Thai food is just one of the many ethnic cuisines that help to draw crowds Downtown to celebrate the city's rich mixture of culture, music and dance. The annual Tucson Meet Yourself festival runs Friday through Sunday with 30 food booths and 100 ethnic performances.

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Youth must be served. Which is why "aerosol art" and a lowrider car show factor into that venerable tradition known as Tucson Meet Yourself.

"It's a nod to our kid culture, what youth is doing today," says Mia Hansen, president of the Cultural Exchange Council, sponsor of Tucson Meet Yourself. "Fifty years from now maybe hip-hop will be like square dancing today."

Um, maybe. Meanwhile, plenty of more-traditional ethnic dances will still be going on this weekend at the annual event, which runs Friday through Sunday Downtown at El Presidio Park, Pima County Courthouse and Jácome Plaza in front of the library.

With 50,000 attending, the festival has slopped onto four stages and five venues, closing down North Church Avenue for good measure.

"Until the late '90s, we only had one stage," says folklorist Jim "Big Jim" Griffith, 73, credited with starting the whole shebang back in 1974.

That was the year he scouted out several festivals around the country, including one held at the National Park Service's Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso.

Also in El Paso that year was teacher Mary Sowls, a member of Tucson's Cultural Exchange Council, which was looking for, well, more cultural exchange.

"I took my 10-year-old son to El Paso. I was very impressed with the fun things there," says Sowls, 85. "As I remember, they had Indian dancers and a Scottish fling. I felt, 'Gee, we could do that.' "

So she pitched the idea of a festival to the exchange council. "They liked it and they got ahold of Jim Griffith. He consented to be the director."

Thus was a Tucson tradition born. Still, it came perilously close to never being dubbed "Tucson Eat Yourself," in honor of its myriad food booths.

"The food booths were my idea," says Sowls. "There were none in El Paso. I thought it would be great. The Cuban people I knew said, 'Well, we could make food.' "

Altogether, nine booths and a vendor's cart served food that year — everything from Greek to Indian, Scottish to African-American.

This year's offerings include 30 food booths, as well as 100 ethnic performances and 40 master folk artists.

Performance groups that first year ranged from mandolin players to a Yugoslavian orchestra, as well as Greek, Scottish, Yaqui and Irish dancers.

"It was moonlight and there was dancing to the music," says Sowls. "People got enthused with the Irish music. Some were cavorting around."

As for who scared up all these participants, "it was pretty much me," says Griffith. "I was looking in the newspapers for their meetings. There was at one point a directory of Tucson clubs with things like the Ukranian-American Society."

As the festival grew, others would hear about it, check it out, sign up. "It grew slowly, and never grew faster than we could cope with it," says Griffith.

Nevertheless, in 1994 he departed the scene, taking the name he had coined with him. At the time, he told the Star, "Tucson Meet Yourself was a '70s and '80s idea. I don't know that the festival as it is really suits the times."

For years, we all suffered with calling the thing the T.H.E. (Tucson Heritage Experience) Festival, but of course the name never stuck.

What did stick, of course, was the festival, and in 2001 Griffith came back to help out, hauling the name back as well.

"It seemed to be on the right track, but it still needed some help," says Griffith, who got involved with fundraising and "whipping up" enthusiasm. Today, he says, "basically all I do is hang around and schmooze, announce a couple of sets."

Fundraising, private donors, and corporate and city government sponsorship fund the event every year, says Hansen, who puts last year's tab at $65,000. "We've broken even every year."

Vendors pay a minimal donation of $125, and the festival gives an honorarium of between $50 and $200 to performance groups. "That's mainly so they can buy their costumes and instruments," says Hansen.

Sponsored then and now by the Cultural Exchange Council, Tucson Meet Yourself still hews to what Griffith calls "a celebration of the richness and diversity of the living, traditional arts of Southern Arizona's folk and ethnic communities."

And those communities are widening to include even more ethnic and immigrant groups, says Hansen, citing refugees from Burundi and Iraq taking part in this year's festival.

After all these years, both Griffith and Sowls are still pleased with what is undoubtedly one of Tucson's most popular events.

"I'm so happy with the direction they're going," says Griffith.

Adds Sowls: "I think it's great that everybody's kept it going."

Especially those food booths.