On many weekday mornings, Acme Records publicist Wendy Harte sits in her suburban Los Angeles office and prepares press kits to get the word out to the media about semifamous rock bands with colorful names like E.I.E.I.O. and Thin White Rope. Sometimes, Harte says, she works so hard that she…
Last month, Phoenix shut down two more heavily used drinking-water wells in Maryvale, saying that they are suspected of sucking up more and more swill from an underground plume of TCE-contaminated groundwater. TCE, an industrial solvent, is a suspected carcinogen. Officials point out that the water from the most recently…
Land baron DENNIS DeCONCINI, already flushed with embarrassment over the looting of half a million bucks from his campaign treasury, is trying to steal a toilet from a union. The wealthy Democratic senator’s staffers in Tucson recently moved into new offices only to discover that they had to share a…
Margo Adams walks into the room. Suddenly, everybody starts acting like a man of the world. By now, you know Margo, I’m sure. Yes, THAT Margo. Penthouse magazine! Wade Boggs of the Boston Red Sox! Barbara Walters! Margo flounces into Alexilion the other day with B.J. Hunter on her arm…
The experts agree that mothers do not have a biological, psychological or natural advantage that automatically makes them better kiddie-caretakers than fathers. Obviously, the experts have never watched a guy change a diaper. There are many areas in which men excel. They grow superior mustaches. They can wear boxer shorts…
It was like a trip in a time tunnel. I stood near the fountain at Arizona State last Friday as students demonstrated against racism on the campus. The sun was hot enough to drive you into the pavement. The crowd wasn’t large. Given the obscene actions of the campus police,…
“They were being called niggers and coons, sure, but it wasn’t racial. It was just the basic tension of the fight. Just like if they were from Poland, you’d call them Polacks.” Nineteen-year-old Sean Hedgecock, accused by critics of starting a race riot at Arizona State University, sat in his…
While chatting with a new club member, the spry septuagenarian we’ll call Marge suddenly shakes her head as if objecting to a half-baked recipe for apple brown Betty or a particularly ill-advised knitting stitch. “No, no, NO!” she interjects, cutting off her colleague in mid-sentence. “Listen, that’s never going to…
If the clubfooted Terry Goddard administration is to blame for bungled dreams like Patriots Square (and it is), it also deserves a stirring tribute for the Mercado. This marvelous and near- kitschy jumble of shops, restaurants and offices going up across the street from Heritage Square promises to be the…
Like hanging on to an old dress in case it’s ever back in style, we keep returning to downtown Phoenix. Giving up on the old place seems a horrible admission that this city really doesn’t have a soul. One city council after another has promised a lively downtown, as young…
Unlike the crowds that amble through St. Peter’s Square, few people ever venture to downtown Phoenix’s grease-stained concrete piazza–the courtyard of the Phoenix Civic Plaza. In the summer, those inhospitable acres of cement stretching out from Symphony Hall are just too hot for human beings to endure. In the winter,…
Back in the days when Phoenix was little more than a supply depot for the calvary, a block of modest shops was built along dusty roads that one day would become the major thoroughfares of downtown Phoenix. As the original townsite, it was called Square One. Phoenix is now a…
The man who’s seen more bunco, bamboozling and balderdash in the past two decades than any other person in Arizona is finally retiring. This connoisseur of cons, C. Van Haaften, has charted thousands of swindles in the Valley during his eighteen years as president of the Better Business Bureau. He’s…
It took months of delicate closed-door negotiations–spurred by the threat of an initiative, Burton Barr’s desire for the governorship and Bruce Babbitt’s hankering for the presidency–before Arizona got the 1986 Environmental Quality Act. Finally, industry and agriculture were restricted on what they could dump into the state’s water supply, with…
At the height of his political power, Charles Keating commanded a private meeting with five U.S. senators from four different states, stopped the Arizona State Legislature from passing astonishingly popular legislation against artificial lakes, and bullied the Phoenix City Council into doing his bidding over a bitterly contested zoning case–the…
The scorched-earth campaign against sex education in Arizona, energized by recent victories, now is cutting a swath through Governor Rose Mofford’s legislative agenda. And the shell-shocked supporters of sex-ed that goes beyond “Just Say No” are groping to understand their defeats amid predictions that teens now served by school-based clinics…
Open wide, Phoenix. Here comes another dose of reality. A major cheerleader behind the splashy, optimistic ad in the April 24 FORTUNE that portrays our city as a vibrant business “hub of the Southwest” has taken a nasty spill. Valley real-estater BILL BLISS couldn’t make his payments for the SUN…
Phoenix hearts pounded with the drama. Carolyn Walker, the only black in the Arizona State Senate, stood to cast her historic vote on April 4, 1988. Media from across America recorded the event as viewers sat transfixed in front of their television sets. Twenty years earlier, on that exact same…
It’s time for the next round in the fight over Central Avenue. And if the final appearance of the city’s “grand boulevard” concerns you, be advised that you stand a greater chance of satisfaction if you keep your expectations under control. “They compare it to the Champs Elysees in Paris…
I love being a dad. But the job is not without certain minuscule details that make me want to remove my clothes, climb the exterior of the Hyatt Regency and do birdcalls until someone takes me to a nice, safe place where I can’t hurt myself. For instance: Plastic-strip thermometers…
Would-be urban dwellers should take heart: The city is finally getting serious about rental housing that would bring working professionals into the core of the city, night and day. A brand-new study commissioned by the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Community Alliance–an advocacy group for downtown–finds there’s a market…
Bonnie Towles stands on her porch. Every day she can see the homeless coming down her street. “They lock those people out of the shelter every morning at nine o’clock,” Towles says. A forceful woman with blonde hair, she is a graduate of the Wharton School of Economics. “Where are…
