Amy Pike has a little of everything at A Perfect Pantry, especially if you're going to host or be the guest at a party.

A Perfect Pantry is one of those stores where you can’t help but smile.

Owner Amy Pike makes it a point to add an element of fun to every single item.

Take the rubber gloves in the kitchen section. They come in a variety of vibrant colors.

“You can have rubber gloves that make you smile because they are pretty,” Pike said on February 21, just a few hours after opening her doors for the first time at A Perfect Pantry, 21 East Congress Street.

Or check out the brooms, with woven handles and purple, pink and blue bristles.

Pike describes her brand new A Perfect Pantry as “a 21^st century modern general store.”

What makes A Perfect Pantry perfect?

“Because it has everything you need to maintain a very interesting lifestyle,” Pike responded without having to think at all, as if she had a prepared answer to the “perfect” question. She said her answer was entirely spontaneous.

Just as she employs the term “general store,” she wants to revive a sense of propriety in entertaining.

“Bring a gift” is her mantra. “You need this store for personal use and for fun and to entertain and be entertained, to be a guest or to be a host or hostess,” Pike said.

Pike will help you be the perfect guest or perfect host.

“You got the cat lover in your life and she invites you for lunch,” Pike said as she lifts a dish towel adorned with cats and pronounces: “Perfect.”

She steps a few steps over and picks up netting in a cylinder shape.

“Bring a bottle of wine and stick it in a nice macramé bag, not a paper sack,” Pike said.

She even carries child hats: “because kids get left out.”

Need to throw an office party? Or toss together a quick party at home? You can equip yourself with party napkins and everything else at A Perfect Pantry.

A Perfect Pantry combines the sense of boutique with 19^th century general store. The look and merchandise hearken boutique, but the disparate variety of what Pike offers is reminiscent of the general store of old.

“It’s not your same old, same old,” Pike said.

One wall has humorous greeting cards. A display rack is stacked with Melissa & Doug wooden toys. Another wall has kitchen tools, A glass case holds some rather artsy jewelry. “Every girl needs her bling,” Pike commented. In back, she has snacks and cold drinks in a 1940s General Electric refrigerator. Beyond the snack room, A Perfect Pantry will pretty much double in size when Pike adds antique furniture in March.

One thing you will notice about A Perfect Pantry is that Pike generally veers away from common brands.

“You will not find my stuff at Target,” Pike said.

Prices, however, are in league with the discount retailer.

“I will not price gouge,” Pike said.

She carries Sierra Brand teas, offers Farmer Brothers Gourmet Coffee (house blend, decaf or Hawaiian hazelnut) for $1.50 and $1.75 a cup, and has snacks. The snacks are more in the raisin and nut family than in the supermarket check-out stand chocolate and sweets.

“I’m trying to focus a little more on a healthier snack with veggie chips and granola bars,” Pike said.

A Perfect Pantry is an early entry in the next level of business openings beyond restaurants, nightlife and entertainment – businesses that can spare Downtown residents a drive to suburbia for household necessities.

“I think the urban lifestyle is coming back,” Pike said.

Pike moved to Tucson from the San Francisco Bay Area four years ago after a life in retail. She describes herself as semi-retired, but two-and-a-half years ago she opened up a much smaller version of A Perfect Pantry at Rincon Market.

“I would find so many fabulous things and I couldn’t fit it all in Rincon Market,” she said.

Pike knew she needed a bigger store. Location was a no-brainer for her.

“It was always Downtown,” Pike said. “People tried to talk me out of Downtown. Lots of people. I said ‘Have you been to Downtown lately?’ They would say, ‘No.’ If you ever want a Downtown again, you need to go Downtown.

“I heard about the TEP building and I saw the HUB (Restaurant and Ice Creamery) going in. I saw the science building (Rialto Exhibition Center) happening. I’ve always had a good nose. The time is right. I want to be part of the reason that Downtown is successful.”

You see it every day these days, older adults running marathons, riding in the El Tour de Tucson – living active, vigorous lives on their own, often fitter than their younger compatriots.

Retirement age no longer means retiring from the essence of an active life. On the contrary, the Mature Generation (pre-Baby Boomers) has forged a new phrase for the lexicon: “active adult lifestyle.”

And the 77 million Baby Boomers, the first of whom just started turning 65 last year, will completely change the face of what becoming older means over the next 25 years.

Still, mainstream events trend to a younger audience. That changes March 2-3 with the Ages ‘n Stages Active Adult Lifestyle Show put on by the Pima Council on Aging.

