It's tough to spend a lot of time in any of the galleries along Roosevelt Road or Grand Avenue on any given First Friday — and that's no fault of the artwork. Thousands of Phoenicians travel downtown for the monthly artwalk, and they move quickly through the galleries and streets. If you're looking to find a spot to discuss the work on the wall with a few local artists (or just a couple friends), try Bragg's Pie Factory. The space is huge, the artwork is always surprising, and there's usually a spot to park in the back alley. Bragg's typically opens its month-long shows on First Fridays (while more and more galleries now opt for Third Fridays) and it welcomes all media — from installations, sculptures, and design conferences to paintings, protest art, and piñatas. You might catch a few funny stories from the venue's owner and arts maven Beatrice Moore, and you're guaranteed to find yourself in the company of dozens of art fans and artists (some of whom have studios down the hall) who are more than happy to hang out.
Here's the dirt: The soil in Phoenix is made mostly of minerals.
That's a no-brainer, to be sure. But consider this. In an era when levels of hazardous pollutants are rising alarmingly worldwide, our Arizona soil continues to maintain a shockingly healthy profile.
It must be all that dry heat. Or the fact that the soil in Phoenix is composed mainly of clay, with large deposits of calcium carbonate, which makes it highly alkaline and, therefore, generally great for planting. That's the good news; the bad news is that calcium carbonate also forms layers of rock-hard caliche, making it impossible to dig a hole in many parts of town. (Ever wonder why there's so little underground parking here? Or why so few houses are built atop basements?)
Plants don't care about parking, though; what they really want is water. Because our lower desert soil is often high in iron (a chemical typically unavailable to plants, which like a drink that's lower in alkalinity), and our water is fairly alkaline and salty, it's not a bad idea to mulch the heck out of your topsoil before planting a temperamental tiger lily (or whatever), to create a better-balanced soil that quenches a plant's thirst for lower-pH water.
Because Phoenix's dense clay soil packs together tightly, becoming like soup when it's wet and preventing proper soil aeration, green thumb gardeners recommend making the soil around a plant more permeable to air with a bagful of large-grained sand to improve aeration. Ironic, isn't it? Adding sand to the soil of the desert. But there you go — another thing about Phoenix that doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.
To see an illustrated infographic of caliche, visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
Right in the middle of metropolitan Phoenix, they've been digging for decades at Pueblo Grande. Usually the cache includes clay pots, shell jewelry, and stoneware — Arizona's alkaline dirt isn't good for preserving centuries-old textiles, baskets or bones, although sometimes the intense heat has preserved impressions of such items (or even the rare footprint) onto rock.
In the late 1980s, archaeologists made an usual discovery at Pueblo Grande: a group of clay animal figurines. Seven dogs, about four to five inches in height, rested 12 centimeters below the soil in the floor of a Hohokam pit house. Why they were made and what they were used for remains a mystery.
Holly Young, collections curator for the museum, speculates that the dogs, two of which appear to be pregnant, may have been part of fertility rituals. Each figure has a hole in its posterior that Young suggests could indicate a dog in heat rather than being a generic representation of — well, you can use your imagination. Archaeologists do that all the time, since very little is known about the religious beliefs and practices of the Hohokam Indians, who originally settled the Valley. Though animal figures and effigies can be found in their art, any meaning suggested remains speculative. For example, representations of frogs are found fairly frequently, leading researchers to believe that they were symbols of water.
The Hohokam flourished in this region from about 500 to 1450 A.D., though the starting dates continue to be pushed back as more and more evidence is unearthed and as archaeological methods become more sophisticated. They were an agricultural people who developed a complex irrigation system to grow crops like corn, beans, and squash.
Evidence from the soil has shown that the area was densely settled. "The landscape was dotted with villages," said Young. "There were quite a few people actually living here, farming, working." After the Hohokam society collapsed — perhaps due to natural disasters or disease — the Valley did not regain the same population density again until after World War II.
"It's a very subtle archaeology," Young says of her work. "It's not like going to places like Egypt — it's hot and dry and dusty there — but you've got big buildings that you're digging around and that kind of thing, whereas here we're basically looking at stains in the soil.
"The depth of digs in the Valley ranges from a few inches to several hundred feet, depending on the position of the bedrock. Closer to the Salt River, where hundreds of years' worth of silt deposits have accumulated, excavations tend to go deeper. But just as mid-century homebuilders discovered that the layer of caliche made house construction complicated, archaeologists found it to be an obstacle for their work as well.
The Hohokam themselves encountered caliche in their own time. It was used to carve artifacts, added in pottery clay, as well as mixed in with plaster to create smooth surfaces.
So what of our society? How will our remains fare over the ages? "It depends on how we go away," Young says, laughing. Within a few hundred years, everything that makes up Phoenix probably will be underground.
"Obviously, the glass is not going to last that long because it's brittle and it will break. Steel is going to last a little bit longer, until it starts rusting. So it all depends on how a society gets destroyed, what happens to its structures to begin with. If there's a neutron bomb and buildings are still left standing, it may take a lot longer to degrade. If it's something like a massive earthquake or a conventional nuclear weapon, it might go away fairly quickly," she says.
But our day-to-day materials do not stand a chance of outlasting Hohokam treasures.
"Plastics, of course, fall apart pretty quickly, especially when exposed to sunlight," Young says. "Most of the metals that we use, like iron alloys for cans and stuff like that, they fall apart incredibly fast in the desert . . . We're talking a matter of centuries for all of the metal things to go away."
Indeed, she says, a copper bell found at another Hohokam site nearby — likely dating to the 15th century — "probably survived better than just about any of our metal artifacts will."
To see a slideshow of artifacts
from Pueblo Grande, visit
www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
One thing downtown Phoenix has in abundance is empty dirt lots. Not for long, if one energetic group of civic-minded garderners has anything to do with it. We love simple ideas — those knock-yourself-on-the-side-of-the-head and say, "Why didn't I think of that?!" ideas that make a big splash. In this case, a big splash of color. A highfalutin-sounding partnership of the Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation and Phoenix Union Bioscience High School (translation: a bunch of artists and some high school kids) have leased empty lots with plans to plant two acres of sunflowers in the Evans Churchill neighborhood between Fifth and Sixth streets and Garfield and McKinley streets. Eventually the sunflowers will be pressed for oil and used for biodiesel fuel, and seeds/flowers will be sold at the Phoenix Public Market, but to be honest, the part we're most excited is about the a big field of yellow flowers that will take over an empty dirt lot early next year. Consider it a bouquet to the city. And a really great — if simple — idea.
In 1974, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson unearthed a revolutionary fossil in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia: the 3.18-million-year-old remains of a female hominid known today as Lucy. Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray were about to return to their camp after long hours of searching for fossilized remains when, on a whim, Johanson insisted on checking a nearby gully one more time. As luck (or instinct?) would have it, they noticed human bone fossils and returned later that day to uncover the remains of a skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis, at that time the oldest upright walking humanoid known to man. At the celebration held by the expedition that night, a recording of The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was played over and over again, inspiring the skeleton's name. In 1981, Johanson established the Institute of Human Origin in Berkeley, California, which was moved to Arizona State University in 1997 — and that is how the Valley came to be home to the man who discovered one of the world's most famous women.
What makes the buried treasure story of Sierra Estrella (southwest of Phoenix) so cool is that there's not one, but several buried treasure legends tied to the area. One is the "Montezuma Head" treasure, which was supposedly left in a cave at Montezuma Point by a guy named either Campoy or Ortega, depending on which version of the story you hear.
The legend says that Campoy/Ortega found 3,000 pounds of gold in the Estrellas, and because the local natives were after him, he hid the gold in a peak just below Montezuma Head and died before he could retrieve it. Another legend talks about the lost mine of Don Joaquim, who reportedly dug a gold mine in the Estrellas in 1847 and made off with tons of gold packed onto the backs of 15 mules. Joaquim is said to have ridden south over the Estrella Mountains to a hidden cave, where he tucked away his haul, and, of course, died before getting back to it.
A third buried treasure legend talks about a small wagon train being ambushed just past Montezuma Head during the gold rush of 1847-1849. The looters supposedly made off with $50,000 and buried the money piecemeal over several nights. Of course, none of these treasures have ever been found, but you can't kill a legend — especially one that involves looking for a ton of riches.
At the bottom of an elevator shaft at the end of a clean hallway in downtown Phoenix's Heard Museum is a basement full of boxes, tubes, and bags.
Take a few (very) wrong turns and press a couple of wrong buttons, and you might end up down there — but don't expect to see anything good without a curator.
The basement's main hallway is piled high with books for the annual book sale and years' worth of display cases, forgotten mannequins, and shipping crates full of rare, and often ancient, artwork.
And behind a series of highly secured doors is what Heard Museum staff call the underbelly of the world-class museum of Native American art.
The museum built the underground facility in 1967, after Senator Barry Goldwater gave the museum his collection of kachina dolls. Decades later, the space is home to moving shelves full of historic baskets, textiles, paintings, and ceramics (all catalogued in the archive's yellowing, basement computer) from various discoveries and private donations of larger collections, including those of entrepreneur Fred Harvey and local real estate big hitter Russ Lyon.
Curators and staff are careful to note the museum's history of repatriating items to their communities, though a few items waiting to be transferred require special care and honoring of the original artist's customs and traditions. They also insist that there are no shrunken human heads in the archives (though a few locals remember seeing them on Boy Scout trips and museum visits decades ago, and others in a position to know claim the skulls are, or were, actually those of chimps).
A number of pieces at the Heard will never be showcased and even more are in the process of being packed up and sent home. Other than an upcoming exhibition of gold jewelry, we may never know what else lies behind the vaulted door in the curator zone, and if security and museum traditions get their way, we never will.
To see more photos of the
Heard Museum's basement,
visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
You can call David Quan the guy behind many of the large-scale murals on the sides of buildings along Grand Avenue — but he prefers to stick to the moniker Luster Kaboom. The local artist and comic started his Grand Ave. mural habit on The Trunk Space with the huge green face of a slobbering monster (sporting very sophisticated glasses). Since then, he's painted the insides of the avenue's galleries and on the front of Citywide studios. Our favorite so far (along with the one he painted on our own building, in honor of Best of Phoenix) is his blue "goo-scape" on the side of the Chocolate Factory. Quan jokes that the bright aquamarine was the cheapest color for his airbrush machine. If that's true, thank the hardware store, because the dripping, oozing, mural that wraps around the building just gave us yet another reason to park the car along the avenue for a closer look.
Ike doesn't consider himself a street artist like Banksy of
Exit Through the Gift Shop fame. That film presents street artists as talented, cerebral, invested, politically clever, sometimes disturbed guerillas, and it's brought street art into the public consciousness. Some might argue that these artists do us all a public service. They make us laugh and think. Others, and the law, label them criminals, which is why they fiercely protect their identities and practice their art under cover of night.
Ike — a college student who studies art and marketing — is part of a local graffiti crew that actually accepts commissions and participates in competitions, which means he lives with one foot above ground and the other deep underground.
Ike's been busted. The first time, he was 13. He tagged a bathroom and the school pressed charges. Then, when he was 16, he was arrested for painting downtown — a felony carrying serious consequences that bleed into his adult life. Ike is undeterred. "I'm gonna get my message out there whether you like it or not," he says, and describes some anti-SB 1070 writing a lot of crews have been putting out there. But there isn't a trace of aggression or threat in his voice.
In fact, Ike might be considered a pacifist. He says, "Trying to bang on each other through graffiti — that needs to stop." Along with competition among top crews, there are rules in this world. When one writer goes over someone else's graffiti, it can escalate to violence. "Some crews hook up with the gangs for protection," admits Ike, who's seen and been in the throes of serious violence, even gunplay. But, he's careful to emphasize, graffiti and gangs are not mutually exclusive.
There's legal painting — businesses like carwashes and pawnshops, skate parks, fundraisers — that brings graffiti into the mainstream, but not without a cost to the artist. "People call you a sell-out, bitch, pussy, artsy-fartsy when you try to go legit," he acknowledges.
Staying underground is harder work, more purposeful, and dangerous. "The craziest thing is painting the freeway signs," he says, then describes running across five lanes of traffic, shimmying up a sign pole, hanging over it and onto it for dear life while painting one-handed and upside down as traffic thunders by below. Painting train cars is safer footing but requires ninja-like skills in getting over fences and past security.
"We are like ninjas," says Ike. "We're really smart. That's how we gotta be."
As a kid, Ike got into graffiti through skateboarding and hip-hop. Now it's all about letters and depth. He likes text, and that affinity is literally expensive. He uses mostly spray paint, favoring Montana, a high-end German product designed by and for graffiti artists, and he budgeted about $1,500 last year for paint. A local hardware store cuts him a deal.
"Writers are doing graffiti for a reason. You have to have some emotional problems. Other people smoke pot or read the Bible. It's my way to stabilize myself," Ike says before pausing and becoming thoughtful for a minute. "Probably in an unstable way."To see more photos of Ike's graffiti,
visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
Like any good (and smart) graffiti artist, KENO keeps a low profile — until he decides to put up a piece in one of his signature spots or a huge roller (i.e., a thick tag, literally done with a bucket of paint and standard paint roller). His work is recognizable by clean letters and wild styles, and it's traditional by graffiti standards: He sticks to writing his name and the name of his crew, BAMC, on walls, boxes, bridges, and trains throughout Phoenix. But unlike any of the dozens of other crew members or big names within the graffiti scene, KENO's developed a knack for documenting the work of others in addition to his own. He started KENO TV (
KenoTV.net) a year ago and has since shot, edited, and published 14 short films that feature local graffiti and graffiti artists. Now that's style.
Sure, there are plenty of sidewalk spots and electrical boxes in Phoenix that are decorated by a few secretive street artists in town.
But when we want to see something fresh and impressive, we head to the northeast corner of Fourth and Garfield streets. Just behind reBAR, around the corner from the fading Soldierleisure mural, theres an abandoned, red-brick building whose boarded-up windows serve as frames for some of our favorite stencils. Artists Nomas and SIKE have been here HMPH and CITIZEN, too.
Theyve sprayed Madonnas, monikers, gorillas, and political messages onto the buildings plywood and paper-pasted front door, and theyve given us a sure-fire spot to catch some seriously cool artwork.
By day, you'd hardly know it was there. Take a stroll down Farmer Avenue in Tempe after dark, though, and you'll undoubtedly come across a glowing purple bicycle permanently fixed atop a tree. The bicycle, the tree, and the purple string of lights all belong to local Tempe artist Eric Iwersen.
Why stick a bike in a tree? Why wrap it in purple lights? We're not certain. The answers lie with Iwersen. We are grateful, however, for his eccentricities, as the purple beacon has often pointed us in the right direction — toward home — after a drunken night at Taste of Tops.
Even if you don't actually ride the city's light rail, we bet you've stopped to admire the public art at light-rail stops from the comfort of your car. One of our favorites is visible not only from the road, but also from the ground and even the sky, as it sits above Tempe Town Lake — right below Sky Harbor Airport's flight path. Artist Buster Simpson's display of LED lights puts an ever-changing rainbow above the lake, reflecting colors in the water. Stop and stare at the bridge long enough, and we know it sounds corny, but you might just feel like that bridge is speaking to you. Try it.
Three years ago, Mark Dudlik wrote an open letter that pissed off the Phoenix design community — he wrote that the local design scene was dead. What the local designer meant was that support for local design wasn't strong enough, and if nothing was done, talented and creative people would inevitably skip town. The community reacted, and Dudlik was ready with a solution. This year marks the third Phoenix Design Week (October 1-18), which has grown from a few days of exhibitions and get-togethers to a three-week showcase with a national conference. The annual event gives designers from a variety of backgrounds (communication, graphic, industrial) and cities from around the country plenty of excuses to get out of their studios, talk about culture and creativity, and work together on new design ideas for Phoenix.
On our to-do list: Learn how to letterpress. Okay, so it's right below organize all the closets and master the KitchenAid — it's going to be a while. That's fine, because gallery HAZEL isn't offering letterpress workshops quite yet. Sign us up when they do! We love to visit this sweet little space on First Fridays so we can behold the glory of a fully functional vintage letterpress — and the super-cute stationery that's been made with it. We can't wait to soak our hands in ink . . .
In the weeks leading up to Best of Phoenix, our culture blog brought you 100 images of the city. One of our favorites comes from artist Melissa McGurgan, who created a series of letterpress prints in an homage to Phoenix. The prints feature common local descriptors, including Dry Heat, Snow Bird, and even Tent City, but our favorite part is the witty attention to detail — teeny-tiny handcuffs and tents for our sheriff's favorite spot, and a lovely roadrunner/snowflake combo for winter visitors. McGurgan manages to poke gentle fun and elevate this place to an artier level at the same time.
