by outside—Maynards becomes something more. This could be the place to ask someone to marry you, or perhaps…
Best Independent Bookstore
“Oh, but the local places don’t have the selection or comfy chairs for my big rear,” you whine. You’re wrong: Antigone Books has a fine selection, with plenty of places for rears to sit and readers to read. Because it’s local, they treat local authors like celebrities. One of the best desert gardening, environment and…
Best Steakhouse
Sullivan’s bills itself as a “1940s Chicago-style steakhouse,” and it is. Yet it is totally modern in style, substance and prices—but seriously, it’s worth it. There are those out there who say, “Hell, I can cook four steaks at home for the price of one there.” Actually, they can’t. The beef here is quality stuff,…
Best Comics/Games Shop
With their snazzy uniforms, the crew at Heroes and Villains is giving the rest of us comic-book fans a good image that we may not deserve. The store itself might defy your idea of the classic cluttered comic-book shop—everything is well-organized and up-to-date, and staff members are always willing to guide you on your next…
Best Independent Newsstand
Newsstands are a common delight in cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, but here on the frontier, an independent newsstand is a rare treat, one to be savored like ice cream and supported like a baby’s head. Sure, you could just go online and read the latest news from around the world for…
Best Beer Selection on Tap
A beer is a good thing. Several beers can be better. But sometimes, only a wide arsenal of different beers will suffice, and when that happens, you need to pull up a barstool at 1702. The name refers to the place’s Speedway Boulevard address, but it might as well be the number of hours you’ll…
Best Moments of Chowing Down in Tucson
The animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire. Just watch people as they grab their bags of chili dogs and fries at Pat’s and head for their vehicles. Maybe one out of 10 will place the bags down and just drive away. The other nine will reach into the fries, initially withdraw from the blast of…
Best Radio Talk Show (Host)
Oh, how the times have changed. During the good old days, when the president used words like evil-doers and terrorizizers (OK, we hope we made that last one up), Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! held this slot. But the right wing is finally getting its due respect. Jon Justice, for those readers who don’t listen…
Best Fresh-Baked Bread
If you want to bake your own bread in these scorching desert climes, be our guest. If and when you recover from the heatstroke, consider a trip to Beyond Bread, where loaves have been baked since 1998. Craving some feta, spinach and onion bread? No problem. Need a loaf of babka, ciabatta or challah? Triple…
Best Bowling Alley
This is the home of the ever-popular Cyber Bowling, for the young and tragically hip, with lasers from the late ’50s, black lights from the ’60s, fog machines from the ’70s, and the term “cyber,” popularized in the early ’80s by William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Please enjoy the overhead video monitors that mock your pin-less shots…
Best Personal Trainer
A hideous ecstasy … seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one against even one’s own will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. Well, it’s not really that bad, although he did work one of us out so intensely that it became difficult to bench-press the bar—with no weight…
Best Place to Get a Last-Minute Birthday Present
It’s Saturday afternoon, and your kid is all excited about the birthday sleepover at which you are about to drop them off. (Admit it: For other reasons, you’re a little excited, too.) Despite having the invite stuck on the fridge for two weeks, you suddenly realize that you have nothing to bring in the way…
Best Local Coffee Roaster
The smell of freshly roasted beans draws in somnambulant neighbors, making this the perfect clubhouse for those almost ready to wake up from their restless, swamp-cooled dreams. The folks here roast beans four or five times a week, selling their 14 different blends to both Chevron stations and other coffee houses. In fact, that’s mostly…
Best Kids’ Bike Ride
Early on a Sunday morning, there’s nothing to slow you down on the concourse surrounding the deserted arena. You and your mini-yous can cruise round and round, careening recklessly down the giant ramps of doom. There’s plenty of crowd-control railing to weave your way through, or you can ride across the pedestrian connector to the…
Best Gay/Lesbian Bar
Walking into IBT’s, the vibe is sort of like a scene from one of those old Saturday Night Live’s Roxbury Guys skits. Think heavy dance beats, flashing lights and lots of room to get your groove on (but, fortunately, minus the bad suits and awkward bobblehead dancing). Located on the north end of the Fourth…
Best Sushi
