The insurance industry and its allies in the GOP leadership could have won, if they just hadn’t been so greedy. They could have come up with a bill to revamp Arizona’s automobile insurance laws that would have satisfied enough Republicans–and maybe even a handful of Democrats–to get the necessary votes…
Some things surprise us. We never expect talk-show hosts to behave with class or to display genuine insight into human behavior. That’s why Jami McFerrin’s dignified farewell to local radio last week was so astonishing. “I’m walkin’ out the door with my head held high,” McFerrin said on the air…
When planning family vacations, the normal course of action is to sit down months in advance, scan road maps, study travel guides and wrangle tips from anyone who’s ever been outside the city limits. But parents, in their haste to decide where they’ll have fun, invariably forget to ask the…
We live in interesting times. The high rollers fascinate us. Whether it’s in business, crime, politics or sports, we become interested in the players only when their numbers head north above the $1 million mark. That’s when the spotlight clicks on. We feel compelled to learn how these people crossed…
He has watched the battle of Park Plaza apartments from the start. He has kept track of everything. He has it all written down. “Can I trust you?” the old man asks. I nod. He is so tiny. And yet his eyes glow. There is a fierce energy. “Keep my…
Every few weeks, we here on the Di-Gel desk like to go through our junk mail. What letters we don’t pass along to the FBI, we like to print. We do this for two reasons: 1) In most classic mass-communications diagram situations, a vigorous dialogue between sender and receiver is…
People remember Harvey Keith Smith as a world-class gentleman. The grandfatherly, silver-haired real-estate developer always dressed elegantly, commuted to his various Arizona developments in a private jet and drove around Scottsdale in a purring Jaguar. He was a global businessman who traveled extensively–he prized a photo of himself as a…
“You name me one other business where, with nothing in your pocket and no real knowledge of any kind, you can go out on the street and make $40 to $60 within 45 minutes.” When no answer is immediately forthcoming, the boyish-looking young man who calls himself Cliff decides to…
Sun Valley could well be the most flamboyant development scheme ever hatched in a Phoenix high-rise, a 48,000-acre fantasy of limitless possibilities and easy millions just fifty fast minutes west on I-10. Ever since the land was hustled out of public ownership and into private hands in a complicated series…
Border Patrol agent Gary Patrick Callahan has had a reputation in Cochise County as a anti-Communist, drug-hating survivalist during his nearly twenty years on the southeast Arizona frontier. Now Callahan’s really got a reason to hate drugs. Paradise Valley dentist Bill Bartel, who is accused of trying to peddle 81…
Phoenix’s effort to revamp its thirty-year-old zoning code, an undertaking aimed at weaving the city’s haphazard growth into the patterns laid out by the city’s general plan, is running into a not-so-slight obstacle: developers. No group has demonstrated more interest in the code’s revision, and the developers trumpet their enthusiasm…
Tens of thousands of raw-footed hikers who’ve trudged into the Grand Canyon to Phantom Ranch know what a relief it is to finally collapse in the shade of the famous campground’s giant cottonwood trees. Until last fall, though, no one realized that the trees themselves could use a little relief…
Strutting around outside the Holiday Inn ballroom on Saturday night in his immaculate jeweled jumpsuit, Little Elvis appears momentarily oblivious to the trappings that have temporarily transformed the motel lobby into a reasonable facsimile of Heartbreak Hotel. He blocks out the big-screen TV where a braying Shelley Winters is doing…
When it comes to cases of fraud, there’s no question where Dennis DeConcini stands. Arizona’s senior senator has been busy this past week trying to get his colleagues to gut the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. If DeConcini is successful, it will tie the hands of consumers and…
In the New Age capital of Sedona, the great outdoors is a precious commodity. Red cliffs and lush greenery make the land one of the state’s most beautiful spots for tourists and day-tripping city folk. For others the attraction goes deeper. Sedona is world famous as a metaphysical “hot spot,”…
What do you do if the big boys won’t put your TV channel on cable and you’re limited to a low-power antenna on South Mountain? You try to get your hands on a real TV station. That’s what BILL SAURO, president of KUSK in Prescott (CHANNEL 27 in Phoenix) is…
Here–in all their pure, unexpurgated horror–are the three ugliest words you can hear after you’ve accepted a dinner-party invitation: “Grandma can’t baby-sit.” If just reading that sentence didn’t soak your shorts in cold sweat, you either don’t have a four-year-old, your four-year-old doesn’t have a grandma, or you’re never invited…
Dave Foreman took a short sip from a bottle of Pacifico. He wore walking shorts. Foreman stands better than six feet, much taller than he seemed a week before in a baggy blue jail uniform. It was late Saturday afternoon and Foreman was waiting on the front porch of the…
Here’s how stupid Phoenix looked in the worldwide broadcast of the Grand Prix by ESPN. After commercial breaks, the sports network used a cartoon logo of the Phoenix skyline. A howling cartoon coyote was identified by the broadcasting boob as “a wolf.” This desert critter was then replaced by an…
There were great sighs of relief at City Hall Monday. Now we can get this damn thing off our backs was the prevailing sentiment in the offices of Mayor Terry Goddard and Councilwoman Linda Sue Nadolski. For months, the two had been fighting off charges that someone–and each accused the…
A Phoenix firefighter lies paralyzed from the waist down following a bizarre Memorial Day incident at a local hospital in which he fell and hit his head after he was given a painkilling injection. According to accounts by friends and fellow firefighters, Kenneth Gardiner, a 22-year-old ambulance driver, had gone…
There’s nothing like the smell of pigskin to make Arizona politicos jump. State and city officials jumped through hoops for years as various NFL teams teased the Valley with the possibility of professional football. Nor were they deterred when teams like the Philadelphia Eagles and the Indianapolis Colts used the…
