JunXion Bar, the newest drinking and entertainment establishment to move into the growing downtown scene, holds its grand opening this weekend. We received this description of the place this morning:

The JunXion Bar is a destination for everyone featuring great local live music, 20 beers on tap, over 100 vodkas, top notch customer service, fantastic cocktails, a huge wall of TVs for sports and event viewing, street side smoking patio, special events, pool and shuffleboard, and a hip, welcoming ambiance that will keep customers coming back again and again!

The grand opening starts today and runs through Sunday, Nov. 18. The bar is located on the northwest corner of Congress Street and Scott Avenue, where motorcycle shop Knucklehead Alley used to be.

Like riding your bike? Like donating food to the food bank? Check out this awesome ride on Sunday and learn how to combine them.

A local grocery store decided to add a repair station for its cycling customers. Find out which store and see what the repair station looks like.

It's always a lot of fun discovering a secret bicycle garden. Check out the one we stumbled upon last week.

The latest numbers from the Arizona Secretary of State's Office show that Congressman Ron Barber now leads GOP challenger Martha McSally by 932 votes.

Pima County did not county any votes yesterday, but expects to get rolling this afternoon. Yesterday's press release from Pima County:

The Pima County Elections Department anticipates counting on Friday the remaining early ballots verified by the Pima County Recorder’s Office.

Of the approximately 261,450 early ballots verified by the Pima County Recorder’s Office, roughly 140 early ballots remain to be counted by the Pima County Elections Department.

Approximately 27,000 provisional ballots were issued at the polling places on Election Day. The Recorder’s Office has verified and turned over to the Elections Department 11,299 provisional ballots so far. Of those, 927 have been counted.

Pima County Elections Director Brad Nelson said he expects the counting of provisional ballots also will continue Friday. The count will begin at 1 p.m.

Seriously, it's a thing. Sure, it's more of a collection of items thrown together on a page for their supposed utility in surviving hordes of the undead, but hey, who am I to turn my nose up at the opportunity to buy every variety of duct tape that Amazon offers?

• Seriously, no machetes? Where's the fun in that?

As you can see, their categories of offerings stop just shy of presenting actual self-defense items (machetes, clubs, semi-automatic rifles—you know, the basics) for you to purchase, but that doesn't mean that their shopping list is without value — it's just incomplete.

Though really, I've got to question some of their ideas here: Safety goggles? Vests? Helmets? As someone who has spent far too much time absorbing zombie-related material in the past few years (with "Shaun of the Dead" and Max Brooks' "World War Z" in heavy rotation), it's obvious to note that every zombie-preparedness kit must involve gear to protect the extremities from bites and clawing, and vests aren't going to do the trick.

But the interesting thing to note is the tiny logo in the center of the page: a clickable image promoting "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" and its zombie-survival mode. That can't be a coincidence, right?

At the very least, make sure to check out the selection of zombie-related books, films and games down there at the bottom. Personally, I recommend Colson Whitehead's "Zone One" — it's a captivating, if bleak, look at what it must be like attempting to survive in post-apocalyptic New York as part of a block-sweeping clean-up crew.

ABC News has recordings from Mitt Romney's Obama-gave-away-too-many-gifts" call to donors. An excerpt from the report:

Romney: "What the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked."

Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, listed a few specifics: "Whether it was free contraceptives for 18 to 29 year-old women, DREAM Act waivers, student loan interest rate cuts for college students, and other initiatives geared toward energizing their coalition. They succeeded."

Romney: " It's a proven political strategy, which is give a bunch of money to a group and, guess what, they'll vote for you. ... Immigration we can solve, but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with."

The comments haven't done him much good with his fellow Republicans.

From another direction, New York's Jonathan Chait reacts:

Sadly, the reporter does not have a full transcript of the remarks, so we don't have the context. In theory, this set of facts could be Romney offering a fulsome endorsement of the Obama presidency. Look at the helpful things he has done — he's made college and health care more affordable, helped the children of illegal immigrants build a life in America, and so on! But I suspect Romney offered this in a more critical context rather than in the spirit of "all these people voted for Obama because he's actually been a really good president." It's essentially the same idea Romney offered up when he insisted the NAACP didn't support him because its members wanted "free stuff."

Like most Tucsonans, I'm spoiled by the existence of a Bookmans within reasonable driving (or in my case, walking) distance. Typically, I'll wander through the stacks, searching for one particular book by one particular author—whether it be an obsession with finding new-ish Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Gaiman, or David Foster Wallace on that day—and I'll give up upon not finding my target, completely ignoring the rows of fascinating books that are lay on those shelves. I imagine I'm not the only person who does this, either, meaning that (guessing off the top of my head) thousands of Tucsonans go home without a spectacular bit of reading material each week.

