Six nights a week, Karamba is all about gay Latinos. But Fridays are more complicated. Friday nights, the club hosts Hot Pink!, a dance scene for the young and would-be fabulous. In most clubs, the women are the pretty ones, but the men here have picked up on the chicks’…
On its face, the federal law safeguarding religious beliefs in the workplace is a simple one: Employers must make reasonable efforts to accommodate workers’ “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Beyond that, though, there’s really nothing simple about it. What’s a reasonable effort? What does it mean to “accommodate”? And really, what’s…
Night Galleries Or we could just be law-abiding: About your “T.G.I.F.” article (Benjamin Leatherman, September 1): I was on the Roosevelt strip on August 5 and saw the officers who seemed to be posted on every corner. I didn’t think anything of it because where people gather in the thousands,…
In a corner of a packed sports bar, beneath a neon Captain Morgan sign and a blank TV monitor, Erik Miller steps up to the mic and launches into his regular Friday night standup routine at Chilly Bombers Bar & Grill in northwest Phoenix. “Let’s keep it going for John…
Maybe it was watching Tommy Lee get tutored by that hot blonde in Tommy Lee Goes to College that inspired us. Or maybe it was just cruising through Tempe the other day and noticing that all the fly Arizona State University chicks are back for fall. Or perhaps we were…
Base Balls Baseball stage parent: Robert Nelson drives home a timely parable on the over-parenting that is helping transform youth athletics into a modern-day Children’s Crusade. As a father who was once the worst kind of baseball stage parent, I couldn’t help but insert myself into the ego-driven thought processes…
It’s a sticky Saturday morning in mid-August, and Tara Logsdon is fried. The sun beats down on Logsdon, 31, as she arranges her bizarre-looking paintings next to some artful teddy bears and handmade clothing on the outdoor stage at Holga’s, during the downtown Phoenix apartment complex’s monthly flea market. The…
For all but the most breathless pageant addicts, the Miss Arizona competition this past June was low on drama. Miss Arizona 2004, a busty blonde, handed off her crown to the new Miss Arizona 2005, a slightly less busty blonde. People clapped. Surely, someone’s mother cried. To see the fireworks,…
The party’s just getting started inside The Fort, even though it’s well past 2 a.m. on the first Friday in August. Haunts like the Emerald Lounge have long since discharged their drunks, but numerous night crawlers have journeyed to the squat gallery run by brothers Isaac and Gabriel Fortoul next…
“There’s more white cloth in here than a Klan meetin’ in Georgia!” I spit as we cross the threshold of Old Town Scottsdale’s Dos Gringos for the club’s toga party last Thursday. “So, uh, how do I look?” “Like someone tried to tie a tablecloth around a hippo,” cracks my…
ClothesHorses Homegrown talent: With regard to the story about Arizona’s fashion scene (“Angela’s Ashes,” Joe Watson, August 18), I strongly disagree with several points. First, the author suggests that talented designers leave the state. But there are talented designers with very successful lines that choose to make Arizona their home,…
“First off, no pullin’ out your ‘man,'” Mr. Luscious informs his fellow male strippers, minutes before they take to the Celebrity Theatre’s stage as the erotic revue known as The Main Event, Part 2. “You can act like you’re about to pull it out, but you better not.” “In case…
I am standing on an earthen berm beyond the right-field fence during the second game of the Arizona Little League Majors State Tournament. If my oldest son’s team wins this tournament, the boys are off to San Bernardino, California, to play in the Little League Western Regionals. If they win…
Ethic Cleansing Freedom of the oppressed: It’s unbelievable that the misconception is so prevalent that there’s an “oppressed and occupied” Palestine (“Der Füror,” Sarah Fenske, August 11). Your writer touched on the central point when she observed: “[The YWCA leadership] focused on the Palestinians’ mistreatment without a word about [Yasser]…
In the weeks leading up to last September’s Republican primary election for sheriff, challenger Dan Saban predicted that someday someone inside Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s inner circle would disclose damaging information that would end Arpaio’s political career. Might that day soon arrive? Federal prosecutors now have a rare opportunity to obtain…
On a sweltering Sunday night in mid-July, the Pussycat Lounge in Old Town Scottsdale is crawling with twentysomethings pounding shots of Patrón and sipping mojitos. A no-kill animal shelter is trying to raise money tonight by pimping a swimsuit calendar filled with local models in bikinis. Clearly, this crowd is…
Joltin’ Joe Indecent exposure: You should do an exposé on what has to be the worst major metropolitan newspaper in the country, the Arizona Republic. For 10 years now, I’ve seen New Times struggle to expose corruption and fraud at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office only to be obstructed every…
When Barbara Lewkowitz first saw the report, she was too stunned to hit “print.” And when she went back online, hoping to read it again, the link was gone, leaving her to wonder if the whole thing was a figment of her imagination. It wasn’t. After a colleague faxed over…
Superior Court Judge Michael D. Jones should be proud of himself. He has made it virtually impossible for the public to find out what is going on inside a sheriff’s department that is noted for cruelty, ineptitude and downright stupidity. In ruling against New Times in a public records lawsuit…
The quarter-mile drag-racing track at Speedworld Raceway Park is sticky from burnt tires, and exhaust fills our lungs like we’ve been puffin’ Pall Malls all day. Cars and motorcycles are lined up in pairs from the beginning of the two-lane blacktop, way back past the chain-link entrance, just like that…
Bigger and Better Size doesn’t matter: It would have been easy for Kreme to revert to every fat joke he’s ever heard when writing about “size awareness,” but he didn’t (“Full Bloom,” Inferno, Stephen Lemons, July 28). Sure, the story had a sense of humor — and even a few…
Anita Watson was overwhelmed July 19, after a nine-person jury awarded her and her family $28 million, at the conclusion of a civil trial in downtown Phoenix. But it wasn’t like she was thinking about how to spend her share of the money. “I kept thinking about my mom and…
