Vivacious, witty, and easy on the eyes. Such is the appeal of Justina Duong, 31, owner of Cyclo, Chandler’s kudos-laden Vietnamese eatery, a culinary lodestone for Valley foodies. You can add smart to her list of attributes. Duong attended USC on scholarship, acquiring a degree in pharmacy. But after a…
Bullfighter and backpacker Carlos Manriquez, 33, is the chef and co-owner of two critically acclaimed Valley eateries: Scottsdale’s Atlas Bistro, and Mucho Gusto Taqueria and Mexican Bistro in Tempe. Raised in Mexicali, Mexico, Manriquez has a degree in dairy husbandry from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He came to Arizona…
Tammie Coe, 35, makes the cake. We discovered her amazing, fondant-covered creations in the dessert case at La Grande Orange, and pretty soon they were everywhere. (And coming soon to her second location at Artisan Village near Seventh Street and Roosevelt.) Tammie Coe Cakes is a tasty Phoenix phenomenon that…
Aaron Homoki, 15, beat out more than 1,500 entrants from around the country in an MTV skating competition tied to a promotion for this past summer’s Lords of Dogtown picture. The northeast Phoenix teen is the polar opposite of the outlaw punks immortalized in the movie as skateboarding’s pioneers –…
Phoenix has been very, very good for 28-year-old JX3. The Power 92.3 DJ moved from Denver to Phoenix to study meteorology at Arizona State University. Eventually, this gregarious young gent began MCing local club events, where he was spotted by Power program director Bruce St. James. Four years later, the…
Sculptor Melissa Martinez, 29, combines materials like cactus needles and concrete into stark, elegiac pieces about the natural world vanishing beneath the pavement of our eternally expanding city. The Chicago native came to the Valley a dozen years ago to get a degree in sculpture from Arizona State University. She…
Thomas Keller, 24, is flat-out the best poker player in the Valley. The Stanford grad (economics, natch) has won two major poker titles, including a $5,000 buy-in tournament at the 2004 World Series of Poker, where he took home a $384,000 first prize. He’s got a book “in the works”…
THU 29Say amen, everybody, as Black Theatre Troupe opens its 36th season with the rousing gospel musical Amen Corner. Adapted from James Baldwin’s 1955 play The Amen Corner, the work is simultaneously serious and uplifting. It’s centered on the internal struggle of Sister Margaret Alexander, a spiritual shepherd who loses…
1. Paul Wall, Peoples Champ (Atlantic) 2. DJ Quik, Trauma (Mad Science) 3. Kanye West, Late Registration (Roc-a-Fella) 4. Mariah Carey, The Emancipation of Mimi (Island) 5. Bon Jovi, Have a Nice Day (Island) 6. Charlie Wilson, Charlie, Last Name Wilson (Jive) 7. Young Jeezy, Let’s Get It (Def Jam)…
Thursday 29Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Suzy (hip-hop, dance) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (jazz fusion, funk) Dos Gringos — Scottsdale: Block Party with DJ Sterling (all genres) e&sup4;: “Eve” Ladies’ Night in the Earth Room with DJ Tranzl8r (dance) Hard Rock Cafe:…
Talk about a thrill ride. After two self-released EPs and a third out this summer on Sub Pop, Wolf Parade’s anticipated debut full-length is the kind of heart-pounding, emotional roller coaster we’ll gladly take again and again — except the line to jump onboard is bound to get longer. Hailing…
As this issue was going to press, we received the sad news that Donnie Chiesa had died earlier this month, from complications following a stomach operation. He was 52. Anybody in the Valley who’s owned a working turntable has shopped at Tracks in Wax, the record store on Central Avenue…
The five members of Oakland’s Watch Them Die eat metalcore bands for breakfast — their sound is that ferocious. They look tough, too — two of them are wearing Goatwhore shirts in a photo on their home page — and they’re not just poseurs. Formed out of the ashes of…
To compare the real-world success of onetime labelmates The Queers and Green Day, consider that one of them has just made a successful transition to bloated arena rock, while the other apparently couldn’t leverage the rights to its back catalogue for a best-of album. For last year’s Summer Hits No…
It’s feeling a lot like the early ’90s, with rock acts selling hundreds of thousands of albums on little indies, and the majors out in force with their bankroll-operated cherry picker. Coming out of the fertile Long Island emo scene, From Autumn to Ashes’ 2001 debut, Too Bad You’re Beautiful,…
Girl-on-Girl Reaction Curious no longer: Your thesis on bi-curious women is something I’ve always observed, but I’ve never seen anything written about it before in the press (“The Vagina Dialogues,” Sarah Fenske, September 15). The fact is, women are almost always more attracted to other women’s bodies than to men’s…
Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power (Universal) American Pie: 3 Movie Pie Pack (Universal) Beethoven: The Pooch Pack (Universal) Billy Jack: The Ultimate Collection (Ventura) Blind Melon: Live at the Metro (EMI) Bouncing Souls: Live at the Glasshouse (Fontana) Britney & Kevin: Chaotic . . . the DVD & More (Jive)…
10/4-10/16First, a word about Googlewhacking for the uninitiated. Googlewhack! is an online game, the goal of which is to enter two or more unrelated words (“Googlefactors”) on Google’s Web site in an effort to turn up a single URL hit. It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially because the…
10/1-11/6You’ll have butterflies in your stomach as you stroll amid the myriad monarchs flitting and flapping about in Desert Botanical Garden’s Marshall Butterfly Pavilion — a lush, 2,400-square-foot closed environment built especially to house ‘flies. The interactive display is part of DBG’s second annual “Mariposa Monarca” exhibit, which is designed…
SAT 10/1As kids, we watched hamsters running in their wheels, pedaling their li’l legs for hours, yet going nowhere. As adults, we became human hamsters on StairMaster machines, climbing countless flights of stairs, but never moving off the ground floor. Break away from the “virtual” stair climb on Saturday, October…
TUE 10/4From Alice Cooper’s onstage beheadings to Iggy Pop’s broken-glass surfing to the robotic samplings of those Venetian-blinds-headed dudes in Devo, rock has seemingly exhausted its conceptual toy box. Or has it? You might change your mind after experiencing Quem Quaeritis and Weirdo Begeirdo, two bands from Riverside, California’s “freak-pop”…
Navajo artist Will Wilson knows about the pain of surviving cultural apocalypse, and how difficult it is to keep one’s traditions relevant in a strange new world. Native Americans have been struggling with this since Columbus dropped anchor in the Caribbean. Forcible removable from tribal lands, devastating epidemics, lost wars,…
