Best Ivy League Wanna-Be 2002 | City of Tempe Parks and Recreation | People & Places | Phoenix
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Best Ivy League Wanna-Be

City of Tempe Parks and Recreation

Sculling calls to mind images of dear old Oxford across the pond, or even rowing upon the Charles River in Boston. Now you can join the sport of English gentry and New England Brahmins right here in the desert. Don't let the artificial lake distract you.

The City of Tempe offers classes in team rowing or individual sculling (providing you've mastered the basics). All levels, from master to novice, are taught on Town Lake under the historic Mill Avenue bridge.

Best Place To Relive Your Brooklyn Childhood

Beyond Bagels

Beyond Bagels has all the stuff you expect to find these days at a deli that claims New York roots: an American flag prominently displayed; a giant photo of the now eerie-seeming Old New York skyline; cartoons by the cash register about kicking bin Laden's ass. And bags of Wise potato chips. But where this place really turns the corner from New York sentimentality into full-on nostalgia is in the check-out line. That's where you'll be enticed by a host of candies and toys -- and not just the stuff you're used to seeing in supermarkets; these are the candies and toys that anyone who grew up back East would recognize, but would probably be amazed to find.

Feast your eyes on the packet of Candy Buttons. Remember those? Small, bright-colored dots of sugar stuck on sheets of paper? How about Pixy Stix? Still as potent as ever. And believe it or not, they even have bubblegum cigars, in all three colors: yellow, pink and green. (Richard, the proprietor, admits to having entertained the idea of also offering bubblegum cigarettes -- the kind you used to blow through to generate puffs of sugar "smoke" -- but he rightly feared that they'd be frowned upon. Most of these vintage goodies, he adds, are available only over the Internet.)

And just to jolt your humid childhood memories into overdrive, there are also the toys. Favorites include the plastic army-man Parachute Jumpers and Stick Ball balls and bats. You'se guys up for a game in the sandlot?

Best CD Release Tie-In Event

Haggis Listening Party
June 20
British Open Pub

In any local music scene, a band announcing a new album with a CD release party is like somebody celebrating a bowel movement. Everybody does it, some several times a week. However, when the band known as Haggis wanted to draw attention to its latest CD, Karma Suits Ya, it did so with a stylish sense of the occasional that made the CD release parties thrown by established indie labels seem like empty gestures.

Not only did Haggis play two back-to-back CD release party blasts at Hollywood Alley, the Tartan Four held a not-so-secret listening party at a local British pub. Haggis fans were spared bagpipe music this time around and were treated to goodie bags, raffled tee shirts, free drinks and food provided by the British Open Pub and Guinness. It was a Bacchanalian blast that made you swear it was 1975 and the Faces were launching a tour.

The Haggis name was reinforced at the buffet table; what people thought were Swedish meatballs was actually the national dish of Scotland. Yup, boiled sheep's intestines, although the delicacy has been known to include sheep's lung, stomach, heart and liver in casings, depending on their availability in the U.S. and how many transplanted Scots are in line ahead of you, waiting for baa-baa's innards. The move was sheer genius. Years from now, the band's fans will remember which Karma Suits Ya song was playing the first time they ate haggis.

Best Place To Feed The Need For Speed

Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving

Living under the watchful eye of the Valley's radar-patrolled freeways and red-light cameras has our inner speed demons so pent up that we could get a Hyundai-manufactured golf cart with two flat tires to exceed 50 mph. Seems it's high time we took a day off from traffic school to spend a day at Bobby B.'s school adjacent to Firebird International Raceway.

This so-called "school" features a 1.6-mile road course, an eight-acre paddock and more than 200 race-prepared vehicles. Classes range from the -- yawn! -- necessary and practical (i.e., Teenage Defensive Driving) to the -- gulp! -- downright intimidating. Unless you're James Bond or David Letterman, we imagine that the four-day, $4,000 "Executive Protection/Anti-Kidnapping" course of "intense driver training for high-risk individuals" is, well, not meant for you.

Fortunately, even mild-mannered AAA members can get fast and furious. If you can't swing $4,850 for the three-day Advanced Road Racing course, cough up 350 bucks (equivalent to about 10 parking tickets) and the boys'll let you lap Phoenix International Raceway's one-mile oval in an F-1 Style Formula Ford for 150 precious minutes.

Best Place To Feel Home On The Range

OK Corral

Ever wanted to say something like, "Get along, little dogies," or "Howdy, partner," and have it be somewhat appropriate? We suggest you try a horseback trail ride with the folks from OK Corral, the oldest pack station in the Superstition Mountains. Summer rides are up through Payson and the Mogollon Rim, and regular-season rides take you all over the Superstitions, including an all-inclusive trek to the Lost Dutchman mine. The rates are very reasonable, and you can take a couple of hours, a day trip, or even an extended trip with camping and a steak fry. A trail ride through the mountains is part of the Arizona experience, and the OK Corral is the most bang for your buck. And don't worry if you aren't easy in the saddle; they have horses for all types of people, whether they're experts or have never ridden any horse that wasn't attached to a pole in front of Kmart.