This trade show geared toward the 45-plus age group takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at the Tucson Convention Center. Admission is free.

There will be 125 booths covering subjects you’d expect (assisted living, retirement centers, medical centers and medical equipment), but Ages ‘n Stages is much more about active lives. Exhibitions will touch on arts, dance, fashions, movement, outdoor leisure activities, travel.

You can learn pretty much every dance needed for “Dancing With the Stars,” and you can learn an array of exercises. You can get a chair massage and learn the basics to improve your flexibility.

On top of that, three stages will offer some sort of entertainment all day long. Mariachi music by Mariachi Aztlan de Pueblo High School, soul by Kevin and Tanishia Hamilton, jazz, Ballet Folklorico, Elvis and Johnny Cash tributes by Robert Shaw and much more will be dished out.

“This is the first time there has been an active adult lifestyle expo in this community. We’re cutting new ground here,” said Adina Wingate, marketing director at the Pima Council on Aging.

This is the biggest event ever put on by the Pima Council on Aging. Attendance could be as high as 10,000 to 20,000.

Just about any entity in the community even vaguely connected to the older set either has a booth or is a sponsor. Richard Carmona is the event chair.

Ages ‘n Stages is the most comprehensive one-stop shop Tucson has ever had for its older population. You can essentially build a lifestyle at the show or, at any rate, fine-tune your senior lifestyle.

The event will showcase just how dramatically life has changed for older generations in recent decades.

“The show is an expression of this long, incremental shift of the last 25 years,” Wingate said. “Within the last 25 years, there has been more of an emergence on the individual’s focus on fitness, wellness and physical activity. This is about breaking the mold. People are saying ‘I have always been physically active. I will continue to do this.’”

Coupled with the increased physical fitness is a similar quest for continued independence.

“You will find the vast majority of older adults, 70 years or older, say out load and affirmatively ‘I choose to age at home,’” Wingate said. “I think it’s been actively discussed for 15 years. The whole concept of aging in place at home is a huge trend that shapes the way homes are built and designed.”

Ages ‘n Stages is billed as “family friendly” with, perhaps, a different twist to the term “family friendly.” Parents with young children may well find value at the show, but Ages ‘n Stages is especially relevant for adult children and their parents.

“We really do see people who are in their mid-40s coming through the door every day at the Pima Council on Aging,” Wingate said. “More and more, we are seeing younger adults coming in to find out how they can help their parents. The caregiver is the adult child. They are raising their own family, holding down a job and taking care of an aging parent. They are known as the Sandwich Generation.”

The Jim Click Automotive Team is the title sponsor, the Arizona Daily Star is the media sponsor and Providence Service Corp. is the third major sponsor. Any time the Providence names comes up, its founder and CEO Fletcher McCusker isn’t far behind.

McCusker is the force behind 2^nd Saturdays and the Arizona Centennial Celebration. He and Jim Murphy, CEO of the Pima Council on Aging, got to talking, and before you knew it, McCusker talked yet someone else into staging an event Downtown.

Ages ‘n Stages also serves as a major fund-raiser for the Pima Council on Aging, a non-profit agency with the mission to promote dignity and respect for aging, which saw a cut in funding of $1 million in July.

“This is not a one-time event,” Wingate said. “The idea is to keep on growing this. This is a way to celebrate being a grownup.”

Scaffolding is up at the Steinfeld Warehouse, 101 West 6^th Street, as structural repairs got started earlier in February, a first step to get the 105-year-old brick structure ready for its new life as an arts hub.

This design shows how a corridor leads through the Steinfeld Warehouse and, once outside, descends to the basement level, which is 5 feet lower than what will be a new courtyard. Courtesy Poster Frost Mirto.

Meanwhile, conceptual planning for the interior calls for turning the loading dock area in the building’s southwest quadrant into a public courtyard with access via a zaguán-style corridor running through the building to 9^th Avenue.

“The idea is to reconnect the courtyard to the east face of the building,” said Corky Poster, a principal at the Poster Frost Mirto architecture and urban planning firm.

The zaguán is the focal point for the Poster Frost Mirto vision to revive the Steinfeld Warehouse as a live-work haven for artists with nine apartments with studios, larger public art studios, classrooms, a gallery and possibly a café.

The zaguán is a Mexican-style passageway leading from an entrance door to a central patio. In the case of the Steinfeld, the 16-foot wide corridor would be 88 feet long and open to the courtyard. Poster describes it as half-indoors, half-outdoors.

