The Bashful Bandit has been remodeled and will be featured on a new Travel Channel reality show called American Road House. It's like Bar Rescue but for biker bars. The episode won't air until early 2014. We hear that the bar has been redesigned to attract a wider audience. The bar is famous for being a gritty biker pub. There will be drink specials and live music to celebrate the grand re-opening.

The party starts at 7 p.m. The bar is located at 3686 E Speedway Blvd. Send us pictures at [email protected] and we will post them on The Range tomorrow morning.

Dancing in the Streets Az & Civic Orchestra of Tucson are hosting the sixth annual The Nutcracker (El Cascanueces) this weekend at the Fox Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. The Mayor and his wife are apart of the performance, according to the Facebook event page. We are giving away two pairs of tickets for both days. The first two people that email me at [email protected] and label the subject line: Nutcracker.

Congratulations to freelance photographer and occasional TW contributor Samantha Sais for having one of her photos included on Buzzfeed's list of most powerful images of the year. Sais' photo appeared on the front page of The New York Times for a story about how immigration laws were splitting families.

Take a look at all 45 of Buzzfeed's favorites here. It's well worth your time.

Earlier this morning I shared news from KTAR.com that Sheriff Arpaio refused to lower the flags in honor of Nelson Mandela's death. Here's the original post that I accidently removed instead of unpublished:

Guess who's ignoring President Obama's order to lower all the flags in the memory of former South African President Nelson Mandela?

A spokesman confirmed that Sheriff Arpaio was ignoring the order that all flags be lowered to honor Mandela, who passed away late Thursday at 95.

I don't think it's out of character, but I find this very disrespectful on various degrees. This is almost as bad as gloating about serving inmates 58-cent Thanksgiving dinners.

Someone informed me the link to KTAR link was down, so I called their KTAR newsroom to figure out what was going on. The newsroom representative stated that the Sheriff's department requested that the story would be pulled from the website, but the KTAR newsroom rep was unable to give me a reason as to why. I sent an email to the Maricopa county public information officer asking them why they requested the story pulled from the site. The PIO replied, "Because the story was totally misleading and completely inaccurate."

I'm still waiting for a response on what about the story was inaccurate and if the flags have been lowered. There is a sheriff in South Carolina refusing to lower the flags. CNN reported that Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark has refused to lower the flags because Mandela wasn't born in the U.S.

"It's just my simple opinion that the flag should only be lowered to half-staff for Americans who sacrificed for their country," Clark told CNN affiliate WHNS.

I know when to admit when I'm wrong and publish a correction, but not until I get confirmation that the flags have been lowered. 

UPDATE:

Lisa Allen, Maricopa county media relations, finally responded: 

"The Sheriff was told about the presidential order late Sunday afternoon by a reporter who called him on his cell," Allen said. "Flags were ordered half staff til Monday sunset."

(via Talking Points)

GIO TACO, the unsuspecting face of the Weekly's "Keep Tucson Shitty" debate from a while back, has finally announced its opening date. It will be open to the public 11 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 21.

“When we were first inspired by the idea of doing tacos in Tucson a little differently, we knew they had to be done in a totally unexpected fashion,” stated Brian Metzger of Metzger Family Restaurants

Boy, did he live up to the hype in conception of the menu:

• Gio, with a home-made corn tortilla shell, house-smoked and coffee and chipotle-rubbed pork belly, seared butternut squash and pumpkin seed salsa;

• Fishy Pig, with a home-made corn tortilla shell, bacon-wrapped albacore tuna, street vendor corn, fresh avocado and pickled onions;

• Chipper Fish, with a home-made corn tortilla shell, beer-battered and fried Atlantic cod, malted cabbage, lemon and herbs, crispy pickles and plantain chips;

• M’s Veggie, with a raw shaved beet shell, chayoti squash “steak,” heirloom baby kale slaw and street vendor corn;

• Grilled Steak, with a home-made corn tortilla shell, pickled chayoti squash, street vendor corn salsa and Rogue smokey blue cheese;

• Citrus Chicken, with a home-made corn tortilla shell, citrus-marinated and grilled chicken breast, house-smoked Fresno chili, fresh epazote herbs and Sonoma Dry jack cheese;

• Duck Mole, with a home-made corn tortilla shell, cherry and chocolate mole, fresh cilantro, lime crema and fresh orange segments

I'm all for Tucson nostalgia. Hell, I would take two, standard carne asada tacos, out of a cart, right now! But with fresh, innovative and promising dishes like the ones above, how can you be mad?

Arizona Education Network President Ann-Eve Pedersen, Tucson Metro Chamber President & CEO Mike Varney and Inside Tucson Business editor Mark Evans talk about the uproar over more than 6,000 uninvestigated CPS reports, the budget challenges facing the city of Tucson, the important of downtown revitalization and turning around TUSD's tarnished reputation.

