Your Weekly guide to keeping busy (and staying cool!) in the Old Pueblo.

Food & Booze

Chorizo and Sonoran Hot Dog Challenge. Tucson is well known as the Sonoran Hot Dog capital of the U.S. Less well known is how great the chorizo in town is. Ask any Phoenician with family in the Old Pueblo: Tucson has it going on when it comes to good chori. Now in its second year, KLPXs' Chorizo and Sonoran Hot Dog Challenge aims to settle any dispute about who's the best when it comes to two Tucson staples. Desert Diamond Casino hosts, while the winner in each category will walk away with a cool $1,000. 2-5 p.m. Saturday, June 24. Desert Diamond Casino, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road, Sahuarita, AZ 85629.

Summer Wine Tasting. Summer in Tucson is looking a little extra hot this year, so you might as well drink a little more than usual. Vintage Wine Estates is bringing Middle Sister Moscato, Cosentino The Blanc, and Clayhouse Adobe Red Blend. Stop by and sample each offering. Bottes will be available for purchase, so the fun can continue when you get home. 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, June 27. Tucson Hop Shop, 3230 N. Dodge Blvd. Free.

Cinema

Moana at the Cactus Drive-In. Indulge in the iconic drive-in experience at the Tanque Verde Swap Meet this Thursday, June 22. The Cactus Drive-In Theatre Foundation presents Disney's latest film about an adventurous young woman (Auli'i Cravalho) on a journey to save her people. 8 p.m. Thursday, June 22.

Cinema La Placita Summer Series. Learn to stop worrying and love Cinema La Placita’s screening of Dr. Strangelove, director Stanley Kubrick’s suspenseful parody examining the comedy of errors that occur when an insane general triggers a path to a nuclear holocaust. In addition to the showing, audiences are invited to enjoy the cash bar and food truck on site. 8 p.m. Thursday, June 22. Tucson Museum of Art outdoor plaza. $3.

Summer Classic Films at the Temple. You can catch James Dean in his final role before his untimely death with a screening of Giant, an epic tale of dysfunctional family dynamics set amid Texas oil rigs that also stars Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. 7 p.m. Friday, June 23, at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. $10.

Jackson. Movies are fun, sure, but they’re also culturally significant. Take part in the Loft Cinema’s Social Justice Summer, a free weekly series with talks lead by local experts. This week’s film, Jackson, explores the conflict between religious freedom and reproductive rights in the Deep South. When state restrictions threaten to shut down the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the tensions between leaders of the pro-life and pro-choice movements come to a head. Wednesday, June 28. The Global Justice Center, 225 E. 26th St. Free.

Frida. The Loft Cinema is teaming up with the Museum of Contemporary Art-Tucson for a series of free outdoor screenings. First up: Frida, a biopic about the life and career of one Frida Kahlo, one of Mexico’s most prominent, iconoclastic painters. Bella’s Gelato food truck will be on site selling tasty treats, or BYO picnic food. 8 p.m. Friday, June 23 at MOCA, 265 S. Church Ave. Future screenings take place on the fourth Friday of the month in July, August and September. Free.

Maniac Cop. June is Cracked Cops month for the Loft Cinema’s Mondo Mondays, and it’s not too late to enjoy a campy police fun. Watch as young cop Jack Forrest finds himself as the main suspect in the investigation about his wife’s murder. As the cops dig deeper, the death toll rises. What’s a cop to do when the maniac he’s investigating also has a badge? 8 p.m. Monday, June 26. The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. $3.

Little Esther Mae Jones was born in Galveston, Texas. Her folks' early divorce saw her to bounce between Texas and Watts, California.

She'd discovered early on that music was one thing that couldn't be taken from her. It stuck to her ribs. Just listen to her first hit record—a 1950 orchestral take on Johnny Otis's "Double Crossing Blues"— it's one of the earliest examples of her top-heavy vocals.

Her Savoy label put out four singles, among them "Mistrusting Blues" and "Cupid’s Boogie." She'd soon leave her "Little" moniker behind and forge ahead as Esther Phillips. She was a now stylist in the studio, one who could hold back just enough to deliver the goods, with a tender, emotive street heart. The voice was, unmistakably, all hers.


For the next decade, she walked with ghosts—cold, afraid, trying not to succumb to dismissive re-plays of successes gone by. It was now time for Phillips to harvest whatever was left of a dying dream.

Esther penned some 40 songs, and in that bloodletting—a performer's bread and butter—she hit one home run with a number called “Ring-a-Ding-Doo” (and I can only guess that it may have been a lesser favorite then the other 39 songs).

But enter the '70s with it's urban renewal and open-air drug markets, which changed the sound on the material being written by new masters like Gil Scott-Heron. In fact, Scott-Heron's monster song, "Home Is Where The Hatred Is,” very likely spoke to Ms. Phillips' dream to take a perfect song and make it her own. In 1972, Phillips recorded one of several albums for Kudo Records, first was From a Whisper to a Scream, featuring her cover "Home ..." (Aretha Franklin won the Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance and said the award should've gone to Phillips and her From a Whisper album.)

It looks like Tucson City Council candidate Gary Watson needs to lawyer up.

