Arts & Entertainment

With all the hoopla that surrounded the opening of downtown Phoenix's Dodge Theatre earlier this year, it was easy to neglect -- but not for long, as it turned out -- this quirky theater-in-the-round in east-central Phoenix. Intimacy and a fine sound system mark this 2,500-seat hall, which has been host over its quarter-century history to such luminaries as Miles Davis, Harry Belafonte, Ray Charles, the Beastie Boys and George Clinton. It also works well as a boxing venue and has been the site of many an "extreme fighting" card. In a one-week span this summer, the cozy confines of the Celebrity welcomed such splendidly diverse acts as Morrissey, the Tragically Hip and the Reverend Al Green. Here's hoping for another 25 years.

Following September 11, our nation had collective guilt about trying to enjoy itself. After the postponement of most sporting events and the Emmys that first weekend, ducking out on a Sunday night to see a band seemed a premature and potentially depressing proposition. But the Issaquah, Washington, trio, which began its tour on September 4, hit the right chord with a video presentation that probably was a happy accident more than anything else. Whatever its genesis, it was a stroke of genius to open the show with video footage of crumbling buildings played in reverse. After a week of watching the towers collapse over and over again on television, the idea of seeing something constructive for a change brought more smiles and a more restored semblance of normalcy than even 100 stacks of "Fuck Osama" tee shirts. In its modest way, the Mouse made a difference. This band deserves to be huge.

When word got around that The Blue Ox was going to become a Mexican bar, we mourned the short life span of our favorite dive -- but not for long. Before we could shed a tear for our old haunt, The Rogue -- formerly known as Sneaky Pete's -- got a bit of a makeover and became the new destination for the same punk and rockabilly crowd. Thanks in large part to Blue Ox personality Randy, who brought his schmoozing skills to the new joint to book the same kinds of bands, The Rogue is not only a great place to kick back with a cold one and enjoy a smokin' jukebox or Saturday-night DJs Nate and Allen, but to see cheap, fun trash-rock acts.

This venerable little club doesn't look like much from the outside. No matter. Inside, the beer is always cold and the music is hot. Bob Corritore (a mean harmonica player himself) works tirelessly to keep this national-level blues joint afloat -- and right in our own backyard. For this, we thank the Blues God from the bottom of our aching, mistreated hearts. Corritore books everyone from the surviving Mississippi Delta kings to up-and-coming honkers from right here in the Valley, and at an eminently fair price to consumers. What more could a bluesbo ask for?

What do Agent Orange, the Handsome Family, Poster Children, Daniel Johnston, Death Cab for Cutie, Mike Watt and Frank Black all have in common? No, it's not a track list for a great mix CD; they're all acts that played Nita's Hideaway in 2002. The intimate venue continues to sate the hunger of deprived music fans with its cornucopia of musical goodness.

Nita's constantly provides a great balance of up-and-coming indie acts, under-the-radio-radar artists and high-quality touring acts that would normally skip our metro altogether. This is largely due to the work of local musical seer Charlie Levy, who seamlessly combines music sense, charm and passion. For years, Nita's has boasted such an amazing array of musical diversity that simply listing its acts would be testament enough to Levy's keen ear and vision.

But the Nita's we know and love is in transition. Due to re-zoning, the building on Rio Salado soon will be no more, perhaps to be replaced by another huge outdoor shopping extravaganza. But fear not. Club owner Mark Covert has a new site lined up, and Levy cannot feign retirement for long. He would never admit it, but he loves what he does.

Teen Central is cool. Too cool for our decidedly unhip vocab. And this is as it should be.

Designed by architect Will Bruder and based on the findings of teen focus groups he conducted, the 5,000-foot, ultramodern space inside Burton Barr is not your mother's library. A brushed metal reference desk is backdropped by towering stereo and computer equipment. Music jams throughout. No one is hushed for chatting, because most chatting is conducted via instant messaging.

