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Tag: Southern Arizona

Pride in Tucson Runs Through the Kitchens

Pride in Tucson doesn’t look like Pride in bigger cities. There’s no corporate float parade down Congress Street in June. Instead, there’s a month of drag brunches, bar crawls, night markets, and small-town parades. Restaurants and bars in Tucson and Southern Arizona Pride host them. They hold this community together, the other eleven months too.

That’s not an accident. It’s how it started here.

Pride Began from Violence in Tucson

Tucson’s Pride didn’t begin because of New York’s uprising. It began outside Stonewall Tavern in June 1976 in murder as 21-year-old Richard Heakin, a tourist from Nebraska, was a victim of a hate crime by four teenagers. The name “Stonewall” is a coincidence. This Stonewall had nothing to do with the 1969 riots in Greenwich Village. Unfortunately, the killers were tried as juveniles and got probation.

Tucson, as a community, responded fast. By 1977, organizers had pushed the Tucson City Council to pass one of the first anti-discrimination ordinances in the country to protect gay and lesbian residents. That June, the Tucson Gay Coalition held the Gay Pride and Richard Heakin Memorial Picnic at Himmel Park. About 50 people came, and it marked Arizona’s first Pride event. Phoenix wouldn’t hold one for more than a decade.

And to be truthful, that ordinance didn’t come from nowhere. Tucson sits in the homeland of the Tohono O’odham and the Pascua Yaqui. The first peoples resided in this basin for more than 4000 years, making room for those who lived outside the gender binary long before any government could vote on it. The two-Spirit has long been an Indigenous identity that predates colonization. Indeed, the Tohono O’odham Two-Spirit community is still here, hosting its own Pride gatherings on the Nation. So when the city acted in 1977, it wasn’t inventing acceptance but rather honoring the character of the land on which it was built.

For almost fifty years, Tucson’s queer history could be found in places where people shared food, so it stood to reason that, from that picnic, a festival would emerge that lasted nearly five decades. In 1982, marchers walked from Tucson to Phoenix to turn Pride into a civil rights march against discrimination across the state.

Unfortunately, this year is different. Tucson Pride, the organization, dissolved in early 2026 after 49 years. However, new groups are forming to carry into the future. Today, Pride has returned to restaurants, bars, and patios where it was in 1977. It’s the simple act of gathering together.

Tucson has been an Arizona trailblazer for nearly half a century. It was among the first cities in the nation to ban anti-gay discrimination, and it consistently earns a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. The city provides explicit protections in housing, employment, and public accommodations. Phoenix and Tempe hold perfect 100s, too, on the strength of inclusive employment policies, non-discrimination ordinances, and LGBTQ+ liaisons.

Those are pockets, though, not the whole state. Advocacy is still necessary. The State of Arizona does not protect LGBTQ people across the board. Unfortunately, a bill that would create one keeps dying in the legislature, specifically over faith-based exemptions and transgender rights. Thus, belonging is still contested; the answer a restaurant gives at its own door matters. None of these places requires a membership card.

Chela’s Latin Cuisine

Disco Divas Drag Brunch, Sunday, June 28, noon. 256 E. Congress St. $20 to $25.

The Divas Illusion Show marks two years of brunches at Chela’s. The Latin restaurant on Congress has quietly become one of downtown’s most reliable stages for drag. Two years isn’t a one-off Pride gesture. It’s a standing commitment, renewed monthly, in the middle of the city’s busiest dining corridor. Come for the performances. Stay for the food. It holds its own without the show.

HighWire

Drag Brunch at The Grand, Saturday, June 21, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 33 S. Sixth Ave. $60.

HighWire built its name on molecular mixology. Its annual Pride drag brunch returns with a buffet, HighWire Craft Spirits cocktails, and performances from Mya McKenzie, Chris Mort, Onika Grande, and Ezmerelda Felix. This one sells out. Buy tickets early.

Tito & Pep

4122 E. Speedway Blvd. Dinner nightly, brunch Saturday and Sunday.

Chef and owner John Martinez built Tito & Pep into one of the city’s best-known tables (NY Times, Arizona Highways), with Southwest cooking and a cocktail program to match. It’s an inclusive, Latinx-owned dining space that runs a gender-neutral restroom and is listed as a transgender safe space. A restaurant doesn’t put that on the record by accident. It does it because it decided, on purpose, who gets to feel at home at the table. Go for the food, but linger because of how it treats you.

