I’ve got one for you: Two guys in wraparound shades with “Wetback Power” gang tattoos saunter past a Maricopa County sheriff’s volunteer posse member. Both are openly armed with pistols and combat shotguns. The weekend cop looks ’em over and says, “Have a nice Sunday, guys.” It was all part…
Grand Stand The attempt to rape the taxpayers of Mesa (sales taxes and recouped taxes) and Arizona (recouped sales taxes) is small potatoes compared to the cost to taxpayers of the control of state, city and county governmental policies by promoters and developers (“House of Cards,” John Dougherty, April 8)…
I’m watching a snuff film, and it’s hard-core. The snuffers–there’s a pack of them, male and female–are in uniforms. Scott Norberg, the man who will be killed on film, has blond hair, jeans, no shirt. He is slumped down, back against a wall. He looks confused. It begins. A fat…
There’s a story about Suns rookie Gerald Brown that has reached legendary proportions. His parents, Gerald Sr. and Wendelene, believe the incident helped make their son a man. His coach at Carl Hayden High, Argie Rhymes, thinks it made his guard a better player. His friend and high school teammate…
“Keane paintings are my friends,” gushed actress Joan Crawford. An art critic from the New York Times checked in with a far different opinion, characterizing the couple’s work as “the very definition of tasteless hack work.” Eye or nay, there was no denying that artists Walter and Margaret Keane had…
Lynette Bibbee’s museum of maudlin art is not a pretty picture. In one strategically placed lithograph titled “No Dogs Allowed,” a wide-eyed waif and his equally optically overendowed poodle soulfully dare the viewer to look away. Avert your eyes to the print next to it, this one identified as “The…
In recent months, there’s been a lot written and said about the death of the Tempe scene. Apparently, the sheer accumulation of isolated events (the closing of Gibson’s, the deaths of Brad Singer and Elvis Del Monte, and the record-label woes of the Refreshments, Pistoleros, Pharoahs 2000, and Lo-Watts) has…
MODERN ROCK: 1. LES PAYNE PRODUCT This high-concept dynamic duo–born of a much reviled alt-rock quartet called Crime Dog–occupies a musical space all its own: You could call it minimalist garage funk-pop. Behind their sense of the absurd and fashion unpredictability, though, guitarist James Karnes and drummer Chris Pomerenke are…
Tribune Newspapers Publisher Karen Wittmer and Mesa Mayor Wayne Brown are continuing to squelch key information related to the Arizona Cardinals’ efforts to build a domed stadium in west Mesa. Their behind-the-scenes strategy, launched last summer, has resulted in the Tribune using its editorial pages to strongly support a plan…
For more than two years, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office withheld a videotape that contains key evidence in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by a paraplegic, Richard Post, whose single night strapped to a restraint chair in Madison Street Jail in 1996 caused him permanent neck damage. When the sheriff’s office…
Sterling, who won the award in 1987 and 1989, was chosen for a portfolio of work that included an investigation into the financial dealings of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona.
“There is a phone booth,” goes a story born on the Internet, “in the middle of the desert.” It’s all alone out in the Mojave, a forgotten telephone network anomaly. And there’s this guy, a Tempe resident named Godfrey Daniels, who loves it. He didn’t discover the booth–some letter-writer to…
Sam I Am Ticked Scottsdale’s head cheerleader isn’t the most popular girl in the class right now. Mayor Sam Campana, who clawed her way to the top of Arizona’s Outdoor Mall from humble beginnings as a baton twirler in Filer, Idaho, has doubled her negative ratings in a recent, top-secret…
Up in Arms While reading the April 1 article on Arm the Homeless (“Give Piece a Chance”) by Inda House (she is very good, by the way; I’m looking forward to her next piece), I was inspired to form my own organization to take on another societal problem that also…
When The Pistoleros singer Lawrence Zubia decided to kill himself after years of depression and drug abuse, for some reason the familiar buttes of Monument Valley came to him in a cocaine-addled haze. Zubia had no gun. And he’d already ingested enough drugs to kill a normal person. Instead, he…
Forget the Super Bowl. The Arizona Cardinals’ biggest victory for decades to come will arrive May 18, if Mesa voters approve a $385 million sales-tax hike that will help finance a 67,400-seat football stadium. For the first time since arriving in the Valley 11 years ago, the Cardinals are displaying…
Bank One Ballpark Rio Salado Crossing Taxpayer funds for construction $238 million $654 million (with interest)* Taxpayer funds for operation and maintenance $0 $163 million through year 2028* Annual naming rights fee paid by team to district $325,000 $250,000 Rent: $1 million** $1.75million*** Seats: 48,500 67,400 Features: Retractable dome Retractable…
As far as we know, the panhandlers downtown are, in fact, not armed with Mac-10s. We’ll give that up now. Last week, though, anyone who called New Times to ask if our April 1 cover story was a hoax received this standard, if indirect, response: “Real homeless people, real guns.”…
If It Swims, We Can Kill It It’s like a classic good news/bad news joke. First, the good news. Governor Jane Dee Hull has finally replaced Russell Rhoades, that canker of a director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Rhoades was a laughable leader, an obstructionist who, had he…
John, We Hardly Knew Ye POW-wow! Your feature articles are reliably engrossing enough to grab your copy hot off the press. With about average-citizen knowledge of our reputed hero senator, I was captivated by the excellence of your expose, “Is John McCain a War Hero?” (Amy Silverman, March 25). I…
Spry raving echoes between smoked glass high-rises, liberating the cool night air of its usual calm. In it, a bullhorn assuredly shrieks, “They’re bombing hospitals! They’re bombing schools!” and, “Stop Clinton now!” All this is heard atop a trilling of whistles, yelps and cheers. The hubbub–a clear anomaly for a…
The tragic death of Phoenix Police Officer Marc Atkinson has our city leaders casting about for a way to better protect the men and women charged with protecting us. I’m not sure they’ve found the solution. But our leaders are. Phoenix police, police union officials and city politicians have decreed…