The circular space features 20 wired, souped-up machines, free for surfing, music listening or gaming. Other amenities to attract teen people include a "living room" with comfy chairs, surround sound and a big-screen cable TV; an art gallery featuring works by young artists; and a cafe. Teen Central also has mucho multimedia. Its CDs, DVDs, videos, books and games are current titles requested by teens and evaluated by Teen Services librarian Karl Kendall. A cursory glance at the CDs offered titles ranging from Blonde Redhead to La Bohème, as well as a large, heavily trafficked rap/hip-hop section.

The Teen Central space also has hosted live local acts, including indie band Employee of the Moth, Christian MC Vocab Malone, Prism Cru, and high school rock band Drift. Cool.

For the Valley's consummate country experience, load the posse into the pickup on a Saturday night and head west to this neon-lighted Phoenix landmark. Order up a $6 plate of country cookin' -- always involving chicken-fried something -- wash down the day's dust with a Coors Light longneck, and watch the cowboys -- urban, rhinestone and otherwise -- lead their ladies across the dance floor. When the band goes on break, the real fun starts: The crowd stampedes outside to gawk at the open-jackpot bull riding in the nearby corral.

While Saturday night's all right for ridin', Thursday brings dance lessons, and Friday features a kids' talent show and all-you-can-eat fish fry. House band Western Bred, led by Lucky's owner J. David Sloan, performs Wednesday through Saturday. And downstairs, the karaoke machine is at the ready, loaded with songs of love lost and dogs gone bad.

So you wanna be a cowboy, but you're short on gear? Lucky's has got your fringe-vested back: Jackson's General Store, right inside, peddles cowboy hats, riding supplies and, of course, handcrafted belt buckles.

Is it a mark of greatness to have a band name that looks and feels like a typo? We think it could be. Stupid names get people talking about a band. But stupid names that people take it upon themselves to correct is really touching a nerve.

Maybe it's all those minimum-wage years spent working at Fry's, just waiting to be singled out above your peers, that's causing your need to alter this band's name in print ads, in conversation, on chalk slates and on hastily handwritten signs at club entrances. So please do not write to our overworked copy editors -- this band is indeed Employee of the Moth.

Having initially sprung out of the cocoon with the generic name Alpha 66, the band opted for a new handle and a more enigmatic sound. It's succeeded on both counts. Its five-song CD sampler Five Alarm Headache delivers the kind of bleary-eyed malevolence that only somebody working for a lepidopterist could be expected to dream up. Imagine a slow-moving world where stream-of-consciousness word play is drenched in reverb and rarely exceeds a whine or a whisper. Whether Jacob, Dan, Geoff and Jesse ever metamorphose into an ultrasonic-emo-techno-hip-hop outfit like they hint at on their Web site, they've got a name that suits them to a T. For this month, anyway.

Three years ago, when Les Payne Product began doing the first-ever live shows at The Emerald Lounge, people were still referring to it as an old man's bar. Gradually, out went the pool tables, vinyl jukebox and odd old man, and in came a stage, P.A., lights, painted murals and a plethora of Phoenix's finest budding local talent.

For most Valley rock clubs, local rock bands are occasional openers for national acts. When the Emerald books a national act, it's some out-of-town band you've never heard of, hoping the bill's local acts attract enough people so they make their gas money back. Local bands drive the Emerald's weekly roster, and with its no-cover-charge policy, it's a great place to check out a new band and not get soaked by greedy promoters and parking garages. And while you once may have needed the extra beer cash to deaden the pain of loud bands incapable of dialing into their own sound, the latest P.A. system upgrade has made a vast improvement.

Its Wednesday night blasts with house band the Hypno-Twists make the Emerald the best place to go out in the middle of the week, while the rest of the week has featured such great local bands as the Liars Club, Beat Angels, the Getaways, Seven Storey, Korova Milk Bar, Lovers of Guts, Sonic Thrills, Velveteen Dream and Meatwhistle, plus other diverting local entertainment like DJ's Tato Soul Trax on Tuesdays, Jim Cherry's Gullaballoo variety show on Sundays and art displays during the week.

