From all appearances, Walter Wrobel is the model Catholic priest. He’s got a doctorate in divinity, years of experience and he looks the part–clad in a suit jacket and black shirt buttoned to the neck. Scholarly glasses. Sweet disposition. Wife and kids. Wife and kids? Wrobel is one of a…
Brunch Tips: The number of high-class resorts in the Valley makes this one of the country’s great brunch sites. If Marquesa and Latilla Room are booked, here are a few other Mother’s Day brunch alternatives: Terrace Dining Room (Phoenician resort): The Sheraton folks have recently taken over the operation of…
And the days dwindle down to a precious few. . . . –song from the Broadway show Knickerbocker Holiday For Charles Barkley, these are the precious few final days. Barkley plans to retire from the NBA at the end of this season even if the Suns are unable to win…
The City of Phoenix has been trumpeting its new City Hall as a prime example of cost-effective public construction. The “Best Run City in the World” even produced a television program about its new headquarters that ran through April on the city’s cable channel. While it may not rate a…
An illustration of an atom is one of the four symbols emblazoned on Maricopa County’s official government seal. It is there to reflect the importance of nuclear energy to the county, home of the nation’s largest nuclear-powered electrical generating facility. And that facility is especially important to the financial well-being…
Early last year, then-Maricopa County manager Roy Pederson found himself sitting across the table from two men who are not easily lost in the labyrinths of government budgets. Newly elected County Treasurer Doug Todd is a crusty pro who previously helped craft the state’s multibillion-dollar budgets as chair of the…
Running up debts of more than $100 million qualifies Maricopa County’s leaders to be called pound foolish, but that doesn’t mean they are penny-wise. While the bulk of the county’s swelling fiscal crisis stems from loans that have piled up and been hidden with more loans, the county has also…
An HIV-positive woman wrongly linked to an alleged “sex for drugs” scandal has won a legal victory in her battle to clear her name. Without comment, the Arizona Supreme Court on April 6 declined to reinstate a marijuana-related criminal case against Ronda Crace. In so doing, the court upheld a…
“We are never the victims of external events. Events just happen,” Neville Rowe once wrote. “When we end a lifetime, we still have the same personalities we had on Earth–the only difference is that we no longer have the physical body around us.” Rowe, a 55-year-old Phoenix man known by…
Fabio? Fabio who? Chalk it up to extreme good fortune, but Chandler rodeo cowboy Norm Nelson somehow managed to reach the ripe, old age of 50 without ever being exposed to the ubiquitous name, image and voice of romance readers’ favorite F-word. But in the past few weeks, Nelson has…
There are worse things than jail. There is no telephone there. There is, instead, peace. A hard table to write on. The best political writing in this century has been done from jail . . . Lenin and Gandhi. –Richard Nixon musing with a friend several hours after resigning as…
In 1962, Grover Cleveland Thompson decided to spruce up the front lawn of his Sunnyslope home with a salute to the then-current Seattle World’s Fair. Using concrete, marbles, broken pop bottles, shattered ceramic figurines and shards of brightly colored Fiesta Ware, the retired plant foreman created a nine-foot-tall replica of…
The Luhrs building, at the intersection of First Avenue and Jefferson Street, is somewhat magnificent–by Phoenix architectural standards. But inside the 1920s-era art-deco structure, the flat, patterned carpet has aged and the hallways smell, faintly, like dirty laundry. It is here, on the first floor, that you will find the…
During the 16th century, fussy Vatican clerics took offense at the friskier frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and commissioned an artist to paint draperies over the private parts of the nudes on the ceiling. Here in Phoenix, there’s a bar called the Monastery, and its frescoes are really a decoupage…
Bob Hirschfeld is used to being the hunter, not the prey. The feisty and flamboyant divorce lawyer–whose specialty is winning child-custody rights for fathers, by any means necessary–is usually on the attack, using the courts as a weapon in his especially bloody brand of domestic combat. Now Hirschfeld is on…
It is about midnight when the cop from Norway cruises East Van Buren Street for the first time. “Wow!” says Einar Kristoffersen, three days into his first visit to the States. “My Godt!” His guttural exclamations are not evoked by the hookers and drug pushers who normally haunt Van Buren…
It’s easy to dislike Frank Ellena. He is loud and argumentative, with a boorish and aggressive manner that is instantly alienating. A large, hulking figure, he has a plump, oval face surrounding two eyes that bulge and burn with righteous anger whenever his views or logic are even gingerly questioned…
When Robert P. McCulloch was building Lake Havasu City in the late 1960s, he needed something to draw settlers to the sparsely populated lake on the western Arizona border. So he purchased the London Bridge, dismantled it, and rebuilt it at his fledgling aquatic playground, hoping to lure buyers into…
Prescott is in an uproar because its own Chamber of Commerce motto, “Everybody’s Hometown,” is coming to pass. The problem is, not all residents are willing to share their hometown with everyone. The battle lines are drawn: Pro-growthers versus anti-growthers. The tactics are ugly. The outcome is uncertain. City Council…
They don’t call Steve Krafft a probing reporter for nothing. That’s why the Channel 10 investigative news hound is the recipient of our latest Bill Close Award. New Times periodically bestows the coveted award, named after the former Channel 10 fossil, on local newscasters who go below and beside the…
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Redfield Baum looked at the attorneys sitting before him and got right to the point. “I’m gonna tell you,” he told two representatives of the Phoenix firm of Hessinger and Associates, “in these fee applications, if you don’t show exactly what you’ve done, you’re not going…
Eric Taylor was a proud father, an exceptional college athlete, a hard worker and a devout Christian. He was six feet seven inches tall, with a strong jaw, heavy brows and chiseled features that could look forbidding until they eased into a freely given, gap-toothed smile. But he lived his…
