When hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon last week, M.R. Diaz was as horrified as anyone.Diaz, president of the Chandler Coalition for Civil and Human Rights, was busy at the time, making arrangements for the third annual Chandler Mariachi Festival, scheduled for September 15, when he…
More than two months have passed since more than 30 community leaders wrote to Governor Jane Dee Hull asking her to create an independent task force to review conditions at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections.Their letter remains unanswered. And the governor’s office has yet to comment on concerns raised…
Mad dog publicist and unsavory martyr David Hans Schmidt is free at last, free at last. Schmidt was released from county jail just before Labor Day weekend after the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office dropped charges of aggravated domestic violence against him. His release came a week after a New Times…
Stadium of AlertCost plus: The biggest lie in this whole fiasco is the construction estimate (“Hidden Agenda,” John Dougherty, September 13). The new Denver Broncos stadium cost $408 million to build. And all the land and infrastructure was in place as it was erected over the demolished McNichols Arena. Plus,…
Welcome to metro Phoenix, or as we like to call it, Amsterzona, the desert dope oasis where vacationers can enjoy super-sized Quad Ganja Lattes at any neighborhood Starbucks Hashhouse. Visit the Tempe Town Bong, the power center of the Dutch West Tempes district. Enjoy heat stroke, ozone O.D.s, Cardinals football…
Last spring, Patrick Lange removed an ornate Persian urn from a shelf in his 1920s-era hacienda and carefully poured the contents of the small container on a table. He stared at the powdery mountain before him. Then, using a spoon and knife he went to work, dividing the chalky, off-white…
Records withheld by the city of Tempe and obtained by New Times reveal that Tempe was planning to submit the Papago Park Center site to the Tourism and Sports Authority for the Arizona Cardinals football stadium before the November 7, 2000, election, but withheld those plans from the public until…
In Andy Warhol’s world, everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. Charles Banaszewski — friends call him Chuck — is looking to grab 30, maybe more.Closing the rear hatch of his black Nissan Xterra, he hoists a flapping stack of hand-lettered cardboard signs above his head and leads four other members…
I stare. Outside the window above my computer screen, rose hips on thorny stems are barely moving, making tiny anticipatory nods to a soft morning breeze. My wife calls down for me to come right away, something terrible at the edge of her voice. On the way up the stairs,…
Hue and CryFade to black: Edward Lebow’s article (“Primary Colors” August 30) about the social and political conditions in south Phoenix was well written. Unfortunately, you avoided discussing what has caused blacks and whites to feel “invisible” today in their own neighborhoods of south Phoenix. You really ignored how illegal…
Onstage, the cocked baseball caps of 2 Live Crew bobbed to the thumping beats that vibrated from the DJ booth at The Rock in Tucson. In the back of the dark, sweaty nightclub, the pulsations were intoxicating Bryan Erwin, who hardly looked at the stage as his blue visor dipped…
It’s hide the records time in Tempe.With Mayor Neil Giuliano facing an unprecedented recall election on Tuesday, September 11, city officials are taking extraordinary measures to keep the public in the dark about Tempe’s chaotic and costly negotiations with the Tourism and Sports Authority and the Arizona Cardinals to build…
Here’s mud in your eye.Last week, Bob Pavlovic, owner of the imperiled Chez Nous, informed his staff the landmark cocktail lounge will permanently cut off customers at 1 in the morning on Sunday, September 23. The announcement followed one of the most heartfelt civic battles in recent memory. Since last…
Color BindVoter cycle: Normally I find it difficult to finish reading your long-winded feature articles because you tend to beat the subject to death, but I did read almost all of (“Primary Colors” Edward Lebow, August 30). Not because it was a particularly good story, but because of what this…
Neal Casal may be one of those scratch-your-head, yeah-I’ve-seen-his-name-somewhere artists. He turned up in the record bins briefly with 1995’s Fade Away Diamond Time not long before his label, Zoo, faded away itself, sucked into the big ol’ black hole of corporate consolidation. But the singer-songwriter is anything but obscure,…
The current scene outside the Icehouse, on downtown’s West Jackson Street, isn’t the one that owner Helen Hestenes and her former husband, David Therrien, imagined when they bought the neo-classical cement bunker of a warehouse a decade ago.They envisioned a thriving hub of experimental art amid a historic neighborhood reborn…
Carolyn T. Lowery — African-American neighborhood gadfly, city council candidate and ice pick in the toes of just about every authority — has a penchant for sometimes spouting outrageous candor. So while others attending a June forum for candidates at the Saint Catherine’s School on south Central Avenue aired platitudes…
A big-eyed horse, his spine as curved as an old hammock, paces nervously inside an auction house stall as two spectators begin an intense bidding battle. On the dusty bleachers sits a crowd struck by the unlikely fight for this sad and forgotten beast. When the price, which started at…
In a parody of Sally Field’s infamous Oscar acceptance speech, readers of a new book are exclaiming, “I dislike it! I really dislike it!”That’s the response from a small band of movie buffs who’ve taken to the Internet to denounce Oscar Fever, a factually challenged study of the Academy Awards…
Out of Bounds Personal foul: I don’t believe I have ever responded to a New Times article in the 11 years I have served in elected office in Tempe, but now I must. The story and cover (“Quarterback Sneak,” John Dougherty, August 16) is so biased and over the line…
On John Vanderslice’s second LP, printed lyrics have been replaced with a series of handwritten letters from Jesse, our strange protagonist who is trapped in Antarctica, lost without GPS coordinates or Internet access. After a few listens, it becomes clear that each of these lonely and reflective missives corresponds to…
In 1989, CIGNA Healthcare of Arizona informed policyholders it would no longer cover long-term speech and physical therapy. Three-year-old Ryan Ewers, who weighed 17 pounds and couldn’t talk, eat or stand to have his skin touched because of complications at birth, needed those therapies for any hope of one day…
