Snell Johnson was in trouble. A successful businessman one day, the target of an SEC investigation the next. So begins a 1992 segment of “The Rest of the Story,” a syndicated program in which radio commentator Paul Harvey “completes” a tale by revealing behind-the-scenes information in that halting, highly inflected,…
Times have long been tough at the Valley’s No. 2 daily newspaper chain, the East Valley’s Tribune Newspapers. They may be about to get tougher. The occasionally feisty papers that provide the Valley’s only significant daily alternative to the Arizona Republic are tough places to work. Reporters and editors get…
The Valley’s coffee-house scene is about to get a huge caffeine jolt. Seattle-based Starbucks Coffee Company has decided to launch a full-scale assault on local Java Man and Woman. Look for the first stores to arrive possibly as early as the end of the year. Starting in 1971 with one…
And You Can Forget About an Aisle Seat It’s not uncommon for businesses to manipulate news coverage by threatening to withhold advertising from newspapers. Car dealers, real estate agents and grocers–all big-money advertisers–are as adept as they are notorious at intimidating editors and publishers. Their efforts often reshape the news…
Since 1981, residents from the poor, mostly Latino south Tucson neighborhoods that now are in the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site have had little reason to trust government officials. And this spring, their confidence eroded more, after the state killed a long-standing appropriation that paid for half of a…
Since moving into a Sunnyslope town house that abuts the Phoenix Mountains Preserve ten years ago, real estate agent Dan Galvin has enjoyed his spacious “backyard”–a scenic stretch of mountainous desert. Hiking enthusiasts, he and his wife, Lori, frequently walk their dog through the outdoor retreat, returning home via the…
Muffler–A chamber attached to the end of the exhaust pipe which allows the exhaust gases to expand and cool. It is usually fitted with baffles or porous plates and serves to subdue much of the noise created by the exhaust. –John Deere Fundamentals of Service manual Muffler Man–A man made…
Pigging Out Should the esteemed young entrepreneur guest columnist Paul M. Fleming spend less time with his bankers and hobnob a bit with “the people,” he might discover that many of us support alternative approaches to food production with our feet and our wallets (“Meating of the Minds,” August 22)…
To Ken Parker’s father, a cowboy who wrangled dudes in the 1940s, the area south of Sedona was unremarkable grazing land known as Jackass Flats. But to Parker, it was a land of opportunity, and he wanted to cash in. The time was 1979, before the crystal worshipers had begun…
Richard Anderson and Bruce Babbitt were the best of pals growing up in Flagstaff during the 1950s. They lived half a block away from each other, played childhood games together, skied together, went to school together. And one day, Anderson remembers, he punched Bruce Babbitt in the face. The youngsters,…
For a man charged with the herculean task of policing Arizona government and resolving citizen complaints, Pat Shannahan has headquarters that are, at least for now, humble. The Office of the Ombudsman is housed in the basement of the historic Carnegie Library, which stands about a mile east of the…
Detention officers at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Madison Street Jail made a grisly discovery on August 9. In the sixth-floor psychiatric ward, they found 44-year-old inmate Thomas Bruce Cooley hanging from bedsheets that he had tied to one of his cell’s air vents. Cooley was cut down and taken to Barrow…
He Don’t Need No Steenking Quotes The Arizona Department of Commerce’s crack public information officer, Don Harris, is often at a loss for words. When New Times asked six months ago whether he’d gone to the Super Bowl, Harris drew a blank. He performed an encore Monday when questioned about…
New Leash on Life Thank God someone finally wrote about something that has been bothering me all my life; and I hope someone, somewhere (i.e., writers, producers, etc.) will read M. V. Moorhead’s “Pet Reprieve” (August 1). I hate it when animals are hurt in movies. It is not necessary!…
Many is the time I have seen this guy come into the neighborhood bar I frequent. He pulls up on some kind of enormous chopper that looks like a Revell model, parks the thing right in front of the bar, next to the bicycle racks, and saunters in, stabbing the…
Prologue You stand accused of violating a national park closure and bicycling in a prohibited area–how do you plead? Rama Jon: “Guilty.” Long Tall: “Guilty.” Wheeze: “Guilty.” Forest: “Guilty.” Dangerous Dave: “Guilty.” The Honorable Steven Verkamp glared at the five men before him. The U.S. magistrate for Grand Canyon National…
Meet the news babes: They’re serious, professional media journalists. Is it their fault they’re perky and have hair that looks great even during live remotes from three-alarm blazes? Of course not. And yet some smart aleck from San Francisco has gone and dedicated a Web page to the women of…
State Representative David Eberhart is a mild-mannered civil engineer from Peoria. In 1995, his fellow Republicans chose him to replace his more colorful colleague, Representative Jeff Groscost, as House majority whip. Groscost, as many will recall, was booted from his leadership post because he repeatedly failed to file his campaign-finance…
Sergeant Mark Battilana found out last week that Sheriff Joe Arpaio intends to fire him. Battilana had been suspended in May and was the subject of an internal investigation for unspecified code-of-conduct violations. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Lieutenant Tim Campbell confirms that Battilana faces a pretermination hearing on August…
Fife Has a Proposition for You Last week, the Committee to Stop Juvenile Crime–created to tout Proposition 102, Governor J. Fife Symington III’s pet diversion–was dealt a serious blow. Opponents of Proposition 102 filed a Supreme Court challenge to the language of the proposition, claiming it’s unconstitutional. Proposition 102 would…
“I’ll put it this way: In the wrong hands, that picture is a portal for domination of the beast.” Let’s just start with that statement, spoken by one David Barnes with an expression on his face of a man who has seen things. Things that you may find hard to…
Corrections The August 1 story “A Cop on the Beat” described a Phoenix Police Officer James Gibbs as having been fired from the force the then reinstated by the Phoenix Civil Service Board. The article stated that he now works for the drug enforcement bureau. Officer James W. Gibbs, Badge…
