As an entertainment, Teatro Bravo’s production of The Motherfucker with the Hat moves snappily through 90 intermission-free minutes, punctuated with vulgar one-liners and asides that keep the audience amused and diverted from this question: We talk, but does anyone actually say anything? Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play is all about language…
Sedona: Okay, so this hippie-dippy town is an obvious destination for any city dweller to head once Phoenix temperatures hit triple digits. Sometimes obvious is good. Known for its red rocks and preponderance of magical thinking, this gorgeous resort town about 120 miles north of Phoenix is a top-of-the-list getaway…
Start out an ugly American who thinks France is a “once in a lifetime” destination and not a place where a freelance writer and a music teacher can afford to buy property. Smile and nod when your spouse returns from a trip abroad and announces, “We must own a house…
To the uninitiated, they’re murals — at first glance, a pair of giant rainbows of latex paint on the walls of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. But James Marshall’s Shift and Radiate, the new installations at SMoCA that commence at the museum’s entrance and pull us both into and…
Julie Moreno’s idea to start a gluten-free restaurant started out of necessity. One of her children needed to go gluten-less and with six kids, she needed to be able to make good eats that would please the whole family. She started with an Internet-only bakery business called Jewel’s Cupcake Shop,…
Anyone who’s been meaning to check out Jewel’s Bakery and Café might make haste. Not because there’s no better place than this East Thomas Road diner for gluten-free breakfast and lunch fare, but because it’s hard to believe this place is going to be open much longer. The service and…
Dear Trio of People Sitting on the Aisle of the Third Row on Opening Night of Arizona Theater Company’s Venus in Fur, Fuck you. I’m certain you don’t care, but you very nearly destroyed what would have otherwise been a rare evening of theater for those of us seated near…
Five years after her death, Vivian Maier is a superstar. An art world darling who might very well, were she alive, appreciate the attention her gorgeous portraiture is receiving. And who would likely not, if the secrecy with which she lived her life is any indication, be thrilled about our…
If you don’t consider museum cafes to be a worthwhile dining destination, then it’s likely you’ve never eaten at Palette, the cafe at the Phoenix Art Museum. It’s one of downtown Phoenix’s better dining spots despite the fact that the menu items bare corny names that change (thought the food…
Few among us think of a museum cafe as a destination — especially those of us who haven’t eaten at Phoenix Art Museum’s Palette, one of the city’s nicest downtown lunch spots. A museum restaurant, like a department store cafe, is typically good for a salad or a sandwich after…
There is no critiquing a play like The Pornozombies, now onstage at Nearly Naked Theatre. The Pornozombies is intentionally bad theater, a two-act so deliberately self-conscious that it never appears to be sending up either pornography or cheesy zombie movies. Plays like this offer a couple of hours of harmless…
For more than four decades Karsh’s Bakery was famous in this town, one of best and longest-lasting Jewish bakeries in a city where finding good rye bread and rugalach can pose a real challenge. So when news broke the bakery would be closing its doors, customers jumped at the chance…
People are wistful about endings. “It’s the end of an era,” people will say when someone they loved dies or when the movie house they visited for decades is razed. In the 21st century, even a middling network television show ends with a much-ballyhooed Final Episode. The usual references to…
Until I recently stopped, buying vinyl record albums was simply something I did, like sleeping or having a lot of opinions. Given a spare hour on a Tuesday, you might have turned on the TV or curled up for a nap; I went looking for records I didn’t yet know…
John Waldron never got high telling jokes. “Back when I was doing stand-up comedy,” Waldron recalls, “the other comics would come off stage and they’d just be high as kites from the laughs they’d given the audience. They couldn’t sleep for hours. I never had that.” But when Waldron heard…
After what seemed like a very long time, Phoenix Theatre’s production of Pippin stopped shrieking and wiggling its collective hips, and shuddered to a close. Meanwhile, we — an audience made up mostly of “people of a certain age” — endured a lifeless rip-off of Cirque du Soleil staged by…
My friend Mary, a poetry scholar, e-mailed me last month. “Cher is kicking off her new concert tour in Phoenix,” Mary wrote. “Are you going?” “The Cher I would like to see in concert doesn’t exist anymore,” I reminded Mary, who publishes an online zine called Cher Scholar, which uses…
After what seemed like a very long time, Phoenix Theatre’s production of Pippin stopped shrieking and wiggling its collective hips, and shuddered to a close. Meanwhile, we — an audience made up mostly of “people of a certain age” — endured a lifeless rip-off of Cirque du Soleil staged by…
Go to Elizabeth Arden’s Maine Chance No, we’re not talking about the Elizabeth Arden salon at Biltmore Fashion Park or the new one in downtown Tempe. This was a full-blown spa, the western companion to Arden’s original spa in Maine, and it was a tattered mess in all the right…
A funny thing happened in 2013. Both of us — two curmudgeonly writers who between us have lived in Arizona way closer to 100 years than either would like to admit — came to a shared conclusion. We like Phoenix. That’s funny because for years we’ve loved to hate this…
“Getting older makes me a better artist,” says playwright Monica Palacios, with absolutely no irony. “The stories I’m telling now I couldn’t have told 20 years ago.” Palacios’ latest story, Clock, is about to open at Teatro Bravo. Directed by ASU’s Marivel Danielson, Clock tells the story of a Latina…
Welcome to the Phoenix Bucket List. Robrt Pela and Amy Silverman — two New Times contributors and longtime Phoenicians — have put together a list of 100 things to do in this city before you die. Each week we’re presenting another 10; in March we’ll wrap it all up in…