The Royal Room

450 N. Sixth Ave. Open 7 days a week, happy hour 4 to 7 p.m.

Sitting at the corner of Sixth and Sixth, on the border of the Fourth Avenue district, guests will discover craft beer, a rotating cocktail list, Sunday trivia nights, and, from the patio, El Taco Royale’s outdoor street tacos. Pride flags decorate the space, while a go-with-the-flow group occupies the seats, as good neighborhood bars always do. It’s the kind of local hangout where everyone is welcome, no matter the color or gender. Grab a table after work, before a show at Rogue Theater, or hang out sipping something refreshing while reading an analog book. They all work.

The Official Pride Bar Crawl

Saturday, June 20, starting at 4 p.m. Multiple downtown venues.

A multi-stop crawl through downtown bars. Drink and food specials at participating venues, drag shows along the route, and an after-party. Twenty percent of proceeds go to the Tucson LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Your bar tab supports queer-owned businesses across the region. Tickets at crawlwith.us/tucson/pride.

Tucson Hop Shop

3230 N. Dodge Blvd.

The beer garden in the Dodge Flower district opened in June with its Summer Queer Bazaar, a night market with more than 30 vendors, a DJ, food, and aerialists. That event has passed. The welcome hasn’t. Hop Shop runs one of the most come-as-you-are patios in the city, with rotating food trucks most nights. Bring the dog. Order a local hazy. This is the low-key option.

IBT’s

616 N. Fourth Ave.

IBT’s (”It’s ‘bout Time) stand the test of time as being a long-running Tucson gay bar of record for more than 40 years. Drag shows, karaoke, and a patio built for summer nights. It anchors the north end of the avenue the way a courthouse anchors a town square. Every Pride event in this city traces back to this room.

Venture-N

1239 N. Sixth Ave.

Tucson’s leather bar is also one of the city’s friendliest. It’s a straightforward (lol) bar with pool tables, a patio with a fire pit, strong drinks, and a regular event calendar of theme nights. The crowd skews older. The welcome extends to everyone who walks in. That combination is rarer than it should be.

Sky Bar

536 N. Fourth Ave.

A solar-powered cafe serving coffee and breakfast calzones by day; at night, it turns into an astronomy bar with telescopes so that you can have a signature Lunar Lemonade or a Cosmic Mule while gaping at Saturn and the moon. Occasional events that focus on the LGBTQIA crowd, but it’s more about the inclusivity.

Bisbee Pride

Friday through Sunday, June 19 to 21. Old Bisbee.

Bisbee Pride turns the whole mining town into a festival every Father’s Day weekend. The restaurants and bars of Old Bisbee are the infrastructure that makes it run. The parade steps off Saturday morning at the Cochise County Courthouse and winds down Tombstone Canyon and Main Street, past the cafés and saloons that feed and water the crowd all weekend. There’s a pool party. There’s a doggy drag show. There’s history. Bisbee was the first municipality in Arizona to pass a civil union ordinance, before marriage equality became federal law. A town of fewer than 5,000 got there before the state did. Book a room now or plan to drive back, because Bisbee gets busy!

One More Thing

There’s no official festival this fall. Not yet. The organization that started with a picnic in Himmel Park is gone, and the groups forming to replace it are still finding their feet. So, this year, Pride in Tucson is what it was in 1977. People showing up for each other at tables, on patios, in bars. Honestly, forty-nine years later, that still works.

Eat well. Make sure to tip your queens, kings and everyone in between.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Bisbee Pride 2026?

Bisbee Pride happens June 19 to 21, 2026, over Father’s Day weekend. The parade steps off Saturday morning at the Cochise County Courthouse in Old Bisbee. Restaurants and bars across town host events all weekend.

Where are the best Pride events in Tucson in June?

This year — 2026 — Tucson’s Pride is in its restaurants and bars. Chela’s Latin Cuisine and HighWire host drag brunches. The downtown Pride Bar Crawl runs June 20. Tito & Pep, Tucson Hop Shop, IBTs and The Royal Room welcome the community year-round.

Does Tucson have a Pride festival?

Unfortunately. Tucson’s longtime Pride organization dissolved in early 2026 after 49 years due to financial issues. Successor groups are forming.

When did Tucson Pride start?

Tucson held its first Pride event on June 26, 1977, a sweet picnic at Himmel Park. Organizers began planning after the 1976 murder of Richard Heakin outside a local bar. That same year, the city passed one of the first anti-discrimination ordinances in the country, protecting gay and lesbian residents. It was Arizona’s first Pride, more than a decade before Phoenix’s.

