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best Men's Salon

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Lately, we've been spending more time at Boxers Men's Salon than we have at home. That's because, at home, we can't get a clipper cut, a full-body massage or a shoeshine. At Boxers, on the other hand, we can have our backs waxed, our teeth whitened and our beards trimmed. We can get shaved, have a facial and get a pedicure, too, because this downtown, full-service salon is overflowing with professionals who like nothing better than to manipulate us into looking and feeling better. In between appointments with our hair stylist (or our barber, who's headquartered in a separate room) and our manicurist, we can shoot some pool, play the glossy upright piano, or do some quick banking at the ATM in the corner. We like to finish off with a one-hour workout with Boxers' in-house weight trainer, followed by a relaxing hot-stone massage. All of this comes pretty cheap ever since we bought our own membership, which allows us almost all of the salon's super services for one low monthly fee.

Best Furniture For Your Groovy Pad

Go Kat Go

This place isn't just a store -- it's a lifestyle. That is, if you're into all things "sleazy vintage." We're not talking straight-up Elvis, James Dean and Marilyn. Go Kat Go caters to the cheetah-clad Bettie Pages, the leather-loving greasers and the cocktail-swilling lounge dwellers of the world. Proprietors Chris and Brandi fill their store with a revolving selection of super swanky sofas, matching tables and chairs, too many gotta-have-'em lamps and candy-colored kitchen dinette sets. Shelves are stocked with space-age tchotchkes -- ashtrays, shot glasses, kooky figurines -- that make stylish gifts. There are racks of vintage clothes to help you look the part, and a case full of hot rod necessities like badass skull gearshift knobs, '50s-style hubcaps and rubber shrunken heads. And if it weren't for Go Kat Go, we just wouldn't know where to go to outfit our tiki bar.

Best Seinfeldian Experience

Pink Flamingos Antique Mall

Before you're halfway through the door, the litany begins: "Hi, welcome to Pink Flamingos. Today all yellow-glazed ceramic from the 1950s is 10 percent off, except for ashtrays and lamps. Also, all Stengelwear, except for serving bowls, is 5 percent off, and anything with a blue-striped price tag -- but not a green-striped tag or yellow-striped tag -- is 30 percent off, but only until 2:30!" Or something like that. The sale items may change every day, but one thing is constant: The pitch is always relentless, and it always makes us feel like extras in a zany Seinfeld rerun. While most folks visit Pink Flamingos for its well-organized selection of handsome old furniture and near-mint dishware, there are those of us who go there just to hear this astonishing greeting. No matter how often we go -- we've been shopping at Pink Flamingos for years, and have the cool loot to prove it -- we never tire of this zany mantra of merchandise.

Best Place To Coordinate The Colors Of Your Aura

The Enlightened Heart

Feeling lost, purposeless, out of touch with the angels flitting about inside your soul? (And, really, who isn't?) Get thy seeking self to downtown Gilbert, where the folks at the Enlightened Heart can arrange an Archangel Realm reading to "reveal what training your soul has, and the strengths and challenges inherent with your angelic experience." Finally!

The shop's other Intuitive and Spiritual Consulting services range from full-body aura photography -- pics snapped by the Aurastar 2000, naturally -- to chakra analyses to numerology readings.

Peddling "gifts, books and education for the conscious mind, body and soul," the Heart also hosts an array of classes and workshops. Trendy topics include belly dancing, astrology, dream interpretation, Feng Shui and tarot reading; yoga classes are held thrice weekly.

In-store gift options include "Colour Energy" bath products, bamboo bonsai plants in Oriental wisdom vases, and Zen alarm clocks. And should the answers you seek exist outside yourself, the Heart's Sacred Travel Partner Program coordinates journeys big and small, from the Sedona Vortex to Nepal.

Best Place To Buy A Shabby Chic Chandelier

subtle tones

This boutique -- barely a chain, as there are only a couple in the country -- is the place to find distressed wood furnishings and frames, casual linen clothing and beautiful beaded necklaces, earrings and even shoes: the essentials of the Shabby Chic ethic. But our favorite find is the gorgeous, straight-from-the-estate-sale-but-these-actually-work chandeliers. Adorned with colorful metal flowers and beads, each unique fixture is a work of art. They don't come cheap, but subtle style rarely does.

Best Legal Copyright Infringement

Jugos y Licuados/La Salsita Mexican Restaurant #3

We had to drive by several times to make sure of this one. Some night, if you're barreling south past Camelback on 15th Avenue, you'll see a Mexican juice and taco stand making the most out of a gleaming Arby's sign that happens to be alongside it. Where's the beef, you ask? It's hiding in enchiladas, salads, soups, tortas and tacos. Imagine the mortified old couple who stops in for a roast beef sandwich and cheese sandwich and comes face-to-face with head and tongue burritos! Now that's roasting worth boasting about!