Happy hour is to sushi as, well, happy hour is to booze: It’s necessary in these rough economic times. Sushi Garden hosts a happy hour with special prices on select sushi, Japanese food and booze every Monday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m., and from 10 p.m. to midnight on weekends. All the standard…
Best Resale/Vintage Clothing
Tucson should be proud of this friendly, hip national chain, which got its start right here in the Old Pueblo. We were greeted by two different employees as we walked in on a recent visit to the university area-store, where wise students were scouring the racks for trendy vintage bargains. Our finds included a “fuck…
Best Green Home-Decorating-Supply Store
Perhaps you are one of the lucky few who still have a house and funds to remodel, or maybe you just want to change the color of your walls to make things a little more inspiring. If so, Originate is the place to go for the most environmentally friendly products around. Clay paint, natural concrete…
Best Martini
OK, so maybe the bank-bailout money hasn’t trickled down to you yet. There’s solace in the bottom of a martini glass—preferably containing high-end vodka and some blue-cheese-stuffed olives. Sullivan’s (or Sully’s, as we like to call it after a couple) is your place, offering 10 or so martinis. Drink in the dark, wood-paneled ambiance, and…
Best Treat to Beat the Heat
Some days, it seems like Tucson invented heat, but in response, its people invented an antidote—raspados. The shaved-ice concoctions are best served from the Oasis Raspados location in the little white shack on St. Mary’s Road. Any time is a good time for raspados, but the only time they are truly curative is when monsoon…
Best Local Performing Artist
Many think of this ever-evolving and internationally acclaimed pyrotechnic troupe as being synonymous with fire-dancing. But the truth is that Flam Chen is a remarkable performance ensemble that just happens to express its art through fire. As performers, they are mythological storytellers, intricately weaving together complex sets of images. Many associate them with the annual…
Best Burger
“They” said a $10 burger would never fly in the Old Pueblo, but don’t tell that to the crowds at Zinburger. Choose the Kobe burger ($14) or the basic Sam’s burger that’s topped with Nueske’s maple bacon, American cheese and Thousand Island dressing ($10). Then again, you can build your own burger, adding any number…
Best Hair Salon
Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? Maybe it’s your haircut. Whether it’s the unseen gaze of Big Brother or the silently critical glances of relatives and peers, having others’ eyeballs trained on one’s untrendy tresses can be more unnerving than a totalitarian regime. If you’re sick of it, head over to Gadabout SalonSpas, where…
Best Architectural Adaptive Reuse
A moment of silence for the passing of Magic Carpet Golf, home of the three-story-tall tiki head. Visionary folk artist Lee Koplin created the tiki head in 1969, and it was nearly destroyed last year when the property was sold to a car dealer. With the rallying cry, “Keep Tucson uniquey, save the Tiki!” visionary…
Best Free Thing to Do With the Kids
Don’t say you can’t get anything for free anymore, because admission on the first Sunday of the month at the Tucson Museum of Art is always free. This is good news for everyone who loves art, but it’s great news for those artsy people and their offspring. The Picture This! Art for Families program occurs…
Best Tea Service
“Like a Virgin,” we went into Seven Cups unsure what to expect. Before we knew it, we were knowledgeable about the earthy differences in various green teas, the rich full flavors of black teas, and the subtlety of white teas. There are various styles and customs of tea service offered in the cozy, red-lanterned tea…
Best Pan-Fried Noodles
Mr. An and his cooks really know what they’re doing when it comes to making pan-fried noodles. They masterfully combine a large quantity of meat and vegetables with a savory, flavorful sauce. The most important part of this dish, though, involves the combination of that sauce with the crisp pan-fried noodles. The result is a…
Best Upscale Bar Ambiance
With its wraparound patio and sleek contemporary design, NoRTH feels like a Hollywood loft-style restaurant, with city views enjoyed by Tucson’s young professionals and trendy foothills types. Located at the La Encantada mall in the Catalina foothills, the upscale bar carries favorite wines and cocktails sure to put some hair on that freshly waxed chest.…
Best Thai
Char’s never seems to disappoint, and with an extensive menu full of classic Thai dishes, both the connoisseur and the newcomer will be satisfied. The lunch specials (your choice of a main dish plus a variety of sides, including the soup of the day) are always great and competitively priced, but you may have to…
Best Fashions (Locally Owned)
Sumptuous yet … complicated. Who knew so much could be done with denim, rivets, leather and tassels? And that’s just one (Work and Casual) of the several lines offered by local institution Maya Palace. There is also Fun and Festive—with quite literal parties in the form of outfits—and their innovative wedding selections, which include everything…