Is Tucson LGBTQ friendly?

Tucson earns a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. The city protects against discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations. The State of Arizona has no statewide law covering public accommodations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Brian Garrido is a Tucson-based food and culture writer and editor of i8tonite

June 14, 2026
Tucson Breakfast Burrito Tour + Chicken Thighs with Cream and Chiltepin
We have been in Tucson for nearly six months. Nick and I have been eating out a lot , trying to get a better sense of Southern Arizona through its food. I’m grateful to have a partner who allows me this indulgence. There is no misunderstanding that eating is far more expensive than it’s ever been, for everyone. However, this is our extravagance. We aren’t big on moviegoing, concerts or theater, maybe the occasional symphony, but dining out is our big thing. It’s our entertainment. I know that when you eat at restaurants in an area and shop at its farmers’ markets, you get to understand its culture better than anything else.

I’ve even been trying to eat my way through as many breakfast burritos in Tucson as I can. While I love burritos, I heart an egg, cheese, bean and whatever else can be stuffed into the Mexican roll-up. It’s a perfect balance of carbs, fat, and protein in one portable, easy-to-eat meal.

Over the last several weeks, we had breakfast at four very different tables: Tumerico, Tito + Pep, El Brunch Bistro, and Buendia Breakfast & Lunch Cafe.

At Tio & Pep, brunch is an energetic and gestural, artsy experience. The dishes look more abstract expressionist, with sauces dripping from well-conceived proteins on large plates, serving as canvases. The interior even sets a specific tone with its Midcentury modern appeal and a philodendron that vines itself around the ceiling.

Inside Tito & Pep with the philodendron.

The very well-known Tumerico pulls you in a different direction with its commitment to vegetarianism. I went in thinking light and left with something more substantial than expected. Chef Wendy Garcia doesn’t sell you on anything; she cooks with the intention of flavor. Even when you think you’re ordering simply, there’s more going on beneath it, and the menu changes frequently.

Chef Wendy Garcia’s breakfast burrito at Tumerico in Tucson’s Sam Hughes neighborhood.

Over at Buendia Breakfast & Lunch Cafe, husband and wife team, Julio and Jael Garcia sprinkle a bit of happiness over every meal. (We can all use that right about now.) Their rendition of a burrito is actually two with housemade refried beans as a dipping sauce. Charming place that you can – or I can go in like a crab-apple and come out as sweet as a peach.

Buendia burrito and bean dipping sauce

And then El Brunch Bistro, a hidden carry-out spot where the burrito, a mas grande ham, cheese and egg log felt like it belonged to the burrito-eating project I’ve silently been on. It was warm, lusciously straightforward, and exactly what you want to be fed well with lots of smack. This is the kind of robust burrito that keeps me seeking out others just like it. Look at the ceiling and it’s not tin, but old license plates painted white. Nice touch.

Ham and cheese burrito at El Bruncho.

This is where we are eating right now: Out in the Old Pueblo, somewhere in the middle of a very unofficial burrito tour and at home.

After a week of eating out, I ended up back in our kitchen, trying to cook something that carried a bit of comfort, depth, and enough heat to wake everything up, including my stuffed sinuses from the desert pollen. That’s where this came from: Chicken thighs with cream and chiltepin.

It’s a simple, European-inspired dish with seared skin, a delectable richness from the cream, and a little sharp, indigenous Sonoran heat from the chiltepin, making a dish that tastes like it rightfully belongs in the desert.

Chicken Thighs with Cream and Chiltepin

Ingredients
- 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- One medium chopped onion
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed chiltepin (more if you want heat)
- 1/2 cup chicken stock
- Optional: squeeze of lime, chopped herbs.
Instructions
1. Pat the chicken thighs dry, then season with salt and pepper.
2. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Place the chicken skin-side down and cook until the skin is golden and crisp, about 6–8 minutes. Flip and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove and set aside.
3. In the same pan, add garlic and onion and cook briefly until your kitchen smells aromatic.
4. Pour in the chicken stock, scraping up any browned bits. Let it reduce slightly.
5. Add the cream and chiltepin, stirring to combine.
6. Return the chicken to the pan and simmer until cooked through and the sauce thickens, about 10–15 minutes.
7. Finish with a squeeze of lime or and freshly chopped herbs, such as Mexican oregano or epazote, if you like.
Serve with rice, handmade tortillas, or a freshly baked bolillo, toasted, to sop up the sauce.

