Tucson’s Best Arts & Leisure

Best Mountain Biking [1]: A fantastic system of single-track trails on a swath of scrubby state-trust land southeast of midtown, Fantasy Island [1] is indeed a mountain biker’s dream come true.

Best Live-Music Venue [2]: Open since 1920 and over the years a vaudeville house, a silent movie theater, and a porn theater, The Rialto [2] now operates as a nonprofit organization showing the best concerts in town.

Best Movie Theater [3]: The Loft Cinema [3], a nonprofit art house, shows the best in contemporary and classic cinema, along with craft-brewed beers and gourmet pizza.

Best Festival [4]: Make sure you’re hungry when you attend the annual multicultural Tucson Meet Yourself [4] 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 [5]: The cool green grass, duck ponds, shade trees, and state-of-the-art playgrounds at Gene C. Reid Park [5] will make you forget you’re in a desert.

Best Contemporary Art Gallery [6]: Etherton Gallery [6] 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 [7]: Tucson Mountain Park [7] 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 [8]: Visit the Arizona Historical Society Museum Downtown [8] 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 [9]: At the huge east-side Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery [9] 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 [10]: About an hour’s drive from Tucson’s downtown, Mount Lemmon and the Santa Catalina Mountains [10] are green and lush and about 10 degrees cooler than the desert floor far below.