Ain’t No Thing

In preparation for Wingstock, Mesa’s yearly celebration of the noble and delicious chicken, we’ve gathered some fun facts about chicken wings from our friends at the National Chicken Council (a real thing!). Here’s one: 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the first “Buffalo Wing” being served at the Anchor Bar…

Bowled Over

Here’s how the Arena Football League works. It’s pretty much a passing league. There are only a handful of top-flight quarterbacks. So there are only a handful of contenders. The Arizona Rattlers have been entrenched as the team to beat largely because they have the best QB in the league…

Plucky 13

When we say that Arizona is home to a lot of people who are funny, we’re not just joshing. We could take a beat and tack on the punch line, “funny-looking.” But this is really for serious. The Valley’s home to a slew of stand-up comedians and sketch jokesters. But…

Rios Grande

As part of its celebration of National Poetry Month, the Phoenix Public Library is inviting Valley residents to spend an evening with Arizona’s first poet laureate, Alberto Ríos. Ríos, who has won such accolades as the Walt Whitman Award, Beyond Margins Award, and the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, has…

Designing Women

All in all, award shows are fairly predictable. Winners cry, losers, clap, and hosts drag the audience on through it. The fun part is the pre-show, when the stars walk the red carpet dressed to impress and rattle off the designers responsible.Of course, while we talk trash about too much…

Shake That Asteroid

Soothsayers have been predicting the end of the world since the dawn of time and we’re still here. It’s an entirely different matter, though, when the government sounds the alarm and tells us that even duck-and-covering can’t save us as in Binary Theatre Company’s latest production, Earthlings, on Saturday, April…

All The Zindel Ladies

New Times’ original hippie readers parented the supernumerous Millennials. Curiously, technology’s rendered the spawn hyperliterate, and the stories of Mom and Dad’s heyday are ripe for revival.Paul Zindel, who gained fame for young adult novels like the Pigman trilogy, was a playwright first. His biting 1967 And Miss Reardon Drinks…

It’s a Chalk-Off

3D chalk art is pretty impressive. Not only are these floor installations you’ve seen passed around on Facebook worthy of being displayed in a gallery, some are so realistic that you may find yourself watching a step. Chalk art transforms mundane sidewalks and cityscapes into a slice of beautiful nature…

Dead Wood

It’s sort of a given that if there’s a play called The Pornozombies, our twisted friends at Nearly Naked Theatre will get around to mounting it eventually. Refreshingly, Matt Casarino’s script is about pretty much what the title indicates: reanimated corpses who are extra-horny and wind up in sexay videos,…

Pen Pals

When one artistic medium overlaps another, the result can be pretty sweet. Such is the case for the spring exhibition “Sugar Cookies.” This mixed-media collaboration combines words with images from Florida-based artist Jenny Odom, who used to live in Phoenix, and Montessori student/budding Phoenix poet Eleri Mosier. The duo began…

Green Is Good

The wide-open, flat, dead desert regions that surround Phoenix are no sight for sore eyes. The landscape looks like a brush fire waiting to happen more than anything. A lot of the state is quite gorgeous though, and areas such as Sedona, Bisbee, and the Grand Canyon have breathtaking beauty…

Grid Bike Share Launch Postponed in Phoenix

Bad news for folks looking to jump on the bike share train in Phoenix: The Grid Bike Share program launch has been postponed until after this summer. While the program was initially slotted to launch in April 2014 during Valley Bike Month, the release had to be pushed back due…

Italian Film Festival USA Coming to Tempe April 26

Time to brush up on your italiano. The Italian Film Festival USA recently added Tempe, Arizona, to its 11-stop schedule. This year marks the 10th edition of the fest, which brings contemporary Italian films stateside to cities including Boulder, Colorado, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Don’t worry; there will be subtitles…

Phoenix and Tempe Are Great for Millennials, According to Niche Ink

If you were born somewhere between the late 1980s and the early 2000s and are currently living in metro Phoenix, good news: You’re doing at least one thing right. That’s according to Niche Ink, the satellite website of Niche.com that specializes in helping people make major life decisions such as…

ASU to Host Chaucer Celebration on Friday, April 18, in Tempe

Every two years, the ASU English Department takes a day to celebrate Geoffrey Chaucer; the so-called father of English poetry was pivotal in bringing vernacular Middle English into the realm of literature, where French and Latin dominated during the Middle Ages. While his accomplishments might be old news (circa the…

Amazon to Offer Free Tours of Phoenix Warehouse

Between the anticipatory shipping , the proposed use of drones, and the fact that you can purchase almost anything from anywhere at virtually anytime, we wouldn’t put it past some customers to assume that Amazon runs on magic. Well, soon those customers can see for themselves…

3 Free Events in Metro Phoenix This Week

Looking for a spring that’s allergy-free? Join the club. While neither we nor your maximum strength antihistamines can clear the pollen from your sinuses, we can help rid your bank account of some unnecessary charges. From flower-pedal pups and poetry speakers to a powerful discussion of the mind and the…