Editor's Note

People Confuse Me

I think most people would agree that life can be strange. I generally find the opinions of others confusing, but this past week, I've found myself shaking my head more than usual.

First, we ran a comics survey online, mostly to get an idea of which of the national strips we run people like the most. Plus, we included a space for suggestions of what we might consider adding to our roster. A few people provided actually useful information (including local musician Cassie Van Gelder on Facebook, who probably should be teaching a class on modern comic strips somewhere), but then, probably predictably, there were comments about how comics are dumb and we shouldn't bother running them in the first place. I understand one or two of these comments, but some people actually clicked the link and took the time to offer their incredibly unproductive input on the survey itself. Probably not a great use of time, but I'm probably in no position to judge.

Now, on Tuesday, we broke the news that Chris Bianco, a James Beard award winner and one of the country's most prominent and respected chefs, is bringing a second location of Pizzeria Bianco to downtown. Because I've been around Tucson a long time, I knew comments from the "Keep Tucson Shitty" crowd were coming, and I'm not entirely unsympathetic to their complaints. After all, no one wants an outdoor mall full of chain outlets up and down Congress (well, I don't think anyone wants that, at least). Bianco, however, isn't that guy. He's deeply committed to Arizona (passing up the offer to open locations in L.A. and Vegas, for instance), so you don't have to necessarily buy into the hype over his pizza (although I make an argument that you should on page 13), but I didn't think anyone would make the argument that his move is a bad thing for Tucson. Nope, people managed to do just that, complaining about everything from some connection to the Ronstadt Center's proposed move to a contention that there's too much parking downtown (wait, what?).

There are probably things that are worth disliking on principle alone (racism, the post-1984 career of Van Halen, Scientology, etc.), but c'mon, comic strips and great pizza don't fall into that category.