You won't find local artist Shelby Robertson's pimpest works on the shelves of your local comic book shop, though he's illustrated for the likes of Marvel, DC, and Verotik. A self-taught artist and founder of independent publishing house American Dischord, Robertson plays with the big boys of the comic industry but still takes hand-drawn pin-up commissions for around 50 bucks a pop. His rendering of heavily detailed and well-muscled figures has been compared to fantasy artist Frank Frazetta and late Witchblade co-creator Michael Turner, which means you'll get more than your money's worth if you throw down for a portrait. And like Frazetta and Turner, Robertson is fond of penning curvaceous vixens in barely-there clothing. Our favorite is Latex Alice, a sultry version of Lewis Carroll's heroine — she makes a Barbie doll seem normal and proportional.
Zombies might be the "in thing" in sci-fi and fantasy right now, but there are other ways to get your brain-eating comic quotient in without picking up The Walking Dead. Local author John Layman, former editor for DC's Wildstorm branch and author of the fun Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness crossover, branched out on his own in 2009 with his indie comic Chew, which follows a detective who has the unusual ability to recall the experiences of anything he eats. Not surprisingly, the character is a vegetarian most of the time; that is, when he's not chomping the dead flesh of victims of murders he's investigating. It gives new meaning to the phrase "take a bite outta crime." A Chew script was picked up for a Showtime comedy series in May, making us proud that Layman chose to call Phoenix home before he hit the major leagues.
Punk rock has never been particularly kind to the art of growing up. There are few stranger sights than a 50-year-old sporting a Mohawk. But Brad Dwyer, who used to shout in punk band Gary's Agenda and currently performs as Brad the One Man Damned, knows how to tell the stories of an aging punk with charm, tact, and humor. His comic, Epic Tales of the Mundane, centers on his day-to-day life — learning to change his daughter's diapers, adult acne, riding the bus, struggling to interest his wife in the DC Comics re-launch, and daydreaming about robots fighting giant mutants. Dwyer's comics are sly, self-deprecating, and hilariously poke holes in the old axiom about burning out before fading away.
There are the jocks and cheerleaders and tight-assed businesspeople and average Joes of this world, and then there are the folks who just don't fit into one of those stifling categories. Some end up burrowing into hidey-holes with LAN games and bags of Cheetos. Others go the academic route and become experts on deciphering dead languages. But the most intriguing club for those on the social fringes is the Dark Ones, the mysterious sponsor behind such events as the Bazaar of the Bizarre and DarkCon. In addition to its major events, the group hosts parties at comic book conventions and regular meet-ups to view fantasy flicks or discuss historical costuming. You don't exactly need to know the secret handshake to be a Dark One, but not everyone is deemed worthy of joining. Noobs have to be sponsored, and you must be a member for five years before becoming a full-fledged Dark One. We don't know exactly what powers come with that privilege, but with any luck, the job at least comes with a horde of minions.
Nerds of the world, unite! Oh, wait, you already did. From Amsterdam to Austin, self-proclaimed nerds are gathering at bars and restaurants to drink and, as they put it, "learn something." And Phoenix is no exception. The new-ish chapter of this oh-so-informal club meets at Carly's Bistro on Roosevelt Row. Topics so far have included "Dialogues between Science and Literature," the story of "audience modeling software," and one we're really sorry we missed — our own Serene Dominic on the virtues of "the best rock band of all time," The Osmonds?!?! We just gotta say it: nerd alert! In a good way, of course.
Five minutes. Twenty slides. One passion. That's the formula for Ignite Phoenix, a local version of the presentation series originally developed by O'Reilly Media. For each edition of Ignite Phoenix, several would-be presenters submit talks based on their greatest passions. Eighteen speakers are chosen and stand in front of 800 or so audience members at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Topics range from "Better Living Through Fast Food" to "Social Media Stole My Kidney!" Just about every Ignite talk is interesting, and if one isn't, another one will be up in only five minutes. Ignite Phoenix has grown a lot since its first incarnation in a tiny conference room at the
Jobing.com offices. Tickets sell out quickly. There even are offshoots, such as an ASU-specific Ignite and an Ignite After Hours for topics that are not safe for work. If you need a shot of inspiration, light a fire under your ass and get it to Ignite Phoenix.
Marshall Shore met his obsession with history in a bag of old slides in a downtown Phoenix vintage store.
He bought the bag, thumbed through the transparencies, and projected them in his backyard. Shore says they were more than just old photos — they were forgotten stories, and he was determined to fill in the blanks.
Shore grew up in Odell, Indiana — a town of 25 people, one street, and two stop signs. There were plenty of stories, but not many characters, and at 23, he took a one-way trip to Brooklyn with no plans of going back. He landed a gig in a New York library and has since spent almost two decades soaking up information about cities and culture.
It wasn't until he transferred to Phoenix (and later lost his job to the failing library economy), that he took his research to the street. Our streets.
Meet Shore for a drink, check out his blog, or take a seat at his monthly slideshow series at Metro Retro, and he'll catch you up on the gossip out of Sun City, the latest of his T-shirt creations, screen-printed with historical buildings, or any one of the stories collected during a day trip to Sunnyslope.
The local historian labeled himself early on as an "information curator" who's not afraid of dark basements or dusty corners. Shore says he chooses to ignore the all-too-common claim, "Phoenix has no history," and is, instead, on a mission to connect the community to its current and historic place.
He's got a camera and a notepad he only uses for names and numbers. And he keeps the stories in a hidden, photographic system in his head. Now we just have to get him to write it all down.
We love a good lecture series. No, really. Have you been to Ignite? Heard about TED? Infomercial meets stand-up — it's all the rage, and we love to sit back and learn something we didn't already know.Add Four Peaks beer and we'll be the first in line.That's what the smart folks at Audubon Arizona did. They know their subject matter can be, well, a hard sell. Do you really want to sit in an auditorium while someone lectures to you about birds? Okay, what if it's the mating patterns of birds, and they serve beer?Throw in a frog or two, and we're there. At the monthly "series of lighthearted lectures showcasing the behavior of native animals . . . geared toward environmentally conscious adults," Four Peaks pours the beer while "environmental professionals" give 20-minute talks about, um, animal sex, complete with visual aids. The material is PG, but you'll still want to leave the kids at home unless you want them swilling ale and learning the mating call of the barn owl.
Bradley Whicker never met a beer can he didn't like. Take a gander inside the garage of his Scottsdale home and you'll see proof of that, as it's filled from floor to ceiling with his ever-growing collection of ale cans and beer memorabilia. It's more than just aluminum castoffs, however. Dozens of bookshelves hold a suds-soaked treasure trove of more than 300 different cans and a wealth of beer-related products, accessories, and memorabilia. Large glass growlers from Arizona breweries like Four Peaks in Tempe and Gentle Ben's in Tucson sit next to mini-kegs, neon signs, old-school advertisements, and even a virtual altar to Pabst Blue Ribbon (Whicker's favorite beer). His collection of cans includes those that held domestic swill such as Coors and Mickey's, imports like Sapporo from Japan and Królewskie from Poland, and regional beers such as Pittsburgh's Iron City. He also has plenty of vintage beers, including Hamm's, Olympia, and Lowenbrau. The tipsy time machine goes back even further with rusty antique cone-top cans made by Frankenmuth and Grain Belt, two Midwestern brands. Sadly, the Beer Museum is open only to Whicker's friends and family, so be sure to buy him a round and get chummy next time you see him drinking at a pub.
We ruined a pair of shoes at this year's Strong Beer Festival. Naturally, on the February day that Phoenicians had the opportunity to enjoy dozens of heavily fortified brews, the gods saw fit to make it rain in the desert. And what a torrential downpour. Mud was everywhere. Beer was sucked down like a shot before Mother Nature could dilute it. Freezing winds kept drinkers huddled together under tents, where we had no recourse but to talk about beer and drink even more. In short, it was one of the best Saturdays of our life . . . we think. After the 12 tasting mugs full of Imperial stout, things got a little fuzzy around the edges. While our memory isn't 100 percent, our resolve to go back next year — on Saturday, February 18 — definitely is.
Run by Local First AZ and presented in the lush courtyard of the Phoenix Art Museum, Devoured manages to hit all the right notes: tons of food, upscale offerings (like Modern Steak's Kobe beef and lobster slider with caviar aioli), copious amounts of local wine, such comfort foods as chili and corn dogs, and cozy seating areas to enjoy it all. This year, lines were shorter, and most booths still had grub available at the end of the day. And though veg-heads might have been disappointed by the lack of meatless fare, everyone else seemed pleased with the juicy pork dished up by Kai and Barrio Café. Local First Arizona also broke a lot of news at the festival, unveiling Cycle's pop-up concept and Payton Curry's Guerrilla Gourmet before the buzz had circulated (though Curry's sausage-making demo wasn't quite as stunning as last year's pig butchering). At $49 and up, Devoured isn't the cheapest foodie fest around — but once you're in the door, it's like the best all-you-can-eat buffet you'll ever visit.
Even though all the delicious eats are free, gluttony takes a backseat to community at the annual Certified Local Fall Festival. Created in 2004 by Local First Arizona, the festival boasts a ton of food from independent eateries Green, Spinato's Pizzeria, Postino Winecafe, and more, plus a rock wall, face painting, and booths from local vendors such as Smeeks and SeeSaw Designs. We appreciate that the vibe here is always chill, with tons of locals meeting and greeting each other with smiles of recognition. If Phoenix is a small world, the Certified Local Fall Festival is an even smaller, tighter-knit community. The raffle prizes are always killer, ranging from local artwork and theater tickets to two-night stays at a boutique hotel. And even if you don't win something super-special, the free massages and candy offered by local vendors are worth a trip to the festival.
The annual Arizona Aloha Festival goes beyond big, burly Samoans slapping their chests and sexy hula dancers swinging their hips — though we certainly don't mind either of those attractions. The event has grown in popularity and size since moving to Tempe in 2009 and now boasts a marketplace filled with coconut shell purses, hand-carved mother-of-pearl necklaces, and replicas of the carved wood and shark's tooth clubs used by ancient Polynesian tribes. We dug this year's focus on dance and education, which brought new treats, including a seminar on Maori bone carving and the return of master dance teacher Kehau Chrisman. Chrisman's hula group, Halau Hula Napuaokalei'ilima, paid homage to a Verde Valley resident who helped build a two-hulled canoe to prove that the ancient Hawaiians could navigate open waters without sophisticated instruments. We'll stick with club dancing and speedboats, thank you very much, but it was impressive nonetheless.
To be honest, we havent bought a thing at a so-called arts festival in years. In fact, if we never see another ceramic Kleenex box holder or a howling coyote watercolor, it will be too soon. About the only thing art festivals are good for is people-watching and kettle corn. At least, that was our position til we hit the first Crafeteria a couple of years back.
On a cool night in December, local crafty types take over a Phoenix parking lot for Crafeteria organized by Smeeks and Frances owner Georganne Bryant, a woman we are quite certain has never possessed a ceramic Kleenex box holder. Crafeteria is a jackpot for anyone with an etsy.com addiction and a one-stop shop for any letterpress, jewelry, or custom-button craving. All Crafeteria goods are 100 percent locally made by the likes of Danielle Hacche, Against the Grain, Crafty Chica, Harmony Handmade Books, Nancy Bobo, and SeeSaw Designs (to name a few). The baked goods at Crafeteria will keep the corn in its kettle, and the people-watchings just as good as at any old arts festival.
Coined "A Party with a Purpose," this music festival is all about the tunes, but it also has a strong focus on charity. All proceeds raised during the festival are donated to Phoenix Day Family & Learning Center and Ear Candy. This festival packs a punch in the music department, too. Bands come from all over the world to play at the late April festival, including recent appearances by JJ Grey and MOFRO, Xavier Rudd, and The Wailers. Bring your lawn chairs and sun block, and be ready to soak up the sounds.
Here's a little secret: The guys who run the music store next to Changing Hands in Tempe call themselves hoodlums — and maybe they look like it, just a little — but really, they're old softies. Just check them out each spring when they throw a weekend-long music festival, aptly named Hoodstock. Fans pack the tiny store to catch local bands like Dry River Yacht Club and Psych 101 taking the even tinier stage to play their hearts out for charity, specifically the education intervention program at a nearby elementary school. The owners and festival volunteers spend weeks having the school kids paint record albums, which hang on the walls, available for sale. It's a great fundraising idea — who's not going to come down to buy their kid's record and spend a few bucks (a percentage of Hoodlums' sales go to the charity all weekend) while they're at it? Just be sure you get there early to buy your child's creation; last year, there were tears when a stranger snatched up a particularly good-looking album just an hour into the festival, before Mom and Dad could make it down to make the purchase. Best part of this festival: No matter where your kids go to school, this is a great way to introduce them to local indie rock in a family-friendly atmosphere.
We love that this alternative-theater festival spotlights the kind of awesome small-budget gems you'd find showing at a Greenwich Village playhouse, which is welcome relief from the recycled Neil Simon snoozers and jukebox musicals Phoenix is known for inviting. This year's event was also rife with Arizona premières, including Steven Fales' Confessions of a Mormon Boy (originally directed by Tony Award-winner Jack Hofsiss), which follows a drug-addicted, excommunicated Mormon dad as he attempts to get his shit together, and The Fall of June Bloom, written and performed in part by an Australian woman battling dementia. The fact that the latter show was rehearsed entirely via Skype is an indication of just how cutting-edge the festival is. Toss in a play about four people finding themselves during the apocalypse and Van Rockwell's Oppressed, which chronicled a breakup from the dude's point of view, and you have a series of short plays that kicks the habit of sitting through The Sound of Music one more bloody time.
Way out in the desert near Cave Creek sits this bastion of the Christian faith and a congregation about 1,400-strong. Sure, Pinnacle Presbyterian offers the usual Sunday-morning fare and other "normal" church stuff. But there's much more: For more than a decade now, the church has offered an annual series of surprisingly eclectic musical concerts that draw a surprisingly eclectic crowd. We have seen (and heard) world-class Brazilian musicians, the Seattle-based Groove for Thought (a jazz vocal ensemble), the Broadway Showstoppers crew, as well as old standbys the Phoenix Boys Choir and Phoenix Symphony. The sound system is impeccable. Church musical director Brent Hylton ought to be proud of what he's built.
In 1938, Reverend Louis Overstreet heard the voice of God, and it told him to buy a guitar. From that moment on, Overstreet made his way as a gospel singer, belting out heavy, blues-inspired music while preaching on street corners. In July 1961, Overstreet and family found themselves in Phoenix, playing outside a nightclub called Trotter's Inn, on Broadway Road. Overstreet decided to start a church in Phoenix, founding St. Luke's Powerhouse Church of God in Christ in South Phoenix. He recorded an album there, featuring his four sons and his nearly psychedelic approach to gospel music. Ahoolie Records eventually issued the records on CD, and, last year, Portland-based roots music label Mississippi Records re-issued the album on vinyl to thunderous acclaim from critics who actually heard it. Overstreet's church still stands in Phoenix, enduring like the album he recorded there.
Considering the lack of a serious military presence here, it's sometimes surprising just how enthusiastic Phoenix gets about the good ol' U.S. of A. For a clear example, just tune into KOOL 94.5 FM at noon. For some reason, the station, which plays a classic hits format with a strong '70s bent (think: Phil Collins' "Sussudio") plays "The Star-Spangled Banner" every day at high noon. It's not, like, some special version, either. Nope, it's the standard sort you'd expect to hear played on an old cassette tape at a middle school basketball game. It's a pretty good gimmick, though. While our national anthem is not the sort of thing most people would seek out for their listening pleasure, wouldn't you feel a little guilty flipping the channel? How could you, what with our brave boys over there in Eye-Rack fighting to keep us free from Saddam Hussein (deceased) and Osama bin Laden (deceased). Freedom ain't free, you know, so keep it locked on KOOL-FM for this obnoxious display of patriotism — followed immediately by some useful information pertaining to the sale of high-quality, modestly priced used automobiles.
Phoenix is usually proud of its winter weather, especially on those pleasantly balmy days when the rest of the country is snowshoeing to work. Well, except for a few weeks in December, around the time that elves, failed real estate developers, and their respective guardian angels take over our televisions. That's when you can sense that the city gets a little self-conscious about our snowlessness. Phoenix actually has a climate not unlike Bethlehem, where the first Christmas was celebrated by dark-skinned Semitic people, but that's of little comfort when we're inundated with the Yuletide rituals that blond-haired, blue-eyed Germanic heathens grafted onto the saintly celebration. So, yes, Phoenix has to work extra hard to get into the Christmas spirit. Which is probably why so many houses are lit up like Sky Harbor around the holidays. No one does it up better than Lee and Patricia Sepanek. The Sepanek display uses 250,000 blinking lights, many hung impossibly high on the palm trees towering over their home in a middle-class neighborhood south of Camelback and 44th Streets. The real show requires more than a drive-by. Toy trains, real snowfall, a hot cocoa stand, and enough animatronics to shame Walt Disney himself make this a must-see attraction. Yes, there are computer-controlled music systems at many other tacky and totally overdone holiday home displays, but detail on every inch of the Sepanek property really makes this house stand above the others. Keep an eye out for Santa and/or a dog dressed as Santa.