Two years ago, Buddy Strong was a 19-year-old killer musician who was living with his parents in south Phoenix while building a local reputation as a monster on keyboards, bass and drums. Then, at a gospel convention in Detroit, he caught the break of a lifetime. Someone heard the youngster jamming on his beloved Hammond B-3 organ and was floored. The talent scout passed along Strong's name to R&B superstar Usher Raymond, who was seeking a keyboard player to support him on his then-pending world tour. Strong was flown to Atlanta for a tryout and quickly won the prestigious -- and lucrative -- gig. Earlier this year, the cottage industry that is the Usher Tour played west Phoenix's Cricket Pavilion. Before Usher's set, Strong worked the near-sellout crowd like the prodigal son he is, greeting family and old friends, before jumping onstage and showing his stuff like a real pro.

For a few hours each Friday night, Dave Valad is a star. His name is up in lights -- literally -- with a neon tube stylishly fashioned to spell his name pulsing light blue above the stage. He sings the hits -- ranging from Tina Turner to "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" to Sinatra -- karaoke-style.

He's got the moves that drive the blue-haired ladies wild. He's got the look: tinted sunglasses, a permy pompadour, and an oak-tree-style sports coat nicely tapered at the waist, his sleeves rolled up a third of the way. And his voice is like butter; each song from the tape machine he makes his cheese-filled own. He is a performer; he is in command. Think Phoenix's own Tom Jones. Plus, he has an array of brass instruments he busts out once in awhile, adding that perfectly classy accent.

His work could almost be called "accidental performance art," and he could be the analog precursor to the digital remix. As the night goes on, he finds just the right tape to transition from one song to the next, using his dual decks like a DJ spinning.

Valad is the man of the hour, every hour he's up there. And if you're really lucky, you might get a shout-out from the stage.

When you want your rock to rhyme with hawk, KDKB is your rawk station. Where do listeners with more girth than goth in 'em go to get a daily dose of what programmers call "mainstream rock," but historians more likely will refer to as "paunch rock," that brand of music that squeezes involuntary air guitar moves out of you in the middle of a sporting goods store? The best outlet used to be the classic-rock format, but since that brain trust has been infiltrated by the chick-rock sounds of REO Speedwagon, Billy Joel and Pablo Cruise, it's KDKB that's making like one of the boys -- and it's the only station on the dial with the balls to play "Fat Bottomed Girls."

It's great to have a station with an appreciation for the classics -- Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin and Bad Company -- that also includes modern and alternative rock like the Cult, U2, Creed, Counting Crows and Korn, all while keeping to a bare minimum the cookie-monster rock that gives other stations their identities.

On Sundays at 10 p.m., KDKB airs the best example of specialty programming on radio, Little Steven's Underground Garage. This weekly two-hour show restores the roll to rock and is hosted by E Street guitarist and Sopranos resident grimacer Steve Van Zandt. Not only does Van Zandt retain the machine-gun verbal bazooka of yesteryear's DJs, he does American radio in general a public service by playing the Standells and the 13th Floor Elevators coast-to-coast. And for weekend warriors who still get a rush from Rush and a jolt from AC/DC, the station plays 16-song music marathons that ensure no tuneouts. Raawwwwk -- it's not just for stadiums anymore.

KJZZ figured out that people don't really have any applicable uses for jazz and blues during the workday, when alertness and coffee replace relaxation and whiskey. That's why it devotes its listening day to National Public Radio, and turns the airways blue at night with acoustic jazz. KJZZ music director (and on-air personality since 1995) Blaise Lantana has a voice that oozes comfort, weeknights from 7 to 11, when she plays her velvety mix of new jazz stars like Diana Krall and Kenny Garrett and jazz legends like Art Pepper, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Lantana and fellow hosts Michele Robins and Ross Brotman never seem rushed to inform listeners about what they've just heard, a far cry from the automated jazz stations down the dial. On Sunday afternoons, KJZZ turns into the home of the blues with its American roots music program Those Lowdown Blues, hosted by Rhythm Room bwana Bob Corritore, who's also forthcoming with information about the origins of every song or artist so that appreciative listeners can investigate further on their own. Although radio contests are converse to this station's m.o., it could award listeners a free CD if a jock fails to back-announce.

When you're talking country, you'd better not be using "new country" and "best" in the same sentence. Everyone knows that the best country is the old stuff, and the fact that country-music record sales have rapidly slumped in recent years is a signal to Music Row that people have caught on.

