Surveying the New Age happening unfolding on the grounds of her Hyder Valley ranch one recent Sunday afternoon, Kay Torrez makes the understatement of the millennium. “If you don’t know what’s happening out here, I guess all this does look kinda far-out,” concedes the 73-year-old grandmother. To say the least…

Once upon a time, Betty Dearing would have found it hard to believe that most of the guests at a recent family get-together could wind up lying around with lighted candles stuck into their ears. Of course, that was before a relative of the Phoenix grandmother mentioned a rediscovered folk…

Like most roadside lodges, Florence’s Blue Mist Motel offers all the accommodations a tourist could ask for–an ice machine, a postcard rack, a color TV with AM/FM radio. But this landmark an hour southeast of Phoenix offers amenities you won’t find at any other motel in the country. Half the…

If trophies are ever awarded for pointless web sites on the information superhighway, Arizona State University freshman Dan Siegel’s home page would seem to be a shoo-in for a Golden Speed Bump. The cyber equivalent of melatonin, the 18year-old broadcast major’s web page appears to be nothing more than a…

When Olivia Birchett donated a prime piece of Mill Avenue real estate to the City of Tempe back in 1979, nobody seemed to mind that the philanthropic widow’s generous gift carried a few strings. The property was to be developed for use as a public park in perpetuity, a proviso…

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. … It’s a plane. … It’s Santa Claus?!” Technically speaking, no. But don’t try telling that to the thousands of motorists who’ll risk fender benders, stiff necks and sunburned tonsils while cruising past the intersection of Central Avenue and Clarendon over the…

As the early morning sun creeps across the desert horizon on little cat feet, the mayor of Meow City steps out of his travel trailer and reports to work. “You guys ready for breakfast?” asks Greg LaTraille, the only human resident of his “retirement community for senior cats.” With low,…

Slo-mo through the wedding sequence from Disney’s The Little Mermaid and it’s hard to tell who’s more excited about the nuptials–the bride or the tumescent bishop who’s officiating the ceremony. And even after repeated viewings of the blink-and-you-miss-it video vignette, some stunned Mermaid viewers continue to ask, “Is that a…

Nobody needs to convince Scottsdale boutique owner Marcia Scardigli that it pays to advertise in the Yellow Pages. Unfortunately, she’s not in the business of selling what most of her callers seem so eager to buy. For that, Scardigli can thank a foul-up inthe latest edition of the Scottsdale/Paradise Valley…

While visiting Nevada earlier this year, 69-year-old Don Phelan did something some men only dream of. Flush from a recent inheritance, the Mesa retiree spent ten days cavorting with prostitutes in one of that state’s legal whorehouses. Five months later, he’s still sore. Plenty sore. That lingering discomfort has less…

Like life, death is full of surprises. Ten months ago, who could have guessed that Jerry Garcia, Elizabeth Montgomery, Eva Gabor, Mickey Mantle and Orville Redenbacher would pass from this mortal coil during 1995? Not me, sad to say. However, I’m happy to report that I did have money on…

Walking into Durant’s one night last week, a couple of longtime customers asked about the deep trench running across the restaurant’s parking lot. “Oh, that?” quipped the valet parking attendant, pointing toward what turned out to be a plumbing excavation. “They’re installing either a wine cellar or a live lobster…

Grunting, straining and sweating like a couple of pro wrestlers, a young couple on the dance floor valiantly struggles to master a difficult back-flip maneuver. But the tricky move eventually reaches an impasse when the woman is stranded upside down on her partner’s hunched-over form, leaving the pair looking like…

They’ve swilled Coca-Cola with aspirin. Smoked banana peels. Licked toads. Over the years, thrill seekers have tried just about everything in their misguided guest for forbidden–if completely legal–kicks. And now–in an effort to experience “euphoric stimulation,” “increased sexual sensations” and a “fantastically light headed, tingly happy-happy buzz”–many thrill-starved hedonists are…

Last month, Almitra Von Willcox left her San Diego home and went for a walk. And if all goes according to plan, the freelance photographer won’t return from her stroll until June 3, 2005–the date that the self-styled “Photo Gypsy” hopes to complete a ten-year trek around the world on…

Like organic tomatoes, natural peanut butter and tofu hot dogs, controversy has always been a hot commodity around Tempe’s Gentle Strength Co-op. Let someone suggest anything more substantive than “Have a nice day,” and you can be sure some disgruntled faction inside the member-owned cooperative will squawk that the organization…

Q: When is a dead bird in the hand worth considerably more than two in the bush? A: When that bird is a protected species–and possession and public display of any portion of its corpse is punishable by a six-figure fine. Or so Valley sculptor Paul Stout discovered the hard…

Seen from the street, the Valley’s most fabled restaurant doesn’t look like much, just a boxy, Pepto Bismol-colored building badly in need of a paint job. The only decoration is the sad-looking awning over the front door, an entrance that doesn’t get used much, anyway. On the roof is the…

Attention, chompers! At a handful of McDonald’s locations around the Valley, drive-through customers like yourselves can do something they can’t do at any of the other Golden Arches in town. Mainly, you’ll have the rare opportunity to get personal with a teen burger drone. Or that appears to be one…

Drunkenly scrutinizing the advertising come-on plastered across the front of the side-show attraction, the wino bellows to all within earshot. “Isha fake!” he says, unable to believe that the 40-foot trailer parked outside the shopping center actually contains a giant 20-ton whale captured in the Pacific. “Isha goddamn fake, I…

For 35 years, the gargantuan neon Roadrunner stood sentry over traffic on the Black Canyon Freeway. But one morning two weeks ago, stunned motorists stared in disbelief as they whizzed past the defunct truck stop at the northwest corner of I-17 and McDowell Road. The big beeper had flown the…

You’ve got your Old Hollywood. And then you’ve got your Incipient Forest Lawn. Somewhere in between, you’ve got the stellar feeding trough known as Chasen’s restaurant, the 58-year-old Tinseltown phenomenon that will slam its reservation book shut for the final time this Saturday night. For anyone even remotely acquainted with…