Jhon Sanders, one of the amazing volunteers behind the All Souls Procession, particularly the Procession of Little Angels, is starting what could end up an equally meaningful Tucson tradition.

LumiNight! 2013 on Saturday, Dec. 21, from 5 to 9 p.m., evening of the winter solstice. Makes complete sense—bring some light and make some light the longest and darkest night of the year. According to Sander's event page on Facebook "LumiNight is a DIY wintertime celebration that we make up as we go: a bit of costumed lantern parading through the neighborhoods, a bit of knocking on doors of total strangers, a bit of surprising hapless passersby in the streets with little gifties. All this and more ..."

All for it. The plan is to start with a potluck meal in a public space, bring some canned food for the Food Bank and then. Costumes will be involved and small handmade gift sharing (to strangers), and light.

To begin helping Moldy Pueblo folks get in the mood, today, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Armory Park, (and next Saturday, Dec. 14, from 1 to 4 p.m.), Tucson artist Mykl Wells and others will share lantern-making techniques. There are heaps of cardboard available today and some cutting took, tacky glue and floral wire.

However, if you have extra cardboard, bring it. If you attended any of Wells' All Souls workshops, then you're familiar with the style of lanterns you'll learn to make—but this time for solstice. But here are other essentials needed for lantern-making that Sanders and Wells are asking you to bring. Paper or fabric to put in the lantern windows; tape, masking or packing; straight edges or squares; pencils; and snap blade knives (the larger size you can get at Ace or the Dollar Tree or 3 for a $1 at Dollar Tree but the ones from Ace last longer). Optional items: hot glue sticks and hot glue guns; safety razors (good for trimming paper and fabric); scissors (there will be a few pair on hand but if you can bring from home, so much the better); opaque paints, brushes, stuff to decorate the lantern; LED lights to light your lantern (can be bought at Dollar Store); and batteries for your light.

OK, so first the Dollar Store, your neighborhood ally picking up cardboard and then Armory Park. See you there.

Hip-Hop DX reported that Tucson's very own Marley B and Cash Lansky have an album debuting on Jan. 7 with Murs' new label.

“I wanted to create a platform for hard-working musicians with good hearts,” Murs says during an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. “All the artists I have lined up are good people who want to see their dream manifest and I’m trying to help them do that. I feel like I do have a lot of knowledge and wisdom to impart to other emcees. It’s a platform where I can do all of those things, do features for artists, help them out, give them advice, put them on some shows with me and help out people I felt had a similar work ethic.”

Murs 316, the new record label, does not give advances or sign long term contracts. The article says, "The company partners with an artist on one project and will share ownership of the masters in perpetuity with each artist on its respective project." Murs says this is strictly business and a way to help the artist make a living with their music. “I always promote the label as, ‘This is not a crew. This is a business,’ because so many people get so involved in, ‘This is my crew. This is my family."


Big props to the local rappers and we are super stoked to see what the future has in store for them. Expect a follow up and review in the near future.

The Color Run is coming back to Tucson on Dec. 21 at the Pima County Fairgrounds and the Weekly is teaming up with the people from KIND Healthy Snacks (and while I generally dislike anything involving the world "healthy" especially considering I just ate an entire bag of gummy watermelon sour somethings, HAVE YOU TRIED THE APPLE CINNAMON PECAN BAR?) to give you and a friend free tickets to participate in the fun.

So, here's what you have to do: Go to the Twitter and hit @tucsonweekly AND @kindsnacks up with a tweet with your favorite song to run to. Bonus points if it included a color in the title (or get crazy with it and pick a song with a color in the title BY a band with a color in their name like The Big Pink's "Stay Gold!" BOOM!). Include the hashtag #kindawesome because the KIND people asked us to and they were nice enough to give us tickets so why not? We'll pick a winner on December 12 and you and the friend of your choice will be in the Color Run for free (a $90 value, which is something).

Good luck!

Attending City High School is a much different experience than if I had chosen to go to a public school. Charter schools in general have a different agenda, and being located in downtown Tucson provides even more of a chance to stand out among most high schools. Whether its by calling our teachers by their first name or gathering for a Whole School Meeting every Wednesday (yes, we can fit the whole school into one room), we always manage to set ourselves apart. Especially when, once a month, we have our Community Day.

Community Day was designed around the idea that students not only learn better when outside of the classroom and in their surrounding environment, but that they can give back, as well. A week in advance, we're sent an email in which we choose from a list of community organizations that we want to participate in that following Friday. The options include Ben's Bells, Ironwood Tree Experience, going down to the Las Milpitas farm, the Poetry center, and my personal favorite, Playformance.