Ten cool things to do in Tucson this weekend (March 16-19)
- Updated
You won't believe what's happening this weekend.
- Updated
The touring production of 'Kinky Boots,' with songs composed by '80s icon Cyndi Lauper, has been at Centennial Hall since Tuesday, but is still worth watching in its final few days in town.
All showings take place at Centennial Hall.
According to the synopsis on the UA Presents website:
With songs by Grammy® and Tony® winning pop icon Cyndi Lauper, this joyous musical celebration is about the friendships we discover, and the belief that you can change the world when you change your mind. Inspired by true events, KINKY BOOTS takes you from a gentlemen’s shoe factory in Northampton to the glamorous catwalks of Milan.
Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business of Price & Son. With the factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola, a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos.
With direction and choreography by two-time Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell (Legally Blonde, Hairspray) and a book by Broadway legend and four-time Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein (La Cage Aux Folles), KINKY BOOTS is the winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Choreography.
- Updated
More than 100 juried artisans, working in mediums ranging from glass to fine art to textiles, will be selling their wares at the Tucson Museum of Art's Spring Artisans Market, 140 N. Main Ave., downtown, Friday-Sunday.
The market is the perfect place to find items unique to the Old Pueblo for your loved ones.
Added bonus: The museum is free and open to the public during all three days of the market.
Find out more on the Facebook event page.
- Updated
On Friday, violin virtuoso Angelo Xiang Yu will be in town to perform Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
If you like classical music, that is already a treat.
We are particularly tickled that Yu will be performing the concerto on a 300-year-old Stradivarius. Not something you hear every day in the Old Pueblo.
Yu's performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Here is what Yu had to say in an interview with the Star:
Violin virtuoso Angelo Xiang Yu plays a 300-year-old Stradivarius and if you’re wondering what that might sound like, well, pretty incredible.
And what’s the sensation of playing an instrument with so much history behind it?
“It’s almost like talking to somebody who is 300 years old,” said the 27-year-old native of Inner Mongolia China who now lives in Boston. “All the history of it and the color of it; it is almost unreal to play this on a daily basis.”
He’s bringing that extraordinary instrument with him when he makes his Tucson Symphony Orchestra — and Arizona — debut this weekend. Yu will perform Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 on Friday, March 17, and Sunday, March 19, at Tucson Music Hall. It will be the first time the TSO has ever played the Prokofiev.
“It’s a beautiful concerto but it’s not been played very often,” Yu said, speaking from home in Boston on a windy Thursday afternoon. “It does not have this flashy virtuoso ending. Every concerto you know, like Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Sibelius and all these famous concertos, they have a brilliant ending so everybody is like, ‘Bravo!’ and standing. But this does have a lot of virtuosities in the second movement, the middle movement, and the audience will hear something they’ve never heard before. Almost, you feel like you’re not listening to a violin; you’re listening to some trumpet or brass instruments playing this. It’s very, very technically challenging, but the piece ends in a very dreamy, nostalgic feeling. It’s almost like a Russian-French combination of impressionism.”
Tucson is one of several orchestra’s hosting debuts with Yu, who spends a month a year in Shanghai, China, visiting his father. The rest of the year, Yu is hopscotching the country, guesting with big and small orchestras alike and performing a wide range of repertoire.
The Prokofiev is among his favorites, judging by the way he waxes poetic when he talks about the piece. When conductor David Lockington, who will lead the TSO this weekend, told him he wanted to bring the Prokofiev to Tucson, Yu jumped at the chance.
“I personally love this concerto because it has a combination of sweetness and sadness at the same time so people get to enjoy all those colors in time as the piece unfolds,” he said, adding that he believes the Prokofiev will once again find popular favor.
The chance to introduce the piece to Tucson on his prized violin is especially exciting, he said.
“I’ve played a number of instruments, some very old ones, but nothing like this,” he said of the Strad, on loan to him for the past six years.” When I play a different instrument, I have to make an effort to make something happen, and sometimes it never really happens because it has its limits. But this one is limitless. ... You can never own this instrument because this instrument is part of you; it controls your soul.”
- Updated
As if Old Tucson wasn't Old West enough, this weekend will see the arrival of Wild West Days (from Friday to Sunday), a weekend of special guests who will showcase what it truly meant to live in Tucson back in the day.
