Bo’s Funky Stuff. Shaboom’s. Elbo Antiques. Go-Kat-Go. Honey Buns. If you’ve shopped at any of these landmark vintage shops — all of them now truly things of the past — you’ve shopped with the Kvetkos, the Valley’s first family of vintage retail. What started as a mom-and-pop antiques store 35…
It was 1981. We were young, and there was nothing better to do. And so my girl friends and I — a bony chick we called Uncle who rarely spoke and her best friend, Laytchie McJeep, a corpulent girl who never stopped talking — got dressed up in funny clothes…
Actors Theatre returned last week from a self-imposed sabbatical with a reminder of why we might have missed them if they’d gone altogether. Keith Huff’s stagey police drama, A Steady Rain, is the sort of tightly wound, finely crafted morals tale that this troupe has long done so well. Rain,…
Actors Theatre returned last week from a self-imposed sabbatical with a reminder of why we might have missed them if they’d gone altogether. Keith Huff’s stagey police drama, A Steady Rain, is the sort of tightly wound, finely crafted morals tale that this troupe has long done so well. Rain,…
It happened again the other day. I met someone at a cocktail party — a museum docent who used to live downtown — and we got to talking about the older neighborhoods in Phoenix and which historic districts we preferred. When I mentioned the corner our home is located on,…
Just when you think you know everything there is to know about Phoenix, someone finds an old trailer, once owned by a barbecued-beef baron, that used to house a radio station and, well, you realize there’s still more to learn about this crazy place. Built by Bill Johnson of Bill…
The first time I ate shrimp, I was with my father. It was 1972; I was 10, and Dad’s youngest brother, my Uncle John, was visiting from New Orleans. Dad wanted to take John out to dinner at someplace fancy, and so we drove all the way downtown, from the…
You know him as Johnny D., as in Mostly Vinyl with Johnny D., the radio program on KWSS that celebrates rare and obscure soul and funk. But John Dixon is also an obsessive collector of recorded music — mostly on vinyl — as well as a record producer, a former…
She looked like an Indian princess. Tiny and dark, with huge, sad eyes that filled up her face, like a kid in a Keane painting. I was 6 years old, so it was easy for me to imagine her riding atop a big, bejeweled elephant. Teresa Amelia Gomez was my…
MacAlpine’s is it: the last of the vintage soda shops. First opened in 1928, the former Birch’s Pharmacy became MacAlpine’s Rexall Drugs 10 years later — a popular pharmacy with a lunch counter and soda fountain. In 1991, Monica Heizenrader bought it and has been running it, with her two…
Halldor Hjalmarson is that rarest of things: A fine artist who stayed in town, worked hard at his art, and made a name for himself here. His signature style — three-dimensional, “sprigged” clay vessels depicting Sonoran plants and wildlife, glazed in earth tones and brilliant blues — is recognizable from…
It was 1981. We were young, and there was nothing better to do. And so my girl friends and I — a bony chick we called Uncle who rarely spoke and her best friend, Laytchie McJeep, a corpulent girl who never stopped talking — got dressed up in funny clothes…
Lewis Pizer is shopping. He’s been at it since dawn, driving from one end of town to the other, whipping through tiny secondhand shops and hangar-like thrift stores, pawing piles of other people’s junk, hoping to unearth an unusual treasure. At one scuzzy hole in the wall where the proprietor…
Twenty years ago or more, Phoenix Theatre operated a black box, where those of us who liked edgier plays and musicals could go for offbeat theater. Last week, the now 93-year-old company unveiled, as part of its multimillion-dollar renovation, a new black box space. Those of us who once laughed…
I was too old for Sesame Street. When it debuted in November 1969, I was in the second grade, and this oddball educational show wasn’t yet a groundbreaking, game-changing cultural touchstone. It was a brand-new public TV kiddy program aimed at 3- to 5-year-olds just learning their ABCs. I already…
I was too old for Sesame Street. When it debuted in November of 1969, I was in the second grade, and this oddball educational show wasn’t yet a groundbreaking, game-changing cultural touchstone. It was a brand-new public-TV kiddy program aimed at 3- to 5-year-olds just learning their ABCs. I already…
Remind Pete Petrisko that he’s one of the pioneers of the Phoenix downtown arts scene, and he’ll likely tell you you’re “weird.” Petrisko’s big on insulting people, even when they’re paying him a compliment. And, lately, he’s also big on public art. Petrisko has been posting his new work –…
A rock musical American history lesson that commences with the line “Here’s the thing about the Indians!” then segues into a song whose refrain is “Populism, yeah, yeah!” can’t be all bad. And in its brand-new, Ron May-directed Phoenix Theatre production, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is sublime. See also: -Space…
Jesus is back. This time, instead of appearing in a tortilla or a fabric softener stain, He’s chosen a ceramic tile at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport as His stage. The Christ’s bearded visage is facing east in a floor tile at a security checkpoint in Terminal Three, home to American,…
At long last, there’s pie again at Bragg’s Pie Factory. A new vegan cafe has opened in the very spot out of which the Bragg family originally sold cakes and pies in the ’40s and ’50s. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 15,000-square-foot cast-in-place concrete Pie…
At long last, there’s pie again at Bragg’s Pie Factory. A new vegan cafe, Bragg’s Factory Diner, has opened in the very spot out of which the Bragg family originally sold cakes and pies in the ’40s and ’50s. See also: – Lunch Under $10 at Bragg’s Factory Diner Now…
Stray Cat Theatre’s production of Trista Baldwin’s Chicks with Dicks commences with a go-go dancing competition and a lap dance, and heads south from there. This unyielding camp comedy is so relentlessly awful, it should be offered up not as entertainment but as punishment for the worst possible crimes. Last…
