Take your pick.
There's a free multi-act music show with video icing at the Fox Theatre Saturday in connection with several community celebrations:
It's Second Saturday. It's Tucson's Birthday (the whole month, actually). It's a celebration of the life of Cele Peterson, Tucson legend and "first lady of fashion." (Peterson, who died earlier this year, is credited with starting the Tucson's Birthday celebration in 2006.) And Tucson Meet Yourself, which for 36 years has annually celebrated the dozens of cultures that make up the local stew, figures in here some way, since there's organizational overlap between the people organizing this show, Tucson's Birthday and Tucson Meet Yourself.
Besides that, the monsoon is here.
"Cele Peterson whipped (Tucson's Birthday) together about three or four years ago to celebrate during the monsoons when Tucson business slows down. Eat, drink, have fun and go shopping," said Mia Hansen, executive director of Tucson Meet Yourself and an organizer of the "Celebrate Tucson!" show at the Fox.
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The less commercial part of the idea behind Peterson's monthlong celebration of Tucson's founding (the Tucson Presidio was established on Aug. 20, 1775, but you knew that) was to bring everyone together and celebrate all the cultures that were brought to this place. That's also much the same spirit driving Tucson Meet Yourself, better known by some as "Tucson Eat Yourself," an annual weekend-long multicultural celebration in the park next to City Hall and the old Pima County Courthouse.
The cultural spread on stage at the Fox Saturday night won't be as wide as Tucson Meet Yourself's.
Singer-guitarist Salvador Duran will perform with Los Gallegos, a Tucson band of brothers. Also on the bill is Yaqui classical guitarist Gabriel Ayala, mariachi singer Olga Flores, the Gospel Workshop of America Tucson Chapter, and Sticks and Fingers, a dance-provoking Afro-Caribbean percussion group.
Somewhere in the mix will be a short video tribute to Peterson by Dan Buckley, a local music critic, writer, video producer, performance artist and composer.
Peterson was, in addition to owning women's clothing stores downtown and around town for much of the last century, in front of and behind the scenes of many of the best moments in Tucson cultural history.
Peterson was a character, not the stuffy matron one would expect to have the title of "Tucson's first lady of fashion," Buckley says. And Buckley says he's got the goods, the stories - and some video- and audiotape - to prove it.
Buckley says Peterson probably didn't remember the first time they met. But he does. He was managing a record store in the 1970s at El Con Mall, just around the corner from one of Peterson's women's fashion shops. Buckley and his crew were thundering the music in the record store, shaking those skinny mannequins over at Peterson's shop. She dropped by to get Buckley to pipe down. He was charmed.
Decades - and dozens of crossed paths - later, Peterson asked Buckley to help her write her memoirs. He interviewed her many times, the last time just days before she died.
The book, to be called "Undressed Women," is due out in the fall.
His favorite Peterson story concerns a fashion-buying trip to New York City that Peterson and a girlfriend took in 1930 or 1931. A thoroughly Western woman, Peterson was comfortable around handguns and carried a little pistol when she went East. Buckley said she learned when she got to New York that she wasn't allowed to possess a gun there. But she didn't want to leave it in the hotel room and chance having a maid find it, call the police and have her arrested. So she carried it in a muff she brought along to fight off the winter cold.
Buckley says Peterson told him things didn't go well at a meeting with one of the businessmen in the Garment District. The man couldn't seem to get over the idea that this young woman was some hayseed from the Wild West.
"The guy was giving her (a hard time)," Buckley says of Peterson's recollection of the meeting. "The guy says: 'Little lady, you're from the Wild West. Do you ride a horse?'
" 'Yes, I ride a horse,' " Buckley says Peterson answered. "He was mocking her.
"Then he asks, 'Little lady, do you carry a gun?' " And she popped out that gun that had been hiding in her muff.
Buckley says Peterson told him, " 'I got the best service from those people from there forward.' "
"Some of those (stories) may make their way into the video I'm doing" for the Fox show, Buckley said.
If you go
• What: "Celebrate Tucson!" concert honoring Cele Peterson with Salvador Duran, Los Gallegos, Gabriel Ayala, Olga Flores, the Gospel Workshop of America Tucson Chapter, and Sticks and Fingers.
• When: 7 p.m. Saturday.
• Where: The Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.
• Admission: Free.
