The hand-painted sign on the wall in St. Joseph’s Hospital reads: “Me llamo Nicolas Ruiz Flores.” When Nicolas was three, his dad was kidnaped and executed. Later that same year Nicolas’ mother was kidnaped and she is presumed dead. The child cannot tell you very much about what happened to…
On the morning of the biggest anti- abortion demonstration in Phoenix history, the prayerful, placard-bearing, demon-eyed enemies of abortion weren’t the real story. The real story was the complacent, glad-handing, slow-footed Phoenix police, who milled among the lawbreakers as though they’d stumbled into a party. This came as a huge…
Dear Cap’n Dave, I find this luncheon spot (The Turtle’s Hurdle) very good. The food is tops and the place is extra clean. Try it sometime. Walter F. Dudley Accountant Phoenix I found The Turtle’s Hurdle just north of the lovely intersection of Indian School and 15th Avenue. A garden…
If Bill Moss can teach Arabs how to sew tents, he can probably teach America how to house its homeless. At least house them temporarily so they won’t freeze to death in the long, cold night. House them in cardboard. This famous artist-tentmaker-designer doesn’t care that some people think he’s…
One inch could be all that decides whether Valley voters are willing to tax themselves for thirty years to build the country’s most ambitious mass transit system. That inch–raising public suspicion Valley-wide–is how mapmakers for the Regional Public Transportation Authority show mile-wide “corridors” in which they want to build a…
It’s relatively easy to turn a “2” into a “4” on a piece of paper. Mark Killian thinks he can do the same thing with Arizona law. Four years ago state lawmakers agreed to let Maricopa County voters decide whether to impose a temporary half-cent sales tax to fund freeway…
I felt sorry for Steve Patterson the other day when they ordered him to announce his resignation. The Arizona State basketball coach was just one more victim of J. Russell Nelson, that total incompetent who still sits as president of the university. It was predicted even before Nelson came down…
The greatest athletes stand alone. Magic Johnson, Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Orel Hershiser, Larry Bird. Each of these men is an artist whose canvas is sport. They transcend their respective games and loom above them like colossi. (Author’s note to dumb people: Colossi is the plural of colossus,…
Every day, newspaper headlines scream of crimes against children. Yet there is one rampant horror you never read about. Its victims are helpless newborns, and it destroys their lives. Fact: Every 26 seconds in this country, a child is born with an idiotic name. Why the government hasn’t stepped in,…
I received a letter from a man who doesn’t trust the people who are running the campaign to push the approval of rapid transit in Maricopa County. He wondered why the financial war chest, which now approaches $500,000, comes from land owners and contractors who stand to gain most from…
I arrived half an hour early. I wanted to watch Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in warm-up. It was to be one of Kareem’s final appearances as a player in Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum. The press box was nearly empty. As I have been doing for the past nine years, I spotted an empty…
Tired of having your friends sneer and jeer whenever you drag out the latest batch of miracle snapshots? Take a tip from the ace shutterbugs who regularly snap photos of the Bayside Apparitions, a series of religious visions seen near the Vatican Pavilion on the abandoned site of the 1965…
Tracing just who owns the Phoenix Suns is not easy. Certain investors have made their involvement with the team known, while others have preferred to remain in the shadows. The team won’t release the names of all the owners, a practice described as “uncommon” by NBA publicist Terrence Lyons. However,…
“I’ll keep creating till I draw my last breath–which, at this point, may be any time!” So says horrified hatchet man Peter Petrisko Jr., the self-styled “renegade artist” who fears for his life after desecrating a yucca plant many believed contained a sacred vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe. During…
I swear to God I don’t know how John Derek does it. He married and divorced Ursula Andress, who, let’s face it, was and is a goddess. Then he married the rather splendid Linda Evans and dumped her for a teen-ager. It wasn’t just any teen-ager, mind you–it was the…
As hundreds of the Valley’s Hispanic community gathered to pay homage to the holy yucca they believe resembles Our Lady of Guadalupe, one gringo stared at the curiously twisted dead branch and merely shook his head. “I wish I had the mind of a Mexican man,” he muttered. “Then maybe…
Things keep happening to remind us why both Arizona State University and the Arizona Republic are so decidedly second-rate. This time it’s the death of Dr. Morris J. Starsky, a former ASU philosophy professor who was fired by the Arizona Board of Regents in June 1970 for asserting his First…
Jerry Colangelo sued reporters in 1983 when his name was linked with betting activities at a local deli. Bookies, high-stakes wagers, point spreads, he didn’t know from nothing and it was libel if you said he did. But if Jerry Colangelo resented being viewed as a gambler, apparently he has…
It’s just like the old days. There’s a full house here in Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum and the crowd’s roaring. Surely you remember how it used to be on nights like this, don’t you? Al Bianchi would be the one doing the shouting on the Phoenix Suns bench next to John…
John Mitchell’s clothing store in downtown Superior is suspended in time. Three-piece suits hang in neat rows. Stacks of shirts rest on a display table. The cash register sits on a counter near the front door. The store looks open for business, but it’s not. Mitchell’s was an anchor on…
They’re slimy . . . they’re sluggish . . . they’re spineless! They’re also the backbone of what is literally the creepiest commercial enterprise in town. Sacrebleu! Is this any way to run a business? If your business happens to be snail ranching, you really don’t have much choice. “We’re…
Monday’s 10-4 vote by the House Judiciary Committee to declare that life begins at conception–a victory for anti-abortion forces–comes as no real surprise. Two powerful legislators made sure it was preordained. The November election resulted in a net increase in pro-choice legislators. Yet the anti-abortion forces continue to have a…
