Cody Lundin, Primitive Guy, is ready to go. He is wearing no shoes in the parking lot of a Safeway store outside Prescott. This is a common thing for him, this not wearing shoes. He does not wear them at home, he does not wear them when he drives, he…
Another attempt to develop property in the historic Roosevelt neighborhood has been rejected. The proposed project was a new, expanded campus for Magnet Traditional School, the brightest star in the Phoenix Elementary School District, a school whose students score better on national tests than their district counterparts, and better than…
To get an idea of just how very on-the-verge CNN sportscaster Daryn Kagan has become, consider this: She is more current, more suitable for framing, than Armando. Armando is Armando Alvarez, who from his home in Miami has phoned Calling All Sports, the CNN late-night sports talk show hosted by…
James Jorquez has been caught up in the gusts of his wife’s passion for historic homes. They’ve lived in some of Phoenix’s older houses in some of the city’s older neighborhoods, places like Willo and Story and now Roosevelt, a spring afternoon’s walk from the original downtown core. About eight…
If you’re looking for where pay-per-view proceeds are going in the National Basketball Association, look to the West. Six of the 16 teams in this year’s NBA playoffs show their games on pay-per-view–the cable-TV option that allows local fans to see selected home games throughout the season by the game…
On-the-spot burial permits! Software that can spit out automatic death certificates, with 2,000 causes of death to choose from! This is what technology is bringing to the modern mortuary, and for the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, it’s not a moment too soon. The energy spent chasing down…
For 16 months, Alex Gonzalez of Central Pawn Brokers has been pummeling City Hall with claims of wrongful prosecution, and now he figures he is in a position to say: I told you so. On April 3, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office dropped charges of theft and trafficking in stolen…
Ruben and Concepcion Valencia find that the harder they try to reach for justice, the more elusive it seems. Not only is their son dead, but a man they say pointed a gun at them not long ago was released by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The Valencias think the…
James “Rocky” Tang grew up in a South Phoenix neighborhood where nearby dairies provided fodder for the games he and his childhood friends used to play with cardboard milk caps. But the retired restaurateur was just as surprised as anyone else when the game made a comeback in the form…
From a bare frame, he created this bike. In his mind, he saw it come together. He looked to others for the freshest ideas. Out of patience and skill came beauty. But what, he wondered, does it take to win? The boy from the projects is scoping out his competition…
Way out on U.S. Highway 70, past Zeke’s General Store and towns so small the post offices have dainty curtains in the windows, sit the adjoining southeastern Arizona towns of Thatcher and Safford. They are places where routine and tradition have a way of becoming the same thing, and neither…
Suzzane Rivera knows people look at her funny sometimes. Maybe they feel threatened, think they see a hard-core gang member. She says to herself: Go ahead. Get a good look. See the bandanna, the proud tattoos, the dangling crucifix. I may surprise you. She sees the impressions form behind those…
Asasn is over where the I and the Z in “revitalization” yawn in blown-out, three-foot-tall alphabet in front of him, filling in the characters with the blasphemous Glidden spray paint provided by the friendly folks at Pioneer Ford. A splash of bright red, and he stands back, intrigued: “That’s like…
It was a band’s dream: to play a small town in the middle of nowhere and give hundreds of local kids music they never get to hear live. Phoenix industrial-metal rock groups N-17 and Ultrapure thought they had that fantasy all lined up in Kingman for New Year’s Eve. On…
You might not be surprised to learn that Alex Gonzalez is an unhappy camper, considering he has spent much of the last four years in pawnshops. For the Arizona Pawnshop Association and its public-image-improvement efforts, the problem is that you might not be surprised; for Gonzalez, who has been fingerprinted…
Basically, Debra Colbert and Joanne Lee got tired of waiting until February. February is Black Heritage Month, and that’s when most of the bookstores would bring out the stuff by current African-American authors other than Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan and Alice Walker and Bebe Moore Campbell. There’d be little…
The steer and the guy on horseback seem to burst from the gate at exactly the same time, but if you know charreria and have trained your eye on the action, you’ve seen the anxious horse fidgeting in place at the door, the spring of the wooden gate, the charro…
Just after the clock strikes 12 on Wednesday nights at the El Capri, the crowded dance floor of the East Van Buren nightclub opens up like a parted sea. People gather three and four deep around the brightly lighted impromptu stage as sleepy-eyed club owner Pedro Marquez steps out with…
Because Maricopa County’s Asian population might, at times, be barely noticed if it weren’t for restaurants, George Cole figured it was time to try to pull things together. To build a sense of community, he says, he is using the printed word. The Asian American Sun, the 12-week-old, English-language newspaper…
He rode out of the west on a muggy evening in June, the sun starting to sink like a shot of bad whiskey on the horizon. Unarmed and hatless, he strode through the door of the Apacheland Book Company, boldly ignoring the “Closed” sign posted in the window. No one…
For her ride, the quinceaera has chosen the bed of a 1978 Chevy El Camino with a lipstick-colored, scooped-out interior. She floats in her velvety hot tub on wheels like a cloud, swaddled in sequins as the driver pilots the car toward the aging church on 17th Avenue just south…