Best Place to Find Ways to Advertise Your Subversive
This local media organization (they call it a project) make those nifty bumper stickers you see on bikes and cars around town that say things like, “Sustainable farmers do it forever,” and, “Creativity before consumption.” You can buy stickers individually, in packs, or even in grab bags—a pack of 100 random stickers is only $30.…
Best Margarita
El Charro might have won here simply because it offers so many varieties! Besides the standard margarita, with our old friend Jose Cuervo and fresh citrus, El Charro makes plenty of variations. You can get ’em with fruity flavors like strawberry, peach or mango; you can get ’em made with prickly pear nectar and Herradura…
Best Plain Glazed Doughnuts
You’ve been corporately trained to think you have to drive all the way to Marana to get a great glazed doughnut, or that good doughnuts have to be filled with fancy cream and globs of icing. Or perhaps you’re one of those people who go to a certain place just for the coffee. (Stop lying.)…
Best Indoor Venue
It ain’t easy to make it in the concert biz—just ask the folks at the struggling Fox Tucson Theatre, or the UA kids who lost close to a million bucks on a Jay-Z show earlier this year. The Rialto Theatre has suffered through its share of recent political troubles, but that hasn’t stopped the folks…
Best Barbecue
Barbecued meats par excellence are Brushfire’s specialty. Beef, pork and chicken are flavored with spice rubs and finished with a choice of Brushfire’s six sauces. The side dishes are worthy of the entrées. Chefs Ben and Jared recommend the baked beans to first-time customers, but the grilled corn on the cob, creamy slaw, fries, mustard…
Best Yoga Studio
Downward-facing dog: just another yoga pose for some, the riddle of the sphinx to others. Whatever your skill level, Tucson Yoga has a class to match, taught by one of their professional instructors. Located just a hop, skip and a jump from downtown, this studio was founded upon the principle of making yoga affordable and…
Best Way to View Democracy in All its Clumsy Splendor
Oceania has no capital, and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts nobody knows. Well, maybe that’s why Oceania blew (although not as much as Eastasia or Eurasia). Here in Tucson, we also have a titular head, but he’s easy to find. Along with the six council members, he’s in the chambers at City…
Best Theater to Get Your Silly On
The fare at the Gaslight Theatre is not Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams, and it doesn’t pretend to be. So, any theater snobs out there: Buck up; give it a try; and be prepared to laugh. The productions at this eastside playhouse have little to do with the Pinter pause or Greek tragedy; it really is…
Best Bulk Tea Selection
Seven Cups is a direct importer of more than 100 Chinese teas. With their own Chinese trading license, Seven Cups is in complete control of their supply, from the tea-grower to the consumer. The staff spends several months each year in China hand-selecting the teas displayed in the front of the store—and that means quality…
Best Mantu
If you like dumplings, or potstickers, or ravioli, and you have not tried mantu yet … well, stop what you’re doing right now, and head for this Afghani joint at Main Gate Square. The dumplings—which have roughly the same dimensions of medium-sized ravioli—are packed with a seasoned ground-beef mixture, and then topped with a creamy…
Best Lowbrow Bar Ambiance
According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition), the word “lowbrow” means “of, relating to, or suitable for a person with little taste or intellectual interest.” Well, there you go. Where else but the Buffet can you walk in the door and be greeted by some tall, skinny punk washing dishes behind the bar in a…
Best Upscale Dining
Janos Wilder, who started fusing the fresh bounty of the Southwest with innovative French techniques more than a quarter-century ago, is still going strong in the tony environs of the Westin La Paloma. Whether you’re dining on a lamb porterhouse in a Native Seeds/SEARCH mole in the elegant Janos, or enjoying jerked pork with cranberry…
Best Antiques/Kitsch/Collectibles
The sign outside Copper Country Antiques reads, “Be prepared to be amazed!” Indeed, the vast selection of antiques is impressive. With 32,000 feet of space here, you’ll find anything and everything, including furniture, artwork, jewelry, clothing, fine china, books, dolls and other goodies. More than 160 antique dealers sell here, and new inventory is rolled…
Best Opportunity to Shop With Like Minds
At any moment, the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom. Let’s get this straight: Just about all bookstores are cool. Some have coffee shops, and others have music sections, and still others have political agendas—but Clues Unlimited has mysteries: murder mysteries and heist mysteries, whodunits and whydidtheydoits. They have…