Watson, a firefighter who is running as an independent for the open Ward 3 seat, is facing a legal challenge to his candidacy.

Attorney Vince Rabago, representing plaintiff Sheila Yamanaka, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Watson does not have enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Watson needs 377 signatures to qualify. He turned in 536, but Rabago alleges in a court filing that 294 are invalid, leaving Watson well shy of the minimum number of signatures.

A review of Watson’s nominating petitions from the Pima County Recorder’s Office showed that he was shy by just one signature.

But Rabago says the Recorder’s Office does not check all the various technicalities that could lead to disqualification.

Watson told the Weekly last Thursday, June 15, that he was having trouble finding legal counsel for less than $10,000. That’s a steep price to pay for a political rookie who faced an uphill battle to win a council in the first place.

If Watson is bounced from the ballot, the August Democratic primary would decide the future of the Ward 3 seat, which is now held by the retiring Karin Uhlich. Three Democrats are in the race: Paul Durham, Tom Tronsdal and Felicia Chew.

The case is set to be heard in Pima County Judge Catherine Woods’ courtroom on Friday, June 23.

On a recent Thursday night on the outdoor patio of H2O, drag queens in stiletto heels towered over showgoers and divas strutted in sequined gowns. LGBTQ and cis-gendered people gathered for Tora Woloshin's opening act. Woloshin hosted an event called Culture Shock to fight against prejudice by showcasing different cultures. The majority of acts were people of color and LGBTQ performers. Woloshin opened and closed the show, singing and dancing some of todays most distinguishable pop songs.


Flight School Acro, was up next. A yoga mat was placed on the ground and the acrobatic duo went straight into their routine. The two transitioned smoothly into difficult acrobatic yoga poses and made handstands and planks look easy, never off balance or struggling to complete their poses.

Seasoned burlesque performer Matt Finish began his act wearing but a shimmering gold robe which eventually came off. Finish's explicit routine was filled with and tease (flashes of his butt cheeks, indeed). The burlesquer taunted audience members in nipple tassels and a shiny banana hammock, and went down to perfect full splits while half naked! He controlled the entire room, kept the crowd on edge and a little uncomfortable.

Lip-sync performer Mama made her entrance emerging from the ladies bathroom covered in toilet paper. Her cheeky performance sort of defined the very idea of a drama queen. MC and lip-sync performer Jenna DuMay heckled the crowd when they were less than thrilled about waiting more than an hour for the show to begin. She called us "emo kids" cause we said "yass queen" with lacking enthusiasm. It was great.

Having lived in Phoenix, I'm of the opinion Tucson suffers from a dearth of quality 24-hour restaurants. Particularly when it comes to pick-'em-up-anytime donut establishments.

If you're trying to satisfy your after-hours sweet-tooth, you're totally out of luck. Want a long-john? Ha, you'll have to wait till 6 A.M. when the grocery store opens.

Unless a sleeve of store-bought, cellophane sealed donut-holes is your idea of a quality midnight snack, you're going to have to drive to Ahwatukee for your glazed fix.

Until now.

Amy's Donuts, located at 101 E. Fort Lowell Rd., opened on June 19 to much fanfare and long lines. With current locations in Columbus, Ohio and Colorado Springs, Amy's Donuts are known for being candy-coated, creme-filled and over-the-top; much in the same vein as Portland's Voodoo Donuts.

Armed with over fifty varieties of doughy goodness, Amy's theoretically offers something for everyone. From the traditional glazed, maple and chocolate offerings to the more exotic strawberry-cheesecake and rocky-road, Amy's aims to please.

With all that in mind, I headed down to Amy's for their 4 A.M. Grand Opening. Between yawns and bed-head, I was able to acquire half a dozen pastries ranging from the traditional to the off-the-wall. Here is one interns take on six of Tucson's newest confectionery treats:

Kehlani had an intimate show at the Rialto Theatre last Monday. The R&B singer was not accompanied by her usual two dancers but was instead serenaded, and gave words of encouragement, to fans throughout the show.  JAHKOY, Ella Mai, and Noodles opened Kehlani's SweetSexySavage Tour with performances that amped up the excitement.


JAHKOY opened. People didn't know the words but they still let loose to his songs. His smooth vocals blended with trap beats that made girls scream (yes, girls screamed!). The Toronto singer lifted the energy in the room, dancing and playing with the audience. It helped that he showed his Tucson pride by wearing a UA tee.


Ella Mai was up next. The mood transitioned from hype to relaxed. People were more familiar with her, singing along to each song. The London R&B singer didn't dance and interact with the crowd as much as the previous act. She let her melodic vocals carry her set.

Hi I'm Curry! I am a 10-month-old female dog looking for a forever family!

I was transferred to HSSA from another shelter a couple weeks ago and now I'm ready to go home. I would benefit from daily walks, playtime and basic training. Want to meet me? Come down to HSSA Main Campus at 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd. or call an adoptions counselor at 520-327-6088 x173!

