The Pink Cat slumps on a folding chair in a makeshift dressing room at Phoenix Civic Plaza. The small cuts beneath his eyes sting, his hands ache, his arms throb. But Scott Walker’s pride hurts worse than his body. He heard the boos and the derisive meows from the small…
Hungry for a career change? Perhaps you dream of trading in your nine-to-five for the excitement and glamour of selling pot? Or maybe you’d just like to keep a few well-cured grams of Maui Wowee around the house for those occasional Cartoon Network marathons, but don’t want to break the…
Fife Deep-Sixed by 60 Minutes? The long-awaited 60 Minutes segment on Governor J. Fife Symington III appears to be on the cutting-room floor at CBS News. It’s been more than four months since Morley Safer interviewed a reluctant Symington–and the piece still hasn’t been scheduled for broadcast. A CBS source…
Halvor Elvik wants balloons. The Norwegian foreign correspondent has jetted to Phoenix after covering President Clinton’s State of the Union address, and he’s been instructed to submit an article about the building excitement for the city’s first Super Bowl. It will be Elvik’s first Super Bowl, as well. And he…
It is a little after 7 a.m. on Friday, and, strangely, everyone in the Bikini Lounge is drinking beer. The strange part is not that the patrons are drinking at 7 a.m., but that they are drinking beer. Beer in this place? In Phoenix’s last remaining shrine of ripped-off, modified,…
Monday morning, 9:30. Robert Balling’s office phone rings. Again. “Hey,” he says into the receiver. “How’s it going? Yeah, I saw. Looks pretty bad. … I don’t know, maybe … I gotta go. Okay, bye.” Balling, 43 years old, solidly built with a healthy, Arizona golf tan, rolls his eyes…
The Salt River Project is mired in sludge, and, at the moment, so is Paul Cherrington, SRP’s engineer in charge of water distribution. He’s pulled on rubber boots and stepped gingerly out onto the cracked, miles-long cake of sludge that had been mucked out of the Arizona Canal and piled…
Charles F. Long II’s detractors say he has duped a lot of people, and apparently wants to pull another fast one–this time on the Super Bowl Host Committee. Long is stirring up racism charges on the eve of Super Bowl XXX by claiming that the National Football League has dealt…
Requiem for a Flawed Planet For months, Planet magazine employees labored under the shadow of a financial guillotine straining at the rope. So when money man (and Zia Record Exchange chain owner) Brad Singer came by the biweekly’s Tempe offices last Wednesday afternoon with a stack of pizzas (mostly broccoli…
Barry Aarons earned a tough-guy reputation when he served as Governor J. Fife Symington III’s director of legislative affairs. He even kept a bullwhip and handcuffs in his office. But now, Aarons’ aggressive nature has cost him his job as director of public policy at U S West Communications. Earlier…
Reeling Movie reviewer M. V. Moorhead was close, but not precisely correct, in describing LaJetee as a half-hour film “told entirely in still photographs” (“Uneven Dozen,” January 11). There is a scene in which a woman blinks. Thomas J. Baker Payson Fife Imitates Art I just finished reading “Young Fife:…
According to the Super Bowl XXX Host Committee Information Hot Line, “Share the Warmth” is the “official slogan” for Super Bowl XXX. Yet, perhaps, it is even more … It is the dead of winter. A small child wanders away from his family’s campsite, unnoticed as the adults sit around…
Angela Maher died on the evening of July 29, 1994, in a crumpled sedan–her feet tangled in the pedals, her body thrown between the bucket seats. The last thing Angela saw was a half-ton Ford van that drifted into her lane and smashed almost head-on into her Oldsmobile on Scottsdale…
From: Super Bowl XXX Security To: All Units Re: Preparatory to possibly subversive January 27 machine-art demonstration at Icehouse on Jackson Street, downtown Phoenix Subject: 0101101001 (Cross Reference: Artificial Life Movement; Guerrilla Art; Punk Rock) Key Target: Mark Pauline Age: 42 Occupation(s): Expert welder, machinist, mechanical engineer, lecturer. Founder (1978)…
Big Brother’s Little Problem The City of Tempe will soon follow Paradise Valley’s lead and install photo radar systems to catch speeders and red-light runners. The devices photograph the vehicle and license plate of an offender, and a ticket is mailed to the auto’s owner. Tempe police expect the I-Spy…
Antismoking activists were pleasantly surprised when Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza went on the offensive against cigarette manufacturers. In letters made public January 3, the mayor blasted cigarette makers for targeting children in their advertising: “While most of us see kids as our hope for the future, the tobacco industry sees…
You may have heard of Kemper Marley, the late Phoenix land baron, liquor kingpin, political deal maker and cockfighting aficionado long suspected as the mastermind of the 1976 carbomb killing of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. Before he died in 1990, the famed scoundrel promised to donate $1million to the…
Once upon a time, Betty Dearing would have found it hard to believe that most of the guests at a recent family get-together could wind up lying around with lighted candles stuck into their ears. Of course, that was before a relative of the Phoenix grandmother mentioned a rediscovered folk…
Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew Cover it with chocolate and a miracle or two The Candy Man, oh, the Candy Man can The Candy Man can ’cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good … Oh, that Candy Man was certainly a…
X Mex I reread Howard Seftel’s fantasy-restaurant-week review (“Holiday on Rice,” December 28) just to make sure. Not one Mexican restaurant among his favorite Valley 21! How to account for this absence? Maybe Seftel just doesn’t like Mexican food. Fair enough. Unfortunately for the Seftels of this world, whose eating…
Like most roadside lodges, Florence’s Blue Mist Motel offers all the accommodations a tourist could ask for–an ice machine, a postcard rack, a color TV with AM/FM radio. But this landmark an hour southeast of Phoenix offers amenities you won’t find at any other motel in the country. Half the…
“I used to look at him and say to myself, ‘Now, that’s what I call a white boy!'” wheezes Marcus Hesby, dissolving into a laugh that starts with sheee and ends about 30 seconds later and an octave lower with it. Hesby is an old man now, a retired hod…