Here is some info, including guest speakers and performers attending, straight from the Old Tucson website:
— Kowboy Kal, an old-school Wild West Entertainer who specializes in fancy trick roping, gun play and bull whips sometimes even while standing on horseback! After watching him perform his rope tricks you’ll swear he was born with a rope in his hand. He is a Guinness Book World Record Holder of the Largest Wedding Ring Loop (100 feet)! Kowboy Kal will be performing and interacting with Old Tucson guests each day of the event.
— Gary Harper, noted weapons expert, will demonstrate large and small arms including the Gatling gun, one of the best known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun. Gary has consulted with and provided historical military weapons for a number of film and television productions including The Last Samurai, 3:10 to Yuma, Deadliest Warrior, Sons of Guns, and True Caribbean Pirates. Gary will share his knowledge and expertise each day of the event.
Old Tucson is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Updated
Tucson's annual St. Patrick's Day parade promises family fun for all this Friday, as it makes its way through downtown with live music, dancing and groups from throughout the community participating.
The parade starts at 11 a.m. at Armory Park Center, 220 S. Fifth Ave.
Catch the information on their Facebook page and visit the Star's "10 top things to do for St. Patrick's Day in Tucson" list to see what else is happening this St. Patrick's Day.
- Updated
For a comic store to make it 40 years seems like nothing short of small miracle.
Which is why we recommend visiting Fantasy Comics at 2595 N. First Ave. and Fantasy Comics North, 6741 N. Thornydale Road, as they celebrate the milestone this Saturday.
According to the Facebook event page:
Fantasy Comics HUGE 40th Anniversary Sale is coming this month, Saturday, March 18th 2017! Almost everything at both stores, Fantasy Comics @fantasycomics & Fantasy Comics North @fantasycomicsnorth, will be 40% OFF (Showcase comics will be 20% OFF; Cards Against Humanity & Supplies will not be discounted)! We will be open 10 am until 6pm, so come down and take advantage of the HUGE savings!
- Updated
The Southern Arizona Transportation Museum's annual Silver Spike Festival, celebrating the arrival of the modern railway in Tucson, is set to take place this Saturday.
Among the festivities planned: A mayoral proclamation, display of the original silver spike, the Fourth UA Calvary Regiment Band and reenactments.
Editor Inger Sandal talked about this year's fest in this week's Caliente:
Julie “J.M.” Peters still dreams about trains.
“We were the first. We didn’t know what to expect,” said Peters, one of the first three women to be hired by Southern Pacific Railroad as locomotive engineers in 1977. “It was a learning curve for all of us.”
She, along with Linda Gasser and Jeanne Rader will be honored at the Silver Spike Festival on Saturday.
The family-friendly event is a celebration of the 137th anniversary of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s arrival in Tucson and the 12th anniversary of the Southern Arizona History Museum. The Silver Spike is an award named after the 6-inch pure silver spike mined as part of the crowning event in 1880.
Activities include a re-enactment by descendants of the people who had a role when Southern Pacific Railroad first came to Tucson in 1880. New to the cast this year will be the great-great- grandson of Albert Seinfeld. In addition, there are also new artifacts to view in the museum.
Peters, who now lives in Colorado, had been a teacher before and after her tenure with the railroad. Her mother, Julia Newman, started with the railroad in Tucson in 1944 as a secretary and crew dispatcher. Nearly 100, Newman continues to volunteer at the museum and has already received the Silver Spike award.
By the mid to late 1970s, many of the engineers were preparing to retire, and word spread that women would be considered as engineers.
“It was something brand new for women to be out there,” Peters said, and they strived to set the bar high. The retiring engineers passed along what they knew. “They were just a wealth of knowledge.”
Museum board chairman Ken Karrels calls it breaking the iron ceiling. Peters said the engineers who trained them 40 years ago were welcoming.
“Many women followed in our footsteps, by the way,” she said, noting positions such as switchmen and yard masters. “It was just a fantastic opportunity.”
While it’s hard to believe that was already 40 years ago, she does remember challenges. “It’s a tough job — it’s a great job, but it’s a tough job.”
Engineers get paid by the mile so the longer routes were sought out. She worked on everything from 13,000-ton coal trains to Amtrak passenger trains. Destinations included Yuma and Phoenix and eventually expanded to El Paso. Other routes carried locals to the mines. Engineers were always on call.