The corridor would have skylights and squares of glass floor to bring daylight into the zaguán and also down below into the basement.

Some of the apartments would be along one side of the corridor with public studios on the opposite side.

Other apartments would open upon a hardscaped courtyard, which would be open for a variety of public events.

Poster Frost Mirto based its conceptual designs on input at a couple of public meetings in January and February, where artists and Downtown neighborhood residents weighed in on what they wanted to see inside the Steinfeld Warehouse.

Here you can see how the entrances to artist aparments would be at a lower level than the courtyard. Courtesty Poster Frost Mirto.

The Warehouse Arts Management Organization acquired the Steinfeld in November 2011 and hired Poster Frost Mirto to come up with conceptual designs and undertake the structural repairs that started February 7.

The Steinfeld needs substantial brick repair to the 1907 walls and also stone masonry repairs in the basement. That should be completed by the end of March, at which time roof repairs would start. After that, new electrical, heating and cooling systems will be installed.

However, money still needs to be found to build out the Poster Frost Mirto concepts.

In the mean time, Poster Frost Mirto has not ironed out all the concept details. The architects want to bring two similar design schemes to the WAMO board, which wants input from the El Presidio, Dunbar/Spring and West University neighborhoods before committing to a final design.

The question arises with how to tie the corridor to the courtyard, which is five feet lower.

One concept has the corridor continue outside at the same level under an existing canopy alongside the remaining apartments. Steps would lead down to the courtyard.

A second concept has steps at the end of the corridor leading down to the basement, which would be opened to the outdoors. Steps would lead 5 feet up to the courtyard.

The second concept has two-story apartments with the entrance and artist studio on the basement level and the living quarters upstairs.

Both concepts had supporters among artists and neighborhood advocates.

To find out whether you are located in a HUBZone, enter your address here:  http://map.sba.gov/hubzone/maps/

To obtain HUBZone certification:  you must first qualify. To qualify for the program, a business (except tribally-owned concerns) must meet the following criteria:

If you have any questions with this, call the Downtown Tucson Partnership, 520-837-6508 and we will gladly walk you through the process.

For certification by the City of Tucson, please fill out the application here:  http://cms3.tucsonaz.gov/office-equal-opportunity-programs-small-business-enterprise-program

In addition, there are Federal programs to certify specific businesses for certain contracting opportunities (such as veteran-owned small businesses or HUBZone small businesses).

We just received an email from a group that will assist you in completing your applications for any Federal programs.  The group, Fedmarket (http://www.fedmarket.com/), is conducting the following webinars and providing the following services that may be of interest to you:

SBA 8(a) Application eLab – March 15 -16, 2012
A 2-day workshop during which you will, with the help of our experts, complete the paperwork required for SBA 8(a) certification.

SBA 8(a) Full-Service Application Preparation
Fedmarket’s experts will prepare and complete your firm’s SBA 8(a) application for you.

HUBZone Wizard
Fedmarket’s proprietary software product which was developed to simplify and expedite the HUBZone application process.

HUBZone Program Application eLab – March 15 -16, 2012
A 2-day workshop during which you will, with the assistance of Fedmarket’s consultants, complete the paperwork required for HUBZone certification.

WOSB eCertify Workshop – April 11, 2011
A workshop to facilitate completion of all the documents needed to self certify your company as a WOSB.

WOSB eCertify Wizard
A do-it-yourself system that walks you through the requirements behind the WOSB certification process.

WOSB Federal Sales Program
Our federal sales program will help you place your WOSB in front of more than 48,000 federal contracting officers.

Think of fringe theater as a very distant cousin of the freestyle dance that wraps up the season at “Dancing With the Stars”.  Remember Marie Osmond’s perplexing ragdoll freestyle dance?

Distant cousin is the operative phrase. Freestyle is the active, breathing element that drives fringe theater. Pretty much anything goes. It’s certainly not anything you’d see at Arizona Theatre Co.

Fringe theater is where you get what artists want to produce without any interference from artistic directors or the uphill struggle to get your show slotted into a theater company’s season.

In fact, everyone who applied for the 2^nd annual Tucson Fringe Theater Festival was accepted. Five shows will appear February 24, 25, and 26 at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 South 6^th Avenue, and at Solar Culture Gallery, 31 East Toole Avenue.

