I got to America West Arena almost two hours early last Saturday night. It was the opening of the Charles Barkley era in Phoenix Suns’ basketball. Outside, the sidewalk was jammed with fans. Traffic crept and horns honked constantly as the garages and parking lots filled. It was a carnival…
If you’re driving back into Phoenix from a trip to San Diego, somewhere along I-10, after brain-numbing miles of creosote, you will realize subconsciously that you are getting close to home because you will begin to notice palm trees sprinkled here and there. You’ll see little groups of them planted…
On a hot July morning in Camp Verde, Ed Phillips, state senator and TV weatherman, briefs the Arizona Federation of Republican Women on the year’s environmental legislation. He’s light on his feet as he chatters pleasantly about the guy who waters his lawn and lets it run down the street,…
It will go down as the Fiasco in Peasco. For the record, it was billed as the Arizona Vs. Sonora Professional Boxing Shootout; aptly enough, when the dust cleared at Puerto Peasco Stadium on October 3, people were in a shooting mood. It was an awesome lineup for any card,…
From his downtown office window, attorney Joe Clees can watch the 20-story building that will be Phoenix’s new City Hall rise one level at a time. At nine stories right now, it is the only significant stirring on the moribund skyline, and the largest construction project going in the city…
Reverend Tommy Barnett couldn’t have made it easier for his congregation to donate big bucks toward the fight against abortion in Arizona. After complaining during an October 25 sermon about the “underfunded” campaign of Proposition 110–the antiabortion measure–Barnett took up an offering as parishioners filed out of his Phoenix First…
“Where’s Johnny Johnson?” a man asked. “Don’t bother,” a friendly photographer said. “He won’t talk.” “You’re kidding,” the man said. “He just played a hell of a game.” “We tried to get him as he came off the field,” said the TV camera operator. “He said he won’t talk.” Johnny…
I don’t have the opportunity to listen to local radio broadcasting teams all over the National Football League. But I’d guess that the current radio team broadcasting the Phoenix Cardinals games over KTAR-AM comes close to ranking as the league’s worst. First of all, they are an absurd trio of…
I wanted to see, face to face, what kind of punks attack and beat a wheelchair-bound paraplegic. There were two of them, a hatchet-faced piece of meanness called Ted Roper and his 200-pound sidekick, the expressionless Richard Brown. Both men carry a badge for the Bullhead City Police Department. I…
Gary Peter Klahr is talking. This is not one of those toss-the-reader-into-the-action, New Journalism leads. It is a statement of fact. No matter when or where you happen to be reading that first sentence, Gary Peter Klahr–Rick Romley’s only competition in Tuesday’s election for Maricopa County Attorney–is talking. The reason…
The 18-year-old turned on his tape recorder and spoke from the heart. “There’s more out there than the anger and violence you see,” he said. “There’s beauty, there’s love, there’s happiness and there’s joy. You need to go out and find it. And you better hold onto it tight, man,…
A handshake used to be enough for Lou Mastela. During more than 30 years in the restaurant business, Mastela ordered thousands of dollars of groceries and liquor, hired staff, paid bills and built his businesses on a foundation of good intentions. Legal niceties–things like contracts, leases and other paperwork–he left…
“From the time he’s an infant, the average person is brought up to believe that all bugs are bad and that we should annihilate em all immediately,” says antipesticide activist Debbie McQueen. “The truth is that there’s a purpose for every bug in the world–whether we like it or not.”…
As the co-chair of the Maricopa County Libertarian party, Debbie Norwitz is understandably upset when people talk about “the American two-party system.” She knows better. She knows that there are Libertarians, Greens, New Alliancers, Natural Law devotees, independents and others out there struggling to “open people’s minds” to the possibilities…
I was startled the other day to see Red Barber’s photograph in the New York Times. He had been the voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers when I was a kid growing up in New York City. I remember so clearly his calm Southern drawl helping me to keep my own…
You’re John McCain, who put yourself up for sale from the first moment you were elected to Congress. You were sent there to represent Arizona, but you had larger plans and they included only yourself. Inside, in the place where a man keeps the trophies of his life, you can…
Quick! Name one thing that costs exactly the same today as when it was introduced more than 30 years ago. Here’s a clue: It’s as much a part of the American motel room as the Gideon Bible, the seascape bolted over the bed and the ubiquitous “sanitary” strip that testifies…
Renz Jennings, chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission, can’t ignore the telephone behind his desk. “We may be the only ones in the building,” Jennings tells his visitor as he grabs the receiver. On the other end of the line is a high school student who wants, at 6 p.m…
Local talk-radio listeners remember Tom Leykis as KFYI’s first and greatest presence, a bomb-heaving provocateur who filled our mid-1980s airwaves with entertaining yak. He left the station early in 1987 because he couldn’t get along with management. Leykis landed on his feet at KFI in Los Angeles, where he became…
Cap guns can pack a mean kick. Ask 12-year-old Gabriel Kerslake of Phoenix, who was convicted of attempted armed robbery and spent 26 days locked up in a juvenile detention facility–all after pointing an unloaded cap gun at a schoolmate and demanding her money. Gabriel maintains it was all just…
Steve the Bartender put up still another round. The group at the end of the bar, standing under the television set, were regulars in the joint. One had actually stood at this same spot at the bar watching the sallow-faced Richard Nixon give his Checkers speech on a black-and-white screen…
John McCain is trying to buy his way into another six-year term in the U.S. Senate. He has raised $1.9 million, most of it from political action committees. But a large amount was contributed by individuals all over this country who have never laid eyes on him. He is running…