No need to be wary of the large eye watching you walk through the lobby of the Arizona Science Center; the huge lens is the latest collaborative and interactive piece by local artists Mary Lucking and David Tinapple. "Curiouser and Curiouser" borrows its name from Alice in Wonderland. It invites visitors to peer at each other through a giant telescope/microscope that juts out of the center's ceiling, and at the current exhibition through a smaller telescope on the lobby floor. The artwork was commissioned by the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture and fabricated by Magnum Architectural Inc. Thanks to Lucking and Tinapple, we can all feel very huge, and then very tiny — a very wonderland feeling, indeed.
When it comes to Phoenix's best urban legend, folks tend to forget the facts and just love the lore. The lore: In October 1947, there was a UFO crash in what is now the Dreamy Draw Recreation Area. Two men named Silas Newton and "Dr. Gee" claimed to have pulled alien bodies from the wreckage and stored them in a freezer until the U.S. Army picked them up. The Dreamy Draw Dam was then built over the crash site, to cover it up. The facts: Aside from a couple of niche books on UFOs, there's no documentation of an alien crash at Dreamy Draw, and no wreckage from the crash has ever surfaced. Newton and "Gee" were exposed as con men (the former was even investigated by the FBI for his business dealings), and the dam was not built to cover anything up, but for the same reason any dam is built: to prevent flooding to the surrounding neighborhoods. Also, the dam wasn't constructed until 1973, which would make it the worst (and most tardy) structural cover-up ever. Still, it's kind of fun to hike Dreamy Draw and imagine there are little green men buried beneath the dam.
Are you a jewel thief or a gold smuggler looking for a hush-hush place to stash your purloined goods? Then steer your getaway car to the Mountain Vault, a high-tech (and super-secretive) storage facility that's drilled directly into the side of a mountain in north central Phoenix. How do we know it's so secretive? Because not only did they refuse to let us take pictures of the site, they wouldn't even answer the most basic questions about the facility. So, instead, we'll tell you what is known about this exotic private strong room. Naturally climate-controlled, thanks to the thick rock walls, the vault itself is tucked behind a 6,000-pound steel door and protected 24-7 by an armed guard housed inside a bulletproof station. More important, unlike a traditional bank safety deposit box, which can be seized by law enforcement or even "frozen" during a legal dispute, what happens inside the Mountain Vault stays in the Mountain Vault. Nice.
And you thought the East Valley was so staid. Think again. Business owners along Mesa's Main Street have reported knickknacks falling off shelves and mysterious items being found in basement storage areas. The row of vintage brick buildings sits atop a series of tunnels rumored to have been used for bootlegging alcohol during Prohibition. Most of the connecting tunnels have long since crumbled or been walled off, but visiting paranormal investigators such as Tucson's Wailing Bainsidhe group have detected unusual heat readings and ghostly orbs in the basement areas that remain.
So speak kindly of our new favorite Valley 'burb — we don't want to disturb anyone's otherworldly peace.To hear a haunted tale from Evermore Nevermore employees, visit www.
phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
It's probably no huge surprise that Ladmo, the iconic host of Phoenix's historic kiddy TV program
The Wallace and Ladmo Show, is buried here (at St. Francis Cemetery, 2033 N. 48th St.). Or that country music legend and former Phoenician Waylon Jennings' final resting place is right here in the East Valley (at Mesa Cemetery, 1212 N. Center St. in Mesa). But why in the world is Walter Winchell buried here?
Winchell, the famous American newspaper and radio commentator who died in 1972, is taking a dirt nap at Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery (719 N. 27th Ave.), right here in Phoenix. Winchell is credited with inventing the modern-day gossip column, co-founded the Cancer Research Fund, and retired here after his syndicated column was canceled in the 1960s. Although Winchell moved away from Phoenix to Los Angeles in the 1970s, in an attempt to revive his column and his career, his remains were shipped back to Phoenix after his death in 1974, and he was buried in the family plot.
Other celebs both notorious and noteworthy who have met their final rest here include former film star and Jack Ross Lincoln Mercury spokeswoman Acquanetta, who played exotics (and, in one memorable movie, Tarzan's girlfriend) in a string of 1930s Hollywood potboilers. She's resting forever somewhere in Ahwatukee, although almost certainly not on the sacred Indian burial ground she sold back to Maricopa County a number of years ago. Local hero Barry Goldwater, a five-term U.S. senator and Republican presidential nominee, is six feet under at Episcopal Christ Church of the Ascension in Paradise Valley (4015 E. Lincoln Dr.) — no surprise there. But who knew that Hadji Ali (known to friends and fans alike as Hi Jolly) is also buried here? Ali became a living legend when, in 1856, he led the camel driver experiment here, one of several men brought over by the government to transport cargo on the backs of camels across the arid Southwestern desert. In 1935, a monument to Hadji Ali and the Camel Corps was erected in the Quartzsite Cemetery in La Paz County (465 N. Plymouth Ave.). The monument is in the shape of a pyramid topped with a copper camel and is built from local stones. Top that, Ladmo.
To see an illustrated guide to where the bodies are buried,
visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
We've all been there. You're at Casey's, drinking what started out as one pint of IPA. It quickly turns to two and, then, God knows how many. What is certain is the raging flood of urine currently threatening to saturate your pants if you don't get up and do something about it. Pushing your way through the throng of bar-goers to make it inside seems impossible. Your only option? The blarney stone. This outdoor wall stained by the liquid leavings of countless drunks before you and shielded slap-dash by a piece of fence is your ticket to relief. Pee on the Blarney Stone knowing full well that the tremendous sense of happiness you experience will feel just as sweet the next time you have to take a leak.
Downtown Phoenix's First Friday is the largest self-guided art walk in the country. For some, that is reason enough to steer clear. So, if you are more into the art than the scene, go when the crowds are thinner and the experience is about looking instead of being seen. Visit downtown Phoenix galleries on the third Friday of the month. You will still bump into friends, but you'll bypass the fire-breathing 20-somethings who crowd the streets on First Fridays.
During the humid March weekend of Art Detour, Modified Arts was a pretty cool refuge. The gallery's main door led into the main room (containing two artist-made video games) and a smaller room, full of computer-created graphic images by Jon Haddock. Each of Haddock's pieces was unlabeled and left visitors guessing which important moments in contemporary world culture were featured. The back wall and main room showed ceramic casts of toy guns by phICA's Laerte Ramos, a Brazilian contemporary artist, and a pair of all-too realistic ceramic sneakers on the floor, which definitely garnered a few double-takes.
Oh, how great things happen when creative minds collide. In January, Alan Fitzgerald, with the help of local artists Carol Panaro-Smith and James Hajicek, transformed an enormous dance studio into a gallery/workspace in Gilbert. Yes, Gilbert.
They founded the 7,000-square-foot space on photography education and built a number of classrooms for creative workshops and public lab space for alternative and digital processes. And then they put artwork on the walls. Since its January opening, Panaro-Smith has curated shows that include daguerreotypes, platinum/palladium prints, photogravures, and gelatin silver prints from local emerging and established photographers. Shes also secured loans of heavy-hitting historic photography collections from around the state.
The space provides accessible explanations of the art forms history and process, though youd be hardpressed to not bump into an employee, artist, or photography nerd (or pherd, as Panaro-Smith says) who wouldnt mind giving you a tour.
Editor's note: The content of this Best of Phoenix award has changed since its original version.
There aren't too many places in town where you can see glow-in-the-dark bikinis and have your jeans splatter-painted and signed by a professional artist. That's the magic of Poolside Gallery, the new pop-up run by Phoenix artists Jenny Ignaszewski and Kyle Jordre. Located on the first floor of the gutted and soon-to-be-remodeled Lexington Hotel and facing the hotel's swimming pool, the gallery serves as a studio space for both artists, meaning you're likely to find Jordre flinging paint on sneakers, mannequins, or canvases, even if it's not First Friday. When the monthly arts showcase rolls around, the gallery gets even cheekier with clever marketing signs that say "Oprah Giveaway," pointing you toward funky and eclectic abstract and conceptual art that's (almost) as thrilling as scoring one of the talk show host's Favorite Things.
It was up for only six short months, but the caliber of artists who showed their contemporary, conceptually based art was high. There are very few galleries in town where artists who do not work in a commercially driven manner can show. So when a pop-up experience like InFlux happens in Scottsdale, we have to stand up, applaud, and celebrate the support for artists who have very few locations in which to show the art world what they are made of.
The ASU Art Museum is hard to miss — and the architect meant it that way. Nestled in the middle of a sprawling, desert-pink complex, the museum was designed by Antoine Predock in 1989. You wouldn't know it from the outside, but the main floor of the museum is underground. Inspired by desert architecture such as the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, Predock set a lofty goal: to create an oasis of art. After the visitor descends several sloping levels of steps, he or she passes into a cavernous antechamber where fountains cool and humidify the air and invite him or her to discover the secrets within. The galleries of the museum are arranged in three levels, and the space is full of hidden rooms. Predock intended for the space to be mysterious and for the layout to be a little tricky to navigate; this way, the experience of the museum is truly a process of discovery. We can tell you firsthand that it worked. We've lost track of the number of times we've gotten lost in this museum. Bonus hidden treasure: the tucked-away Jules Heller Print Study Room, home of the museum's encyclopedic collection of prints, including works by Rembrandt, Goya, and Whistler.
As the story goes, when the family of fashion icon Ann Bonfoey Taylor called the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to try to donate pieces from Taylor's incredible wardrobe, the Taylors were sent packing. To Phoenix.
Phoenix? This place is hardly the fashion capital of anybody's world — here we glue crap to T-shirts and call it haute couture. Ah, but we've got Dennita Sewell, who has curated the Phoenix Art Museum's fashion collection since 2000.
And that's how scruffy Phoenix came to have one of the year's sleekest fashion-based art exhibits, lauded everywhere from Elle to the New York Times.
Born and raised on a farm in Missouri, Sewell developed a passion for clothing early on. Both her mother and grandmother were expert seamstresses, and she majored in textile management at the University of Missouri. After that, she headed to Yale University for an MFA in costume and set design and eventually became the Collections Manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
And then she came to Phoenix, whose namesake art museum has a 5,000-item fashion collection — one of the best in the country, thanks to donations over the years from rich and famous vacationers.
Talk your way into a tour of the museum's underground, and you'll see a original 1966 Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking suit, a handmade footman's livery (circa 1830s), and flashy platform boots formerly belonging to the band Steppenwolf.
Items are chosen for "how they're important for telling the fashion story of the era," Sewell says.
The vault is temperature- and humidity-controlled — and under tight security. No mothballs or chemicals are used to preserve the materials. Twentieth-century items are arranged alphabetically by designer, and everything before that is stored in chronological order. Accessories are grouped by type.
"Storage is a big undertaking and a huge endeavor, and it's very time-consuming and expensive," Sewell says, picking her way amongst tall columns of shelves stacked with long, flat boxes, each labeled with a picture of the garment within.
Inside the boxes, clothes are wrapped and stuffed with tissue paper to protect their form and thwart dust. Shoes are carefully arranged on shelves. Clothing made of heavy textiles rests on hangers in closets. Repairs and cleaning are kept to a minimum and only happen after a consultation with a local conservator in order to keep the items as true as possible to their original forms.
Turns out modern textiles are the hardest to keep. While their 18th- and 19th-century predecessors were made of pure, natural fibers that tend to be highly durable, the plastics and chemicals introduced in the 20th century have proved to be a challenge to preserve. Some items, like vinyl shoes, are essentially self-destructing — becoming brittle and losing their color over time.
"There's nothing you can put on them to preserve them; consistent temperature and humidity is the only thing that helps them survive," says Sewell, who refuses to name a favorite piece — even when pressed.
Times are tough for the fashion industry; the mass production of clothing has made couture less and less accessible to regular people and has put a strain on designers competing for an ever-limited clientele. Nevertheless, Sewell remains optimistic about the perseverance of the industry. "The wealthy will always seek ways to define themselves from other people," she says. "Couture is never going to die."
To see more photos of
the Phoenix Art Museum's fashion collection,
visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
The world may not be a black-and-white place, but when it comes to photography either you've got skills or you're no better than a 5-year-old with a cheap, disposable plastic camera. All the artists at Tilt Gallery fall into the former category. We love that owners Melanie and Michelle Craven (twins who graduated from ASU's fine art program) focus on vintage, hands-on techniques such a Victorian ambrotyping and hand-tinted sepia printing rather than the flashy digital media that's saturated the market. Guest artists also host classes on everything from portraiture to infrared photography — so even if your Facebook pics are all missing heads and you think that bichromate has something to do with hermaphrodites, there's still hope for you at Tilt.
So, you've got an hour or three to kill at the damn airport and you're sick of people-watching and drinking yet another cup of coffee. You've hit all the stores in Terminal 4, but you're not quite ready to go toe-to-toe with the TSA. We've got the solution, and it's art. The folks at Sky Harbor really have it going on culturally, especially in sprawling Terminal 4, where the 24/7 galleries always have something for the most discriminating and the simply bored to enjoy. In the past year, we checked out a photographic exhibit of our state's magnificent saguaros, as well as atmospheric landscapes by Ellen Wagener and a trippy exhibit of outstanding artists who work with fiber in various ways. But our recent favorite was a multi-media tribute to baseball's spring training in the Valley. The black-and-white photos of the San Francisco Giants (with the Hall of Fame Willies — Mays and McCovey) working out in Casa Grande in the early 1960s were priceless and helped us lose ourselves for a few moments without reaching for our wallets. Art for the masses, indeed.
Who doesn't have a picture of themselves in front of the Love sculpture on the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall? Visitors to Scottsdale flock to the sculpture because it is one of only a handful of them in the country. It is large and, unlike most pieces of art, you can touch it and climb on it. This makes for a perfect picture-taking opportunity. We can't wait to see your Valentines.
Joerael Elliott's well known in the Phoenix area for his incredible large-scale murals on the sides of Way Cool Hair Salon and The Caravan, but his latest (very) small-scale work has us hooked on lattes and cappuccinos at Lola Coffee. Between mural gigs and canvas projects, the local artist has a part-time barista gig on weekday afternoons, when you can catch him doodling on coffee bags with sharpies. But the real magic happens on foam — backgrounds and intricate faces emerge as Elliott chats about the local art scene while drawing with his milk thermometer. We've never been so inspired or over-caffeinated.
We don't mind the notoriously long lines at Lux Coffee Bar — they give us more time to check out what's up on the walls. The shop's monthly rotating shows have included Hipstamatic photography by Jason Hill, a documentation of train graffiti by Christopher Marks, and a photo essay of Haiti by The Parlor owner Aric Mei. Lux owner Jeff Fischer promises to continue the rotating art now that the shop has expanded into the building next door, which means more walls, more art, and even more open seats so we can sit down to enjoy the view.
We are not sure why outdoor malls are so trendy these days, because having grown up in the Valley, we find nothing more comforting than the blast of freezing cold, good-smelling air that greets you when you open the door at Scottsdale Fashion Square. We've been around so long that we remember when SFS was an outdoor mall — when you had to hoof it in the heat from Guggy's to Goldwater's, or get in your car to drive to Sakowitz. Now Goldwater's is (several generations later) Barney's, and we're thinking the old Guggy's was about where Anthropologie is now. Sakowitz is Neiman Marcus. Not a bad trade, and the whole thing's enclosed, so you won't get wet from some misguided misters. Love. All our favorite shops are here at Fashion Square — they've even got Pita Jungle in the food court and Modern Steak for fancier feasts. And did we mention Barney's?
Manhattan has the Hearst Tower, the first truly green skyscraper in the country. In Los Angeles, it's the Audubon Center at Debs Park, with more than half its materials locally manufactured and the first building in the United States to receive a platinum rating under the renowned Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system. Here in the Valley, though, we're greener than green, thanks to the forward-thinking, desert-loving developers who built DC Ranch, Scottsdale's preeminent golf course community. The developers approached the McDowell Mountains as an asset by integrating walking roads and bike paths into a landscape that embraces the desert, rather than trying to obscure it with bearing walls as so many desert-centric developments do. We say, if you're going to live in the desert, live in the desert — which means being able to look out your window and see cactus and sand, not brick walls and pavement.
It's not often that a building turns out looking exactly like the architectural drawing that inspired it. But somehow, Optima's location just north of Scottsdale Fashion Square materialized into a modern version of the famed hanging gardens of Babylon, chock-full of lush climbing plants and beautiful flowering bushes with blossoms the muted orange and purple colors of an Arizona sunset. The multi-tiered complex — which houses condos, restaurants, shops, and an art gallery — boasts a massive central courtyard, with gorgeous fountains and plush sitting areas dotted with colorful couches. The bottom floor of the open expanse offers an amazing view of the whole building, and it always makes us feel as though we're vacationing in a tropical paradise, without ever leaving the desert.