Since there's no longer a reliable radio signal for picking up old country (unless you cover your body in tinfoil and point it in the direction of Austin), we recommend you try KUET-AM, the nostalgia station that broadcasts "timeless classics" out of Black Canyon City. KUET's broadcast day includes all the fundamentals of country, from back when country was cool -- Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Glen Campbell, B.J. Thomas, Marty Robbins and Patsy Cline. It's worth slogging through the Platters, Percy Faith and Barry Manilow just to hear the occasional Roger Miller or Bobby Bare hit.

When this old-pop-is-really-new-country controversy gets out, it'll turn country-music radio on its ear. In the meantime, you can trace where new country got its roots dyed with Olivia Newton-John, Barbara Mandrell, Kenny Rogers, Eddie Rabbitt and John Denver. Until Arizona gets a radio format that meets David Allan Coe's checklist for what makes a great country song, KUET is the best bet for hearing at least one song per hour about drinking, trucks, trains, prison or mama.

What would happen if all alternative radio stations were suddenly issued a directive not to play any more records by members of the Record Industry Association of America? That's the standard operating procedure of this Internet radio station located in Tempe, manned mostly by volunteers and college kids. Every broadcast day, it extends a big middle finger to the Library of Congress, which insists that Internet radio stations pay 70 cents per 1,000 listeners per RIAA song, as well as the 7.5 cents that regular commercial radio stations are charged -- and mandates that these fees be retroactive to 1998.

Knot Radio was started by Chris Richardson as an adjunct to his Knot Known Records label. In one stroke, he has given Tempe the credible college rock station it's been lacking for ages; it provides an outlet for local rock groups who've all been shunted off the commercial airwaves and gives them global exposure. Specialty shows range from Chris Horak's Punk, Ska, Oi, Surf, and Hardcore Show to the Blimey! It's BritPop! Show by some cat named Eddie to DJ John's Heathen World, which gives us a history of indie music of the past, present and future. Factor in other eclectic shows that feature jazz, exotica and bootlegs that somehow fall outside the RIAA's regulation, and you have alternatives that no other alternative radio station can provide because it has to play Third Eye Blind for the kajillionth time.

Knot Radio averages about 1,500 listeners a day. Lord knows how many of them are local, but one thing's for certain: They're getting freeform radio at its finest with a click of the mouse.

Pop historians say that Top 40 died years ago, when everyone went fleeing to different formats. And while that's true, it's the hip-hop stations that inherited all the energy. There's not a millisecond of dead airtime on Power 92, recently named by the Arbitrons as number-one for hip-hop and R&B in the Valley. It's a fact that couldn't possibly escape Power 92 listeners, since station IDs proudly trumpet the fact every 10 minutes.

So what's there to miss about Top 40 anyway? Hearing new music? You hear chart heat-seekers regularly; even songs in rapid repeat rotation, like Nelly's "Hot in Here," get a face-lift every go-round, especially when turntable wizards like DJ Shy are live in the mix for the "Powerworkout" from noon to 2 p.m. You want countdowns? JX3 rattles off the "Power 7 at 7." You miss crazed on-air personalities with funny nicknames? You've got MG, Mad Dog, Danielle and Gringo Suave manning the Morning Madhouse in the a.m., naughty Da Nutz carrying on in afternoon drive time, and Melissa the Midnite Mamacita playing slow jams into the dawn. And how about a station that has guest host Nuff Ced (NBA Superstar Cedric Ceballos) holding court whenever the mood strikes him? Long-distance dedications? Call 602-260-6923, and they are "Down 4 U."

