Walk around on Mill Avenue, or any other disaffected-youth-magnet sort of locale, and you're bound to see a proliferation of bad tattoos. It's symptomatic of a generation of 20- to 30-year-olds who years ago grew an affection for tattoos as a mark of rebellion and not artistry; scratchwork is omnipresent...
Some say that it really isn't happening, that Less Pain Forever (a.k.a. Lush Budget Presents the Les Payne Product) isn't really leaving Arizona, that all this talk about the duo living, recording and touring for perpetuity in a 1983 Chevrolet Southwind RV is just the latest in a series of...
Utter the words "public access" and you'll probably elicit little more than a comical wince from most people; the very term conjures up images of a wasteland of low- and no-budget television programming. Admittedly, the bulk of public access fare usually falls into two categories: kids-with-cameras goof fests (à la...
Who's on Beck? Spotted at the Jeff Beck show Saturday night at the Web Theatre: Randy Johnson. The Flash knows, because the Flash was sitting right behind the Big Unit, which meant that the Flash had a primo view of Beck's receding hairline, and little else. It stands to reason...
Nearly a decade ago, Phoenix resident Brian Brooks was churning out little Xeroxed coloring books filled with inventive characters, clever phrases and subtle skewerings of pop icons. He put Yoko Ono on a snowplow in suburbia. Paul McCartney peddled frozen entrees at sporting events. One showcased geometrically shaped bugs predisposed...
The citizens' committee to recall Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano collected almost 5,000 signatures to put Giuliano's name on a September recall ballot. But with three months left to qualify, not a single serious candidate has emerged to challenge the mayor.The most viable potential candidate, activist and two-time (unsuccessful) city council...
The Photo Lady emerges from a corner of the venue dressed all in black. Her salt-and-pepper mane is pulled back into a tail off a softly weathered face. "I gotta fish," she announces, eyes all wide behind buglike specs. The urgency in her voice suggests something big, as if she...
Some claim that the ghost of screen star Clifton Webb communicated that he couldn't bear to abandon his beloved Beverly Hills digs, so he opted to hang around years after he died like the last drunken partygoer. It is said that the spook of workaholic Howard Hughes still goes to...
No birthday party in this town seems to be complete without the tradition of breaking a piñata. And why should it? After all, nothing says "Happy Birthday" better than taking a giant wooden stick and beating the complete crap out of, say, a life-size Barbie or a smiling yellow Picachu...
It's a cold Thursday evening in early February, right in the heart of what's been an unremittingly bleak -- at least by Valley standards -- winter season. As the bark of a dog guarding a nearby scrap yard echoes faintly in the night, I find myself sitting in a car...
The last few months of 2000 have proven fruitful for Valley music. With a series of high-profile CD releases and promising debuts from a number of new bands, the scene seems to have escaped the typical year-end doldrums. But it's also been a bittersweet time, the winter air heavy with...
It's nearly midnight on New Year's Eve, and the Arizona Roadhouse and Brewery is packed. The place is filled with revelers and roots music courtesy of the Rustic Record label and its cohorts: the Trophy Husbands, Heather Rae and the Moonshine Boys, Nitpickers, Grave Danger, Mark Insley, Chicken. As the...
We're picking things out of our tom yum soup at Jax Thai Bar, a Tempe restaurant that's the newest addition to Mill Avenue's increasingly cosmopolitan culinary scene. Barklike nubs of galangal, a southeast Asian vegetable that's a member of the ginger family. Whole kaffir lime leaves, dark green and similar...
When the idea was first hatched, no one could've imagined that this week's Scotti-Stock concert -- a local music extravaganza to benefit Piersons/Beat Angels bassist Scott Moore, who was involved in a near-fatal traffic accident last October -- would have taken on such a profound meaning. Relying heavily on the...
The living room of Jamal Ruhe's downtown Tempe home is a mess. The small quarters are cluttered with amplifiers, cables and instruments of every variety and size. Amid this labyrinth, it's nearly impossible to find a place to sit down. The only unoccupied seat, it turns out, is behind the...
Mill Avenue BenchCam http://www.spotlife.com/users/ozinaz/webcam/Last year, the award in this category went to the city of Tempe’s official Web site, which offers wide views of Mill Avenue — about the only street in the Valley where one regularly witnesses both foot and vehicular traffic. This year, one Mill Avenue worker bee whose office affords an unobstructed view of the […]
Mill Avenue BenchCam http://www.spotlife.com/users/ozinaz/webcam/Last year, the award in this category went to the city of Tempe’s official Web site, which offers wide views of Mill Avenue — about the only street in the Valley where one regularly witnesses both foot and vehicular traffic. This year, one Mill Avenue worker bee whose office affords an unobstructed view of the […]
"Happy hunting," says a communiqué claiming responsibility for the firebombings of nine luxury homes encroaching on the Phoenix Mountains Preserve. The mysterious hit-and-run arsonist has violently reduced each house to a scorched effigy of suburban sprawl. And with the latest damage estimates surpassing $5 million, the FBI's anti-arsonist task force...
"You'll be the first journalist in the Valley that I'll walk right up to the spot where I was conceived," Dan Harkins says over the phone. He's inviting New Times to tour the Valley Art Theatre, which is in the final stages of renovation before its grand reopening later this...
Dinosaur-size ErrorCall me bonehead: My name is Kevin Curtice, brother of the paleontologist, Brian Curtice, you interviewed for the article "A Bone to Pick" (Lunch Meet, M.V. Moorhead, November 9). The picture referenced in the article was cropped from a larger picture of myself, Brian and my sister Gina. Apparently...
As we approach the twilight of each calendar year, it seems music critics are overly eager to proclaim the preceding 12 months as the "Year of" something. You know, "The Year of Grunge," "The Year of Women in Rock," "The Year of Electronic Music" and on and on. But if...
At a downtown car wash, the pastor's pimp-daddy Caddy is getting a final once-over by the Latino buff crew. The chestnut-colored 1977 El Dorado gleams with an optimistic glint that suggests its owner is up-to-the-moment, a person who views himself as better at setting fashion than following it. The pastor...