We don't mind a little history lesson with our home tour, so long as it's fun — and Modern Phoenix always provides a nice mix of both education and entertainment to fans of mid-century architecture from all over the Valley. Last April, Modern Phoenix's Alison King and her many dedicated midcentury cronies threw open the doors on a dozen rehabilitated midcentury homes in Sunnyslope (including a few contemporary models, among them houses by architects Ralph Haver, Paul Christian Yauger, and James Trahan. Several of the houses even had vintage cars parked out in front. But King and company didn't stop there, offering a full day of free slide shows and hands-on workshops — with themes like "How to Research Your Midcentury Modern Home" and "Modern Scottsdale" — in collaboration with the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. In addition, a Modern Marketplace Expo offered a day full of midcentury design, architecture, landscape, and furnishings aimed at '50s fans everywhere. No wonder this wildly popular tour sells out every year!
It's our own Bigfoot — or is it?
Oh, sure. Everyone's heard about the Gold Spot Bowling Alley. And over the summer, rumors about the long-shuttered underground space grew even louder. We couldn't help obsessing. Local photographer Dayvid LeMmon created a Facebook page for the abandoned spot, across Central from the Westward Ho, a few weeks ago. He checked in a few times, and since we'd heard a few locals got tours, we were all over him. But LeMmon readily admitted that while he was equally obsessed, he'd been equally unlucky. He hadn't been down to see that darn bowling alley, either.
The Gold Spot closed in about 1950, and the cellar and buildings above were sold to the city, which supposedly blocked off the tunnels from the Westward Ho.
Today, we're told, there isn't much left underground — just a few painted grooves in the floor where the old lanes used to be and a piece of a wall mural of a bowling pin. Above ground, the glass bricks in the sidewalk still illuminate the space where bowlers (and, decades later, late-night partiers, including DJ Ariel) used to hang.
We made a few visits to the Westward Ho, and our requests for a tour or even confirmation of the Gold Spot connection were rejected. On a hot, midday walk around the space, we noticed a gap in the tiles. So we returned with the founder of the location's Facebook page, lowered a camera into the hole, and captured what's left of our local mythology.
Just days before publication, an old friend unearthed an even older treasure: a brochure from the 1940s that mentioned Gold Spot. Mystery solved.
To see a panoramic photo of the underground bowling alley, visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
Historic home tours have become a tradition in our town, and we love any opportunity to go play looky-loo in the old-time houses downtown. But, by far, our favorite is the Willo Home Tour, on which we get to see a nice mix of early-20th-century custom homes and handsome housing developments built in the '30s and '40s. Tract homes never looked as good as they do in Willo, where big baseboards and ancient hardwood floors are the order of the day. We love the outdoor shopping and dining concessions, where we always come away with some great Hanukkah gifts and a stomach full of fun food. Still, we'll admit that our favorite part of this nicely organized, warmly staffed wintertime festival is the opportunity to ogle the folks who come out to look at window treatments and finials and, occasionally, to peek into strangers' closets. We love to park ourselves on a Willo street corner and check out the Scottsdale moms who always act as if they've never seen a house built before last year; the west-siders who ooh and ahh over how high the ceilings (and how small the rooms!) are in old houses; and the historic architecture snobs who sneak around looking for updated kitchens to scoff at. Fun!
Ah, to have vacationed in the Valley in 1928, the year the Westward Ho Resort opened. The 15-story skyscraper was the height of glamour, the tip-top of the local food chain — and you can still glimpse a bit of that today. Providing you can get inside.The term "flop house" is not a nice one, and we're not even sure it technically applies, but this place is close and probably worse, if the smell in the lobby on a recent August afternoon was any indication. Only residents can roam the halls, one of the two security guards on duty warned us, explaining that the Westward Ho is now home to the elderly and "mentally disabled" (and with the latter, she made rude loopty-loops around her own ear — the international sign for "cuckoo"). No one we saw seemed particularly cuckoo, just down and out — even though they are living in a building with one of the prettiest lobbies in town. If you are fortunate to get inside, be sure to look both up (at the incredibly intricate ceiling) and down (at the perfectly preserved, painted tiles) and sneak past the guards to check the painted wooden beams in what appears to be a living room, waiting to be furnished. Such an ignored treasure — such a shame. If this place were in Portland, Oregon, it by now would be a hotel/brewery/nightclub/movie theater/tattoo parlor with a restaurant that grows its own herbs. Sigh.
In April, Michael Levine was back at it, cursing and working on the oldest remaining warehouse in Phoenix. The local artist, historic preservation advocate, and operator of Levine Machine Development pulled out his scissor lift and power washer, in hopes of restoring the Phoenix Seed & Feed Building before the national spotlight came with the MLB All-Star Game. With a high-pressure washer, Levine carefully lifted layers of old paint, brick by brick, to reveal the original Seed & Feed sign, which is more than 100 years old. And while a fresh old face isn't exactly what anyone hopes for after a lift appointment, it's exactly what (more than) a few Phoenix buildings need.
There used to be swastikas all over Arizona. And this was way before neo-Nazi-hugger Russell Pearce became state Senate president. Yep, back in pre-WWII Sand Land, swastikas proliferated: on official state road signs, on gas stations, hotels, maps, Navajo rugs and jewelry, baskets by the Maricopa and Pima Indians, you name it.Though the symbol is thousands of years old, an ancient icon of good fortune in many cultures, it was also a quintessential symbol of the American West. For the Navajos especially, it was a religious symbol, referred to as the "whirling logs," with its own mythology, used in art and sacred sand sculptures.Anglo-Americans adopted its use, and the symbol was so popular that it even adorned official buildings, such as the one housing the Arizona Department of Agriculture, catty-corner from the state Capitol, on the northeast corner of Adams and Washington streets. Next time you're there, look up, and you'll see swastika tiles ringing the roof of the structure, built in 1930, before that dork Adolf Hitler came along and really ruined a good thing.
All summer, all the time, it was "haboob this" and "haboob that" — amazing how a word we'd never heard before (despite having lived in Phoenix for decades) got tired practically overnight. For a while, all the boobie jokes ("I Love Haboobs," written in dust on your back windshield, for example) were funny, but by the end of August we were just ready for some rain. And we never did get a haboob to match our first — a real humdinger of a dust storm (that's what we called them back in the day) that put up a wall of dust between here and Tucson bigger than any of us old timers had ever seen. It was a spectacular (and terrifying) display — and one we're still cleaning up from. The latest reports estimate that the heavens dumped 50,000 pounds of dust on the city that evening alone.
Work hard, play hard. That was apparently the motto of Larry Black, a former top aide to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and Black's best buddy, Captain Joel Fox. These tireless public servants slaved for two years over a super-secret project to raise money for their boss' 2008 political campaign, then made an illegal $105,000 donation to the state Republican Party, which funded slimy TV ads targeting Arpaio's opponent. After the Attorney General's Office released its report this year, the public finally learned why Fox had struggled for months to keep the involvement of others in the scheme under wraps. He hadn't just been protecting his co-workers and wealthy posse members who had contributed to the fund. He'd also been protecting Black — because he loved Black. A search warrant served at Fox's home turned up several e-mails in which the pair, both married with children, expressed their feelings and referred glowingly to time they'd spent in a hotel room — not that there's anything wrong with that. Unless, as in this case, the relationship between superior officer and subordinate results in unprofessional and allegedly illegal activity.
Even Mike Tyson doesn't pack a punch powerful enough to cause someone to lose his leadership position in the state Senate. Aubry Ballard, the former flame of onetime Senate Majority Leader Scott Bundgaard, however, does. Ballard and Bundgaard went a few rounds on the side of a Valley freeway in February as they were driving home from a charity event. Details of the fight are sketchy, but Ballard suffered some cuts and bruises. After getting socked by Ballard, however, not only did Bundgaard have a pretty nice shiner, he went from being one of the most powerful people in the Senate to losing his leadership gig and getting charged with assault. In the end, Bundgaard avoided jail time but he does have to serve out the remainder of his term in office. Probably.
Quite literally, the food is garbage at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail. And humiliation is always on the menu. It starts as soon as an criminal suspect arrives, when the obligatory photograph taken during the booking process is posted on the Internet and entered into a taxpayer-funded game called Mugshot of the Day. Like a modern-day version of a stockade, the sheriff's web game aims to shame the prisoners. Typically, thanks to the callousness of an anonymous cyber-population, the "winner" is all too obviously mentally ill. Ha ha, look at the funny face! The one good thing that could be said about the ethics of this public contest is that all arrestees appear to be fair game. When one of the sons of David Hendershott (the chief deputy Arpaio had to fire this year for numerous policy violations and potential crimes) was arrested in July on suspicion of DUI and hit-and-run (no injuries, but still!), his picture appeared on Arpaio's game board — and shot to the top of the Mugshot of the Day rankings. Mysteriously, typing Hendershott's name into a search field didn't bring up his photo. At first, computer users had to find it by scrolling through the "DUI" category of the mugshot look-up site. A post on New Times' Valley Fever blog probably helped things along. Soon, he was listed in a separate web page of top contenders. After a day of online voting, Jeffery Hendershott, then 29, took the honors with more than 100 votes, narrowly beating out a woman arrested for alleged probation violation who inexplicably drew nearly as many votes. Hendershott's dad can rest more easily — his alleged crimes are being investigated by the federal government, which so far doesn't have its own National Mugshot of the Day award.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's the gift that keeps on giving (for political pundits, anyway). Not much will compare to Jan's epic moment of silence during a 2010 gubernatorial debate, during which she clammed up and giggled like a cheerleader for 20 painful seconds. But this is 2011, and Brewer's boneheaded-ness hasn't changed. Brewer, who's in her second term as governor, thinks she can run for a third — the Arizona Constitution, which clearly says she can't, be damned. According to the Constitution, "No member of the executive department shall hold that office for more than two consecutive terms . . . which shall include any part of a term served." Jan, however, seems to think the Constitution "is not really clear," and doesn't apply to her. Stay tuned.
What do you get when you cross politics, religion, and sex? One of the most bizarre sex scandals in the history of both sex and scandals, that's what. The sex scandal that has plagued the devout Mormon family of Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock is a yarn that needs no embellishment. Over several months, it was revealed that Brock's now-estranged wife, Susan, had a sexual relationship with a teen boy starting when he was 14. Turns out, her adult daughter, Rachel, was having sex with the same boy. Court documents indicate that both Supervisor Brock and leaders in the Mormon Church knew of the relationship but never called police — and that's the recipe for a fantastic sex scandal.
The best part about getting executed by the state of Arizona, as several convicted murderers have found out (the hard way) this year, is the food. But some use their last meal to pig out more than others. Take kid-killing rapist Donald Beaty, for example. Beaty was put to death for the 1984 rape and murder of 13-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff. The night before his state-ordered death in May, Beaty ordered the following: a beef chimichanga with salsa and sour cream, a double cheeseburger with onions, tomato, pickles, lettuce, mustard, and mayo, and French fries. He washed it down with a Diet Coke and 14 ounces (nearly a pound) of Rocky Road ice cream.
For whatever reason, meth fiends have a tendency to want to strip naked while in the throes of a binge. Similarly, they also tend to masturbate in public — and nobody did it better than Theodore Ruiz. While naked and masturbating outside a Phoenix hotel, Ruiz was approached by police. "You come back here to suck it," Ruiz told cops while continuing to beat off. Police asked Ruiz to put his hands behind his head, but his hands were busy — masturbating — and he refused. He again invited cops to "come and suck it." He continued to masturbate even after he was hit with pepper spray. Even as cops grabbed one of his arms to try and place him in handcuffs, Ruiz used his remaining free hand to continue pullin' his pud. Now that's dedication.
If you're forced to call Joe Arpaio's infamous gulag, Tent City, home and you like smoking weed, you might be inclined to try and sneak it in the old-fashioned way: your ass. This is a mistake. For starters, who wants to smoke ass weed? Secondly, who wants to stick weed up their ass? The solution: Have someone toss it over the fence — according to Sheriff Joe himself, that's how most of the contraband gets into the jail in the first place. Of course, if caught hurling bags of weed into the jail, the person recruited for such a task could find themselves behind bars with you.
Man Cave offers all kinds of signs for garages, pubs, etc., but the store's line of marijuana signs is their most colorful. The store's tin signs for medical marijuana include all sorts of pop culture imagery, from a Bob Dobbs-ish guy asking, "It's 4:19. Got a minute?" to a sign designed like a postage stamp and depicting a raven-haired Statue of Liberty suggestively sucking on her finger, above the words "Ganja Girl." Man Cave has plenty of tin marijuana signs depicting half-naked women, like their "Humboldt Honey" round sign (with an image of a busty blonde dressed as a bee/fairy) and its "Make Love Not War" stamp sign, depicting a topless blonde in a state of ecstasy, with a marijuana leaf necklace around her neck. Old anti-marijuana propaganda posters are available as well, such as the "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth" front-page newspaper image, and a Marihuana: The Plant from Hell movie poster. And in case you're not sure when it's going to be 4:20, Man Cave also offers a Humboldt Funk Clock with a redhead in short shorts holding a pot leaf. With so many sexy designs to choose from, why bother with those old Reefer Madness posters?
If you're a valid, card-holding medical-marijuana patient unable to procure your own medication, AzGrowPro has got you covered. This company connects patients with caregivers and has several certified caregivers ready to assist patients in the procurement and delivery of medical marijuana. AzGrowPro says its caregivers have access to "award-winning strains from Europe and California's finest," and it even offers assistance in paying potential patients' application fees. People who are looking to become caregivers can also work with AzGrowPro to find patients. The company will help potential caregivers complete their applications and find clients to refer for caregivers who already have their medical-marijuana cards. They even offer education on growing methods and creating edible marijuana products.
Just the phrase "teenage driver" is enough to send shivers up and down our spine. For some kids, getting behind the wheel is akin to another act that also may be fast, exciting, and potentially dangerous. Either way, someone might get screwed. Thank goodness (on one front, anyway) for Driving MBA. We have observed this mom-and-pop local operation in action and are impressed with its attention to detail, the intense one-on-one interactions between teacher and teen, and the distinct feeling that no one's getting out of there with a driving certificate unless they truly earn it. That's a good thing, not only for the kids, but also for the rest of us, right?
Donald W. Tucker knows the streets — working as a federal narcotics agent on the streets of Chicago and, later, as a member of the Secret Service. He works as a private dick in Scottsdale now, but with The Two-Edged Sword, he's added an "author" notch to his belt of accomplishments. The book explores his experiences as a black man and as an agent, discussing the difficulties he faced and recounting harrowing stories, including being called to escort the first black student at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, but being denied the chance to take part in the cultural milestone due to his race. Tucker's writing is clean and straightforward, allowing his stories to tell themselves. Some of the stories, like ones involving the Black Panthers, undercover operations, and complications at Indian casinos, seem as if they could come have straight from an Elmore Leonard novel — except they actually happened.
We'll admit, the gray complex with its drab green trim isn't much to look at, but you know what they say: You can't judge a book by its cover. Even with the death of the beloved Eastside Records, the University and Ash strip mall is home to just about everything we need. Cartel Coffee Lab's iced toddy? Check. Otto's pizza slices? Check. Headquarters Head Shop for all your bong supplies? Check. Buffalo Exchange for a sweet new outfit? Check. Wet Paint, Ash Ave Comics, HTC Piercing, and Cowtown Skateboards? Check and check. And with the Tempe farmers market and Casey Moore's right next door, we don't think we'll ever need to leave this corner.
This young museum (founded in 1993) is run entirely by volunteer staff, many of whom are family members of police officers, past and present. They love having visitors to the museum and will gladly take you on a tour of the museum exhibits and enthusiastically share all they know about the history of law enforcement in Phoenix. And there's plenty to see here, from Phoenix's first "jail" (a big rock with shackles) and an arrest ledger from the 1800s to a 1919 Ford Model T police car and a 9/11 exhibit featuring a piece of steel from the Twin Towers. Visitors can also learn all about late Valley resident Ernesto Miranda, after whom Miranda rights are named, and pay tribute to fallen officers killed in the line of duty (the first was officer Haze Burch, shot and killed by fugitives in 1925). Best of all, the museum is free (but donations are needed and appreciated).
As the career (and credibility) of former Pinal County Sheriff's Deputy Louie Puroll went down in flames this year, an actual hero has emerged from the PCSO: Deputy Robert Taylor, who saved two lives — in two separate incidents — in less than 45 minutes. The first was a choking infant, on whom Taylor performed CPR before getting the girl to a hospital. About 45 minutes later, while performing a wellness check at the home of an 83-year-old man, Taylor found the man trapped in a 15-foot-deep well and "barely conscious." Taylor crawled down the well and carried the man out to safety. Now, that's a cop.