A free opening gala will launch the festival at 8 p.m. February 23 at Old Town Artisans, 201 North Court Ave. There will be music by The Shameless Flirts, and Algae and Tentacles, plus an appearance by local fringe presidential candidate, Al “Dick” Perry.

The festival itself  will have a song cycle called “Lethal Fairy Tales” written and performed by Fish Karma and Kevin Henderson; Catfish Baruni has a play called “The Starter House”; “Numb” is a one-woman show written and performed by Alison J. Torba; Joan O’Dwyer wrote a trio of short plays under the banner “Unreality Shows”; and a performance group calling itself One Gentle Mule will be staging a “bacchanal vaudeville” they are calling “The Barely Free Baja Spectacular.”

Each show is no more than about one hour. You can see three shows on one day.

The fringe festival is unjuried and uncensored.

“Who am I to say this show is deserving production?” co-founder Yassi Jahanmir said, espousing the core philosophy of fringe theater. “It’s all-inclusive. It puts the control back in artists hands.”

Two acts are by people who took part in last year’s inaugural fringe festival (Fish Karma and Alison J. Torba) and two are taking part this year after attending last year’s fringe (Bryan Sanders from One Gentle Mule and Catfish Baruni).

“They are all local,” Jahanmir said.

Actress and now playwright Joan O’Dwyer had three short plays on the shelf that no theater companies would likely produce, but they fit the one-hour fringe format ideally.

“I think it’s great,” O’Dwyer said. “Nobody really wants 15-minute plays.”

O’Dwyer was the woman behind the Wilde Playhouse that had a brief life on Congress Street from 2007-09, just predating the Downtown renaissance now in place.

Locally, O’Dwyer is largely known as a community theater actress, mostly at Comedy Playhouse and for Old Time Radio Theatre at Beowulf Alley. She got a bachelor’s degree in creative writing in 1999 at the University of Arizona. O’Dwyer adapted the short story about cancer survival she wrote for that degree into the 15-minute play “Happens All the Time” that opens her fringe festival set.

Her second mini-play, “Kids!”, derived from experiences in writing classes.

“You meet a lot of crazy, crazy people in writing classes,” O’Dwyer said.

She spent a few years in Ireland in the early 2000s and discovered the Irish are especially opposed to genetic engineering of their food. That concept evolved into the third play she will present at Fringe Festival, “Is a Pig’s Ass Pork?”

“I’m hoping people like the plays,” O’Dwyer said. “I’m hoping they attract people who don’t go to theater. Maybe (theater producers) will be more receptive the next time I offer a play.”

O’Dwyer is a theater veteran, as are all the artists involved in this year’s fringe.

“They all have backgrounds in theater and music,” Jahanmir said.

She hasn’t seen any of this year’s shows but is confident this year’s festival will be a winner.

“I think we had really good shows last year. We had a lot of solo shows. This year we have more traditional shows that push boundaries in another way,” Jahanmir said. “I’m interested to see how different this year will be.”

Tucson natives and lifelong friends Yassi Jahanmir and Sara Habib founded the Tucson Fringe Theater Festival one year ago to provide artists affordable opportunities to craft original ideas and have a chance to stage them.

No matter the crowd counts, the first Fringe Festival proved successful by the most crucial measure: “We broke even.”

Jahanmir and Habib staged the 2011 festival March 24-27, coinciding with the University of Arizona deep run in the NCAA basketball tournaments.

“Some of the games were aligned precisely with our shows,” Jahanmir said.

Thus, the 2^nd Tucson Fringe Theater Festival was moved up one month to February 24-26. The performance schedule was reduced from four days to three, and this year there are three show each day instead of two.

“You could make a night of it,” Jahanmir said.

The performance schedule is as follows:

Three shows are at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11. S. 6^th Ave.

“The Starter House” by Catfish Baruni is at 7 p.m. on Feb. 24, 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 and 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 26.

“Unreality Shows: Three Short Plays by Joan O’Dwyer is at 8:30 p.m. on Feb 24, 7 p.m. on Feb. 24 and 3 p.m. on Feb. 26.

“Lethal Fairy Tales” written and performed by Fish Karma and Kevin Henderson at 10 p.m. on Feb. 24, 10 p.m. on Feb. 25 and 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 26.

Two shows are at Solar Culture Gallery, 31 E. Toole Ave.

“Numb” written and performed by Alison J. Torba at 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 24, 7 p.m. on Feb. 25 and 3 p.m. on Feb. 26.