Best Wine Bar
Intriguing wine flights, outstanding nightly drink specials and great appetizers are just a few of the reasons why Armitage Wine Lounge and Café won this year’s title. The flights are a great way to travel the world via wine (and the pours are generous). The specials include half-price bottles of wine, and those apps include…
Best ‘Cutesy’ Meal
If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles. One of the great typos of all time! He meant to say that it lies in the bowls. We know that having a bread bowl that one can eat after consuming the contents is a gimmick, but it’s a great gimmick. Bison Witches offers…
Best Outdoor Venue
The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself. And so it was at the Earth, Wind and Fire concert at the AVA. Creepy how Orwell could have foreseen that 60 years ago. Anyway, AVA is magical. It’s the right size and the right shape—and the acoustics are…
Best Sandwich
With the wide variety of loaves fresh out of the oven every day, Beyond Bread has a head start over most of the competition. And then they pile on meats, cheeses and veggies in every imaginable combination. With nearly three dozen different sandwiches—along with plenty of salads, soups and sweet treats—it can be hard to…
Best Sex Toy Shop
So what are you in the market for? A sexy schoolgirl outfit? A whip for your favorite dominatrix? Something to slip out of? Something to strap on? Something slippery? Something rough? Something hard? Something soft? Whether you want to get active or you want to watch, Fascinations is the place to go, with a wide…
Best Tourism Idea Since the Car
Have you heard? There’s a movement afoot to make boutique motels (think Austin, Texas) out of all those remnants of Miracle Mile’s heyday as a tourist mecca in the ’40s and ’50s. It’s worth the effort just to keep all that funky-cool, vintage neon lit. Best in class so far is this reasonably priced, rehabbed…
Best City Excursion With the Kids
Don’t avoid evening walks along Fourth Avenue just because of the bars and clubs. An evening walk along Fourth Avenue with the kids after dinner is a great way to get in a little city excursion. Going down both sides of the shopping district can be great exercise and a great adventure, considering the interesting…
Best Urban Landscaping
How can anybody disagree with this choice? The walk from Main Gate to Old Main—with its stretch of stately palm trees, manicured lawns and flashes of color from all sorts of flowers—is lovely. The area around Old Main is considered a mini-arboretum, with mesquite trees, cacti, willows, palo verde, pine trees and much more. The…
Best Introduction to the Sonoran Desert (Without Breaking a Sweat)
Before Amazon cons you into getting rid of your books and exchanging them for electrons that can be deleted remotely at any time, you should buy real books while you still can. And first on that list should be A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert. In one handy guide, you can find information on…
Best Nightclub
The oft-moved stage has finally settled and matured into a thing of beauty. What other venue offers such variety? With bars, a DJ booth, a lighting booth, and the ability to accommodate either a standing-room-only concert crowd or a night of butts-in-chairs spoken word, Club Congress is like a shark, always moving forward. We shudder…
Best Casual Dining
The food is great here. That alone, plus the amazing beer selection, should be enough to make you want to come and try it out. But the secret to the B Line can only be tapped during the days and nights when Fourth Avenue is teeming with humanity—like weekends, or during the Fourth Avenue Street…
Best Art/Artisan Jewelry
Webster’s defines “Bohemian” as “a person living an unconventional life, usually in a colony with others.” Bohemia, now settled in at a more voluminous Broadway Boulevard location, showcases the work of more than 200 Bohemians, nearly all local. Tucson native Tana Kelch and her congenial staff edit out the mundane, and carry only the funkiest,…
Best Jaw-Dropping Store Policy
In the end … there will be no words in which to express it. So your spouse sends you to the store to return something bought the previous weekend. On the drive to the store, you’re trying to come up with a plausible reason as to why it’s being returned. Maybe a story with pirates…
Best Signature Cocktail
It comes in a bowl with a long straw that allows you to sit back, let your arms hang down and sip. Look, its liquor, folks—a big bowl of alcohol that over the years has become part of people’s stories, part of their mythology. It’s that big-ass Scorpion drink at that cool tiki place. Back…
Best Fine Art Gallery
Etherton got its start 28 years ago—three years before 1984—and ever since, it’s been the city’s most consistently excellent gallery. Always strong in photography, Etherton started last season with a dazzling show of figurative photos. Mexican photog Flor Garduño triumphed with magical realist images of women of unearthly beauty. Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe followed…