She loved the expressions on people’s faces when they realized she was the engineer.
Peters also took part in Operation Lifesaver, an education campaign that took her and conductor Bob Reid into local classrooms. The teachers were always happy to see them, she said, because they showed the students that if a woman could be the engineer, anything was possible.
The retiring engineers told her that long after she left the job, she would dream of trains. And they were right.
The scenery between Tucson and Lordsburg, New Mexico, was amazing. “You would see the best lightning storms. Wildlife. Meteor showers. It was just unbelievable what you’d be able to see.”
- Updated
Gettysburg. Bull Run. Picacho Peak.
What do they all have in common? They were all sites of Civil War activity. And while Gettysburg and Bull Run are battlefields synonymous with the bloodiest war fought on U.S. soil, Picacho Peak did play a part, albeit a small part.
You can find out all about what happened at this weekend's reenactments, running from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Picacho Peak, 15520 E. Picacho Peak Road, according to the Facebook event page.
- Updated
Valley of the Moon, Tucson's only historic fairyland garden park, will be the recipient of funds raised at this weekend's Rillito Bend Neighborhood Association neighborhood tour, this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Rillito Bend neighborhood surrounds the park.
Here is the calendar information in the Star: Tucson's historic RillitoBend Neighborhood Association will hold its first ever walking/biking neighborhood tour on Saturday, March 18, 2017 to raise money to support Valley of the Moon.
This event will take explorers on a journey through the century old neighborhood surrounding Valley of the Moon: RillitoBend. Tour goers will visit homes, gardens, a hidden labyrinth, horse properties, art exhibits and, of course, Valley of the Moon. Educators from Desert Archaeology, Community Renaissance / Do Happy Today, and the Tucson Village Farm will be on hand to talk with visitors about the important work they are doing. Living Streets Alliance will be providing bicycle support for the event.
Tickets $20. Kids 12 and under FREE.
- Updated
If you have a dirty dog, head to Barrio Brewing, 800 E. 16th St., this Sunday for a dog wash, courtesy of the Humane Society of Southern Arizona and Tucson Roller Derby.
A custom pint glass will get you $1 off of your beer. It is $15 for a regular wash and $40 for a VIP wash.
Proceeds benefit the Humane Society.
The touring production of 'Kinky Boots,' with songs composed by '80s icon Cyndi Lauper, has been at Centennial Hall since Tuesday, but is still worth watching in its final few days in town.
All showings take place at Centennial Hall.
According to the synopsis on the UA Presents website:
With songs by Grammy® and Tony® winning pop icon Cyndi Lauper, this joyous musical celebration is about the friendships we discover, and the belief that you can change the world when you change your mind. Inspired by true events, KINKY BOOTS takes you from a gentlemen’s shoe factory in Northampton to the glamorous catwalks of Milan.
Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business of Price & Son. With the factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola, a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos.
With direction and choreography by two-time Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell (Legally Blonde, Hairspray) and a book by Broadway legend and four-time Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein (La Cage Aux Folles), KINKY BOOTS is the winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Choreography.
More than 100 juried artisans, working in mediums ranging from glass to fine art to textiles, will be selling their wares at the Tucson Museum of Art's Spring Artisans Market, 140 N. Main Ave., downtown, Friday-Sunday.
The market is the perfect place to find items unique to the Old Pueblo for your loved ones.
Added bonus: The museum is free and open to the public during all three days of the market.
Find out more on the Facebook event page.
On Friday, violin virtuoso Angelo Xiang Yu will be in town to perform Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
If you like classical music, that is already a treat.
We are particularly tickled that Yu will be performing the concerto on a 300-year-old Stradivarius. Not something you hear every day in the Old Pueblo.
Yu's performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Here is what Yu had to say in an interview with the Star:
Violin virtuoso Angelo Xiang Yu plays a 300-year-old Stradivarius and if you’re wondering what that might sound like, well, pretty incredible.
And what’s the sensation of playing an instrument with so much history behind it?
“It’s almost like talking to somebody who is 300 years old,” said the 27-year-old native of Inner Mongolia China who now lives in Boston. “All the history of it and the color of it; it is almost unreal to play this on a daily basis.”
