Gary Giordano is convinced that a decadelong grand conspiracy involving the most powerful business and political interests in the state is finally coming to fruition. Unless it is unmasked, he insists, that sinister plot will destroy the rural community where Giordano lives–New River, Arizona. At a cafe in downtown Phoenix…
Drunkenly scrutinizing the advertising come-on plastered across the front of the side-show attraction, the wino bellows to all within earshot. “Isha fake!” he says, unable to believe that the 40-foot trailer parked outside the shopping center actually contains a giant 20-ton whale captured in the Pacific. “Isha goddamn fake, I…
For 16 months, Alex Gonzalez of Central Pawn Brokers has been pummeling City Hall with claims of wrongful prosecution, and now he figures he is in a position to say: I told you so. On April 3, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office dropped charges of theft and trafficking in stolen…
Woman’s in Tuition “Would you deny this beautiful, bright-eyed child a future education?” That’s the question 200 acquaintances of Valley Art Theatre owner Krista Griffin have been wrestling with recently. Each of them received a flier requesting a $25 donation to put the Tempe moviehouse magnate through another semester of…
Employees fired in the wake of an undercover sting at Phoenix Newspapers Inc. say they have learned that honesty is not the best policy. Although they say they were assured they would not be fired if they were forthcoming about drug or alcohol use, some employees who confessed were terminated…
Rosalind Hall is a welfare mother. Two months ago, she got a job. It’s nearly caused her to lose everything. She doesn’t make enough to stand on her own, and because she’s employed, she’s lost the assistance that would help to change that. Hall is stuck in “the system.” A…
Debby Kosobucki vividly recalls her first gig as a topless dancer. It was 1984, and she was 28 years old. She had fled a broken marriage, packed up her three daughters and moved to Phoenix from Washington state. She chose Phoenix for her fresh start because she had read there…
Ruben and Concepcion Valencia find that the harder they try to reach for justice, the more elusive it seems. Not only is their son dead, but a man they say pointed a gun at them not long ago was released by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The Valencias think the…
Congress is busy scaling back, even getting rid of welfare payments to folks like unemployed teen mothers and hungry schoolkids. But it’s also under pressure to restore benefits to a different class of beleaguered constituents–restaurant owners. Before the mid-1980s, businesses could deduct 100 percent of their meal costs, as long…
With Friends Like These . . . If you’re following the state legislative circus, you’re familiar with Senate Bill 1290, the so-called environmental audit bill. Environmentalists and other non-cranks have dubbed 1290 the Polluter Protection Act. It would allow corporations to escape prosecution for polluting, provided they disclose their misdeeds…
If you’ve never witnessed a 50-year-old Vandercook No. 232 Proof Press working at full-on, finger-crushing capacity, then you’ve never heard a noise like this: SKREE CHUNK KA-CHANK SKREE CHUNK KA-CHANK SKREE CHUNK KA-CHANK. And you’ve never seen the primitive, industrial sensuality of rollers, bearings, plates, wheels and belts moving in…
It’s the final round at the Doral-Ryder Open, and Gary McCord is scatting. His solo begins as Peter Jacobsen, the hottest player on the PGA Tour, eyes a putt on the 12th green. “He’s in that ever-present Zone that these guys get into once in a while,” the CBS golf…
Twenty-three years ago, Arizona lawmakers set up a trust fund for the state’s prisoners. The lawmakers’ idea was simple enough–profits generated from prison convenience stores, hobby shops and the prisoners’ telephone system would go into a Special Services Fund that would be held in trust by the Arizona Department of…
For 35 years, the gargantuan neon Roadrunner stood sentry over traffic on the Black Canyon Freeway. But one morning two weeks ago, stunned motorists stared in disbelief as they whizzed past the defunct truck stop at the northwest corner of I-17 and McDowell Road. The big beeper had flown the…
Fast. Extremely fast. Wide lanes. Deep gutters. No waves. Perfect water temperature. And most important: clean air. These are the physical attributes that separate an average swimming pool from a great one. There are only a handful of elite competitive swimming facilities in the United States. One of the best…
Pistol-Packin’ Emma The front door at Phoenix City Hall proclaims: “No weapons of any kind allowed in building.” But one city employee is packing heat–City Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood. Although she usually leaves her handgun in the car, Dirty Emma, who has a concealed-weapon permit, admits that she sometimes carries…
The whining from the leftish side of American politics seems to grow less intelligent and more ineffectual by the day, even to a veteran Nixon-Reagan-Bush hater like me. It’s as if the Democrats want to prove that Rush Limbaugh is right–that they actually are the party of politically correct minutiae…
The Gaddie family has been in the education business for decades. In the 1970s, members operated the John Hancock Academy in Mesa, teaching children back-to-basics that included phonics, morality and other conservative values. Later, they moved to higher education, operating the Mountain States Technical Institute to teach vocations like mechanics…
Nothing that’s happened in Lake Havasu City since March 13–the official beginning of spring break, MTV-style–came as much of a surprise to anyone. That’s not to say things were uneventful, though. A miniriot took place on the beach after shots were fired in a confrontation between a pistol-packing spring-breaker and…
You’ve got your Old Hollywood. And then you’ve got your Incipient Forest Lawn. Somewhere in between, you’ve got the stellar feeding trough known as Chasen’s restaurant, the 58-year-old Tinseltown phenomenon that will slam its reservation book shut for the final time this Saturday night. For anyone even remotely acquainted with…
Although People for the West–the antienvironmental “grassroots” lobby of the mining, ranching and logging industries–boasts more than 3,000 Arizona members, fewer than 200 showed up in Mesa last Saturday for the organization’s state convention. Most of the conventioneers were over 60, the sort of right-wingers who drive slowly in the…
You may not know Stella Gaudreau, but state Senate President John Greene and the 13,500-member Arizona State Bar sure do. Thanks in great measure to Gaudreau, it’s still not a crime to practice law without a license in Arizona. Senate Bill 1055, which could have made it a felony for…
