The story
Tucson Meet Yourself in Tucson
Tucson Meet Yourself is a folklife festival founded in 1974 by University of Arizona anthropologist James Big Jim Griffith to celebrate the living traditions of Tucson and the borderlands. Held every October in downtown Tucson, it draws around 120,000 visitors to sample food from more than 30 countries and regions, watch traditional performances, and meet the community and ethnic clubs that keep those customs alive.
In the 1960s, Tucson's urban renewal project bulldozed large sections of the city's historic barrio, displacing longtime residents and scattering the community networks that had sustained the neighborhood's traditions for generations.