Landscape designer Martino emphasizes unfamiliar plants, calling his creations “garden architecture.” I’m that rare thing: a Phoenix native. I was born here in 1946 to immigrant parents. My mother was from Canada and my father from Italy. I was raised in Phoenix and left home in the eighth grade to…
Appleby grew up in Buckeye, and she and her siblings used to surf the canals. I was born in the desert, in Buckeye, 83 years ago in May. I’m the sixth of 10 children. We were born right at our house in Buckeye, and this was back when it was…
One of our best-known artists, Mell depicts the desert in his paintings, prints, and sculpture. It’s an old story, but when I was still working as an art director in New York, a friend of mine was teaching on the Hopi reservation out here. He said, “Come out and do…
Multimedia artist Yazzie’s newest work is a series of films about indigenous people. I’ve been in the Valley full time since about 1996. I grew up in northern Arizona in Black Mesa, LeChee, and Page. I spent some time in the Marine Corps and lived in some other cities: Portland,…
A landscape architect at ASU, Fish Ewan teaches seminars on walking in the desert. I have forgiven my husband, Joe Ewan, for lying about the summer heat when he talked me into moving out here from the lovely, foggy Bay Area. He said people get used to the heat after…
Renowned dancer and choreographer Anderson is the artistic director of Ballet Arizona. His recent Topia was a site-specific performance piece at the Desert Botanical Garden. If you like sameness, this is a good place, because things don’t change that much. If you like intense things, this is also good, because…
Spalding Best is a painter best-known for landscapes featuring utility poles and traffic signage. I’ve lived here 16 years, and I’m still overwhelmed by the desert sky and its sunsets. I love celebrating a rainstorm and the smells that come with it, and I find the people here to be…
Paper artist Elling is a former manager of ASU’s creative writing program. Seventy years ago, my family left Hanford, Washington, where my dad was recreation director for a group of scientists working on a secret project, one they thought would end the war. I was 2 years old when we…
Ethan Misiewicz is throwing things into the canal. He came across his old Easter basket at the back of the coat closet this morning, and the only good use for stale jelly beans, he’s decided, is pitching them into the lake. “But we don’t got a lake,” the 8-year-old explains…
I have fond memories of meeting colleagues for drinks at Nixon’s, the little red brick bar next to the escalator at the Esplanade. The red bricks are still there, but the erstwhile cocktail lounge has housed several spots and currently is inhabited by Ten, a sometimes-better-thanaverage restaurant and bar overseen by Ohio…
Hello, Dalí! I was late for the theater, a particular and long-held fear of mine. But Mesa Arts Center was celebrating its 10th anniversary with an outdoor carnival (because how better to honor an arts center than with a frybread truck and a Tilt-A-Whirl?), which gobbled up all the parking…
It seemed we couldn’t help ourselves. Overcome by infantile mirth, my fiancé and I sniggered all the way to The Perch, an upscale Chandler gastropub whose gimmick, we knew, was that it was home to a menagerie of 50-odd caged tropical birds. We expected menu items with clever names like…
If it were legal to wed breakfast foods, I might well get down on one knee before the French toast at Fàme Caffe, because I’d like to spend the rest of my life with it. This delightful breakfast item, and several others on Fàme’s chalkboard menu, are unique and simply…
My Italian is lousy, but I know a lot of the swear words, so when I spotted cazzone as one of the specials of the day at Forno 301, my new favorite restaurant, I laughed. Cazzone means “big dick,” not as in “giant penis,” but more like “you’re an idiot.”…
There was something wrong with Mrs. Kaplan’s lunch. I tattled when I got home. “The soup was cold, and it tasted like potatoes,” I grumped to my parents. “And the bread was crazy. It looked like a doughnut, but when you bit it, it kept coming.” “Vichyssoise,” my father replied…
The good news is that no one among us will go broke seeing every single interesting and innovative theater production this coming season. The bad news is that commerce dictates another year of More of the Same. The exceptions are worth noting. Perhaps taking a cue from Phoenix Theatre, which…
Hip, modern dining, the kind that “has a vibe” and combines upscale comfort food and gourmet sensibilities, has come to Gilbert. Not recently, mind you: Joe Johnston, best known for his prescient, pre-cafe-nation Coffee Plantation chain, and wife Cindy have been slowly redefining dining for the past 20 years. Their…
When Gallo Blanco at the Clarendon Hotel closed in January, much whining commenced, mostly from fans of truly fine Mexican food. In Gallo’s place, Café Tranquilo features a vibrant menu from Chef Dan Maldonado, known for stirring the pot at his now-closed Tacos Atoyac and, more recently, at Mucho Macho…
The opening night performance of Brelby Theatre’s Beyond Musketeers: Utopia Lost began with a curtain speech from director Brian Maticic, who warned us that the production was “super combat-heavy.” He wasn’t kidding. It seemed that nearly every scene of this occasionally entertaining retelling of Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers ended…
Bitter and Twisted, on the ground floor of the Luhrs Building in downtown Phoenix, is a gorgeous room. The former home of the state’s Prohibition headquarters, it’s tricked out with tall, tufted, ornate booths on one side and a long, dark bar on the other. In between, a lovely blend…
Unless you live in the East Valley, you will drive and drive and drive to get to Earnest in Chandler. And your journey, once you arrive, will have been worth it. Earnest is the fine dining establishment formerly known as Cork. Its owners closed up shop last July, reopening with…
“Too much of everything” appears to be the culinary theme at Barrio Urbano, Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza’s diner at midtown’s food court The Yard. Originally opened last fall as a Mexican breakfast place, this is the third of five restaurants to carry the acclaimed restaurateur’s Barrio brand launched from her…
