New Times is bringing pop-culture luminary Richard Florida to the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix at 6:30 p.m. on October 21. We expect him to save us from ourselves. You’re invited; tickets are free. Florida was last year’s — “Check out the big brain on Brad” — author of The Rise…
Journalists take it for granted that they can reach professors on the phone for expert opinions. Universities even publish directories to make faculty members accessible to the media. But you can’t just call up Richard Florida, Heinz Professor of Regional Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Ever since…
In this job, it’s difficult not to maintain a mental “coaches’ poll” of the state’s top scumbags. Sociopath Sheriff Joe is a perennial powerhouse in the dirtbag BCS. Former bishop Tommy “Speed Bump” O’Brien has the strong running game and defense necessary to challenge for the title. Russell Pearce, Dave…
Another teenager in the care of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections has tried to kill himself. On September 21, a boy assigned to the mental health unit at Adobe Mountain School in Phoenix tried to hang himself, ADJC spokesman Steve Meissner confirms. Although he released a few details on…
Cop Rocked Jake the snake: After reading the story about Roy “Jake” Jacobsen and his comments regarding the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, I was appalled (“PLEA Bargain?” Paul Rubin, September 25). First, police officers put themselves in terrible danger every day just by coming to work. They never know…
Last March 11, photographers zoomed in on the disfigured face of Phoenix police officer Jason Schechterle as he sat before a New York State Senate committee in Albany. The officer — whose story of near-death by burning and his near-miraculous (and ongoing) recovery is well-known to most Valley residents –…
Radio Friendly Music man: Thank you, Jimmy Magahern, for your diligent research into the KCDX-FM 103.1 story (“Ghost Radio,” September 18). This station is the best thing to happen to radio around here in, well, since it’s commercial-free, maybe ever! For weeks, no other station has been playing on my…
It seemed at first that a sick, elderly woman had died peacefully in her bed after a memorably full life. When Scottsdale police responded to the home of Katheryn Howard on the early afternoon of June 16, 2000, they got the basics from a close friend of hers named Chuck…
Adam Marsland, an indie rock singer-songwriter who, by his own accounts, spends most of his life on the road, discovered KCDX purely by accident one day while riding in his tour bus across the Arizona desert. “I usually don’t listen to the radio because it seems like it’s always the…
College listeners will find themselves Googling lyric phrases to discover the artists and song titles of all the oddities they hear; older listeners will just go giddily searching for the hash pipe. Below are 50 of the better mind-benders heard on 103.1 recently. In no particular order, which is just…
Last week’s arrest of four skinheads charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder offered another glimpse into a world where, despite the white supremacist gang’s professed beliefs, violence is not limited by the ethnicity of their victims. It appears that anyone who encounters them, whether friend or innocent bystander, is fair…
Congressman Rick Renzi is sponsoring a provision in a defense-spending bill that could provide hundreds of millions of dollars to his father’s business while delivering what environmentalists say is a death blow to the San Pedro River, the state’s last free-flowing desert stream and one of the most important environmental…
Fear Factor As Phoenix incubates an art scene, one thing the players — and the wanna-bes — are learning is that creativity breeds contempt. And nowhere is that more evident than on East Roosevelt Street. Recently, The Spike showcased the artistry — really, the pageantry — of the not-so-nice goings-on…
Jazzed Up “Vee” day: You should have known the “Vee” back in the late ’70s and ’80s when it was smaller and more seedy-looking (“Jazz Rift,” Ilan Brat, September 11). It was The Bomb then. Times have changed and people have passed on, but places like the “Vee” exist more…
Last year, ASU bioengineering grad Jason Wilson was at a friend’s party when he was let in on a secret. He’d found himself talking with Gaynel Hodge, a doo-wop musician and former Valley resident who now makes his home in the Netherlands. Hodge was back in town on a visit,…
Lethal Weapon 1 Gun Safety Rule No. 1: Never point the muzzle of a gun at something you don’t want to shoot. Like your left hand, for instance. Or the person walking behind you. But that’s what happened last week in west Phoenix when a local firearms expert made a…
I had been in this situation before. Last time I got a call about a mom and a young daughter arguing in a park, I nearly got my head blown off. I mean, you arrive and see a young woman sitting calmly on a park bench with a purse and…
It’s not easy being a liberal in Arizona, much less broadcasting your progressive beliefs via radio from Tucson to Yuma to Prescott each day. It comes as no surprise that in the two months On Second Thought has been on the air, host Dr. Mike Newcomb says irate conservative listeners…
The Candidate Dog eat dog: After reading your article regarding Jessica Flores (excuse me, Florez, since the letter Z is Spanish, unlike the rest of the letters in the Castilian alphabet) and her campaign for the Phoenix City Council, I am very disappointed /(“Vote For Me Or I’ll Shoot This…
They emerge from the darkness like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead, boys in tee shirts and girls in skintight halter tops. You can see the girls from the far end of the parking lot, with their sparkly earrings and glitter-smeared skin already glistening in the hot…
Artistic Discord The Spike loves the arts, loves artists, loves to tour the galleries on First Fridays, sipping wine and watching the young and hip watch each other. So it comes as no surprise that there’s a bit of bickering going on within the community. After all, artists, like most…
Meth Mess Some people live like animals. And if you think that’s some sort of journalistic overstatement, then you should have been with the Valley cops who last week busted three suspected meth labs in Wittman, a community strewn along Grand Avenue west of Phoenix. Actually, the term “meth lab”…