Saguaro National Park

The end. Go eat.
March 25, 2026
Mesquite Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies: Smoke, Sweet and Salt
When two food cultures meet, you get something that feels familiar but tastes different, with a deeper flavor. Mixing things doesn’t erase what was there, but enhances it.

Lobster folded into mac and cheese. Watermelon with feta and salt. Mango or pineapple with chile and lime. There is still a sweetness and richness, but the lobster in the cheese adds dimension and even a touch of luxury. The salinity against the watermelon makes it sweeter and brighter, and the sugar gets punched up against the heat and citrus. Something new moves in, but the original is still there, just changed.

Some of the most interesting combinations come not from a restaurant kitchen, but from the food that grows in a region.

Mesquite doesn’t smell like a sweet dessert. It smells like heat and smoke caught in desert air. Stand near a mesquite tree in Southern Arizona, and you understand that the aroma comes from being grown in the aridness and sun.

But chocolate chip cookies tell a different story. Even before a taste, it’s a comfort only from a home kitchen. Butter, sugar, vanilla and chocolate turned into dough that doesn’t need explaining. It’s a childhood come back in a flavor.

What happens when you fold mesquite flour into a chocolate chip cookie? You get something you recognize, but the sweetness shifts toward caramel and molasses. Think sassafras and root beer.

Indigenous communities have harvested and ground mesquite pods for thousands of years, transforming what grows in the Sonoran Desert under drought into nourishment. There’s a faint smokiness beneath it all, subtle and dry, a flavor that doesn’t shout but lingers.

So, when mesquite is added to the recipe, it’s still a chocolate chip cookie, but there’s more happening underneath. It’s bringing in the Indigenous tastes, unique and wholly American, because it’s from here.

The chocolate chip cookie may be one of the most adaptable eats. It’s welcome anywhere. It’s what you bake when you want assurance that all is right with the world. Mesquite brings in drought and sun, turning the cookie into a more meaningful treat. Even if you never leave your kitchen, wherever that is, it’s like moving between places.

I use almond flour because my partner is celiac. You can use regular wheat flour. What’s important to remember is that foods change because we do. We are not statues; we follow our health, which takes us to the kitchens and destinations. Changing a recipe keeps it alive.

And then there’s salt. Salt brightens it. Without it, the sweetness falls flat; with it, the flavors become more pronounced. If this cookie were a person, it would be me. Don’t laugh. (Okay, laugh.) But it’s made by many places, with a convoluted history that doesn’t fit in one place. I’ve spent my life in that in-between, never just one thing or another. Like mesquite in a cookie, I don’t always match what they expect. Once, someone said when they met me, they expected me to be blonde and blue-eyed.

This version is very Southern Arizona. It’s where desert ingredients meet European baking. It’s still butter, sugar, and chocolate, but with something more grounding—like nutmeg or cinnamon —only sweeter and unfamiliar.

When I make this, I feel it showcases my new home, bringing the old and the new together. It’s still a chocolate chip cookie, for chrissakes, but now it has more of a story.

Mesquite Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 cups finely ground almond flour

3 tablespoons mesquite flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

½ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

¾ cup dark brown sugar, packed

1 large egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾–1 cup dark chocolate chips or chunks (use the higher amount if you like them generous)

Optional but good:

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Flaky salt for finishing

Instructions
1. Heat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, mesquite flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon if using. Set aside.
3. In a larger bowl, whisk the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth and glossy. Add the egg and vanilla, whisking until fully emulsified.
4. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. The dough will be soft but scoopable. Fold in the chocolate.
5. Scoop heaping tablespoons of dough (about 1½ tablespoons each) onto the prepared sheets, spacing them about 2½ inches apart. Gently flatten the tops slightly with your fingers.
6. Bake for 10–12 minutes. Rotating the pans halfway through baking until the edges are set and lightly golden, while the centers remain soft.
7. Remove from the oven, sprinkle lightly with flaky salt if using, and let the cookies cool on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a rack.
Mesquite flour is naturally sweet and aromatic, so resist the urge to add more sugar. This balance lets the caramel notes come through.

Almond flour keeps these tender. If the dough feels oily, chill it for 15 minutes before baking.

These improve after a few hours and are excellent the next day—especially with coffee.
February 28, 2026
Tucson’s Black Foodways and the Sonoran Desert

Black American history is incorporated into the story of Southern Arizona in ways we don’t see in other cities. In the Sonoran Desert, Black life didn’t grow out of the big migration waves or the busy neighborhoods that influenced food in Chicago, the South, or Los Angeles. There were no rows of storefronts, no restaurant scenes built on being seen. Instead, in this arid landscape, where survival depends on resilience, Black communities adapted to the land, forming in small, often invisible ways.

