Best Mountain Biking: A fantastic system of single-track trails on a swath of scrubby state-trust land southeast of midtown, Fantasy Island is indeed a mountain biker’s dream come true.

Best Live-Music Venue: Open since 1920 and over the years a vaudeville house, a silent movie theater, and a porn theater, The Rialto now operates as a nonprofit organization showing the best concerts in town.

Best Movie Theater: The Loft Cinema, a nonprofit art house, shows the best in contemporary and classic cinema, along with craft-brewed beers and gourmet pizza.

Best Festival: Make sure you’re hungry when you attend the annual multicultural Tucson Meet Yourself festival at downtown’s El Presidio Park. Members of dozens of cultural clubs — from Colombians to Navajos — cook up and sell their national cuisine.

Best Urban Park: The cool green grass, duck ponds, shade trees, and state-of-the-art playgrounds at Gene C. Reid Park will make you forget you’re in a desert.

Best Contemporary Art Gallery: Etherton Gallery concentrates on photography — from the classic 19th-century chroniclers of the West to today’s shutterbugs, as well as regional and local artists of the highest caliber.

Best Hiking in the Desert: Tucson Mountain Park is a huge public park west of downtown that has dozens of desertland trails with some of the largest saguaro forests in the world.

Best Place to Brush Up on Tucson’s History: Visit the Arizona Historical Society Museum Downtown to learn about the history of Tucson’s city center from the dusty-street territorial days to the advent of suburban sprawl in the 1960s.

Best Southwestern Art Gallery: At the huge east-side Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery you can view all the famous images and tropes from the Southwest’s history beside the best interpretations of the region by today’s artists.

Best Hiking in the Mountains: About an hour’s drive from Tucson’s downtown, Mount Lemmon and the Santa Catalina Mountains are green and lush and about 10 degrees cooler than the desert floor far below.