While most interns spend their time filling Starbucks orders and finding ways to screw up making photocopies, Daniel Hernandez goes above and beyond. On January 8, Hernandez applied pressure to the entry wound on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' forehead after she was shot through the brain during the Tucson shooting rampage. The quick thinking of Hernandez, whose internship with Giffords started the morning of the shooting, is widely credited with saving the life of the congresswoman, who continues to recover from injuries sustained during the shooting. Hernandez claims he's not a hero. President Obama disagrees. "Daniel, I'm sorry, but we've decided you are a hero," the president said during a memorial service for the victims of the shooting.
We are quite certain that Jack Kennedy is rolling around in his grave knowing that Jon Kyl — bedrock of the far right, champion of all things conservative — now occupies his old Senate office on Capitol Hill. But even JFK would have to admit that Kyl's a hell of a politician. Earlier this year, Kyl stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate and announced that well over 90 percent of the work Planned Parenthood does is directly related to terminating pregnancies.Turns out, that number is closer to 3 percent. That didn't faze Kyl. Instead of apologizing or having the good grace to look embarrassed, he simply issued a statement explaining his was not meant to be a factual statement. Oh. Comments like that can be career-enders, but not for a guy like Kyl, who sailed right past it and landed himself a spot on the debt supercommittee this summer. For years, no one heard much from Jon Kyl — the gray, angular guy stood in the shadow of his colorful angry Senate colleague John McCain. As the story goes, McCain kept his foot on Kyl's throat, promising the junior senator he could take the spotlight once McCain was elected president, assuming Kyl was a good boy and helped on McCain's campaigns (which he did). Whoopsie — McCain never did become president, did he? Never mind. Kyl never has made a big splash here in Arizona (wait, neither has McCain), but he stayed busy in the shadows, building clout in Washington, where, for a guy like Jon Kyl, it really matters. (Pesky constituents!) Today, Kyl is the minority whip in the Senate, considered one of that body's big decision-makers. He's done well for himself. And we have a feeling he's about to do even better. The true test of his political abilities will come when we see what sort of plum job Jon Kyl lands when he leaves office in 2013.
Vivacious, personable, and brilliant, Cari Gerchick, Maricopa County's primary spokeswoman, makes her job look easy — when it most definitely is not. Having accurate facts at your fingertips when commenting on the business of government in the nation's fourth most populous county is a daunting task, one she does daily with aplomb. Now throw in the fact that she has to field questions about the Board of Supervisors' battles with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Maricopa County Attorney Andy Thomas, and you begin to grok the difficulty of her position. Still, Gerchick calls 'em as they should be called, and she has never veered from offering Arpaio or his henchmen a verbal castration, when necessary. Which is why the press generally digs her, because most PIOs master the art of giving bland pronouncements — the blander the better. Gerchick is never shrill, and she chooses her words carefully, but she's not scared of sparring with the idiots who make her day. You know, the simian-like badge-bearers over at Sheriff Joe's cop shop, who must curse the day she came to work for the county and suddenly made life far more interesting for the local Fourth Estate.
If Ted Simons were a jazzman, he'd be Paul Desmond, the longtime alto saxophonist for pianist Dave Brubeck and a master of the melodic and understated amid the tumult. Simons is so well informed about local politics and Issues with a capital (and Capitol) I that it's scary sometimes. Maybe he forgets stuff as soon as he's done with an interview, but somehow we doubt that. The unflappable and fair-minded Simons continues to stand out as a straight-shooter and general good egg in a media market increasingly dominated by uniformed screamers. He makes people feel comfortable on the set, even when he's asking the occasional tough question. For this, we applaud him — loudly.
Plastic hair, shiny suits, lackluster "reporting," and corny jokes: That's what you can typically expect from a local TV news guy. KSAZ's John Hook is the exception to that rule. While KPHO ends every spoon-fed segment with a reporter squawking about how he's "telling it like it is," John Hook actually questions what politicians say to him. For example, when Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu wrote off New Times as a "conspiracy theory newspaper," Hook was quick to jump in and point out to the sheriff that "In New Times' defense, Sheriff Babeu, they have done some of the best journalism in this town over the years. I mean, they've broken some big, big stories." His defense of New Times aside, Hook is an honest, hard-hitting journalist — not an empty suit whose only talent is reading from a teleprompter. Though he's not bad at that, either.
This mighty mite stands out as a welcome dinosaur in an ugly biz that favors the young and the pretty, the easy soundbite, and the superficial. Watkiss sure knows how to sink his teeth into a yarn and not let go until he's good and ready. Case in point has been his obsessive coverage of polygamist pervert Warren Jeffs and his renegade Mormon sect: Watkiss and our former colleague John Dougherty were the only two reporters on that wild case for years, and they moved the narrative forward like good old-fashioned muckrakers. Watkiss (and the rest of us) are fortunate that Channel 3 encourages him to spend endless hours doing real journalism. End result? A great storyteller gets to tell great stories — and we're all the better for it.
Valeria Fernandez is not just the best Spanish-language journalist in Arizona, she's one of the best reporters in the state, bar none. Originally from Uruguay, this tough-as-nails Fourth Estater was once a staff reporter for La Voz. Now she freelances for outlets worldwide and works regularly for CNN Español, La Opinion, New America Media, and Inter Press Services, among others. (Full disclosure: She's freelanced for Phoenix New Times, as well.)Like that's not enough, she's been putting together a documentary about the roiling immigration debate in Arizona, tentatively titled Two Americans. One of those "Americans" is Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Fernandez has skewered so many times in print that he might as well be her personal pincushion. When Valeria and her fellow documentary makers posted a YouTube teaser for their film of Arpaio comparing Tent City to a concentration camp, the sheriff's flacks began barring her from press conferences. Fernandez wears it like a badge of honor, all while she sets up Joe for the next verbal take-down.
There are no DJs to muck up the proceedings, there are no commercials, and there's almost no information given as to who is behind the AOR sounds of KCDX 103.1 FM. You get the call letters every few songs, and a mysterious radio voice identifying the 2,700-watt station as being broadcast from Florence and Phoenix. KCDX plays tunes from the collection of Ted Tucker, a former pharmacist who set up the station as a showcase for a couple thousand of his favorite jams. Sometimes the station plays popular cuts from rock 'n' roll radio standards like Aerosmith or Pink Floyd, but Tucker is just as likely to throw in left-field selections from Badfinger, Fairport Convention, or The Blues Magoos, making it one of the most unpredictable stations in the Valley.
We have always loved public radio, so tuning the dial to 91.5 is a no-brainer. But lately, KJZZ and National Public Radio have really kicked it up a notch with coverage from their "Changing America" desk. Usually, names like that make us gag a little, but in this case, these journalists are more than living up to it, providing coverage not just of immigration issues but other stories that affect how we live, work, and play in the Southwest. These stories are more in-depth than what we see in the daily paper, and they blow away anything on TV. In fact, more and more, KJZZ is our go-to source for news. Right after a certain alt-weekly, of course.
According to the Kool Herc's 2005 tome, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, the crackalackin' urban genre has been around since way back in the 1970s, when street hustlers like Kool Keith and Grandmaster Flash started spitting out songs on NYC street corners. You wouldn't know it by listening to some of the other hip-hop stations in the Valley, which tend to ignore old-school hip-hop in favor of spinning up "today's hits" ad nauseam. Not so at The Beat, where DJs such as Big Boy, Ruben S., and Tyler Martinez mix classic cuts like Whodini's "Friends" and Digital Underground's "Freaks of the Industry" into regular rotation along with some New Jack Swing-style hits from Bel Biv Devoe, or maybe even a little alt-rap by A Tribe Called Quest. While the signal coming from The Beat's broadcast antennas scattered around the Valley causes listeners to flip among one of the station's three frequencies, it's totally worth the hassle, especially if it means getting to hear some dope gangsta shit from Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.
During the day, you tune into KJZZ 91.5 FM for the news, but at night, the station turns all manners of blue — playing classic and modern jazz, and devoting Sunday night to Those Lowdown Blues with blues impresario Bob Corritore. On weekday evenings, DJ Blaise Lantana brings the music of artists like Chet Baker, Art Tatum, and Oscar Peterson to the late-night dial. With KYOT focusing more on soft pop and soul, KJZZ is about all there is for jazz on the Valley FM dial. Until someone kick-starts a free jazz and acid fusion station, we know our tuners will be set to that jazzy station north of all those Christian rock frequencies.
It's cool enough that independent radio station KWSS 106.7 FM is commercial-free (excluding the on-air plugs during programming for "underwriters"/sponsors), but it's the station's lack of rigid format/computer-generated playlists that really sets it apart. While tuning into any advertiser-driven rock radio station in the Valley guarantees you'll hear the latest hard rock "hits" everybody else is playing, you get no such guarantee with KWSS. In fact, you're more likely to hear an alternative radio hit from 1985 before you'll get the latest Nickelback tune. And that's fine with us — we'd much rather have eclectic programming like Erratic Radio (hosted by Westley Allen, who plays in local bands The Plainfield Butchers and The Rebel Set) and Live Transmission (hosted by notable Valley club DJ William Reed). In addition to obscure alternative cuts and new tunes by emerging artists, KWSS gives lots of love to local artists, pimping Valley rockers' songs in a daily top five list — so instead of being stuck with any other station's "drive-time" drivel, we get to cruise to tunes by Phoenix bands like The Love Me Nots, Kongos, Peachcake, and Banana Gun.
Yeah, we're a little more partial to classic country like George Jones, Willie Nelson, and Loretta Lynn, but you've got to hand it to KMLE 108 FM for bringing the newest and hottest country pop to the airwaves. You'll hear all the hits from well-known acts like Rascal Flatts and Tim McGraw, as well as newer breakout stars like The Zac Brown Band and Lady Antebellum. The station's morning show, Tim and Willy in the Morning, is a huge hit with Valley listeners, as the irreverent dudes crack wise on local news (for a taste, check out their parody tune, "Pot Fell from the Sky," about airborne weed in Yuma, sung to the tune of Alan Parson's "Eye in the Sky").
We're all for getting into new music, but there are times when you don't feel like checking out hot new artists, and you just want to jam to something you know. Mega 104.3 FM brings the goods, spinning classic old-school jams like "Car Wash" by Rose Royce and "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club. Best of all, Mega 104.3 hosts the syndicated classic Art "Oldies But Goodies" Laboe from 10 to noon Mondays through Thursdays and on Sunday nights, spinning the kind of soul, doo-wop, and classic R&B that sound best late at night. Dedications are welcome, of course.
Modesty and tact aren't two of John Holmberg's better virtues. As the titular host of rock radio station KUPD's a.m. drive-time program Holmberg's Morning Sickness, the 39-year-old attempts to both entertain and offend as many listeners as possible. Same goes for the rest of his kooky cadre of sidekicks, which includes madcap man-child Brady Bogan and the show's long-suffering producer, Dick Toledo. Few things seem sacred on the show, which airs every weekday morning starting at 6 a.m., whether it's riffing on celebrities, humorously discussing the toilet habits of septuagenarian Arizona Senator John McCain, or suggesting that Arizona Diamondbacks radio announcer Greg Schulte might be gay. Holmberg's also a gifted impressionist, as he demonstrates during the program's weekly parody of the Hollywood Squares. Our absolute favorite Holmberg impression is "Buffalo Binks," a mash-up of Silence of the Lambs serial killer Buffalo Bill and Jar-Jar Binks. It was hilariously wrong in so many ways, particularly when Holmberg began doing dialogue like "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again" in the reviled Star Wars character's nasally twang. By the way, John, you owe us for the auto detailing we had done after spitting up coffee all over the dash.
KWSS morning man Beef Vegan has a gravelly baritone that sounds a lot like a young Wolfman Jack. It's doubtful, however, that Jack would push things quite as far as Beef does — even during his outlaw years in Mexico. Accompanied by a pair of sidekicks known as Big Buddha and Shorty, Beef mans the morning show on a low-power FM station audible inside the 101 loop. In an era when most of Phoenix's radio personalities seem to be playing it safe, hoping to lay low and avoid the axes wielded by the corporate conglomerates that own them, Beef is a breath of fresh, if pungent, air. The scruffy DJ (real name: Brad
Pfirrman) doesn't have much to lose, which may be why he has a lot to say. Beef's station has only a low-power license that doesn't allow for ad sales, and he doesn't get paid to do his show, so he'll gladly play music outside his station's indie rock format or antagonize guest comedian Adam Carolla to the point that Carolla dedicated eight minutes of his own Internet radio show to dissing him. Sure, there are some rough edges on Beef's show, The Morning Infidelity. For example, it's probably not strictly necessary to put every caller on the air, even when they're totally unintelligible and possibly drunk at 7 a.m. But, hey, that's all part of the fun. You never know what you're going to get from Beef, which is a great reason to tune in.
The next time you walk around US Airways Center, consider this: An underground neighborhood — Chinatown or "China Alley," as it was once referred to — was centered right at Madison and First streets.
Census figures from 1890 put the number of Chinese people residing in Phoenix at 200, though given that many were single men living in boarding houses, the number may have been under-reported. Certainly not all Chinese residents lived in this neighborhood bounded by Jackson, Jefferson, First and Third streets, but the majority did at what may have been the height of Phoenix's Chinatown community.
There were Chinese-owned businesses such as grocery stores, vegetable stands, laundries, and restaurants. By 1899, there was a joss house, boarding houses, and another business, Dr. Ah Yim's Chinese Tea and Herb Sanitarium on First Street just north of Madison. In 1910, the three largest restaurants in Phoenix were Chinese-owned.
But this being our "underground" issue, we have to mention there were some pretty persistent and salacious rumors, too — mainly that a system of subterranean tunnels criss-crossed underneath Phoenix's old Chinatown, connecting dens of inequity.
This was such a long-held piece of gossip that a man recalling his Phoenix childhood in 1982 in an article in the Arizona Capitol Times says there was "conviction among the youth of Phoenix that Chinatown lay over a sinister maze of tunnels and underground rooms put to god-knows-what use. Stories about mysterious goings-on were common."
Okay — vegetable vendors, sure, but gambling tunnels?
While it is true that after 1909, gambling and opium smoking were illegal in Arizona, both were still available in Chinatown, and opium joints and gambling dens, visited by both Chinese and white residents, were raided occasionally by law enforcement. We found this gem from the Arizona Republican (March 9, 1910): "Four opium dens were discovered, all in full blast, and packed to the doors with hop-smoking Chinks."
And a Republican article from March 17, 1923, said officers involved in a narcotics raid "made human rats of themselves in exploring the underground tunnels which played an important part in the narcotics activities of the men taken into custody. A majority of the dope taken in the raid was discovered in these subterranean passages."
So there were definitely sensationalized reports in Anglo newspapers, but was there any real evidence to support the rumor that a vast network of underground tunnels existed?
In 1989, archaeologists undertook a survey of the site around the arena prior to its construction and published a report of their findings. Their dig did unearth evidence of narcotics use and gambling (through fragments such as opium cans; see other artifacts, pictured above) found in basements of formerly Chinese-operated buildings, but there was no mention of a system of tunnels.
The terms Chinatown and "China Alley" were used by Phoenix newspapers and on maps up until the 1940s, to describe the area. But by that time, local Chinese populations had chosen consciously to integrate and scattered throughout the city.
"My name is Westley Allen, I think — let me check my notes." That's a direct quote from Westley Allen, who hosts Erratic! Radio each Tuesday night on KWSS 106.7 from 8 to 10 p.m. Allen plays the best in garage, punk, and crude-ass rock 'n' roll, spinning tunes from all over the map, like garage-rock stars The Black Lips and head-scratcher selections from polka man Frankie Yankovic ("Weird" Al's pops), while hosting music from local and national bands like The Limit Club, Labor Party, Cat Party, Digital Leather, and more. Sometimes Allen broadcasts live from clubs like The Rogue, but even when he's in the studio, there's a wild, anything-goes feel, something that's sorely missing from the FM dial in Phoenix.
Jacy Shepherd mans the boards at Wickenburg's Real Country 96.3 FM (you can pick up the station here in the Valley, no worries) from 4 to 7 p.m., and her sultry, smooth voice works wonders toward easing the pain of afternoon rush-hour when paired with modern country hits from the likes of Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins and classics like "Big Bad John," by Jimmy Dean. The freeways may lock up during her shift, but Shepherd has a calming style, whether she is practicing her Spanish on air or just playing the part of the "aw shucks" country girl and remembering the clouds of dust in her rearview mirror as she drove down dirt roads in her past. Yeah, we wish.
Medical marijuana in Arizona went from pipe dream to reality, thanks to the grassroots movement by the pro-Prop 203 Marijuana Policy Project and its leader, Andrew Meyers. Meyers and MPP collected about 250,000 signatures last year to get the initiative on the November 2010 ballot. The measure passed by a narrow margin thanks to countless hours of campaigning by Meyers and other supporters. The future of the law is still in the weeds, but it's important to give credit where it's due. Congrats, Mr. Meyers.
