Smaller Tucson Meet Yourself festival

The goal of the 48 year old ‘Tucson Meet Yourself’ festival is to showcase all the nationalities, ethnic groups and tribes who live in Greater Tucson with food, arts, music, and dance. But one local wag has called it “Tucson Eat Yourself” because of the emphasis on food booths. This year was much smaller than in 2019, but there were still 60 groups represented in one way or another.

Here is some of what I saw:

Two local indigenous peoples took up one whole block this year. Sadly some of the photos I took seemingly vanished from my phone, so I only have this pix of the Tohono O’odham booths. That central booth had really nice and unusual small baskets for sale, but they had a “No Photos’ sign on the table, so no close-ups of the baskets.

The African baskets booth had no objections to photos. I like that it was sitting cheek-by-jowl with a juice booth that used prickly pear as a main ingredient. A local gardening group recently had dozens of posts about all the ways to use prickly pear fruits–juice being the most popular suggestion.

And then there were the dozens of food booths

Lining up for Indian fry bread, a staple at southwest festivals. Nearby the Jamaicans’ BBQ put out a cloud of smoke. And the Avalon Organics booth was selling hemp products, CBD, Squash and garlic. A little something for every taste.

Diverse opinions

The Amity Foundation offered festival-goers the opportunity to comment about racism based on where the writer lived in Greater Tucson. This board was for Marana, a northern suburb. Not everything is good food and happiness.

Diverse opinions are okay at “Tucson Meet Yourself”. Atheists were sitting side-by-side with the anti-fur people. I wonder how many people buy fur coats anymore? There certainly aren’t many places and/or events to wear fur coats in hot Tucson. Maybe the opera or the symphony? I haven’t even seen a fur collar around town.

The affluent–or at least the automotive aficionados–are more likely to spend their excess money on cars in Tucson. There are car shows here seemingly every weekend! I’ve been to a couple of them–one that included farm vehicles, another that was primarily about Harley Davidson motorcycles.

And then there was the music on two stages. The women with colored hair were part of the audience for an Argentine singer and guitarist, accompanied by a Chilean drummer. The seated woman in red was part of a Chinese performance, now part of the audience. There was also a multi-ethnic dance program held at the Fox theater the first night of this festival.

This year really felt skimpy, but maybe next year…

---

---