On a recent Monday night in a strip mall parking lot on Camelback, Jeremy Kinison takes a swig of lighter fluid, then holds it in his cheeks as rain extinguishes the small torch in his left hand. He fumbles for a lighter and flicks it repeatedly as fissures of lightning…
Our Town Philadelphia story: I for one thought when I read the cover of New Times this week — “Robrt Pela compares notes with that Philly columnist who dissed Phoenix” — you were really going to lay into Don Russell and give him many of the reasons we Phoenicians are…
A parade of pedestrians streams down Roosevelt Street on a warm First Friday evening in April, bringing life to an urban stretch that is desolate on most other nights of the month. Like colorful spring blossoms sprouting up from barren plots of desert, the dusty sidewalk and parking lot next…
“Dinnner” Companion The Spike presumes that most people who have been to Mill Avenue in Tempe have run into Dennnis (with three ns) Skolnick. This is the guy who calls himself the Mill Avenue Food Critic. For a small donation that allegedly goes to help the homeless or homeless cats…
In Cole Blood Bad medicine: Kudos to New Times and especially to Cole Bailey Sr. (“Skinhead Slayer,” Susy Buchanan, July 17). I look forward to the day that I read about the cowardly skinheads getting a taste of their own medicine. I also hope Mr. Bailey finds the peace he…
Psych Job The Spike is thrilled to report that famed Wyoming attorney Gerry Spence has signed on to work his formidable legal magic for a Phoenix man charged with killing his mother and 7-year-old niece. The Spike spotted Spence in town for a July 1 hearing before Superior Court Judge…
Abbreviated Response XOXO from NT: Just read your story (“The Mile High Guys,” Jimmy Magahern, July 10). I met my fiancée while I worked for HP (1996-2002). We met in OGG — I lived here in PHX, she lived in ORD. Knowing that the distance was a non-issue, I didn’t…
Alone in the dark, Cole Bailey Sr. pilots his black Escalade around sleek, moonlit curves that make up the hundred-mile descent from his mountaintop mansion to the sprawling valley below. Bailey lives on a hill above Prescott, and regularly does business in Phoenix and Tucson, traveling between the destinations so…
Rob, a newly divorced, 41-year-old SWM known to the online dating community by his Match.com screen name “phxbuddy,” is 24,000 feet over Pocatello when it suddenly dawns on him: The only piece of identifying information he has on the woman he’s traveling 726 miles to see tonight is her e-mail…
On a hot afternoon in May, Michael Hovan sat silently, unmoving, on a concrete bumper in the parking lot of his apartment complex. His neat white tee shirt and denim shorts were still virtually spotless despite having spent the previous few moments face down on the hot asphalt as Phoenix…
Head Games Ring leader: Thanks for Paul Rubin’s article “Off With Their Heads” (June 26). Mr. Rubin got it right when he summarized the United States Supreme Court decision in Ring v. Arizona as holding that jurors, not judges, decide whether factors exist to make a convicted murderer eligible for…
Ironic Chef The acclaimed Zagat Southwest Top Restaurants Guide calls the decor at RoxSand “stark.” As in “sophisticated,” in a “New York City” kind of way. The place is stark, to be sure, but as of last week, it’s in a low-class, shameful kind of way. The upscale restaurant at…
I find myself on the couch excited about watching the last few innings of an Arizona Diamondbacks game. I haven’t felt this way since the postseason run in 2001. What the hell is going on here? I’m supposed to be mowing. My 10-year-old son joins me. I look at him,…
The state Auditor General’s Office has begun a preliminary investigation into the finances of a polygamist-controlled school district in northern Arizona in the wake of New Times’ reports of extravagant and improper spending by the tiny, one-school Colorado City Unified School District. The auditor general’s “special review” could lead to…
Inspired Stupidity And now another black eye. For the Arizona Republic, natch. On its front page the other day it listed Bishop Thomas O’Brien, Evan Mecham, Charles Keating, Fife Symington and AzScam — scandals one and all to be sure. Then, as only the Republic can, the paper grasped its…
I still see you in your googly-wheeled Escalade, alone, cruising down the HOV lane at rush hour sporting your sky-blue “alternative fuels” license plate. But I no longer reach from my own fumigating jalopy to offer the spiteful spike of my middle finger. I have sold my portable tire spikes…
Momentous rulings about anti-sodomy and affirmative action laws stole headlines last week as the U.S. Supreme Court ended its term, but the talk at the Maricopa County courthouse was about another far-reaching opinion. By a definitive 7-2 vote, the high court sided with a convicted Maryland killer and said defense…
Death Row Death be not proud: Thank you for an article that had to be written. (“Off With Their heads,” Paul Rubin, June 26) Instead of placing pressure on the state Legislature and the county boards of supervisors for the money to conduct death penalty cases correctly (e.g., proper training…
Matthew “Scar” Haugen kneels in the middle of a wrestling ring preparing for battle. The gangly 20-year-old knots the laces of his dirty navy-blue sneakers and then gathers up several weapons. He grabs a battered kendo stick and throws it into an aluminum trashcan, along with several other tools of…
Bob Storrs looked spent last week as he left a Maricopa County courtroom after trying to save a young killer’s life. Storrs has been a criminal-defense attorney for nearly 35 years, and has tried many murder trials. But his defense of Tony Aguilar differed from the others in one major…
It was one of the least-publicized emergency sessions in memory, but one of the more momentous — at least for death-row inmates, the families of murdered victims, and taxpayers. Last July, then-Governor Jane Hull asked the Arizona Legislature to devise new laws in response to the landmark Ring vs. Arizona…
For the last decade, Archbishop Michael Sheehan has been a leader in a little known clique of American Catholic prelates known as the “fixer bishops.” They are the Pope’s relief pitchers in America. When a diocese or archdiocese is shelled by scandal, it’s the job of a proven “fixer bishop”…