Best Annual Festival
Circa 1984: A young future Tucson Weekly contributor is wandering the Fourth Avenue Street Fair with her parents, and sees a dude with dreadlocks past his midsection, no shirt, no shoes and very threadbare shorts, staring intently at the sky. She stops and stares. “The Street Fair is when all of the hippies come out,”…
Best Movie Theater
The Loft is more than a movie theater—it’s a celebration of cinema in all its wonder. Besides the rotation of new art films, foreign movies and other top-grade releases, the Loft shows cult movies like The Big Lebowski and Planet of the Apes on weekends; wacky stuff like Plan 9 From Outer Space on Mondo…
Best Pizza
Brooklyn Pizza Company is runner-up no more—it’s now Brooklyn’s turn to be the best. Since 1996, Brooklyn Pizza has been serving hot, tasty pizza on Fourth Avenue. There are calzones, heros, pasta and desserts on the menu, but the hand-tossed, stone-fired pizza takes the starring role. Slices are either regular or Sicilian-style. Get your regular…
Best Theater News
The Rogue Theatre spent its first four seasons in borrowed spaces, mostly the Zuzi! Theater within the Historic Y. Zuzi’s facility is problematic, mainly because sets have to be moved every night to make way for daytime dance classes. Now the Rogues have obtained a long-term lease on their very own place—a former gymnasium across…
Best Home Amenity
How did we ever get through a Sonoran Desert summer without our cowboy swimming pool, aka the stock tank? Made from galvy metal, and big enough for two, we fill it up every year as soon as we hear the first cicada. Five minutes in the stock tank on a simmering July afternoon realigns your…
Best Night Out for Highbrow Paupers
If you have ears and a sense of adventure, you’ll find a musical temptation every week at the UA School of Music’s Crowder Hall, September through May. If you don’t have a lot to spend on a night on the town, this is the ticket: Most performances are free. Last year brought Trombones de Costa…
Best Mexican Food for Vegetarians
Mexican restaurants have long been considered a safe harbor for vegetarians, a place where carne asada can be ignored in favor of a good bean burrito. But there has always been one large and uncomfortable elephant in the Mexican-restaurant dining room—the use of lard in the cooking of pinto beans. “What do you think makes…
Best Classic ‘Special’
This semi-legendary dish—which has been satisfying Italian-food-craving Tucsonans for more than a half-century now—couldn’t be any simpler. The skilled cooks at Mama Louisa’s take their fresh, homemade linguine, and mix in garlic and red-pepper flakes. Then they cover it with a special blend of melted cheeses and their oh-so-savory marinara sauce. The result … well,…
Best Cocktail Menu
After a hard day of work (or play), a tropical escape—complete with fruity but potent cocktails—sounds like a mere dream, considering the Hawaiian islands are almost 3,000 miles from Tucson. That’s where Kon Tiki comes in. This island-inspired cocktail lounge boasts a huge assortment of original drinks like the Koko Pino (pineapple and coconut blended…
Best Outdoor Seating
Enjoy the deep shade provided by the vine-covered trellis overhead—yes, the Blue Willow has got you covered. This oasis in the heart of midtown is well-insulated from the best-left-unheard traffic sounds of the rat-racetrack known as Campbell Avenue. Why not pull in for a pit stop, and enjoy the burbling of the fountain in this…
Best Commercial Jewelry
Diamonds may be forever, but they’re also damn expensive. So it’s best to buy them from someone who’s not going to rip you off—and Rainbow Jewelers wouldn’t dream of such a thing. How do we know? Well, first of all, they wouldn’t be profiled here if Tucsonans didn’t love them, which proves the truth of…
Best Locally Headquartered International Operation
Started in 2003 by Tucsonan Deron Beal, Freecycle is an online network that connects people to used stuff that would otherwise go to the landfill. It started as an e-mail list among a handful of friends, and grew exponentially to more than 85 countries with millions of members. Freecycle keeps more than 500 tons of…
Best Billiards
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. Glorious math abounds at Clicks, from the exquisite geometry and physics of a game of billiards to the maddening scoring of a game of darts. Clicks offers 20 pool tables, including three of the 9-foot Gold Crown variety. They also offer soft- and…
Best Mural
Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past. Ah, if only we could control our present, perhaps our future would look a bit brighter. Perhaps our past, so brilliantly and lovingly memorialized by Steve Farley’s mural of earlier Tucsonans, can show us the way. Runners up: 2. Stone Curves…
Best Spectacle for Charity
