By modern ski-industry standards, Arizona Snowbowl in Flagstaff is a failure. It has no slope-side hotels and condos; no high-speed detachable quad lifts; no “terrain gardened” (bulldozed) slopes to make sure the downhill run is as effortless as the uphill ride; no snowmaking equipment; no picturesque village full of art…
Although Governor J. Fife Symington III is bankrupt, cash is never a worry for him. When Symington needed $1.5 million to run for governor in 1990, he got it from his mother and his wife. When legal bills related to his pending criminal trial surged past $600,000, Symington’s wife, Ann,…
U.S. Wants Fife Locked Up The word from sources inside state government is that Governor J. Fife Symington III is desperately seeking a plea agreement with federal prosecutors before he goes on trial in May on 23 felony counts. The Fifester wants to cut a deal that will keep his…
Jeremy Voas has been appointed editor of New Times, executive editor Michael Lacey announced Tuesday. He succeeds John Mecklin, who has been named editor of SF Weekly in San Francisco. Both publications are owned by Phoenix-based New Times, Inc. Voas, 40, has been managing editor of New Times since 1992…
After 13 years of participation in task forces with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the state Department of Public Safety has withdrawn its officers from the multi-agency effort. The move continues DPS’ eight-month trend of scaling back narcotics enforcement. The state’s largest police agency has been strapped for funds since…
How many times has this happened to you? You awake to yet another glorious Arizona dawn. You tumble out of bed and immediately engage in your ritual, 40-second sitz bath, splash on some brisk perfume or aftershave, wink into the mirror and stride out to the garage to retrieve your…
Paper Cuts Regarding the layoffs at Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., one will find that for the most part, the reporters who were terminated are those who have been writing articles sympathetic toward Valley citizens in their fight against dragons like Sumitomo-Sitix (“Scenes From a Slaughter,” Amy Silverman, January 23). Those reporters…
Sheriff Promotes Gambling The betting action was furious February 6 at downtown Phoenix’s American Legion Post No. 1 as Sheriff Joke Arpaio swaggered to the podium. People were giving odds on exactly how vainglorious The Crime Avenger would be. The occasion was the Legion’s 60th annual Policemen of the Year…
Kim MacEachern, Mary Simmerer and Peggy Guichard-Watters are women of unusual courage and honor. But these three environmental regulators have learned, painfully, that in a government ruled by J. Fife Symington III, state workers who display courage and honor may well find their heads on the chopping block. Three weeks…
Curtains! I find it irritating that in a city as large as Phoenix, a publication as large as New Times can’t seem to find a theater reviewer who actually will review a production. The previous reviewer was too busy illustrating his knowledge of the industry and the history of the…
The cornflower-blue, kid-leather Donna Karan handbag dangles from her fingers. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t even particularly like it,” she says. “But it’s Donna Karan–not just DKNY, but Donna Karan–and it’s perfect.” She turns to her girlfriend–who stands mutely, draped in four designer scarves and…
Were the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Patsy Cline, Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley to converge on Earth, they could hardly have picked a more unlikely location for their postmortem summit meeting than the far East Valley, a snowbird wonderland of RV parks, propane stations, swap meets and all-you-can-eat…
Tony Freman needed his mother. He had been selling drugs on Minneapolis street corners, which got some people irritated with him. So he jumped on a Greyhound a few months ago, hoping to meet up with his mother in Phoenix. He hadn’t forgotten that when he was small, he and…
It was quite a going-away party for one of the state’s top cops. Nearly 300 people, including scores of the state’s leading police officials, packed into the Fraternal Order of Police lodge on January 25 to acknowledge the outstanding career of Rodney Covey, an Arizona Department of Public Safety lieutenant…
Things have gotten downright catty in June Thomson’s old neighborhood. The former KSAZ-TV, Channel 10, news anchor left her home in the Encanto neighborhood late last year to become a morning anchor at KGO, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco. She took her husband (former game-show host David Sparks) and…
Losing His Religion Dressed down in orange corduroys, a stocking cap and ratty blue flannel, Michael Stipe looked less like a pop superstar than a Mill Avenue urchin during the R.E.M. singer’s appearance at a packed book signing at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on January 29. The tome in…
Zamboni. You either know what it is or you don’t. If you do, then skip the next sentence. The Zamboni is the big machine that drives around an ice rink scraping up a thin layer of used ice and laying down a sheen of water that will soon turn into…
Editor’s note: The names of the victims, their parents and the assailant — a relative of A. Melvin McDonald’s — have been changed. Some details of the crimes are intentionally vague so as to protect those identities. Everyone else named in this story is accurately identified. In 1990, Janet Brooks…
It is May 1994. A standing-room-only crowd, mostly parents, filters into the auditorium of a library in north Scottsdale. They have come to hear a presentation about the state of their children’s education. The evening’s keynote speaker is Janet Martin, a former elementary school teacher and conservative educational activist. Martin,…
Republick My Boots At the Arizona Republic, the survivors may envy the executed. Publisher and CEO John Oppedahl remained comfortably invisible in the days after his cashiering of 60 journalists at a time of record profits for Central Newspapers, Inc., the Republic’s parent company. Oppedahl was no doubt at home…
Prostrate they display themselves in desperate attitudes of boredom . . . smoking cigarettes to kill time. –Baudelaire, Les Salons de 1848 Hey. Yeah, you. I know, you like girls, sure. Young, hot girls–no problem. Young, hot, elegantly dressed girls. Am I right? Okay, then! Give me another second here–what…
No News Is Now News I’ve long been convinced that the Arizona Republic is blatantly biased and skews its coverage of the news to suit its own agenda a la the old Communist newspaper Pravda (“Scenes From a Slaughter,” Amy Silverman, January 23). Now, with the demise of the Phoenix…