Black history in Tucson and throughout the borderlands starts with the Spanish colonial era, not the U.S. South. By the mid-1500s, Afro-Mexicans were living throughout the region, outnumbering white settlers, with Mexico ending slavery in 1829. After the Civil War, the Buffalo Soldiers stationed in Arizona remained and built lives there. As time passed, Black Arizonaians entered the military, worked on the railroads, taught, and held civic jobs. Neighborhoods formed, as they often do, around churches, schools, and civic institutions.

Enslavement under Spain was brutal, just like that of those bought and sold in the American South, but it operated differently. Spanish colonial slavery allowed for indentured servitude, wage earning, and migration freedom, so by the eighteenth century, many people of African descent in Mexico, then called New Spain, were living outside plantations or farms. Regarding food, cooking was done at home rather than along trade routes, unlike much of the Confederacy. In other words, they were tending their farms and livestock because they owned them. In Chicago and other northern Midwest cities, Southern recipes and traditions were sustained by churches, clubs, and restaurants that served as community gathering places. In the South, food came from working on plantations and farms. Black cooking along the West Coast is part of a broader conversation, blending with Mexican, Central American, and Asian Pacific flavors.

Buffalo Soldiers at a military camp in the American Southwest, early 20th century. Public domain image, Library of Congress.

In Tucson, Black life took shape through military service, particularly at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, because the city is a service town—railroad jobs, education, and civic work—not through dense neighborhoods like Harlem or South Central. There was never a big soul food scene here. Instead, a blend of Afro-Mexican and Mexican cultures began to emerge, found in ingredients that could withstand the heat. The result is a mix that also draws from Indigenous culinary history, too, in what the desert grows and sustains.

Importantly, the Tucson Black History Museum tells the story of Black culture in Southern Arizona, weaving work, service, and the slow building of community, not through big culinary scenes. Across the region’s churches, homes, and workplaces, the food stories told become part of everyday life rather than being celebrated publicly.

Portrait of a Buffalo Soldier, circa 1896–1899. Public domain image courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Preserved by the museum, a quote from a longtime resident, “You cooked what you could get here, not what you remembered from somewhere else. The desert decided a lot of that for you.”

The other night, I cooked cod with garlic, butter, lime, and chiltepín. I used what I had on hand, which I thought might honor those before me. I served the pan-roasted fish with quinoa, roasted cabbage and green onion. It’s a Borderlands meal, but the ingredients might show up in Black kitchens in Borderlandia. Instead of vinegar or tomato sauce, lime provides acidity, shifting the flavors toward the Southwest. Chiltepín, native to this region, adds the heat. Quinoa can be used in place of sorghum or rice, though either would work. The farmers-market cabbage and green onions, sautéed and mixed in, tie it together.

These ingredients don’t match what you’d find in Chicago, the South, or Los Angeles, because life and farming are defined by the desert and what grows here. Everything in the Sonoran has to adapt to heat, to scarce water and to being resilient in the face of adversity.

Paddle cactus at Mission Gardens

Recipe

Cod with garlic, lime, butter, and chiltepín

Quinoa with charred cabbage and green onion

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 cod fillets

Olive oil

Salt and black pepper

2 tablespoons butter

2 garlic cloves, smashed or thinly sliced

1 lime

Chiltepín, crushed, to taste

1 cup cooked quinoa

2 cups thinly sliced green or Napa cabbage

2 green onions, sliced

Roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped or crushed

Instructions

Begin by cooking the quinoa, then set it aside.

Heat a wide skillet over medium-high heat with olive oil. Add the cabbage and let it sit undisturbed for a minute or two, until it starts to char. Stir, add the garlic, season with salt, and cook until tender, with browned edges. Remove from the heat and fold into the quinoa, along with the green onion and peanuts, if using. Finish with lime zest, a small squeeze of lime juice, and salt to taste. Set aside.

Pat the cod dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat with olive oil. Add the cod and cook without stirring for approximately 3 minutes, until lightly browned. Flip, add butter and garlic, and baste the fish for another 1 to 2 minutes as it finishes cooking. Remove from heat and finish with lime juice and a pinch of crushed chiltepín.

To serve, spoon the quinoa and cabbage mixture onto the plate and place the cod on top. Drizzle some of the spicy butter and lime sauce over the fish.

February 8, 2026