BEST GOLF COURSE

tie: Troon North Golf Club
10320 East Dynamite, Scottsdale
480-502-5360

and

Tournament Players Club of Scottsdale
17020 North Hayden, Scottsdale
480-585-3428

BEST CITY HIKING TRAIL

Camelback Mountain

BEST CITY PARK

Encanto Park and Recreation Area
2605 North 15th Avenue
602-261-8994

BEST KIDS' FREE FUN SPOT

Tempe Town Lake

BEST KIDS' FUN-FOR-A-PRICE SPOT

Castles-n-Coasters
9445 North Metro Parkway East
602-997-7575

BEST PLACE TO SPEND THE DAY WITH YOUR DOG

Any dog park

If you're the sort of parent who blows your budget on your kids' parties, consider introducing your children and all their friends to T-Bo, the rhinoceros iguana. T-Bo is one of 500 creatures kept by Rich Ihle's Reptile Adventures. For $150, Ihle will cart a truck full of snakes and lizards to your home guaranteed to drop every jaw in the joint. This is a very hands-on experience that involves lots of touching and education with a cast that includes an Argentinean Red Tegu, a four-foot-long carnivorous lizard. Other big hits include water monitors that can hit seven feet in length, 19-foot-long pythons and hulking anacondas. A walking infomercial on all things reptile, Ihle is hoping to construct a public museum in the near future.

Yeah, yeah, there's more to do at GameWorks than simulate genocide. But inspired killing is the foundation of any inspiring arcade. And with several dozen of the world's most realistically hyperviolent video games, GameWorks is just about as inspiring as it gets, killing-wise.

If you tire of killing, if that's possible, GameWorks offers all sorts of other entertaining cyber realms. And yes, there are numerous nonviolent games for children if you're some sort of daisy-pickin' pacifist.

After a hard day of killing, you can retire to GameWorks' full bar and a menu of mostly excellent food. The upstairs restaurant and pub makes a nice place to hide from children asking for more money.

To stem the high cost of killing, GameWorks offers daily specials as well as reduced pricing for bulk-killing. Now, if they could only pipe in the smell of napalm in the morning.

Before he became a Valley Popsicle, Ted Williams said famously that hitting a baseball was the hardest thing to do in all of sports. Keep that in mind the next time your Little Leaguer whiffs. If you'd like to do something constructive to help your budding all-star, take the kid over to Big League Dugout, where former major league ballplayers offer individually tailored half-hour instruction for $40. Tutoring in both hitting and pitching is available. Hummmm, baby!

What legions of us still have childhood memories of time spent in the game room, sitting cross-legged (back then we called it "Indian style") in front of a loop of plastic track, jockeying tiny magnetic cars to race our siblings for superlative titles -- the winner was "the coolest person on the planet," say, and the loser was "actually adopted but Mom and Dad don't want you to know"?

You can practically hear the whiff of your plaid corduroy trousers just thinking about it.

But now you can relive those easy times at Terry's Performance Raceways, where slot-car racing is way more than a nostalgia trip. It's pretty much a lifestyle. Terry's features (for now) two modes for mini-scale enthusiasts, beginning with the so-called "H.O." racers, those Hot Wheels-style cars that are authentic enough to induce a flashback in almost anyone. And it only costs $6 an hour: $3 for track time, $2 for a car, and $1 for a controller.

Then there's the drag-racing track, where speed is the only thing that matters. Even with cars that are 1/24th scale, Terry himself claims, cars have been clocked on the 55-foot-long track going as fast as 50 miles per hour, real time. He's currently building a 1/32nd-scale road course, but for now the main event is on Friday and Saturday evenings, when diehard slot jockeys compete in earnest. For a $5 entry fee you can compete if you make the qualifiers; and winners can receive up to 30 percent of the pooled money in store credit, which the proprietor says can sometimes be enough to buy you your own new car -- Terry's, you see, also sells a full line of cars, tracks and slot-car accessories.

"Racing cars to win more cars," Terry says. "That's just gotta be the best thing on Earth."

The Music Man is a fine musical, but that Meredith Willson lyric "trouble starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool" has cast a dark pall on the upstanding game of billiards. We beg to differ, because words like "tenacity," "temperance," "tolerance" and "tertiary" don't exactly start with the letter J.

Indeed, "pockets mark the difference between a gentleman and a bum," and a young man's idle hours are better spent learning a game of skill and coordination that's not a carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing video game.

Most billiard palaces won't even allow minors a peek inside, but we've found a pool table that's easily accessible to kids at the Original Hamburger Works, located on the outdoor patio away from secondhand smoke, beer and guys named Fats, Philly and Moe. There's also a Ping-Pong table and horseshoes for those times when you've got to wait for the pool table to free up. The official eatery of the Phoenix Outlaws is a safe bet your kids won't grow up to be juvenile delinquents learning how to line up a bank shot.