There actually is an Arby's on Camelback -- the dubious sign is directing you to Arby's drive-through lane -- but it's half a block away, obscured in two directions by a sprawling car wash and a window-tinting shop on the corner. So, in the interest of equal time, we think the Arby's people should put a sign directing them to Jugos y Licuados' parking lot and its equally lost-in-the-shuffle La Salsita annex. Perhaps this exchange of neighboring cultures can be beneficial to both sides. Arby's can pass along those calves' feet they don't use in their Big Montana half-pounders, and La Salsita can suggest other things to serve with rice besides broccoli!

Best Reason To Believe In Old-Fashioned Service

Gordon Joines in Men's Suits

We'd given up on getting anything other than attitude from men's department sales clerks until one recent afternoon, when we stumbled into Macy's at the Biltmore in search of a new necktie. We left with armloads of trousers, a new pair of Santoni loafers and a renewed respect for retail sales help -- all thanks to Gordon Joines, whose warm, gentlemanly assistance harks back to the days when Dad shopped in finer establishments in towns more stylish than this one. Gordon manages the nearly impossible: He points us toward more and better purchases without a single sales pitch. We leave feeling like we've had a pleasant visit with an old friend who happens to have impeccable taste and a store full of menswear at his disposal. During our first encounter with Gordon, he surprised us by knowing our collar size at a glance, and astonished us by gently suggesting a cut and color that proved more flattering than the costly rag we had planned to buy. We sometimes shop elsewhere, but we never find service we like as well as that provided by this stylish Southern gentleman.

Best Music Store

Central Music

Music salespeople can sometimes get snotty if you don't instinctively know the difference between Gibson, Fender and Taylor. That's why we love Central Music. They know their stuff, but it's no problem if you don't know yours. Whether you know everything or nothing about your instrument of choice, they will help you get what you need. And they should be good at it by now -- this place has been an institution in the Valley for more than 50 years. Central Music is the musician's music store, with a fantastic selection of sheet music, on-site instrument repairs, and a great retail selection of instruments and accessories, from capos to pedals. This is the ultimate place to upgrade or start your music career, whether you're a concert pianist, a future rock star or a junior-high band member.

Best Jazz CD Selection

Zia Record Exchange

Just for the record, this is decidedly not a jazz town. That said, here's a tip: You don't know what you've been missing. In Europe, Japan and a few more enlightened pockets inside the States, appreciation for jazz rarely has been greater, and with good reason. It's a far fresher genre than you know, especially if you limit your listening to the pabulum on KYOT-FM and the wonderful if predictable old-school fare offered at nights on KJZZ. If you'd like to see what's really up in jazz -- we're talking such artists as Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson and Avashai Cohen, as well as such masters as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane -- head to any of the four locations of Zia Records and start digging. They've got a great selection of used stuff, with an adequate number of new CDs on the shelf. For Phoenix, that is.

Best Place To Buy New CDs

Tower Records at Desert Ridge

Those of you who bemoan the behemoth chain stores conveniently forget the many times Tower Records has saved your ass by having the record you were looking for at the last -- and we mean very last -- minute. Sure, when you're buying CDs for yourself, you can take your sweet time shopping around and getting a used copy of a Nick Cave album at half the list price. But when you're buying your little sister that copy of *NSYNC's first album, the cool, smaller shops won't have it. What if you have to give it to her today? Even last-minute Internet enablers like Amazon.com can't get it to you the same day and, let's face it, that's when the very last minute falls.

Tower's airy new location at the Desert Ridge Marketplace has 14,000 square feet of CDs, cassettes (yes, places still carry them), videos and DVDs, plus an array of current magazines and stereo equipment. If you want to buy a Puccini CD for your dad, or that Raffi CD for your mom that she enjoyed playing more than you did, chances are it's in stock. A recent last-minute inspection to fill holes in the ol' record collection found the store carrying a dozen Hole CDs -- and six by a blues guy with the unfortunate name of Dave Hole. Their prices ranged from $12.99 to $14.99, with imports hovering just below the $20 range, besting the everyday regular price of your mark-up mom-and-pop fave.

Heck, why stop there? Check Tower's Web site to see what they have in stock; you can pretend it's Amazon and special-order a title. So cross yourself, ask your mom-and-pop outlet's forgiveness, clutch that Ziggy Stardust 30th-anniversary set that no one else in town has, and go to bed without any supper.

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