Well, Canadian used bookseller The Monkey's Paw has a solution for that: Enter the Biblio-Mat, a vending machine specializing in offering up a random used book in exchange for a measly $2.

• The Biblio-Mat

Quill & Quire, a book-centered Canadian magazine, has an interview with the owner of The Monkey's Paw, Stephen Fowler here, where they get a look at the inspiration behind the machine, and a touch of his philosophy:

What is the story behind the Biblio-mat? I went fishing this past summer with Craig Small, co-founder of The Juggernaut, an animation studio in Toronto. I had this idea that I would love to have a vending machine that gave out random books. I pictured it as a painted refrigerator box with one of my assistants inside; people would put in a coin and he would drop a book out. But Craig is more pragmatic and visionary then I am. He said, “You need to have an actual mechanical vending machine.” That was beyond my wildest imaginings, but not Craig’s, so he just built it for me.

...

What books are stocked in the Biblio-mat? The books in the machine are two dollars each — that’s not enough to make any profit, but the nature of the second-hand book business is that I end up with a lot of books that are interesting and worth keeping and disseminating, but have no practical retail value. Historically in the used books trade there has always been the dollar cart in front of the store. This is just a spin on that.

Personally, I'd love to have a similar machine in my tiny hallway of an apartment, if only for the ease of deciding which to pull next from my immense to-read pile of books.

For the rest of the interview, check out Quill and Quire's write-up here — and if you've seen anything else booksellers have done that's similarly clever, share it below.

Sen. John McCain has spent the last two days demanding an investigation into the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Yesterday, at the same time he was at a press conference demanding that the Obama administration release more information about the attack, he was skipping a classified briefing on the matter.

McCain blew his lid today when he was confronted by a CNN reporter:

When CNN approached McCain in a Capitol hallway Thursday morning, the senator refused to comment about why he missed the briefing, which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials. Instead, McCain got testy when pressed to say why he wasn't there.

"I have no comment about my schedule and I'm not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media," McCain said.

Asked why he wouldn't comment, McCain grew agitated: "Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?”

When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, "I'm upset that you keep badgering me."

In a good bit of analysis about whether McCain can block Susan Rice's nomination as Secretary of State, Slate's Dave Weigel puts McCain's push for the investigation—which drew an unusually angry response from Obama at yesterday's presser—into perspective:

With Cochise County wrapping up its vote count, the tight race between Congressman Ron Barber and Martha McSally is down to the provisional ballots left to count in Pima County. Team Barber had a lead of 709 votes as of this morning.

Today, Team Barber's Jessica Floyd released a memo detailing why she believes Barber will win:

To: Interested Parties
From: Jessica Floyd, Campaign Manager
Re: State of the AZ-02 Vote Count
Date: Thursday, November 15, 2012

With Cochise County finished counting all ballots, Pima County finished counting early ballots, and only provisional ballots in Pima County remaining, we see that Congressman Ron Barber is likely to prevail in his bid for a full term representing Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. There are three trends that point to this likely outcome.

1. Barber's Steady Strength in the Count

Since Election Day, each day has ended with Barber in a stronger position than when that day began. At the end of Election Night, Martha McSally led, but over the next few days she saw her advantage disappear. Since then, Barber's lead has grown each day. Below are the vote margins at the end of each day:

You know what covering the food beat for four years has taught me? That cooks and many other people involved in the world of food are artists, and not in the sense that they make things that are nice to look at, although they do that as well.

What I mean with that comparison is that the world of food is packed with people who work out of the sheer joy of what they are doing. They seem driven by an internal fire that can only be quenched by the edible things they create, and I love them for being like that.

An e-mail received this morning reminded me of this. It was from one Kelly Dewey, who started the small Tucson business Rex's Perogies last year.

"I started this business on my own and work extemely hard to provide quality yummy Perogies to Tucsonans!" writes Dewey. " I hand make every single one from the dough to the fillings and make 100's a week! We make 4 types Potato & Cheese, Potato, cheese & Roasted green chile, Sauerkaut & onion and Mushroom & onion."

Check in at Rex's Perogies website for more information on where to find these delicious Polish dumplings.

A new place called Public Brew House and Coffee Shop, which the Weekly's David Mendez wrote about some weeks ago, took another step toward becoming a reality yesterday.

The coffee shop and nano-brewery project met it's goal of raising $37,000 through fundraising website Kickstarter yesterday, with only minutes to spare. Will this mean more coffee and beer for Tucson soon? All signs point to "yes."

From a description of the new brewery:

Our goal is to open up a community oriented nano-brewery and specialty coffee shop in downtown Tucson, Arizona. We intend to create a space and experience around specialty coffee and craftbeer, with priority given to creative endeavor and community contribution.