On this ranch, they have some chickens, E-I-E-I-O. With a donkey here and a billy goat there, you name the domesticated farm animal, you can pet it and make it your friend. After communing with farm life, go on a hayride, have a cookout, or take in the wildlife (like Arizona's "first bird," the cactus wren). The ranch is located in the slightly cooler stretch of the Sonoran Desert, so it's one of the few places that you can be outdoors when the weather is hot. Or stay in the A/C and take a scenic driving tour. If you do some digging, you'll even learn about the little-known mystery of the Mormon Girl Mine. But what makes MacDonald's Ranch special isn't what it has, it's what it doesn't have. You won't find any mechanical farm equipment here, because the ranch still operates with true "horsepower." That's just cool.

Sure, there are plenty of places that can boast "Fun" as their middle name. But Fiddlesticks in Scottsdale can claim it as its first and last name as well. The main draw of this seven-acre family fun park is the 4,000 square feet devoted to Atlantis Laser Odyssey, a state-of-the-art laser tag adventure game that becomes a matter of familial pride when another brood gets it in their heads to make you and your kids their quarry.

While the lure of bumper boats, batting cages and go-carts you need a license to drive makes this park a top draw for preteen parties, it's also ideal for toddlers. The park's Kiddie Land offers six flagship rides including Flying Dumbo Elephants, the Miner Mike Roller Coaster and rookie go-carts. Value Packages are $16 for guests 60 inches and taller, $12 for guests 36 to 59 inches tall, with an additional $3.50 for the laser tag. You could probably make a case for the Value Package 2 if you're a short dad, but then they might not waive the height requirement for the go-carts.

Nothing is free, especially where kids are concerned. "I gotta have," "I want it" and "You promised" are all familiar mantras heard by parents milliseconds after the car door shuts. So why not surprise your complaining juniors with a "scared straight" time-travel expedition to 1870 that's absolutely free?

It's worth the drive to Florence just to see the shock on your spawn's faces when they realize their Native American counterparts passed their time not by shopping but by actually making baskets, pottery, quilts, arrowheads and figurines of other hardworking Native Americans. Other sobering turn-of-the-20th-century artifacts include blacksmith equipment, antique medical supplies that were a marked improvement over bloodletting, musical instruments that don't plug in, tools, historic maps and jail objects like old nooses that have swung as recently as 1965! We can't guarantee your kids will be humble and hardworking once you get back to the future, but you've given them an interactive past money can't buy.

Open April-June, and September-November, noon-4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays; December-March, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, noon-4 p.m. Sundays. Closed July-August.

Arizona's best winter resorts have figured out they can make money in the summer offering local families a relatively cheap night and a day at a water park.

Of these resorts, Pointe Hilton's Squaw Peak resort is best-known because of its sprawling lazy river. It's great fun, but our money goes with Squaw Peak's sister hotel at Tapatio Cliffs. That's because Tapatio Cliffs has The Falls Water Village. And more so than the lazy river, the Water Village, a three-and-a-half-acre expanse of swimming pools, waterfalls and water slides, offers enough different activities to keep the whole family entertained for the whole day.

Besides numerous water features, the Village offers lots of time-occupying programs and events for kids. That means parents can slip over for a drink at one of the several themed bar and grills!

Also, more so than most area resorts, the Tapatio Cliffs management really works to fill your plate with events and free stuff. As part of this summer's Summer Splash event, for example, guests for $109 a night also received coupons for events worth more than $50.

If you've got kids, and you're sick of the heat and sick of cleaning and fixing meals, Tapatio Cliffs is a great way to break things up with a quickie vacation.

A stunning stand of increasingly rare saguaro cactus welcomes visitors to Maricopa County's largest park, totaling 29,217 acres of rugged mountains with ragged ridges separated by deep canyons. Infrequent, heavy rains pouring down chutes and plunging over cliffs have scoured out a series of depressions in white granite -- creating a series of "tanks."

