Wet Paint Art Supply & Gallery could be one of the best things to happen to Tempe's underground culture since Mill Avenue went corporate. Located in downtown Tempe, right across the street from Arizona State University, Wet Paint is the brainchild of artist Jess Jordan. It didn't take Jordan long...
Six days a week, a large group of teenagers quietly leave their homes before first light for a predetermined location in Tempe. By 4:30, they have gathered directly under the Loop 202, near Mill and Curry avenues. The teens -- almost all of them girls -- chat for a few...
The middle of a scorching summer seems like the worst possible time to open a coffee shop and art space. Especially since, restricted by anal Tempe business ordinances about announcing your "grand opening," you don't dare advertise the place until students come back to Arizona State University. But Three Roots...
New Times is bringing pop-culture luminary Richard Florida to the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix at 6:30 p.m. on October 21. We expect him to save us from ourselves. You're invited; tickets are free. Florida was last year's -- "Check out the big brain on Brad" -- author of The Rise...
My people smoke cigarettes, but they're the brand of people I want to be around. More often than not, they're not at all self-serious. They're passionate about their lives, their environment, their friends, their recreation. In other words, smokers make great bar patrons. Now, I don't smoke. I never have...
Thursday, October 16 While the gallery scene in Scottsdale covers all the bases of contemporary art, Western subject matter still has a mighty stronghold in "The West's Most Western Town." See the latest creative take on cowboy art from supporters of this all-American genre when The Scottsdale Gallery Association presents...
Mon 7/21 "I hadn't really thought about doing thrillers for adults," says best-selling children's author R.L. Stine. He's speaking of his new book, The Sitter, a creepy summer read aimed at the twentysomething set that grew up reading Stine's Goosebumps series. "I thought maybe I'd try to grow with my...
They emerge from the darkness like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead, boys in tee shirts and girls in skintight halter tops. You can see the girls from the far end of the parking lot, with their sparkly earrings and glitter-smeared skin already glistening in the hot...
In the early 1990s, it was hard to find a Valley band that didn't know, and somehow benefit from knowing, Julie Hurm-Tessitore. A local music "it" girl, she was connected to the local scene to a ridiculous degree. Hurm-Tessitore worked for Evening Star Productions, promoter Danny Zelisko's baby in pre-Clear...
In the recent past, Mill Avenue in Tempe has been reserved for the aging jangle-pop bands of '90s yore, but things have started to turn. The relatively young noise-rock outfit Hotfoughtcold has joined the storied avenue's ranks -- and they're hauling their friends with them. The year before HFC started...
Sat 6/14 If June in the Valley doesn't feel like optimum walking weather to you, you're either (a) perfectly sane or (b) simply hanging out with the wrong people. For the sake of argument, let's say it's the latter -- and rejoice in the fact that if your urge to...
Sat 10/25 For all of you Peeping and would-be Peeping Toms, The Roosevelt Historic District is offering the perfect way to peep without getting slapped with jail time. TourFest, a guided tour of more than 20 houses, lofts and businesses, allows a rare view into buildings that date back to...
For most Arizona bands, the arc they can expect their careers to take is not unlike that of the Sciannas. Take a bunch of transplanted musicians, in this case Connecticut-bred brothers Fran and Dan Scianna, and thrust them into a mystifying music scene where it takes months, even years, to...
5/24-5/31 Summer is a ripe peach, juice dripping off our elbows. At Schnepf Family Farms in Queen Creek, the trees bow low with fruit so junior pickers can reach the branches, in time for Grandma's Baking Day. Sign up your son or daughter for this tasty event that has kids...
Rusty Chiles is halfway through executing a left turn on the corner of Seventh Street and Ash in Tempe when he and his buddy Slipnode, riding shotgun in Chiles' white Nissan Altima, experience a simultaneous "onosecond" -- cyberspeak for that split second in time between decision and consequence when you...
Thursday, September 4 If you still haven't had a chance to see Phoenix Art Museum's exhibition "Sculpture in Silk: Costumes From Japan's Noh Theater," Thursday, September 4, is the perfect time. That's when Janet Baker, the museum's curator of Asian art, gives 30-minute ArtBreaks talks at noon and 7 p.m...
Thursday, June 5 Tucson-born comedian Pablo Francisco, best known as one-third of The Three Amigos (with fellow funnymen Freddy Soto and Carlos Mencia), hits the road for a one-man tour coming to the Tempe Improv this weekend. While he's already got plenty of fans from years of performing in the...
About 15 minutes into their set at the new Marquee Theatre in Tempe last Tuesday, Idaho guitar ambassadors Built to Spill blasted into "The Plan," a bombastic, subtly melodic rocker. As 700 fans or so looked on, lead singer and ax man Doug Martsch sang the lyric, "The plan means...
5/1-5/11 The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, a powerful Japanese folktale turned children's play, begins when a cruel lord captures a Mandarin duck because he covets his exquisite plumage. When a kitchen servant sees that the enforced captivity is destroying the bird's beauty, she frees him, causing the evil lord...
8/7-9/13 ASU's Art Museum is popping an attitude. Anchored by Andy Warhol's famous "lipstick-and-peroxide" screenprint of Mao Tse-tung, a sharp-witted exhibition honoring American Pop Art also features Robert Rauschenberg's flattened cardboard-box birds and Robert Indiana's snarky screenprints (in After Mississippi, words encircling a state map read: "Just As in the...
Thursday, August 28 Phoenix has its very own live version of The Gong Show: Beat the Buzzer at the Paper Heart Gallery on Thursday, August 28, and the last Thursday of every month. Much like that late, great '70s game show, there's a lineup of performers trying to outdo each...
Sat 4/26 "...My father had a foot in each country, where the mud on each boot caked the same, and the dirt sifted the same through each hand. And the earth had but one scent, and as far as he could see . . . the vista was unbroken."So begins...