We've heard a few whoppers from politicians in our time, but none tops what onetime Phoenix City Council candidate Gary Whalen told a New Times staffer earlier this year. It was discovered that Whalen, a Tea Party Republican, had been in a scuffle with his live-in boyfriend. The cops were called and a report was written stating that a drunken Whalen threw the partially naked man out of his apartment. Awkward. When contacted by New Times about the scuffle, Whalen actually denied being Whalen. He then called back shortly after — from the same number we called. Sure enough, "Gary Whalen" popped up on our caller ID. The man claiming to not be Whalen then explained there was a mix up: It was "Gaby" Whalen who was involved in the scuffle. Sure, "Gaby" Whalen was mistakenly written on one of several court documents, but the error later was corrected by court officials. Of course, it was Gary who got into a fight with his boyfriend — and who spoke to New Times. He ended his candidacy the next day.
Tucked beneath the lobby of the tallest building in the state, this sprawling underground atrium originally served as a mini-mall for the building's 2,100 employees. Recently remodeled as part of this 40-story skyscraper's $14 million upgrade, most of the stores are long gone, but in-the-know downtowners still ride the escalator down to hidden gems like the Coin Room cafeteria. More important, this surprisingly airy basement is also a soothing reminder of 1970s-style corporate Zen. Sitting here in climate-controlled perfection, surrounded by well-dressed business types and staring up at the high-rises out of every window, you're transported to a time when downtown Phoenix really was the center of the Valley's universe. Now if someone would just bring back the old penthouse dining space spanning the 37th and 38th floors and featuring killer 360-degree city views from nearly 500 feet above the Valley floor.
In Spanish, puente means "bridge." And the peace warriors of the Phoenix-based Puente Movement are building a bridge to an Arizona future free of nativism, bigotry, and hateful anti-immigrant laws pimped by the likes of state Senate President Russell Pearce. Yeah, they're nonviolent, but they kick much nativist hiney and have fun doing it. Their leader Sal Reza, can put a hundred thousand pro-immigrant protesters in the streets like it was nothing. Sometimes he and his people get arrested performing acts of civil disobedience, like their heroes Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. And sometimes they're targeted for retaliation by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom they regularly assail while protesting him outside his headquarters at the Wells Fargo Building downtown. It don't sweat 'em none. They know their vision will one day be triumphant, though they may have to wear a few steel bracelets in the meantime.
Burly and bearded with an elbow ever ready to bend, Drew Sullivan is a committed anarchist who can discuss the relative merits of the black bloc (where anarchists don black clothing and hide their faces during protests) or hold forth on the theories of Hakim Bey and Mikhail Bakunin while sucking back his sixth pint of Guinness and ordering six more.But you're as likely to see him on the front lines of an anarchist street brawl with neo-Nazis as you are in his favorite bar, tipping a few. And oddly for an anarchist and strident critic of capitalism, he owns a business, Ash Avenue Comics and Books, where debates over Batman and Robin and the Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips series Criminal take precedence over the theories of Pyotr Kropotkin and Pierre Joseph Proudhon. A modern contradiction, he is, with a lust for life and a passion for political theory wrapped up in one personality. He'd be as comfortable in a pub in London or a coffeehouse in Barcelona as he is with a comic book or a treatise. He's a bit of an anachronism, a return to the days of the Spanish Civil War, to the Haymarket Riot and Sacco and Vanzetti, and the times when being an "anarchist" actually meant something.
Yes, we know this museum is closer to Tucson than Phoenix, but the bottom line is that the Titan Missile Museum is the only missile site in the nation that the public can actually visit. So if you think in terms of the entire country, this missile museum is right in our backyard. And this place is like nowhere else in the Valley: It's a complex of steel-reinforced concrete, completely underground, with three-ton blast doors and a 103-foot Titan II missile. The missile silo, which was operational starting in 1963, was one of more than 32 Titan II silos throughout the country. The missile in Green Valley was de-activated in 1982 (along with the rest of the Titan IIs), but this is the only silo that survived demolition. And the museum still sees a lot of action — many scenes from the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact were shot there, and the public can tour the facility. Tours include restored engines, the control room, and a simulated launch. There are even overnight stays in the crew facilities for more adventurous tourists.
It's bad enough that a gum-smacking idiot like Anthem Republican Lori Klein is a state senator, but then, Arizona's Legislature is filled to the brim with lightweights who've never evolved emotionally or intellectually past the eighth grade. She is also a class-A bigot and Mexican-hater, yet even that is fairly common these days in Sand Land's highest deliberative body.A water-carrier for the state's premier xenophobe, state Senate President Russell Pearce, Klein sticks out because she is so crass, so proud of being what she is: white trash. Along with her colleague in prejudice, state Senator Al Melvin, she gets her kicks during Senate hearings cracking jokes at any citizens and lobbyists who speak English with an accent. She once told Latino demonstrators outside the Capitol to go back to Mexico, despite the fact they were American citizens and legal residents. And she's infamous for reading a letter on the Senate floor from a substitute teacher filled with lies about Mexican-American school kids and how they'd rather be gangsters than get an education. When it was revealed that the letter was bunk, Klein was unapologetic. A loathsome, racist cretin, she has no place in public life, and yet there she sits in the Legislature, one more reason for the world to regard Arizona with horror, and one more reason for Arizonans to be embarrassed.
Does anyone like Carlos Galindo? Well, he is happily married. And the sometimes abrasive talk-radio host can boast a loyal listenership for his various radio shows for different outlets. But he doesn't play well with the other immigrant activists in town. And he likes to pick verbal fights with those on the right and the left, even though he often refers to himself as an "unapologetic liberal."All the same, Galindo is like a portly, Latino version of Batman. When something's going down in the community, the dude is there. He might be protesting a lefty like Democratic state Senator Kyrsten Sinema, dogging racist legislators like wingnut state Senator Lori Klein, or harassing police officers going to a benefit for killer cop Richard Chrisman over at the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association's offices. We've seen Galindo confront racists, cops, tea baggers, other members of the news media, and prejudiced state Senate President Russell Pearce, who once shoved him after Galindo got his goat. Perfect, he ain't. But sometimes you need a streetfighter like Galindo to take on the bullies and cowards who pollute our public life. And if he pisses off folks as a consequence, for Galindo, that's the price of doing business.
Iraq war. Ring a bell? The second one, we mean, under Bush II. Cost nearly a trillion dollars (at last count), more than 4,400 in U.S. military lives, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, and we still have freaking troops there. So what was that all about? Cheap oil? Sheesh, look at the gas pumps, boyo. Weapons of mass destruction? You mean, weapons of mass distraction. As we all know, the WMDs never existed. Anyway, when former president George W. Bush's slobbering top adviser and justifier, Karl Rove, came to speak at the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce's Forum Series last year (at a cost to attendees of $75 a head), the peaceniks over at the End the War Coalition threatened to "arrest" Rove as a war criminal. Of course, Rove is a war criminal. So are Bush and all of his ex-White House co-conspirators. The End the War Coalition brought zip-tie handcuffs to the event and signs indicting Rove for his part in an illegal war. They never got anywhere near Rove, natch. But the signs and the zip-ties sent a message: Rove is not beyond mankind's justice for his rationalizations for the invasion of Iraq. And there's always the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which at least in theory could do some real prosecutin' one of these days.
Faithful Word Baptist Church "Pastor" Steven Anderson's fear of faygelehs is well documented. He's perhaps best known for praying that President Barack Obama would die of cancer because he "has wrought lewdness in America." Anderson's highway of hate recently led him to teen pop star Justin Bieber, whom Anderson recently compared to a "sissified, effeminate twinkie." Anderson's got a problem with "metro-Christians," and was spouting off about the difference between feminine and effeminate when he started bashing Bieber during a recent sermon. Some call a fascination with Bieber's sexuality "Bieber Fever." In Anderson's case, it's just the ramblings of self-loathing, homophobic lunatic who seems a little too interested in the sexuality of a teenage boy — if you catch our drift.
Stephen Montoya is a throwback to the Clarence Darrow days of lawyerin', when attorneys (or at least some of them) stood up for the oppressed and battled injustice with a combination of skillful oratory and brilliant legal maneuvering. As a kid, Montoya considered becoming a doctor or a priest. Instead, he ended up a civil rights attorney. And whether he's blasting the government in one of the federal lawsuits brought against Senate Bill 1070, taking up the cause of pro-immigrant activist Sal Reza when he was banned from the state Senate by Russell Pearce (and subsequently arrested), or suing a business that's discriminated against its employees, Montoya's always flaying the mighty and making sure the scales of justice tip toward those whose rights have been trampled. Indeed, if there were more lawyers like Montoya, we get the distinct feelin' there might be fewer dead lawyer jokes.
Kyrsten Sinema, a state senator from Legislative District 15 and formerly a state House Representative for the same liberal enclave, is perhaps best known for being the foil for state Senate President Russell Pearce, opposing him in committee and on the House and Senate floors on a host of issues, the most notable being Pearce's dreaded breathing-while-brown statute Senate Bill 1070.Though she sprang from conservative Mormon stock, she's a fierce defender of lefty causes in a state that's so far right it could tilt the Earth on its axis. A lawyer who is currently working on her doctorate at Arizona State University's School of Justice and Social Inquiry, she's been a valiant champion for the poor, the underprivileged, and the state's immigrant population.Time magazine chose her as one of its 40 under 40 political up-and-comers, and she's served the Obama administration on its White House Health Reform Task Force. But we like her for spearheading the Democratic effort in the Legislature to oppose Pearce's nefarious proposals at every turn, albeit from the outnumbered ranks of the Democratic minority. This, she does, while claiming to "love" the belligerent bigot in purely Christian terms. That's why we encourage Sinema to "love" Pearce a little harder every day the Legislature's in session.
Bill Straus can talk. And what he says is worth listening to. As regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of Arizona, he's the media's go-to guy when it comes to discussing the ever-broiling ethnic strife here in Sand Land, hate crimes, Senate Bill 1070, neo-Nazis, or the latest anti-Latino antics of state Senate President Russell Pearce and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.In a state where some civil rights groups (and we won't name names) are virtually invisible, Straus is always there to draw the bright line of what should be unacceptable in civilized society. Prejudice and hatred, and those who preach them, are his enemies. His friends are Hispanic, Asian, African-American, Hindu, Native American, and every variation of humanity under the sun. The gift of gab? That comes naturally. As a young man, he parlayed his verbal dexterity into a job announcing horse races. Then into talk radio, long before all talk-radio hosts were right-wing muttonheads. Now he uses those same skills to decry discrimination, racism, and bigotry of all kinds. His detractors say that Straus never shuts up. We hope he never does.
The Book of Matthew tells us, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." Every time we hear that passage of scripture, we can't help but think of Pastor Warren H. Stewart Sr. of Phoenix's First International Baptist Church. A doctor of divinity, Stewart thirsts for righteousness like no one else we know, calling on the powerful tradition of spiritual leadership and social advocacy that's characteristic of African-American churches.
With impassioned sermons from the pulpit and speeches at civil rights demonstrations, Stewart led the fight two decades ago for an Arizona holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. Now, he helps lead the fight against anti-immigrant sentiment in this state, joining forces with Latinos and people of all colors who demand righteousness when it comes to the treatment of the undocumented. In the case of the King holiday, Stewart's "thirst" was slaked in 1992 after years of struggle. Which gives promise that one day, his "hunger" for immigration reform will also be fulfilled.
Margaret "Peggy" Plews has devoted her life to advocating for the plight of Arizona's incarcerated. By her lonesome, she maintains the Prison Abolitionist website, dedicated to the eradication of the "prison industrial complex." To this end, she maintains correspondence with prisoners in the Arizona Department of Corrections, who tip her off to untimely deaths, abuse from guards, systemic neglect, and poor living conditions. She reports it all on her website, much to the chagrin of ADC satraps.But that's not all Plews is up to. She also writes chalk graffiti on sidewalks and walls all over Phoenix, conveying anti-establishment messages of love. Plews is a dreamer, to be sure. She dreams of a day when there are no prisons. A pipe dream, sure. But Plews has no problem playing Don Quixote. She revels in the role.
Who's watching the detectives? And the patrol cops, and the highway patrol, and the sheriff's deputies? Phoenix Copwatch, natch. Started in 1998 by ostensible anarchists, Copwatch trains observers to monitor the po-po and videotape them as they pull over cars or stop folks on foot. The Copwatchers are there to "stop police brutality," and it's notable that Officer Friendly tends to be a lot friendlier when he's being videotaped. (Well, who isn't?) Copwatchers have been especially effective in monitoring Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-immigrant sweeps of Latino neighborhoods in the Valley. Under the collective gaze of Copwatch, the sweeps became a game of cat and mouse, with MCSO deputies as the mice. Video of possible civil rights violations was turned over to the ACLU, and if Arpaio's boys in beige were never waylaid, at least they were met toe-to-toe by the activists' critical eyes.
Sergeant Al Ramirez is the coolest kind of cop: He prevents bad stuff from happening, all while protecting your First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. A good day for him is not arresting anybody. His mission is making sure people on opposing sides of an issue holler and fuss at each other, but never come to blows and end up going home without incident.That's a tall order when you're assigned, as Ramirez has been for many years, to the Phoenix Police Department's Community Response Squad, which is charged with keeping the peace at demonstrations and protests of all kinds, from rallies by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement to marches by those opposed to Senate Bill 1070. Often, Ramirez is in the middle, making sure people can express themselves, whatever their political affiliations, without violence ensuing. He's been a cop for decades and has the wisdom to know that it's better to talk people down than threaten arrest. Though in case you get any ideas, those handcuffs on his belt still work, bro, and he's got forearms as big as Popeye's, in case you choose to tango instead of talk.
Talk about an easy act to follow! Andy Thomas quit his gig as Maricopa County Attorney to run for higher office (and lose) after laying waste to the concept of dispensing justice equally during his six years at the helm. Hell, the demagogic Harvard law school grad is probably going to lose his ticket to practice law, at the very least. Montgomery, who assumed office in January after working a few years for Thomas as a prosecutor, has every bit the hang-'em-high bent of his notorious predecessor. But that's where the resemblance ends. Montgomery took pains from the start of his tenure to bridge the chasm between his office and the two other county government branches — judicial and legislative. He is not going to have a pliant Barnett Lotstein, Phil McDonnell, Lisa Aubuchon, or Sally Wells-type (Andy Thomas lieutenants) do his bidding. We will continue to disagree with him about a lot of stuff. But a breath of fresh air is what Bill Montgomery certainly has been.
Jack Harris was a Phoenix cop for nearly 40 years who rose through the ranks to take the helm for six years. He spent a few decades in "motors," patrolling the mean streets on his trusty motorcycle before landing as a top administrator for his agency. A likable and straight-talking fellow, Harris retired as "police chief" for about a minute, and then was rehired as "public safety director." That enabled him to collect hefty pension benefits and a substantial salary. But things went south after Harris got crossways with the increasingly politicized police union, which successfully demonized him as "pro"-illegal immigration and other such nonsense. The union and other Harris haters won the day after a bizarre flap over kidnapping statistics, and the chief got the boot just one day after publicly telling his enemies, "Anyone who wants these stars can come and get them!" They did. But they didn't get his pension — actually, quite lucrative pensions. Harris is in line in about a year to start getting a second check for his long tenure. We should be so lucky to get canned.
Get this. An underground tunnel runs beneath Phoenix City Hall, connecting City Hall with other city buildings, including the Calvin Goode Building on the south side of Washington Street. Accessed by a freight elevator, the passage is used by city workers tending to underground equipment. But in a pinch, it's also regarded as an emergency escape for the mayor during a security threat — or to evade pesky reporters camped outside the Mayor's Office, waiting to ask questions after a particularly contentious city council meeting. While we're at it, we'll tell you about another nifty escape route for the mayor: a set of interior stairs that connects the 11th and the 12th floors of City Hall. To get away from someone on the 11th floor, easily slip upstairs, effectively avoiding the public elevators on the 11th floor, and hop into the 12th-floor elevators. Don't worry, the elevators won't make a stop on the 11th floor. Once inside, a special pass waved in front of the elevator panel engages a nonstop ride straight to a secured parking garage beneath City Hall reserved for top city officials.
To see an illustrated map of the
mayor's escape route, visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/best of2011.