He’s bringing that extraordinary instrument with him when he makes his Tucson Symphony Orchestra — and Arizona — debut this weekend. Yu will perform Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 on Friday, March 17, and Sunday, March 19, at Tucson Music Hall. It will be the first time the TSO has ever played the Prokofiev.
“It’s a beautiful concerto but it’s not been played very often,” Yu said, speaking from home in Boston on a windy Thursday afternoon. “It does not have this flashy virtuoso ending. Every concerto you know, like Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Sibelius and all these famous concertos, they have a brilliant ending so everybody is like, ‘Bravo!’ and standing. But this does have a lot of virtuosities in the second movement, the middle movement, and the audience will hear something they’ve never heard before. Almost, you feel like you’re not listening to a violin; you’re listening to some trumpet or brass instruments playing this. It’s very, very technically challenging, but the piece ends in a very dreamy, nostalgic feeling. It’s almost like a Russian-French combination of impressionism.”
Tucson is one of several orchestra’s hosting debuts with Yu, who spends a month a year in Shanghai, China, visiting his father. The rest of the year, Yu is hopscotching the country, guesting with big and small orchestras alike and performing a wide range of repertoire.
The Prokofiev is among his favorites, judging by the way he waxes poetic when he talks about the piece. When conductor David Lockington, who will lead the TSO this weekend, told him he wanted to bring the Prokofiev to Tucson, Yu jumped at the chance.
“I personally love this concerto because it has a combination of sweetness and sadness at the same time so people get to enjoy all those colors in time as the piece unfolds,” he said, adding that he believes the Prokofiev will once again find popular favor.
The chance to introduce the piece to Tucson on his prized violin is especially exciting, he said.
“I’ve played a number of instruments, some very old ones, but nothing like this,” he said of the Strad, on loan to him for the past six years.” When I play a different instrument, I have to make an effort to make something happen, and sometimes it never really happens because it has its limits. But this one is limitless. ... You can never own this instrument because this instrument is part of you; it controls your soul.”
As if Old Tucson wasn't Old West enough, this weekend will see the arrival of Wild West Days (from Friday to Sunday), a weekend of special guests who will showcase what it truly meant to live in Tucson back in the day.
Here is some info, including guest speakers and performers attending, straight from the Old Tucson website:
— Kowboy Kal, an old-school Wild West Entertainer who specializes in fancy trick roping, gun play and bull whips sometimes even while standing on horseback! After watching him perform his rope tricks you’ll swear he was born with a rope in his hand. He is a Guinness Book World Record Holder of the Largest Wedding Ring Loop (100 feet)! Kowboy Kal will be performing and interacting with Old Tucson guests each day of the event.
— Gary Harper, noted weapons expert, will demonstrate large and small arms including the Gatling gun, one of the best known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun. Gary has consulted with and provided historical military weapons for a number of film and television productions including The Last Samurai, 3:10 to Yuma, Deadliest Warrior, Sons of Guns, and True Caribbean Pirates. Gary will share his knowledge and expertise each day of the event.
Old Tucson is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tucson's annual St. Patrick's Day parade promises family fun for all this Friday, as it makes its way through downtown with live music, dancing and groups from throughout the community participating.
The parade starts at 11 a.m. at Armory Park Center, 220 S. Fifth Ave.
Catch the information on their Facebook page and visit the Star's "10 top things to do for St. Patrick's Day in Tucson" list to see what else is happening this St. Patrick's Day.
For a comic store to make it 40 years seems like nothing short of small miracle.
Which is why we recommend visiting Fantasy Comics at 2595 N. First Ave. and Fantasy Comics North, 6741 N. Thornydale Road, as they celebrate the milestone this Saturday.
According to the Facebook event page:
Fantasy Comics HUGE 40th Anniversary Sale is coming this month, Saturday, March 18th 2017! Almost everything at both stores, Fantasy Comics @fantasycomics & Fantasy Comics North @fantasycomicsnorth, will be 40% OFF (Showcase comics will be 20% OFF; Cards Against Humanity & Supplies will not be discounted)! We will be open 10 am until 6pm, so come down and take advantage of the HUGE savings!
The Southern Arizona Transportation Museum's annual Silver Spike Festival, celebrating the arrival of the modern railway in Tucson, is set to take place this Saturday.
Among the festivities planned: A mayoral proclamation, display of the original silver spike, the Fourth UA Calvary Regiment Band and reenactments.