“The Barely Free Baja Spectacular!” written and performed by One Gentle Mule at 10 p.m. Feb. 24, 10 p.m. Feb. 25 and 4:30 p.m. Feb. 26.

General admission is $10 for each show, $7 for students and seniors. Tickets are available at Antigone Books and online at www.brownpapertickets.com.

“We really believe with performance you can make a difference,” Jahanmir said.

Science and technology will be in the air – and the Main Library, the Children’s Museum and more than a dozen Downtown businesses – for Science in the City taking place from 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, February 18.

You’d expect a science and technology festival at a museum, but this Arizona SCITECH festival event gets right down to the retail level.

“The theme is to impress upon everyone that science and technology is everywhere,” said Don Ruedy, the festival’s Tucson coordinator. “We want to get people to realize how important science and technology is.”

Science in the City especially focuses on family and kids of all ages. Think of it as a science variation of the monthly 2^nd Saturdays festivities. That wouldn’t be much of a stretch because 2^nd Saturdays Downtown is presenting Science in the City.

Science is the name of the game all the time at the Children’s Museum.

“In some ways, we don’t ever call it science because it’s just fun,” said Peggy Solis, the museum’s marketing director.

Fun is what this science and technology extravaganza will be all about.

High school students from Catalina Foothills, Desert View, Flowing Wells and Mountain View will put on an engineering showcase from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Children’s Museum, which will have free admission on February 18, and students from the TUSD Regional Science Center will do demonstrations at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library.

Many Downtown businesses will transform into mini-science centers for Science in the City:

• Access Tucson, 124 East Broadway, will have TV production workshops for kids.

• O₂ Modern Fitness, 186 East Broadway, will demonstrate bicycle pedal stroke efficiency.

• Chicago Store, 130 East Congress, will bring in a University of Arizona music professor to describe the science of music.

• Maynards Market & Kitchen, 400 North Toole, will have an organic food discussion.

• 47 Scott, 47 North Scott, will delve into the science of cocktails.

• DOWNTOWN Kitchen + Cocktails will produce the “coolest food in the world” from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Children’s Museum with the assistance of liquid nitrogen.

• Etherton Gallery, 135 South 6^th Avenue, will demonstrate the use of light.

• The Drawing Studio, 33 South 6^th Avenue, will explore sacred geometry with an examination of the “golden ratio.”

• Headliners Barber Shop, 216 East Congress, will reveal the science of hair styling.

• On a Roll, 63 East Congress, examines the science of cooking.

• Knucklehead Alley, 63 East Congress, shows off the technology of knucklehead motorcycle engines.

• Got All Your Marbles, 220 East Congress, will do a marble mass experiment.

• HUB Restaurant and Ice Creamery, 266 East Congress, will dip into the science of ice cream.

• Sacred Machine, 245 East Congress, will introduce people to nanoart.

Science in the City is just one of more than 200 science-related events across the state that make up the Arizona SCITECH Festival, which is taking place from January through March to raise awareness that Arizona is a driving force in the world of science and technology.

Science in the City gives people an opportunity to discover the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) innovation and education taking place in Tucson.

“We want Tucson to become better known as a science center,” Ruedy said.

The lot on Congress Street between Scott and Stone will transform into Interactive Park with hands-on adventures with Zero Gravity, the Mathematics Road Show, a rocket demonstration from the Southern Arizona Rocketry Association, and a Sun Tran hybrid bus.

UA Downtown at Stone and Pennington will host science discussions. More UA activities will take place at City High School, 48 East Pennington Street.

The “Mars and Beyond” exhibition at the Rialto Exhibition will offer 2-for-1 admission

Pima County Joint Technological Education District (JTED), comprised of dozens of local high schools, will have students and teachers at the Children’s Museum from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (before Science in the City itself starts) doing activities with children. These will including completing a 3D animation, a food demonstration, CPR for pets and first aid on dog and cat dolls.

“Kids can plant a seed in a cup and take it home and watch it grow,” Solis said. “We will have a microscope so kids can look at their hair and skin.”

Come on Downtown on Saturday afternoon and explore around for even more encounters with science and technology at Science in the City.

Details in this .pdf:  http://www.downtowntucson.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/20120213-Innovation-Day.pdf

Legislation to move this forward in AZ is pending in the state legislature.

Details about the program can be found here: http://pacenow.org/blog/

Details about the progress of this legislation and a tool kit for how to support it is here: http://votesolar.org/city-initiatives/solar-municipal-property-tax-financing/pacetoolkit/