About 21 miles of trails are available for mountain biking, horseback riding and hiking with difficulty ranging from easy to strenuous. The Waterfall Trail offers .4 mile of barrier-free access to the Petroglyph Plaza.

The park has a unique 10-mile "competitive track" designed for cross-country runners and joggers, endurance bike riders and galloping equestrians. Family and group camping sites are available on first-come basis for $10 a night. The park is open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a $5-per-vehicle entry fee.

The White Tanks provide a priceless respite from the relentless expansion of the metropolitan area that is now lapping up against the park's eastern and northern boundaries.

To get there, exit on Cotton Lane from Interstate 10 and go north to Olive Road. Go west on Olive to the park entrance.

It's a quick jaunt, but it offers a little bit of everything that you're looking for when you're lighting out to the desert to spend an hour or two with nature. The Ahwatukee trailhead of South Mountain Preserve offers lots of options for the hiker -- from the flat Desert Classic (favored mainly by mountain bikers) to the arduous National (for the self-detesting) -- but the 1.5-mile Telegraph Pass is the clear winner when it comes to compromise.

Just to start you off easy, the first undulating half-mile is paved, rolling up and down in small sine curves until it empties out at the meeting point with the Desert Classic. Veer left and suddenly you're in flavor country -- a craggy but flat trail that creeps along the base of a long rock outcrop. At about the halfway point, things then take an interesting turn: upward. Now you're hoofing it into the sandstone, crabbing along an upslope and eventually hucking up ersatz staircases that have been hewed out of the hillside. And just as your pulse reaches cardio level, there you are: Telegraph Pass, right along a rise on South Mountain Drive. Sit on the bench and watch the lazy lunkers drive by. Then have a drink of water and begin stepping down into the flatlands, where your oven-hot car awaits. Now, aren't you glad you took that hour to commune with nature?

There are a hundred reasons to hike up Pinnacle Peak. First, the scenery is breathtaking, high Sonoran Desert in all its glory. Second, there's variety. Besides hiking trails over 150 acres, there are three rock-climbing areas. Third, there's the feeling of victory if we make it to the top of the 3,171-foot peak. Fourth, it's nice to know that the main 1.75-mile hiking trail is less demanding than our two most popular mountains, Camelback and Squaw Peak.

Reasons five through 100: flat-out snubbing-the-snooty satisfaction. Since 1994, the park has been closed to us regular folk, commandeered by a developer building the upscale Estancia home community. The fencing was supposed to be temporary; new homeowners refused to take it down, citing concern over riffraff (that's us) coming too close to their manicured yards. Finally, this spring, Scottsdale parks planners woke up and returned our park to the people.

It's hard to hike and thumb our noses at the same time, but hey, we're willing to bet the effort burns extra calories.

Who needs reality TV when you can be out getting a cardiovascular workout on Squaw Peak? We've traveled up other more vigorous hiking trails and found people too tired to dish the poo. We've tried easy walking trails where it's too hard to keep pace with a pack of gossiping secretaries. This trail has the perfect balance of physical challenges and audible mental breakdowns.

You'll get more mother-in-law gripes than a borscht belt comedian convention, more upper-management-bashing than a bound volume of Dilbert cartoons. And as an added bonus, you'll get 75 percent more inane chatter about tapping into your personal potential than a 30-day Tony Robbins cassette course -- without the incessant smiling.

Plus there are the human oddities, like the midday New Age guru who hikes with bells, the perfumed and fully made-up professionals who never sweat, and this one guy whose body odor actually resembles bacon and eggs! Don't delay. Get off your ass and join in!

It easily could have wound up as just another 75 acres of concrete jungle, but instead the old Phoenix Indian School grounds now include a 2.5-acre lake and a neighborhood park with a playground and volleyball courts. The 1,500-seat amphitheater housed the city's summer concert series this year, including free steel drum and Brazilian jazz performances, and even a performance by our favorite local jazz musician, Margo Reed. An entry garden is marked by walls made of old sidewalk from the original Indian School, and throughout the park you'll find tributes to Native American culture. This project was more than a decade in the making, with heated negotiation from City Hall all the way up to the U.S. Congress. For a change, our leaders did the right thing. Thanks.