What is it about Tuesday? Must be that they’re slow days for places that depend on customer walk-ins, because the deals are cray-zee. Taco Tuesdays you’ve heard about, and they’re ubiquitous (a Wyoming restaurant is said to have pioneered the custom in 1989). The offer is most common among national chains like Rubio’s Coastal Grill ($1.75 for their Original Fish Taco® after 2:30 p.m.) and Tijuana Flats ($5.99 for 2 tacos, chips and a drink on “Tijuana Tuesdaze”), but it seems that most purely Mexican restaurants share the attitude of Tampa’s TacoSon, whose website boasts, “TACO tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday.” 

But TuesDeals are not just for tacos. At many area restaurants — again, mostly the chains (of which we have sooo many) — Tuesdays are for kids. Places that offer “kids eat free” deals on Tuesdays include Bob Evans, Ruby Tuesday and Village Inn. (For a comprehensive list of Tuesday restaurant deals of all sorts, check out the site eatdrinkdeals.com.)

The TuesDeal trend is in effect at some local museums, too — most notably, the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, whose $10 Tuesdays feature discounted admission and concerts or lectures beginning at 6 p.m. (Tonight the museum’s curator of art, Emily Kapes takes a closer look at the exhibition Spirit Lines: Helen Hardin Etchings.) And if you’ve scored one of those “kids eat free” deals somewhere, why not go for a totally thrifty Tuesday and take your clan to the Glazer Children’s Museum, where on the first Tuesday of every month (that would be today, Feb. 4), the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County sponsors free admission to the museum from 12-6 p.m. Bonus:  Clifford the Big Red Dog, the children’s book hero with his own TV series on PBS/WEDU, will be making appearances throughout the afternoon.