They’re Good Kindling, Too The boys at Rural/Metro Fire Corporation were not pleased with New Times’ August 17 story about their handling of the 20,000-acre Rio fire. Soon after the issue containing Michael Kiefer’s cover story, “The Souring Inferno,” hit the streets, racks in several northeast Valley locations were stripped…
Contrary to what you hear from the official press, the odds are reasonably high that J. Fife Symington III will be media deep-fried and resigned from office well before his gubernatorial term ends in 1999. By filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, Symington has stepped onto a tightrope strung over a…
Walking into Durant’s one night last week, a couple of longtime customers asked about the deep trench running across the restaurant’s parking lot. “Oh, that?” quipped the valet parking attendant, pointing toward what turned out to be a plumbing excavation. “They’re installing either a wine cellar or a live lobster…
Let’s daydream for a minute. It’s opening day, 1998. Nearly 50,000 fans are tightly packed into Bank One Ballpark’s dark green seats, eagerly anticipating the first pitch in America’s grandest and most expensive new generation of baseball stadiums–$70 million more than the next most expensive ballpark, Denver’s $215 million Coors…
Quail race across a secluded Phoenix street where Gretchen Freeman and her husband will soon break ground on a new home. Their future backyard affords a view of Camelback Mountain’s Praying Monk. Neighboring houses sprawl across roomy, desert-landscaped lots. Home prices in this development, Biltmore Alta Vista Park, start at…
The hot talk around the Maricopa County Courthouse in recent weeks hasn’t been about juicy murder cases or Sheriff Joe. What people really want to know is why three court commissioners–Laura Estay, Joel Glynn and Roy Waddell–were forced to resign August 9. The forced courthouse resignations were the first in…
W. Wallace Covington, a professor of forest ecology at Northern Arizona University, likes to invoke the memory of Aldo Leopold, the naturalist and philosopher who lectured on the importance of undisturbed wilderness. Of course, there are no more undisturbed wildernesses, and after more than a century of fire suppression, grazing,…
The Executioner’s Song and Dance State Representative Scott Bundgaard considers himself an “idea man.” His fresh idea for this month: kill people. The District 19 Republican intends to introduce a bill requiring capital punishment for interstate drug dealers or people who produce “a commercial amount” of illegal drugs, whatever that…
Everybody knows that Phoenix is, quite simply, the best place in the world to live. Whether you’re looking for great weather, a unique cultural spectrum, expressive architecture or just plain friendly folks, this year-round fun capital has it all! And while naysaying summer guests may moan that the Valley of…
When I was a reporter not long ago, I often found myself in the same crowd of journalists as one particular television newsman. This reporter stood out from the journalistic pack. No matter what the event–trial or news conference, government meeting or murder scene–he seemed always to be behind schedule…
Lying in her bed last April, frail and small, Yvonne Camenos knew she had only weeks to live. Yet she was not embittered. She seemed content in the knowledge that she had fought for as long as she could. So as her mind replayed her struggle against ovarian cancer, she…
Sometimes, Debbie McQueen wonders if people could possibly understand what she’s gone through. The isolation. The struggles. The heartache of being the mother of chemically sensitive boys. There was the time a family vacation soured when Jason McQueen had a seizure at Sea World. Another incident involved Michael, Jason’s brother,…
It could have been a pep rally. But rather than “Go Team,” the placards said things like “Big Classes, Little Learning” and “Your Kids Deserve Better.” And instead of being carried by the cheerleading squad, they were brandished by teachers, More than 200 teachers picketed outside the Phoenix Union High…
A judge has thwarted the latest effort to derail construction of a major league baseball stadium in downtown Phoenix. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey S. Cates on Monday dismissed two lawsuits that tried to give county voters a voice in whether they should be taxed to build the stadium…
Another Arizona Export The giant sucking sound from out Yuma way is federal funds being flushed on behalf of the 125 powerful farmers who make up the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District. Federal largess has reached such absurd proportions that agencies now are fining each other. The U.S. Environmental Protection…
There were 15 of them standing together in the sun. In the dust and dirt, penned up yet blas about the situation, nowhere to go. The flies were taking advantage of this, landing on their noses and clustering about their eyes. But those eyes–gleaming black eight balls of calm and…
For all of her 53 years, Donna Goodale has threaded horses and mules through nearly impassable thickets of scrub oak and manzanita behind the tiny hamlet of Top of the World, Arizona, 75 miles east of Phoenix on U.S. Route 60. Goodale is a solid-framed woman with curly blond hair…
A nasty fight may be brewing over the redrawing of county supervisor districts–and which of the current supervisors will take the political fallout from the major-league baseball stadium vote. In February 1994, supervisors voted 3-1 to impose a countywide quarter-cent sales tax to fund construction of the major-league baseball stadium…
You’re tuned to the most substantial, most intelligent, hippest television broadcasting available today. You’re one of the lucky three million people in the nation who gets the Independent Film Channel, which airs domestic and foreign nonstudio cinema, uncut and commercial-free. You’re watching the works of Fellini, Truffaut, Kubrick, art-house staples,…
They’ve swilled Coca-Cola with aspirin. Smoked banana peels. Licked toads. Over the years, thrill seekers have tried just about everything in their misguided guest for forbidden–if completely legal–kicks. And now–in an effort to experience “euphoric stimulation,” “increased sexual sensations” and a “fantastically light headed, tingly happy-happy buzz”–many thrill-starved hedonists are…
Grunting, straining and sweating like a couple of pro wrestlers, a young couple on the dance floor valiantly struggles to master a difficult back-flip maneuver. But the tricky move eventually reaches an impasse when the woman is stranded upside down on her partner’s hunched-over form, leaving the pair looking like…
Like Abigail Van Buren, Joyce Brothers and Xaviera Hollander, Dr. Crime Lab wants to help. He wants to utilize his expertise, his know-how in the world of wrongdoing and advise you, the law-abiding citizen, the potential victim. The only difference between Abby or Dr. Joyce and Dr. Crime Lab is…
