The annual Tucson Festival of Books isn’t for another six months, but we’re dying to celebrate our love of reading. To close out their Summer Reading Challenge with Why I Love Where I Live, #ThisIsTucson, the Star’s sister site, is hosting an informal bookish happy hour complete with author meet-and-greets, a bookish cocktail and a book scavenger hunt. The fun takes place 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19 at the MSA Annex, 267 S. Avenida del Convento.

Tucson’s Sun Link Streetcar connects multiple districts for locals, visitors, and everyone in between. The nearly four-mile route has 23 stops and there are plenty of restaurants along the way!

Rollies Mexican Patio has been serving food on the south side since 2017 and on Saturday, July 6, the restaurant expanded to the west side at the MSA Annex. The restaurant’s original location is located at 4573 S. 12th Avenue. The new location is located at 267 S. Avenida Convento, building 4.

Summer admittedly slows things down for everyone. Students leave for the summer, snowbirds head back home. Popular restaurants have less of a wait, larger festivals come to a halt until cooler temperatures return.

The line extends down the strip of the Mercado Monier at noon on Wednesday. Within a half hour, the slices of Sicilian pizza are all gone. “I haven’t had a slice of Sicilian in years,” says Jeff Collins, a Tucsonan who spent his childhood in New York. Jeff finds himself among another group of native New Yorkers at the patio and they begin to chat about food, New York and life in general.

Event organizers are preparing for a busy weekend at the Annex. First on Friday night, the first Night Market of the Summer is being held. It’s free to walk around, then you can pick and choose which of the 60 local vendors you want to support at the night market.

In 1997, Travis Evans sold everything he owned, packed up a big truck and moved to the Big Apple. After working at Tucson’s now-closed City Grill for three months, the executive chef moved to New York City, telling Evans that he would have a job for him on the east coast if he wanted it. So, Evans made the trip to the lower east side to work as a chef.

The Bautista, a new development in the historic Mercado District near downtown Tucson, will add apartments, retail space and a restaurant to a neighborhood in the midst of urban revitalization. The $110 million project was approved by Tucson in 2022, and construction started in March. The development is slated to be completed by late 2024.

The popular Mercado District, west of downtown, is being built out with a new apartment complex, river walk and plaza with a large food and beverage hall and a parking facility. The $110 million Bautista project, by local developers The Gadsden Co., recently broke ground and is expected to be complete in 2025.

Over the past couple of years, the Mercado District, that’s just west of Downtown Tucson, has grown and developers are planning to expand the area even more. Now equipped with a streetcar, restaurants and shopping, the Mercado District didn’t always look like this.