Even when it's not 115 degrees out, we like to head underground to our favorite secret subversive hideaway, where we can relish the big-city vibe of an underground tunnel while also enjoying live music and public art, besides. And even though the Camelback Pedestrian Underpass isn't exactly a secret (it would be hard to hide a much-publicized passageway that runs under Camelback Road and connects two of the city's most popular dining and shopping destinations), we can't help feeling kind of like we're in on a special alternative-universe version of Phoenix, where we're watching a free performance in an underground subway station.Completed in 2007, this glorious, 86-foot-long pedestrian underpass just east of 24th Street on Camelback provides safe passage for people moving from, say, the condominiums and office park at Esplanade Center to the shops and restaurants at Biltmore Fashion Park. Seen from the street, the underpass looks like a bump in the road with nice xeriscaping on either side. Down below you'll find decorative pavement, lush landscaping, and rubberized asphalt to minimize noise and increase proper air circulation. But the real secret to the well-lit tunnel's success is its otherness: We feel as if we've wandered onto the platform of an especially glamorous subway stop, where we always linger to read the pamphlets being passed out by a city-wise political activist or enjoy the music of one of the several musicians who perform there from time to time. We gaze at the lovely terrazzo mosaic and pretend we're in the big city, where one can go briefly underground, only to emerge at the other end having enjoyed getting to where we're going.
Arizona has been referred to as the "meth lab of democracy." One look at some of the asinine legislation that passes through the state Legislature and you'll know why. Picking the most humiliating of the droves of embarrassing bills our leaders waste their time — and your money — considering is no easy task. However, a clear winner has emerged: Representative Carl Seele's "Birther Bill," which could have required a presidential candidate to provide documentation describing what his penis looks like to get on the ballot in Arizona. Even Governor Jan Brewer wasn't batty enough to take that bait.
People can be lame, so the next time your best friend has a make-out session with your boyfriend or your friends draw on your face after you accidentally pass out with your shoes on — ditch 'em and pick up a new best friend from Maricopa County Animal Care Control. If you're looking for loyalty, companionship and unconditional love, puppy dogs and kitty cats are where it's at — we dare you to take a trip to the so-called "pound" without falling in love. You can find just about every breed of dog and a rainbow of colorful cats and kittens at this animal shelter, and they take care of all the pesky details like spaying and neutering, vaccines, and microchipping for a super-reasonable adoption price. One of the ultra-friendly volunteers or a member of their knowledgeable staff will help make sure you team up with the perfect new pet.
Every now and then, everybody needs a birth or death certificate. However daunting the task, this office's staff (who are somehow both blazingly efficient and reassuringly motherly) will help you get it done. Normally, we never say this about the bureaucracy, but call first — you'll get a human being who'll make sure everything's in place before you show up in person. When you do, and you have to take a number, don't despair. Just turn off your phone and enjoy a few minutes of serenity; they'll be with you in no time. And there's a free parking lot!
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to take their terrible toll on Arizonans. So many loved ones have died while serving our country, or have been injured on the battlefield (or wherever), or simply have been separated from their families for years on end. In generations past, military veterans and their families often had nowhere to turn but to that bureaucratic nightmare known simply as the VA, short for Veterans Administration (or Very Apathetic). But thanks to this very cool public/private partnership — which includes the Arizona National Guard, the Arizona Department of Veterans Services, and a whole bunch of other folks — many services are far more readily available these days for souls who are suffering from traumatic brain injury, looking for work, or just need counseling for themselves and their families. Things are far from perfect for our nation's returning vets in this area, obviously. But this coalition is a step in the right direction, which is saying a lot in these difficult times.
Childsplay has done it again — scored another unsurpassed season of fun and fancy. And it's not as if they don't have competition; there are several other children's theater venues in town that are quite good. But no one comes close to Childsplay for a finer mix of good scripts, delightful acting, and fun times for kids and adults alike. Maybe it's because of Katie McFadzen, who plays birds and little girls and ice cream scoops with such gusto. Maybe it's D. Daniel Hollingshead's super costuming skills, or Karen Siefried's clever set designs that help transport audiences both old and young to a better place, where they can enjoy the huge talents of Jon Gentry and Debra K. Stevens and D. Scott Withers and Andres Alcala. Or maybe it's because they mix popular favorites (like Charles Way's adaptation of Mary Norton's The Borrowers) with original works, like last season's The Imaginators, written by Childsplay ensemble member Dwayne Hartford. Whatever the reason, Childsplay is your best bet for kid theater.
Detour Company Theatre provides an arts education and performance opportunity for adults with developmental challenges — including deafness, blindness, and autism — through theater. Detour is all about fun, companionship, and celebrating each individual who makes each production happen. The end result is pretty terrific, too. Sam, the founder and creative director, leads the annual productions on a shoestring to create amazing performances.
Reviews were mixed for their season-ending Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party, but that show — as well as so many others offered by this smart, talented troupe of community players — was sold out. So who cares what critics say? In a town overrun with little theaters (most of them a revolving door for would-be thespians that offer nothing more exciting than another rerun of West Side Story), this petite playhouse caters to a more discerning theater-going crowd. This season, artistic director Ron May and company offered up a rousing production of Neil LaBute's stunning meditation on looksism, reasons to be pretty; a naughty-but-nice look at racism called Learn to be Latina; and Steve Yockey's wet and wonderful Octopus, full of naked men and very moist special effects. While not every one of this tiny troupe's productions is a winner, most of the time they come closer than any other local troupe with a nice mix of alternative theater done up right. We're looking forward to their next season, set to launch this month.
We don't have a lot of professional theater companies here, but the handful we do have are pretty amazing. We're particularly fond of Actors Theatre, a resident company at the Herberger Theater Center and one of the most diverse theaters in the state. This past season, they kicked off another stellar season with Sarah Ruhl's The Vibrator Play (which is, in fact, about vibrators) and things only got better from there. Right now, they're presenting A Conversation with Edith Head, a comic Hollywood biography that frankly we could count on no other theater company in town to bring us. We're sorry that Actors Theatre dropped their wonderful A Christmas Carol after 19 years, but we're looking forward to its winter replacement: Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's delicious Hunter Gatherers. We've always counted on this company to bring us unusual and unusually competent productions, and they rarely let us down.
In 2004, the Arizona Department of Transportation was in the process of building the San Tan leg of Loop 202. As workers dug in the Ocotillo area of Chandler, near Alma School and Pecos Roads, the crew lowered a video camera into one of the abandoned wells on the land formerly belonging to A.J. Chandler. As the camera descended, the view of the well's dirt walls gave way to beautiful handcrafted bricks: The ADOT crew had discovered a leg of an aqueduct system 15 to 20 feet below the surface and constructed by hand in the 1910s. Because the Salt River Project had not diverted sufficient surface water to Chandler's lands, Chandler dug about a dozen wells in the area and connected them with aqueducts for irrigation purposes. Historians speculate that the system extends anywhere from 1,800 feet to several miles, as far south as Hunt Highway — a monument to a hardworking farmer.
This metallic Mont Saint-Michel, a neighborhood asset that doesn't even have a neighborhood, rises from the west end of Tempe Beach. Its parking, art gallery, and bar are primo, but the vibe, in particular, is unrivaled — from the waterfront patio, where the fountain seems to disappear into Town Lake, to the countless cozy conversation areas in the undulating lobby, lit by the outdoor fireplace's glass niches and candy-hot neon signs identifying each part of the building. If you haven't been lured in yet by a performance event, consider test-driving TCA as a classy hangout. You won't be the first.
We've seen a lot of nice plays and musical revues in this dark, compact space, once used exclusively for rehearsal by the likes of Arizona Theater Company and Actors Theatre. Its new renovation includes a Van Buren Street canopy that beckons passersby to drop in for weekday Lunch Time Theater, courtesy of drama doyenne Judy Rollings and a revolving cast of characters and playwrights. The marquee sign outside reminds us, late in the year, to reserve tickets for iTheatre Collaborative's magnificent holiday cabaret featuring Jeff Kennedy and a parade of local song-and-dance talent doing Yuletide tunes every December. Once inside, we feel like a member of the theater elite — or at least like we're enjoying entertainment in a more sophisticated city — while we sit in the dark mustiness of a rehearsal hall, watching our favorites emote and croon.
When you've been around as long as Phoenix Theatre (founded as Phoenix Little Theatre in 1920), you're bound to be haunted by something. In the case of the theater, that something is a cast of five distinct ghosts. The best-known is dubbed "Mr. Electric." He's described as an old man who sits on the pipes that hold up the theater's lights. Reportedly, there's also a spirit called "Tiny Dancer," said to be the specter of a little ballerina. She was first "sighted" during a 2005 production of A Chorus Line, dancing around the cast. Both of them seem relatively benign, unlike the "Prop Master," who's said to move things around in the prop room, as well as lock people out; "Light Board Lenny," a theater ghost who supposedly has locked people out of the lighting booth, where he's said to spend the majority of his time; and "Freddy," said to be the ghost of an actor who was killed in a bicycle accident on his way home from the theater after being fired from a production. Freddy's apparently still disgruntled, judging from the reports of him slamming doors and throwing things around in the upstairs rooms of the theater.
Shari Watts had big, dirty shoes to fill — and fill them she did. Her turn as Big Edie Beale in Tempe Live! Theater's Grey Gardens: The Musical last April was a stunner. The ability to truly enjoy this camp musical depends on one's knowledge of (and affection for) both of the women it portrays as well as the documentary on which it's based, and mostly on how well its leading ladies impersonate the famous recluses at the center of its story. Fortunately for the former Tempe Little Theatre (which scored a major coup by snagging this Arizona première), the show featured worthy impersonations of both Big Edie and Little Edie, the true stars of this show. But it's Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis' aunt, Edith Bouvier, who's harder to capture in any production of this peculiar tuner. Still, Watts nailed it. Her flawless take on owl-eyed, bedridden Big Edie is still with us, half a year later.
D. Scott Withers did the unthinkable: He trumped Divine. In Phoenix Theatre's Hairspray: The Musical last December, he created an all-new take on the late cross-dressing actor who first played Edna Turnblad in John Waters' Hairspray, the movie on which this Tony winner is based. Withers' Edna was an entirely new creation, one that may not have eclipsed Harvey Fierstein's Edna on Broadway, but that was so delightful to watch, audiences hollered for more. The actor, trussed up in a giant housedress and what appeared to be a girdle full of galoshes, consumed a stage crammed with cool choreography and energetic performances with the conviction and good humor he brings to all his performances. In a popular musical satire about small-town wholesomeness under siege, his frumpy housewife was a stunning spectacle.
The improvisers who make up The Torch Theatre prove comedy isn't just about making you laugh — it's about making you think. The actors take a theatrical approach to their on-the-spot scenes, injecting emotion and strong characters into the humorous vignettes inspired by audience suggestions. They've been doing it for more than a decade, and now after four years as The Torch Theatre, the group opened up their very own theater in Central Phoenix, the first one dedicated to long-form improv in Arizona. The Torch's passion for the improv community goes beyond acting on the stage, as the actors' efforts in spreading improv throughout the Valley include putting on events such as the Phoenix Improv Festival, hosting tournaments, and offering classes, when they're not performing weekly shows. Now that's applause-worthy.
Ballet eludes us, and we don't think we really dig jazz or tap or interpretive dance, either. But we're feeling braver about checking into these and other forms of dance, because CONDER/Dance combines these traditional forms in such quirky, entertaining performances, and now our interest is piqued about dance in general. Most contemporary dance companies leave us confused (were we supposed to like what we just saw?) or like dunces (would we have enjoyed that more if we knew who Martha Graham is?), but we leave CONDER/Dance events nothing but entertained. In their spring show, The Comfort of Strangers, founder and choreographer Carley Conder fused rock 'n' roll performances by Elvis Presley with the music of Glenn Gould and folded this odd pairing with humorous, engaging routines involving powdered-wigged women dressed as Marie Antoinette. Cool! Our only complaint about CONDER/Dance is that they don't stage dance shows more often.
Somebody, quick, pinch us! We can't believe our dream (well, one of our dreams) has come true. Phoenix has its own indie movie theater. With a bar. And it's downtown, right off Roosevelt Row, making it one more piece of the puzzle in what may eventually come to be a real city instead of a few scattered outposts of cool. On a recent First Friday, the place was packed with folks drinking, chatting, and people-watching. You don't have to buy a movie ticket to come in the door, but trust us, you're going to want to — the line-up is pretty remarkable, everything from a documentary about Keith Haring (complete with presentation by local history buff Marshall Shore) to one called Automorphosis (about the art car movement), with plenty of indie dramas and comedies mixed in. This is the stuff real cities are made of. Thank you, Kelly Aubrey.
With the economy the way it's been for a while (read: lousy), we wondered aloud about the possible bad timing when this high-dollar movie joint opened at the Scottsdale Quarter. But we gave it a shot one night and got hooked. It's like being on a first-class flight, what with the comfy suede recliner seats, even a pillow and blanket if you wish. The food — we had chicken-salad wraps, Maytag blue cheese chips, and a couple of glasses of a good red wine as we awaited the start of the main feature. The service was impeccable, almost freakishly so, and we don't mind that for a sec. Endless boxes of fresh popcorn were there for the asking, part of the $25 fee for the evening's entertainment (that's for the most expensive seats). As for the movie that night? Don't have a clue what we saw. But we did have a heck of a time, and you will, too.
Admit it. You've said it; we've all said it: "Well, time to go back to the salt mines." But did you know there is an actual working salt mine here in metropolitan Phoenix? It's true: An enormous salt deposit — we're talking 15 to 30 cubic miles of salt — makes up the Luke Salt Body, which runs under the facility. Hundreds of years' worth of salt! Salt production began at the facility in 1969 by the Southwest Salt Company, but the joint has been owned and operated by Morton Salt since 1985. There is no blasting here; the facility produces solar salt using a solution mining method, in which salt is pumped out of the ground by injecting water through a series of pipes that dissolves the salt (creating brine) and brings it up to the surface and into a solar pond. Arizona's intense sun evaporates water from the brine, causing salt crystals to form. The almost-pure salt is stockpiled in impressive tall white peaks. But don't expect it to end up on your lunch. This is not your average "when it rains it pours" table salt — about two-thirds of the salt produced at the Glendale plant is used for water-softening products, distributed throughout Arizona and Southern California.
Harder to find than a shaded parking space in July, the Phoenix basement is a rarity. The story goes that, because the ground here is typically so hard, digging into it is costly and difficult. (In colder parts of the country, the foundation of a house is set below the frost line; digging a few more feet to provide room for a basement is a snap.)
Whatever the reason, few homes in the Valley have basements. And, for people with a tendency to hoard, like New Times contributor Robrt Pela, that may be a good thing. Because, as he tells us, it's easier to pile up crap if you have a giant hole in the ground under your house, where no one can see the neatly arranged rows of Rubbermaid boxes filled with stuff that you're certain you'll need someday.
"Not that I would know. I mean, sure, my basement contains several dozen boxes filled with the stuff I use to make assemblage pieces for the occasional art exhibit. And, yes, I do have, down there tucked just behind the furnace, an entire set of vintage Melmac dinnerware, service for 12, still in its original packaging. And seven boxes of old Tiger Beats and Esquires and Archie Comics titles. And 15 packing crates filled with books that I read and didn't like but that, if I ever find the time, I plan to take to Bookmans to trade for store credit. And four coffin-size containers of carefully wrapped paintings and contemporary art that I don't have room for upstairs on the walls of my house. Also three pieces of matching luggage and an electric fan that doesn't work but is too cute to throw out.
"In the Midwest, where I hail from, people actually live in their basements. There's usually a wet bar down there and maybe a tiny kitchen and always a sofa that leaks its stuffing a little but is perfectly good for sitting on while watching television. But this is Phoenix, and my basement is what is referred to as "unfinished," which means it's a great place to put things so that my house remains tidy and doesn't look like an episode of Hoarding: Buried Alive. Which is a show that wouldn't exist if everyone had a basement."
There is only one way to describe the lobby of Pollack Tempe Cinemas: jacked-up. Michael Pollack (you might recognize his name, since it's on practically every strip mall from here to Tucson) has a big, odd collection of movie memorabilia and life-size figures, and it's on display for all to see. If you can get past it, you'll also get to see not-quite-new-releases at bargain prices — just $3, and $2 on Tuesdays. You can't beat that. Be sure to bring cash, because Pollack Tempe Cinemas doesn't take plastic and their ATM doesn't always work. But the A/C's cranked low, the seats are comfy, and you can't see Pollack's collection from the theater, just a nice, entertaining movie.
From the rooms named after famous former guests like Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart to the Hollywood-style stars embedded in the exterior sidewalk, the Hotel San Carlos is proud of its past. But these days, the 83-year-old landmark in downtown Phoenix is probably best known for the various guests who may have checked out — but never really left. Yes, this hotel is a hotbed of haunted apparitions, including the ghost of a heartbroken young woman who jumped (or was pushed) from the roof while dressed in a full evening gown mere weeks after the grand opening. Then there's the basement, which features water wells dating back to 1874, when the site was home to Phoenix's first school house (and supposedly a sacred Native American watering hole before that). Which might explain why many guests report hearing the sounds of children playing in the basement, or even creepier, their screams echoing out of the well shafts.
