• Blake Collins

What happens when you put a family of chefs together in Arizona’s first and only solar powered food truck? Chef’s Kitchen, of course. Clad in matching tattoos of their logo, the Cryderman’s - Chris, Ivor, and Chris’ wife Mary - are sharing their passion with Tucson one dish at a time.

Chris has been a chef for 40 years. He started flipping burgers in Detroit at 14 and trained at the Culinary Institute of America the same time Anthony Bourdain was there. “It was quite the party,” says Chris.

He’s opened 23 restaurants in Michigan and Colorado, mostly for other people. Chris always wanted to come back to Tucson - he worked at El Conquistador for a time - and finally had his chance when he found the right woman. The original plan was to open a cheese store, but when the perfect location fell through, Chris figured it just wasn’t time and looked into food trucks instead.

Thanks, caller Ray ! So we're not number two, but 19, because Greatist.com listed them in reverse alphabetical order. So, we switched places with Phoenix from last year and that makes Tucson 19th ... and I'm still left scratching my head ...

I can't help but scratch my head over the reasons that Tucson came in second in 19 is listed in Greatist.com's 2013 list of the 20 Best Cities for 20-Somethings, one spot above behind Washington, D.C., and right behind before third-placed Seattle.

New York City-based Greatist.com, described on its website as "the trusted health & fitness source for the young, savvy, and social," had this to say about Tucson:

Take a deeeeep breath. Tucson is one of the cleanest cities in the U.S., as measured by year-round particle pollution. That should come in handy when we’re panting heavily on a bike, hike, or simple jog. Surrounded by mountain ranges, this year-round sunny city is the place for outdoor activity aficionados, especially cyclists. A program called “Bicycle Boulevards” helps turn city streets into safe pathways for bikers. And unlike some of the other cities on this list (cough New York cough), Tucson’s not a place where we’ll end up blowing our whole paycheck: The city’s been rated one of the most affordable places to rent an apartment. Spend some of that extra dough at the restaurants, bars, and boutiques in the historic Fourth Avenue district.

By the way, last year, Phoenix came in at 19 (Austin came in second). But this year, Greatist.com says it had new criteria for this latest list:

" ... this year we expanded our scope: Does a city provide ethnic and cultural diversity? Can you walk in peace or are the streets packed with cars?"

I forgot to mention the stats listed for Tucson for the 2013 entry:

Average Temp (High, Low): 82, 55
Per capita Income: $20,460
Average Rent for 1-Bedroom Apt: $669
Population: 524,295
Median Age: 33

I love Tucson, but there's the reality of living in Tucson and I'm just not sure where the folks at Greatist.com got their info. Maybe from the hipster travel blog that came through one day, touched some adobe and granted us instant hipster status? Maybe.

First, in the description of the city and the air quality. During the winter, a climb up Tumamoc and look out over the city made the brown crud that hung over our streets instantly obvious before even seeing the Pima County air quality warnings that were issued on and off until some rain finally hit town. Then, the bike paradise designation. Folks who love to ride in Tucson love their bikes, but a good portion of them are constantly involved to making bike riding better and others have been outspoken about dealing with traffic tickets and almost getting smushed by those wonderful Tucson drivers. So, yeah, I'm not sure whose Tucson Greatist.com is talking about.

Looking at the stats, if they talked to a local they might learn a few things: Tucson, with a per capita income of $20,460, is the sixth-poorest large city in the country. One-bedroom rent at $669 might seem like a ganga by Washington, D.C., and Seattle standards. But the truth is that even folks making a little more than the per capita income listed are having a hard time making it. Tucson is a low-wage city with many folks having to smile and swallow when they say, "Well, at least rent is cheap."

Thanks, Greatist.com. You may want to warn those 20 somethings that some fortitude is needed during the summer since the average temp is definitely not 82 degrees come monsoon.

Cheers.

Details about this flyer and another complaining about gun control are sketchy at this point, but according to a slew of lefty political blogs including RightWingWatch, someone seeking to recall Daniel Hernandez from the Sunnyside School Board is stooping to depressingly homophobic lows:

The story behind the recall is the kind of byzantine saga found only in local politics. Four of the five members of the Sunnyside Unified School District, which includes parts of Tucson and surrounding areas, are now facing recall petitions — two members who faced recall for their support of an embattled schools superintendent turned around and filed recall petitions on two members, including Hernandez, who opposed the superintendent.

But the tactics being used against Hernandez are clear as day. A source in the district sends us two flyers that Hernandez’s opponents are reportedly handing out to parents dropping their children off at schools in the district. Right Wing Watch repeatedly tried to contact Marcos Castro, the manager of the effort to recall Hernandez and brother in law of school board president Louie Gonzalez, to discover whether the flyers came from his campaign, but Castro refused to take our calls.

New episodes of the beer-focused webseries Hopped Up tend to appear somewhat sporadically, but when they do arrive, the show, focusing on an establishment that either makes beer or serves a bunch of it, is a delightful watch. This time, the crew stops by Fourth Avenue establishment Mr. Heads. Enjoy.

• Courtesy AZPM
• Joe Peña in the AZPM stairwell

Arizona Public Media engineer extraordinaire Jim Blackwood was so intrigued by the acoustics in a stairwell in the basement of the AZPM studios that he decided to start recording performances in there:

But recently, recording engineer Jim Blackwood decided to try something new. For years, Jim had noticed the unique acoustics of the five-story stairwell that is right outside the studio door. He decided to try recording musicians in the stairwell's confined, reverb-rich space. And now you can hear the result.