When dogs rule the Earth, life will look a lot like the Humane Society of Southern Arizona’s Puttin’ on the Dog fundraiser. Skilled chefs will create top-shelf snacks for canines dressed in formal wear. Humans will fawn over four-legged fashionistas as they strut down runways with well-dressed owners in tow. Hordes of animal-loving humans will…
Best Art Classes
In a world in which the word “art” is used with reckless abandon, in which “art” is whatever is hanging on the wall, in which museums continually perplex the masses, in which exists the term “sandwich artist”—in a world like this, The Drawing Studio stands like a golden obelisk, proclaiming the truth: The fundamental act…
Best Ice Cream
Frost doesn’t serve ice cream; it serves gelato. That means Frost uses a lot less butterfat to create rich, flavorful treats. You only need to look at the display case to know this stuff is going to be delicious. The amazing range of flavors is courtesy of Nazario Melchionda, an Italian chef who knows his…
Best Tattoo Parlor
It seems like Tucson has more tattoo parlors, per capita, than any other place in the Southwest. Enchanted Dragon stands out as a leader of the pack; it began sticking hot needles in people in 1984, the same year the Weekly was founded. (Coincidence?) By drawing (no pun intended) such a high caliber of artists…
Best Example of City Efficiency
There are plenty of cranks who will say mean things about the city, and we count ourselves among them much of the time. But we were dazzled by the Scott Avenue makeover. Not only did the city get neighborhood residents, designers, business owners, engineers, utilities and cultural organizations to play nice; they did it in…
Best Discount Movie Deal
The early ’80s were tough economic times. Unemployment was high, and the nation was in the midst of a difficult recession. In September 1984, the matinee discount price to see Tucson’s own Revenge of the Nerds was $2.50. Now, 25 years later, some things haven’t changed—including the price of a movie ticket for those taking…
Best Park
Reid Park is a grassy, tree-covered oasis in the center of a dry, barren desert. Without it, Tucson wouldn’t be nearly as nice. There may not be 1,984 things to do in the park, but there certainly are a lot. There are major attractions like Hi Corbett Field, where the Tucson Toros play; DeMeester Outdoor…
Best National Park
Well, OK, it’s our only local national park, but it’s still the best. Tucson is in the heart of saguaro country, and Saguaro National Park celebrates that fact. Two units—the Rincon Mountain District to the east, and the Tucson Mountain District to the west—showcase the big green plant. There are more than 165 miles of…
Best Happy Hour
The Zona 78 happy hour starts a little earlier than most (3 p.m.), but by the look of the crowds at that time, it seems a few of you are sneaking out of the office a little before quitting time. The two Zona 78 locations offer half-price appetizers, which include a spicy twist on the…
Best Late-Night Eats
You may not be able to find a place to park right away, but you will find burgers, sandwiches and a mean batch of mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy at Grill—no matter what time it is. This downtown diner serves food 24/7, seven days a week, and has a menu with everything from a bowl…
Best Home Furnishings
When your interior decorator says, “Let’s Go Crazy,” reorient him or her with a walkabout at Copenhagen. Their sweep of Euro designs—in ebony, teak veneer, mahogany, beech, cherry, walnut or rosewood, all crafted into elegant tables, chairs, beds or even armoires—defines civilized living. To accessorize, add a silver retro space-age lamp or a playful shag…
Best Cooler Pads
Cooler pads should be this city’s official emblem: Without them, Tucson never would have grown beyond a dusty outpost. The cooler pads made locally at Miracle Breeze really are the best: They’re much thicker than the outsourced pads from Big Box, and the euphoria of that first sweet aspen-scented breeze of the summer from the…
Best Wine/Liquor Store
Sometimes, the King of Beers just isn’t enough. You’re ready for something a little more sophisticated than what you’re gonna find on the shelf at EZ Mart. That’s when you’ll want to check out the wide selection at Plaza Liquors, which stocks beer from around the world. Or maybe you’re ready to graduate to wine:…
Best of Tucson Coming Tonight!
Hey, kids! The entirety of this week’s issue is online, except for one minor part: The Best of Tucson(R) part. We’ll be officially unveiling the Best of Tucson(R) this evening at Laffs Comedy Caffe, 2990 E. Broadway Blvd., during our Best of Tucson(R) ’80s Karaoke Night Party. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and we’ll start…
Poll: Goddard Looks Good in AZ Governor’s Race
Public Policy Polling gave us President Barack Obama’s numbers in Arizona yesterday. Today, the organization has some data on Arizona’s potential governor’s race next year—and the news is good for Terry Goddard: If the election was today Democrats would reclaim the Governor’s seat they gave up in Arizona when Janet Napolitano became Homeland Security Secretary.…