Love and snuggles,
Curry (843939)

Looks like the Carpe Diem charter school chain which started in Yuma is experiencing problems. One of its Indiana schools lost its charter and is being shut down, and the flagship Yuma school is struggling to reach full enrollment. I've been following the Carpe Diem story since 2011, wondering if its "blending learning" system would rise or fall. Indications are, it's falling.

Charters wither and die all the time, so an ailing charter isn't news. What makes this news is the school's "blended learning" educational strategy and the lavish praise heaped upon it by people in the privatization/"education reform" community. The Goldwater Institute loves Carpe Diem. So did John Huppenthal when he was Ed Supe. What the charters do is "blend" computer-based learning with more traditional classroom teaching. For Carpe Diem, that means students spend hours in computer labs that look like call centers working their way through off-the-shelf online curriculum. They also spend some of their time in classrooms with teachers, but the computers take up so much of the students' day, it doesn't take many teachers to handle the classroom chores. The student-teacher ratio is 50-to-1, more than twice the ratio at most schools. That means a school with 300 students has six teachers, barely enough to stretch across the disciplines.

Conservatives love the blended learning concept because, well, teacher salaries are such a waste of money. Businesses don't make a profit on monthly paychecks. But if you cut the teaching staff in half and buy or rent lots of computer education programming—and of course you have to replace all those computers with new ones every few years—ka-ching! What once was money wasted on salaries ends up in the pockets of for-profit education companies and computer vendors. Conservatives don't put it that way, of course. It would sound crass. They say "blended learning" gives students curriculum tailored to their learning styles. Students move through the material as quickly or slowly as necessary to achieve mastery, with the educational software analyzing each student's responses to individualize the best learning strategy. Computer-based education is the disruptive wave of the future, and the future is now.

A black-and-white New York City skyline that's receded from the vantage of a helicopter. Once the city resembled something one could hold in a fist, the photograph is snapped. It’s 1966. Yet the photo vibrates for contemporary eyes as contemporary thru its darkness. It's a sight of the '60s we can enter, because its black-and-white noir world conveys a '60s we now live with—a '60s not nostalgically dreamt of in day-glow face-paints, psychedelic celebrations and love-ins, but one whose heart beats in this haunted aerial shot. It resonates with photographer Danny Lyon's other '60s American subjects, like Texas prison life, the civil rights movement, biker gangs, migrant workers. The photo is from Lyon's series The Destruction of Lower Manhattan.

It can be seen seen as a translation of the 1960s, as a past darkness that never lightened, one that's only darker now. Lyon's photographic contraction of Manhattan in size, expands it into something ominous, a feeling of something wrong, that makes the present day observer viscerally feel something like what Mia Farrow's character suggests in Rosemary's Baby, the premonition of the city as metallic belly of things to come: a rising of towers, a falling of towers, elections without paper trails, results of such elections, more planes hitting towers.

We see it there, waiting in New York City, way back in 1966, having contractions, shrinking the future's promise, a past more futuristic dystopia than many a wised-up observer has yet seen manufactured for the screen.

Danny Lyon's first hit book, The Bikeriders, put him in high position. From 1963 to 1967, Lyon became part of the Chicago biker club/gang The Outlaws. What those photos capture are so truthful to human nature they represent the occult side of our here and now. Every "model" in The Bikeriders, whether posing for the camera, or ignoring it, or half following what Lyon asks them to do or not do, gives a look of irrevocable distance in their eyes. This isn't right-time-right-place photography. This is pure sensitivity and truth in documentary.

Lyon later explained that he became one of them during the shoots, and that they were always the rare type of guys (and gals) who didn't want to be photographed. That's part of the record. There's also the death threats involved in some of the exhibitions of the photographs.

This show at the Etherton gives a good example of how Danny's work stays alive some 40-plus years later. When you look at the photography of Danny Lyon, you see clearly the dark America that TV sitcoms helped parents erase from their children's view of the world, the darkness they feared. Erasing facts always backfires. Looking at America thru the lens of Danny Lyon, delivers a picture of the past America that shows us who we still are.  Then, as in this very moment, we are the heart of darkness.

Danny Lyon: Present Future, the Silverman Museum Collection runs through Aug. 31 at The Etherton Gallery, 135 South 6th Ave. Ethertongallery.com; 624-7370.

Tonight on the televised edition of Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel: I talk to Tucson City Councilman Paul Cunningham about the city's border-wall resolution, the recently passed budget, the state of the city's parks and much more. Then I introduce you to Mary Matiella, a retired Assistant Secretary of the Army who is considering jumping into the crowded Democratic primary to decide the nominee to challenge Congresswoman Martha McSally in 2018.

The televised edition of Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel airs 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Creative Tucson network, Cox Channel 20 and Xfinity Channel 74. The TV show repeats Sunday mornings at 9 a.m.

This week's radio edition of Zona Politics will feature physician and former state lawmaker Matt Heinz, who announced this week that he is also jumping into next year's CD2 primary. We'll also talk with Dawn Penich-Thacker with Save Our State Arizona, which is running a referendum campaign to overturn the state's recently enacted expanded voucher law.

The radio edition of Zona Politics airs at 5 p.m. Sundays on community radio KXCI, 91.3 FM, and at 1 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. Sundays on KEVT, 1210 AM.