In the 2015 edition of New Times’ Summer Guide, we’ve rounded up our 13 favorite Phoenix-area tourist attractions that are fun for locals, too. Heard Museum There you’ll find art, artifacts and history of the Southwestern people, from Native Americans to Hispanic cultures. For hours, current exhibitions, and admission costs,…
In the 2015 edition of New Times’ Summer Guide, we’ve rounded up our seven favorite Phoenix-area spas for kicking back and relaxing. Spa at Sanctuary Situated on Camelback Mountain, is an Asian-inspired retreat perched above the city, secluded in thick bamboo, and features a reflecting pond and Zen meditation garden…
If I miss anything about the neighborhood where I lived for much of the 1980s, it’s the authentic ethnic cuisine, mostly along McDowell Road, that I so took for granted there. I remember a Laotian place that served nothing but coconut rice, a Chinese restaurant that sold fried chicken feet,…
Occasionally, a fine play is overwhelmed by actors who wrestle its words to the ground or by a director who tramples the point its author meant to make. In the case of iTheatre Collaborative’s new production of An Almost Holy Picture, now on stage at the Herberger, the opposite is…
If Mandy Bublitz loves Phoenix, she owes it all to bread. Bublitz grew up in Michigan. Six years ago, she relocated to Chandler — but not, unlike a lot of people, because she was cold. “My family is here,” she says. “My brothers live out here, and my…
It’s an unlikely pairing, chicken and waffles. It’s also a combination that beckons to anyone fond of the coupling of sweet and salty foods. This delectable union of soft and crunchy, maple and meaty is a lively duo that dates back to 17th-century Pennsylvania Dutch country. The original, and arguably…
Jesse Teer is living his dream: life as a recording, touring, professional musician. “Last year, I was working at Starbucks,” he says. “And I thought, ‘It’s now or never.'” Taking that first step into a music career, he admits, was scary. “But not as scary…
In the 2015 edition of our Summer Guide, we’ve rounded up our 10 favorite pools for a summertime splash. Talking Stick Resort The Main Pool is the place to get tanned and tipsy with no cover, private cabanas and daybeds with bottle service, traveling DJs, and cheaper drinks than you’ll…
Amy K. Nichols grew up here. Yet Phoenix, she admits, sometimes eludes her. “I can never really explain this place to people,” says the author of Now That You’re Here. “Other cities have a brand or a culture they’re known for. It’s hard to pin down Phoenix in…
I’ve been pissing and moaning about Phoenix, pretty much nonstop, for more than a half-century now. It’s getting harder to do, though, because Phoenix is getting a heck of a lot more interesting. “There’s no culture here!” has become “I think I’ll go…
Both the artist’s interest in celebrity and his own eventual fame form a loose theme in “Warhol: Portraits,” now in its third month at the Phoenix Art Museum. The traveling exhibition, which debuted in 2010 at Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, features nearly 200 works from Warhol’s childhood and…
“I can’t believe you’ve never eaten here.” This, from my spouse. “You grew up here, too,” I remind him, as we dig into piles of eggs — his an omelet, mine over-easy and piled atop hash browns. We are at Mel’s Diner, a longtime Grand Avenue tradition and the setting…
There is nothing, I have said publicly and privately for years, that could ever make me enjoy live theater’s odious and ever-growing ritual of audience participation. Calling hapless audience members up out of the audience and humiliating them has always struck me as a particularly low form of humor, gratuitous…
Visitors to the Arcadia Community Association website are greeted these days by a colorful banner proclaiming “Stop the Madness! Help us Preserve Arcadia!” In this case, the madness concerns the David and Gladys Wright House, the recently rescued and controversial “round house” designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright toward…
The food at Bistro du Lac is often magnificent and almost entirely authentic. One hopes that Francophiles and fans of French cuisine will support this restaurant while it works out the bugs in its service, which I found lacking, and its food temperatures, which were often disappointing. Located in Scottsdale…
It’s a warmish spring evening. A man sits in front of a wig shop, playing an electric keyboard to the deserted patio next door. Inside, Park Place Bar and Grill is just as empty as its outdoor dining area. And after eating here, it’s clear why. Located in Scottsdale Mall,…
Like so much of what one finds on Grand Avenue, Carson Wheeler’s pizza joint is a little grungy. Grand Avenue Pizza Company’s itty-bitty dining room is besotted by an amateurish mural, the relentlessly hip music is played too loud, and the patio is tastefully unkempt — all in keeping with…
One hopes that Nawaz Indian Cuisine, way out in the suburbs on West Dunlap Road, can limp along until the light-rail line reaches the restaurant later this year. Nawaz isn’t the best Indian restaurant in the Valley. But this casual Indian eatery has plenty of options to appeal to fans…
I don’t know that I’ve ever before eaten a meal swathed in latex, but having dined at Hot ‘n’ Juicy Crawfish, I can say not only that I have but that I plan to do so again very soon. This Las Vegas-based restaurant chain opened on Mill Avenue last April…
I have two questions: When did every American male under the age of 30 start sporting a beard, and why don’t I eat at Fez more often? I can’t answer the first of these, nor do I especially care to. But I can tell you that the answer to the…
Arizona Theatre Company’s Romeo and Juliet is a treat, but only for those who haven’t already witnessed a previous parade of updated, restructured Shakespeare productions. And for those who don’t care whether the Bard’s verses are well-delivered or his young hero and heroine are nicely acted. Everyone else would do…
Women and their stories are not being adequately represented in American theater — not here in the Valley, nor on Broadway, nor points between. At least, that’s the message that’s recently gone viral in various social media outlets, in a public conversation sparked by the announcement of next year’s seasons…