The flicks that Dr. Zombie screens at his occasional Movie Lab of Terror aren't actually scary. It's tough to get terrified by old-school movies like The Brain That Wouldn't Die, The Evil Brain from Outer Space, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians when we live in an era of ultra-dark, violent and disturbing cinema. But modern horror is rarely as much fun as the B-movie stuff, and Dr. Zombie taps into the rich tradition of Elvira, Vampira, and Morgus the Magnificent as he showcases his titles with an over-the-top, campy glee. He boasts a lot about his plans for world domination, but his reality is far less sinister, tapping into a time when scary movies were more about suspending disbelief and having a real killer, ghoulish time.
Here in the land of endless suburban sprawl, you can find pretty much any style of home, from traditional adobe to super-sleek glass and steel. That said, there's one staple of suburban living that is darn near impossible to find in the Valley of the Sun: homes with basements.
They do exist, if you know where to look.
Mesa's Grove District is a hot spot for basement homes here in the Valley. Not only is the fertile, irrigated soil in these former citrus fields a little softer, but the large Mormon and Catholic populations mean (in the case of the former) generally larger families, who are also encouraged by church leaders to stockpile large quantities of food in case of emergencies. No wonder longtime Mesa realtor Charlie Randall says a home with a basement "sells twice as fast" in this 'hood.
Francis Lazaro is one of those fortunate few who don't have to endure the usual 9-to-5 grind to make his living. He spends most of his daytime hours catching some winks, in fact, probably because the filmmaker spends most evenings at local clubs recording footage of DJs, followed by all-night editing sessions crafting energetic videos. Check out the Vimeo page for his production company, Pheosia Films, and witness Lazaro's genius editing, which he envisions while at gigs and rushes home to start splicing. "I work fast and have all these ideas fresh in my head," he says. "When I'm filming, I'm already thinking about what's gonna be pimp. I gotta get back and get cracking." The method to his madness is paying off, big-time. Promoters have his number on speed dial. Nationally known DJs like Skrillex request his services when they come to town. He even says he's got a record label deal in the works. When we start seeing Lazaro's work on MTV, we can always say we knew him way back when.
Most people who want a glimpse into futurist Paolo Soleri's vision hoof it north an hour to his Arcosanti, when a good feel for the guy is available right here in town.
Soleri lived and worked in Paradise Valley from the 1950s on (not far from Taliesin West, where he studied). Today, his disciples are still hard at work, casting the bells that fuel his now-obviously futile passions.
Located on the grounds of Cosanti, the "Earth House" is billed as the "original underground house." We're not so sure about that (what about the cavemen?) — but we do know the partially submerged building is considered a fine example of underground house construction in the Valley. Built in the mid-'50s, it looks a lot like the Flintstones' house — but with lower A/C bills.
To see more photos of the Earth
House, visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/bestof2011.
When Robbie Pfeffer started Tempe Starving Artist a little less than two years ago, he had no idea his little 'zine would last beyond the first issue. But Pfeffer, who started TSA just to entertain himself and his friends, has watched it grow from a dinky, photocopied pamphlet to a thick booklet with color covers and advertisements from local businesses. Apparently, people were starved for some quirky, independent coverage of local music and art, and that's what TSA gives them. There are crisp reproductions of photographs, paintings, and drawings by local artists like Scott Bowen, Jamie Fontana, and Sentrock, as well as original poetry and fiction from Valley residents, and slews of interviews with bands, both local (Peachcake, Boys and Frogs) and national (Busdriver, No Age). Now, Pfeffer's expanding his indie empire by promoting shows at The Fixx, the Tempe coffee shop he manages. In fact, he took a summer hiatus from printing TSA to focus on live shows (though new issues were still available online). Now that the college kids are back in school, we can only imagine how much more TSA will grow.
The ladies behind PoolBoy Magazine, a.k.a. Phoenix's newest (only?) hipster porn rag, say they joined forces because they wanted to give women something fun, classy, and local to read in public places. After a year of blogging, raising awareness, and hunting for the right male candidates — male, mid 20s, early 30s, good-looking, but also normal, and, of course, well-endowed — they released their first edition. The glossy 'zine has interviews with local scenesters, girly health information, a few columns, and college-age guys who sheepishly pose nude and answer a few survey-type questions. The PoolBoy team sold more than a few copies online and through local indie shops for $8 and says plans for the second edition are in the works. In the meantime, the ladies encourage all their readers to check out the large doses of pleasure in their small-time package, er, publication.
If the diminishing interest in radio stations, the fallow state of the recording industry, and the death of CD emporiums both big (Tower Records, Sam Goody) and small (Eastside Records) aren't enough indication that the music biz has forever changed thanks to the web, take a gander at the ever-growing prominence of the audio blogosphere. This online taste-making brigade, particularly dance-music bloggers, also has the habit of plucking relative unknowns from obscurity and crowning them the next big thing. On the local level, one of the more prominent EDM anointers is the duo of Chad Birt and Andrew Hood, better known as The Get Downnn. Rabid fans of all things electronica, the 20-something hipster DJs regularly dole out embedded MP3s, streaming audio, and YouTube clips of unknown and outstanding dance music artists from around Phoenix and throughout the world. On any given day, Birt and Hood will pimp out choice tracks from French electro acts like Yelle and Justice, fierce-sounding dubstep from such Valley talents as Liquid Stranger and Sluggo, or killer cuts by hipster act At Dawn We Rage. Their mission is simple: "If you can dance to it, we'll cover it, man. We want to post your music. We want to jam with you." Word.
Don't get us wrong — local blogs like Electric Mustache and So Much Silence kill it, but in terms of pure bonkers passion, Dave Murrow, the brains behind Waved Rumor and garage-pop band Dfactor, blows everyone else away. He covers it all — punk, garage, classic rock — with a zealous glee, riffing on everything from Paul McCartney setlists to blatant Bob Pollard worship to Phoenix venue openings and closings. Murrow's blog isn't the prettiest-looking thing (though those American Apparel banner ads don't hurt), but Murrow's overwhelming enthusiasm for rock 'n' roll is contagious, and his earnestness is a truly inspiring thing.
It's not hard to believe that Pen & Fork editor Gwen Ashley Walters is a professionally trained chef, given the nonchalant way in which she tosses around words like "quenelles" and "aperitif," and her knowledge of what happens when you crossbreed a Fortunella margarita with a citrus aurantifolia (you get a limequat, as it turns out). Her food blog is always ripe with juicy descriptions of local grub, penned by Walters or such notable foodie contributors as James Beard Award-winning editor Linda Avery. But we have to admit that it's Walters' eye for food porn that makes the site so easy to digest. Whether a contributor is waxing visually poetic with a Gruyère-smothered burger or Walters is making Chinese pig's ear look as appetizing as a pile of perfectly crisped bacon, the photos on Pen & Fork never fail to make our mouths water.
Pssst. There's secret treasure at the library. And you don't even have to leave your house to find some of it.
No, really. You can, thanks to the nice folks at the Phoenix Public Library, take an online class from the comfort and convenience of your own home. You can choose from aromatherapy, digital photography, book publishing, Buddhism, freshwater fishing, criminal profiling, yoga, and more than 500 other classroom topics. Classes are self-paced with real instructors who offer video-based lessons, graded tests, and certificates of achievement. Library customers can enroll in up to five courses at one time, and take six months to finish each course. All you need is a library card and the ability to click on "Learning and Research" at www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org. And just like that, you're on your way to an accredited course in something you care about.
For those of us less likely to traffic in the ether, there's the distinguished permanent collection of art at Burton Barr Central Library. Displayed in public locations throughout the building's five stories, the collection includes such big-name artists as Fritz Scholder, Ed Mell, Shonto Begay, John Waddell, Merrill Mahaffey, and Paolo Soleri.
A separate collection in the Central Library's Center for Children's Literature (a hidden treasure in itself, with more than 3,800 pieces of classic literature and an extensive collection of folk and fairy tales) features a collection of original works by award-winning local artist/illustrators Ron Himler, Sylvia Long, Lynne Avril, Amanda Shepherd, and Michael Lacapa.
For folks who aren't into art but do love Arizona, the Arizona Room at Central Library is, in honor of the approaching centennial, pumping up its collection of non-circulating materials about all aspects of our state: archeology, architecture, history, geography, geology, famous Arizonans, current events, and more. Who knew that there were so many files in the Arizona room devoted expressly to all the movies that have been shot here over the years? Or that the collection of oral histories of Arizona-based Holocaust survivors was so extensive?
We didn't, but we do now — and it's a secret we don't plan to keep, either.
Many have gone in search of the secret bathroom at Four Peaks in Tempe. Most have failed. Worry not, though; they were really drunk. Should you find yourself adventurous (and needing to release the floodgates), the entrance to the secret bathroom might be yours. Look first for the beaded curtain leading seemingly to nowhere. Behind this tacky cover is the entrance to an immaculate bathroom complete with a row of urinals and a sink. Such a pristine example of a brew house outhouse is this secret bathroom that you'll never want to piss anywhere else again. A word of caution for the ladies, though: This secret bathroom is only for the gentlemen.
In 2009, little Miss Tiffany Egbert started Kitten Paws Vintage as a mere Etsy store. Thankfully, it has evolved into an online store and fashion blog. Mama cat Egbert's website and blog is effortlessly charming and impeccably put together, reading more like a Southwest-themed Anthropologie catalog than a hipster-tastic fashion blog. We love that Egbert embraces her unique Phoenix style with her lookbooks — her gorgeous photos make the desert look downright chic! Kitten Paws Vintage uses its budding notoriety for good causes, supporting ethically motivated companies such as 31 Bits, which employs Ugandan women who hand-make jewelry using 100 percent recycled paper and local materials, giving this trendy blog a little more class and definite cat style.
For many suburbanites, they're as close as the Valley gets to a natural water feature. But Salt River Project's canal system isn't a series of lushly planted swimming holes; it's a man-made network of several connected bodies of water that run in an underground network through much of the southern half of the Phoenix metropolitan area, helping to distribute water from the Salt River system.
The system of canals SRP operates today was developed by the Hohokam Indians, American pioneers, and the federal government. The precise locations of the original Hohokam canals remain a mystery, in part because most of them have been destroyed by land development. Redeveloped over the past 100 years, each canal — with unglamorous names like Arizona, Crosscut, and Consolidated — has a unique history. The Grand Canal, constructed in 1878, is the oldest remaining pioneer canal on the north side of the Salt River, and the site of at least one annual (and quite secret) pioneer re-enactment game, complete with covered wagon. (Shhh!) And while portions of the old crosscut canal have been turned over to the city of Phoenix to carry away messy storm drainage from the northeast side of town, it hasn't discouraged neighborhood teens from making this canal their after-school hangout.
For some desert dwellers, though, the canal system is an open invitation to play. An unofficial society of canal dwellers can be found most weekend mornings, hunkering around the Tempe Canal or the South Canal over by the old Val Vista Water Treatment Plant. Summertime swimmers are forever being fished out of the canals and sent home with citations, since the canals aren't a resort feature, but a functional means of moving
agua from here to there — with sometimes dangerously fast currents. And speaking of fish, trolling for trout is a pastime among many canal fans. While the thought of eating anything caught in a canal makes us go "Ack!," we can't really blame people for wanting to throw out a line or jump in and splash around a little — some of the canals are beautifully seated in lovely areas.
The New Crosscut Canal in Papago Park is surrounded by lush plant life and offers a stunning view of the Papago Buttes. And the Arizona Canal, located about a half-mile below Granite Reef Dam, affords visitors a perfect view of the Four Peaks mountain formation and a man-made mini waterfall that's nice to look at.
You have to know to look for it. Enter the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art — and you can walk straight ahead to the current exhibits, or turn right into the gift shop. Both wise options. Or, if it's close to sunset (hint: the museum is open late on Thursdays — and admission is free), take an immediate sharp left. Down a hallway you'll find a small, oval-shaped room, all concrete. It feels monastic, but settle yourself onto the hard gray bench and look up. From dusk to dark, the change through that ivory-framed hole is remarkable, as the pale sky takes a tour through the blue-hued section of your 64-pack of Crayolas. End your time in the small space with a dark velvet blue sky and a feeling that this is a day — and night — to remember.
In this year's Best of Phoenix we are taking you underground, but here's a hidden treasure you'll find on the top floor of the Phoenix Art Museum. We admit we're guilty of neglecting our city museum's permanent collections — we're more likely to hit PAM or the Heard Museum to see a blockbuster show. But this year we had occasion to take a stroll through the contemporary collection upstairs at the Phoenix Art Museum, and we were so glad we did. A friendly museum guard told us to be sure and check out the fireflies — and after some hunting we came upon a funny-looking closet-like exhibit lit with hundreds of teeny colored lights, with mirrored ceiling, floor and walls. The effect (once you get over a bit of claustrophobia) is, true to the exhibit's name, like finding yourself in a swarm of fireflies. Best of all, the fireflies are part of the museum's permanent collection, so you can take your time getting over to see them.
You don't have to know the difference between a comet and a meteor to climb up to the rooftop of the Bateman Physical Sciences wing for a killer show. Each month (during the school year), graduate students at ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration open their laboratory doors to the public for planetarium shows, informational sessions, and, our favorite, a view of the stars through their telescopes. The open house runs from 8 to 10 p.m. and is free to the public. No reservations are required.
On March 18, 1961, the Roosevelt Dam (on the Salt River northeast of Phoenix) had its Golden Jubilee (50th anniversary). As part of the celebrations, a copper time capsule was placed in the dam. The capsule was removed — but not opened — in 1984 (when Roosevelt Dam was modified) and placed in the Roosevelt Lake Visitor Center. On March 18, 2001, Arizona Bureau of Reclamation deputy commissioner Kira Finkler opened the capsule in front of about 200 guests, revealing voting ballots from 1960s elections, a list of Roosevelt Dam employees at the time, photos, and a letter from then-president John F. Kennedy about the importance of the dam. It was exciting to see some Arizona history unearthed, and more will be buried. The Salt River Project is now designing and filling a new capsule, to be buried this year and unearthed in 2061.
One of the things we like about Scottsdale Fashion Square is that so many of its parking garages open right onto high-end department stores: Like Dillard's men's store, which has an entrance in one of Fashion Square's big, shaded parking garages, just like Nordstrom's does, up the street. We think it's awfully civilized. But not as cool as one particular section of Fashion Square's parking, where we always stash our wheels, especially in the hot, hot summertime. This entrance is on the south side of the mall, in front of Modern Steak, where there's always a traffic jam of cars wanting parking spaces. Beneath this, there somehow are loads of places to park, which means not only coming back to a cool car after shopping or dining (without paying to valet park!), but also getting to go down that fun ramp into the garage itself. Whee!
Next time you're driving down Interstate 10 in Phoenix — approaching the Deck Park Tunnel — take a quick look at the center median. Did you notice anything odd, like a fenced-off passageway slicing right through the middle of the larger tunnel? That, friends, is Phoenix's infamous Papago Intermodal Transfer Station — a.k.a. an underground bus station that was started in 1990 but never actually completed.
According to Valley Metro light-rail director Wolfe Grote, who was involved with the planning of the I-10 tunnel back when he worked for the City of Phoenix's public transportation department, the bus station was designed to serve the needs of the then-red-hot midtown Phoenix area. (One developer was even proposing building a 114-story skyscraper in the area, which would have been the tallest in the world at the time.)
"The thought was to include an express bus station into the plans for the new tunnel that would allow passengers to exit underground and then ride a combination of elevators and escalators up to the park level," Grote says.
Unfortunately, despite spending more than $9 million to build the bones of the structure, the city was never able to secure the $20 million-plus in federal funds it would have taken to complete the project.
Meanwhile, the flood of new developments in midtown failed to materialize, and Valley Metro started delivering workers directly into downtown Phoenix via a new system of express buses. And maybe the last best chance to build out the station fizzled in 2008, when the planned light-rail extension to the west was routed through the Arizona State Capitol area a few miles south, rather than running through the I-10 tunnel.
So for now, this monumental concrete cavern remains a road to nowhere.To see a slideshow of the abandoned bus station, visit www.phoenixnewtimes.com/best of2011.
Stepping inside NRG Energy's underground cooling plant in the heart of downtown Phoenix, you feel a little like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. One minute you're standing outside an anonymous metal door next to the Phoenix Convention Center, and the next you're three stories underground, walking across a metal bridge suspended over a massive holding tank filled with bubbling, neon-green ice water. Named the Downtown Cooling System, this plant, along with two others sprinkled throughout the city core, chills and then pumps near-freezing water to more than 35 buildings across downtown via an underground system of pipes.
The water, which is dyed green in case of a leak, is then used to air-condition everything from Chase Field and US Airways Center to Symphony Hall and the Fourth Avenue County Jail.
Even cooler: The system chills CityScape's outdoor ice rink every December, and also powers the Valley's only air-conditioned Valley Metro light-rail station, at the corner of Second Street and Jefferson.