Editor Inger Sandal talked about this year's fest in this week's Caliente:
Julie “J.M.” Peters still dreams about trains.
“We were the first. We didn’t know what to expect,” said Peters, one of the first three women to be hired by Southern Pacific Railroad as locomotive engineers in 1977. “It was a learning curve for all of us.”
She, along with Linda Gasser and Jeanne Rader will be honored at the Silver Spike Festival on Saturday.
The family-friendly event is a celebration of the 137th anniversary of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s arrival in Tucson and the 12th anniversary of the Southern Arizona History Museum. The Silver Spike is an award named after the 6-inch pure silver spike mined as part of the crowning event in 1880.
Activities include a re-enactment by descendants of the people who had a role when Southern Pacific Railroad first came to Tucson in 1880. New to the cast this year will be the great-great- grandson of Albert Seinfeld. In addition, there are also new artifacts to view in the museum.
Peters, who now lives in Colorado, had been a teacher before and after her tenure with the railroad. Her mother, Julia Newman, started with the railroad in Tucson in 1944 as a secretary and crew dispatcher. Nearly 100, Newman continues to volunteer at the museum and has already received the Silver Spike award.
By the mid to late 1970s, many of the engineers were preparing to retire, and word spread that women would be considered as engineers.
“It was something brand new for women to be out there,” Peters said, and they strived to set the bar high. The retiring engineers passed along what they knew. “They were just a wealth of knowledge.”
Museum board chairman Ken Karrels calls it breaking the iron ceiling. Peters said the engineers who trained them 40 years ago were welcoming.
“Many women followed in our footsteps, by the way,” she said, noting positions such as switchmen and yard masters. “It was just a fantastic opportunity.”
While it’s hard to believe that was already 40 years ago, she does remember challenges. “It’s a tough job — it’s a great job, but it’s a tough job.”
Engineers get paid by the mile so the longer routes were sought out. She worked on everything from 13,000-ton coal trains to Amtrak passenger trains. Destinations included Yuma and Phoenix and eventually expanded to El Paso. Other routes carried locals to the mines. Engineers were always on call.
She loved the expressions on people’s faces when they realized she was the engineer.
Peters also took part in Operation Lifesaver, an education campaign that took her and conductor Bob Reid into local classrooms. The teachers were always happy to see them, she said, because they showed the students that if a woman could be the engineer, anything was possible.
The retiring engineers told her that long after she left the job, she would dream of trains. And they were right.
The scenery between Tucson and Lordsburg, New Mexico, was amazing. “You would see the best lightning storms. Wildlife. Meteor showers. It was just unbelievable what you’d be able to see.”
Gettysburg. Bull Run. Picacho Peak.
What do they all have in common? They were all sites of Civil War activity. And while Gettysburg and Bull Run are battlefields synonymous with the bloodiest war fought on U.S. soil, Picacho Peak did play a part, albeit a small part.
You can find out all about what happened at this weekend's reenactments, running from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Picacho Peak, 15520 E. Picacho Peak Road, according to the Facebook event page.
Valley of the Moon, Tucson's only historic fairyland garden park, will be the recipient of funds raised at this weekend's Rillito Bend Neighborhood Association neighborhood tour, this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Rillito Bend neighborhood surrounds the park.
Here is the calendar information in the Star: Tucson's historic RillitoBend Neighborhood Association will hold its first ever walking/biking neighborhood tour on Saturday, March 18, 2017 to raise money to support Valley of the Moon.
This event will take explorers on a journey through the century old neighborhood surrounding Valley of the Moon: RillitoBend. Tour goers will visit homes, gardens, a hidden labyrinth, horse properties, art exhibits and, of course, Valley of the Moon. Educators from Desert Archaeology, Community Renaissance / Do Happy Today, and the Tucson Village Farm will be on hand to talk with visitors about the important work they are doing. Living Streets Alliance will be providing bicycle support for the event.
Tickets $20. Kids 12 and under FREE.
If you have a dirty dog, head to Barrio Brewing, 800 E. 16th St., this Sunday for a dog wash, courtesy of the Humane Society of Southern Arizona and Tucson Roller Derby.
A custom pint glass will get you $1 off of your beer. It is $15 for a regular wash and $40 for a VIP wash.
Proceeds benefit the Humane Society.
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