Greyhound Soul's Joe Peña is the first musician in the well. Check out his session, which aired last Friday on Arizona Spotlight.

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There's a lot for music fans to like about this year's installment of the annual concert extravaganza HoCo Fest, whether that's 80's Night with Howard Jones and Men Without Hats on Thursday, Camilo Lara, Sergio Mendoza and Taraf de Tucson on Latin Night Friday, the free festivities on Saturday, Sunday's finale featuring Scout Niblett and Chelsea Wolfe.

Want to go to one of the nights for free? Enter our contest for four tickets to the evening of your choice (other than Saturday, since that's free already) now. We'll pull two winners on Wednesday afternoon, notify those winners via email, and those winners will select the night they'd like to attend and their tickets will be ready at will call. Fun for everyone!

For more information about Club Congress and HoCo Fest, including ticket prices, lineups and such, visit the Hotel Congress website.

Good luck!

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is the latest target of the Senate Conservatives Fund, which is pushing the move to force a government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare.

Talking Points Memo reports:

The Jim DeMint-founded Senate Conservatives Fund is targeting Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) for not willing to endorse an effort to defund Obamacare or shut down the federal government in a new radio ad airing Monday.

"Senator Jeff Flake is no where to be found," says the narrator in the ad. "Jeff Flake won't stand up to President Obama and join conservatives in pledging to oppose funding for the implementation of Obamacare. So what's his excuse?"

Speaking at a town hall in Gilbert, Ariz. this weekend, Flake said that while he "would love" to defund the law, "the continuing resolution is not the mechanism" to do so.

As you might have all recognized by now, Jan Brewer isn't actually making a move to implement some sort of crazy, anti-gay measure in this state, despite what your reactionary family, friends and neighbors have shared on Facebook. That's awesome—but what's not awesome is how these "satirists" are making everyone else look.

As noted last week by the Weekly's Mari Herreras, the "news" that our fair Governor was instituting a change to the public school curriculum that was intended to scare gay kids straight was, thankfully, false.

What's bothers me is that, by my count, this is at least the third "satirical" story that's caught a significant amount of fire in recent memory, with one being the Daily Currant's idea that Egypt issued a warrant for Jon Stewart's arrest, and roughly anything that Andy Borowitz writes for the New Yorker.

Now, while the Internet gives a voice to any idiot with a keyboard and an idea, the work that those idiots produce in the name of being "funny" distracts from real, thought-provoking ideas, becoming the noise that scrambles the signal.

Such as with the National Report, which sounds enough like the National Review to give the illusion of credibility; or the Daily Currant, which is one letter away from becoming the name of a legitimate news source and not a berry; or The New Yorker's Andy Borowitz, who is a damn fine writer, but should have the same rules applied to him regarding satire as sex offenders get regarding schools (not allowed within 500 feet of, regarded with disdain and disgust for his past acts, etc.).

Satire should be biting—it should call attention to the main issue by distorting reality; it should at least sound smart; it should be funny; and (most importantly) it shouldn't distract people from the point by stirring up outrage for page views.

And that's the problem with these websites —  they're too desperate for attention to realize that they're screwing themselves, their message, and incidentally, anyone who writes anything on the Internet

The Report's "Brewer Teaches the Gay Away" post sounded plausible because it was too busy citing CNN and Fox News as sources and falsifying quotes from (often deserved) liberal targets such as Brewer and Joe Arpaio to distort reality.

If you write satire just to screw with people and get pageviews, you're not just hurting your own image, but you're hurting the public's depiction of the medium you've chosen. For every savvy person out there who realizes that there are people who make things up on the Internet, there are 10 people out there who don't think critically enough about what they're reading to realize that it's bullshit. They screw up the curve for everyone else, causing people to further distrust what they're reading—and not in the "question everything" way, but in the "this is all lies, I have to follow the only folks I can trust" way.

These are the people who are de-legitimizing thought-provoking writing on the Internet, because they're too busy trying to put themselves and their work over to do real, actual good—or at least be entertaining, like The Onion.

In other words, the National Report and its ilk are responsible for Fox News.

Thanks, dicks.

• MS Paint art by Dan Gibson

UPDATE: The tickets have been claimed!

The response to our Padres ticket giveaway was incredible and seemingly we sent a bunch of happy fans to the last games in Tucson Padres history, but yet, there is still one set of four tickets available for tonight's game against the Reno Aces at 7:05 p.m.

So, who wants them? Email us at [email protected] and we'll reply to the first email that comes in. HERE'S THE CATCH: You need to be able to pick these tickets up BEFORE 5 P.M. at our office at 3280 E. Hemisphere Loop. Our offices are largely inconvenient to everyone, so Google Map where we're located and what it would take for you to get here before emailing. If we pick someone for the tickets and the tickets end up unused, that would be a bummer.

Get to emailing! I'll update this post when the tickets have been awarded.

Things you should not do when running a business (a partial list): Work people under eighteen more than eight hours a day; have anyone work more than forty hours a week and pay them for 25; owe $313,333 in back wages to 292 current and former workers. But, yet, that's what the Department of Labor has uncovered at the Octopus Car Wash locations here in Tucson.

The lowlight? When it wasn't busy at these car washes, the management would take the employees off the clock, but require them to stay on premises until a manager or supervisor told them to work again. Of course, these unpaid breaks would at times last up to three hours.

Octopus has paid back wages to the employees they could find, but they were unable to find 200 former employees who are apparently just out of luck. Octopus was also forced to pay an undisclosed fine for over working one 14-year-old and two 15-year-olds.