Best Place To Break Up With Your Lover

Carlsbad Tavern

Meagan Simmons
We're not vindictive, really. We wish the best for that yellow-bellied, sneaky, lying hunk of flesh we've been dating. We certainly don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with a breakup.

So we'll let Carlsbad do the talking. We'll bring our loser, er, lover in for dinner. A romantic evening out, we'll say. Don't bother with a menu, we know exactly what you need, we'll insist. And then we'll order the chile cheeseburger for them. We won't bother to mention that this isn't just any Anaheim chile burger, but one fashioned with Carlsbad's New Mexican artillery, the incendiary habanero chile.

It comes with fries, salad and a free glass of milk (though if we're feeling really wicked we'll tell the server to hold the beverage).

As Carlsbad's menu warns, the burger may cause temporary blindness or loss of hearing. Maybe our beloved will lose the ability to speak, too. Gee, that would just be too bad.

Best Place To Eat With The Animals

Farrelli's Cinema Supper Club

So we're not kid people. So shoot us. Or better yet, shoot the kids. No, really, we think kids are okay; we just don't understand how people can have them and hope to have any chance of a normal life afterward.

Farrelli's feels our pain. And so, in a stroke of genius, this feeding/film house offers family festivals, offering dinner and a movie for parents with small kids, even babies. Dailey movies at 5 and 6 p.m. cater to the wee folk, when Mom and Dad can cart in the kid, watch a flick and feed on baked Brie a l'orange, spinach salad with feta and pine nuts, and center cut top sirloin. Kiddies keep happy snacking on pizza, chicken or spaghetti, while watching classic yarns like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

It's full table service as the movie rolls, and there's even an isolation room to handle the infants acting infantile (or parents who've simply had enough). At all other movie showtimes, it's no diapers allowed, just as the world should be.

Best Place To Be A Jerk

Callaloo

One of the things we love about hanging in the Caribbean is the laid-back attitude. No pretension, just cool. At Callaloo, owner Michael Washington-Brown keeps the spirit. If we want our food spicy (and we do), we don't ask politely. We bluntly tell our waiter to "Jerk This!" That's the signal to pile on the killer Jamaican spice called jerk.

And the kitchen doesn't apologize. There's no in-between on heat level -- you either Jerk This! or you don't. If you do, just keep an ice-cold Red Stripe close at hand.

Ordering is easy. Adjustable dishes are noted with the instruction, "Jerk This." Choices are impressive, too: chicken wings with cucumber dill dipping sauce; island barbecue ribs; chicken salad with fruit and mango vinaigrette; chicken pasta in spiced mango sauce with angel hair pasta; and rum-glazed pork ribs with plantains. A favorite is Callaloo's signature Dat Ting, a chubby pork chop with plantains, sweet corn and okra risotto drizzled in a passion fruit sauce.

At Callaloo, being a jerk is a good thing.

Best Use Of An IRS Refund

Fighter Combat International

The folks at Fighter Combat International use flyers from the Top Gun program to offer you everything from dogfights to acrobatic stunts. Using laser weapons mounted on the spectacularly agile, German built, Extra-300 L, experienced pilots take you up for aerial combat against other professionals. Or maybe you don't want a dogfight. Maybe you just want to strap on a diaper and try a few face-stretching acrobatic moves like hammerheads, lomcevaks, loops and rolls. No experience required. Prices range from $285 all the way up to $955, depending upon the amount of flight time you want and how often you want to take the stick. You can be a passenger with your stomach in your mouth, or you can take the stick and shoot down the bad guy.

Best Private Room Party

Dick's Hideaway

Patricia Escarcega
We love hanging out in nice places with our friends. The trouble is, nice places usually don't want us.

Dick's Hideaway has become our personal haunt when we've got a group of up to 25 party pals. There's a $500 minimum to use the room, but divided among our cohorts, that comes to only $20 each, and the money is applied to food and drink (the contract lets us know the fee can be used to cover damage to the room, too, but we've never tested it).

The place is just too cool, hidden behind a door set invisibly into the paneled wood wall of the tiny bar called Dick's Hideaway. Signs? Doorknobs? Not here. Inside, it's startlingly opulent, centered by a copper-topped table and comfy booth tables lining the wine-rack-lined walls. There's a loft above one of the booths, too, in case we feel like taking a nap.

Dishes are the best of next door's Richardson's, lauded for its creative New Mexican fare like surf and turf (tenderloin with jumbo chipotle pecan grilled shrimp, enchiladas, green chile potato and fried egg), or blue corn smoked turkey enchiladas with grilled portobello mushroom.

At Dick's, we can get as raucous as we want, and no one will shush us. That alone is worth the price of admission.

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