For the better part of two decades, Felicia Fahr was the Valley's Queen of Queens, a flame-tressed temptress who ruled the local female impersonator circuit with stiletto heels, sequins, lethal talons and, as more than a few colleagues can attest, a tongue to match. Arriving in Phoenix from Los Angeles...
Where do hospitality employees go for good food when they're done with work? Many restaurants close at 11 p.m. on weekends. Nightclubs don't kick patrons out until 1 a.m. And resorts never shut their doors. What's a starving late-shift staffer to do? Keegan's used to be the "in" spot for...
This summer's Musicmaker.com-sponsored twin tour -- by a Jimmy Page-led Black Crowes and modfathers The Who (hitting Blockbuster Desert Sky on August 13 and 14, respectively) -- is for most observers an uneasy mix of nostalgia and commerce. Certainly neither effort can be regarded as much more than a kind...
Tempe Butte is an island of rock in the midst of a city, a volcanic and sedimentary bump that rises barely 300 feet above downtown Tempe. Yet to an increasingly vocal crowd of locals, the Butte -- also known as "A" Mountain and Hayden Butte -- looms as the latest...
Could it be that Phoenix is finally becoming a town where restaurants can not only survive the summer, but also thrive? A recent rash of hot-weather expansions and grand openings suggests this might be the case. Now, let's all get out there and eat, to support these brave restaurateurs and...
Scary Thoughts Self-absorption: We have governors become presidential candidates who rush to execute a person with the mind of a 6-year-old (Clinton in 92) or who cruelly mock an executed woman who had uplifted her life (George W. in 98). If the media slide over such things, can we expect...
"I'm not here trying to sell millions of copies of records," says Knot Known Records president and sole full-time employee Chris Richardson. He says this between bites of a roast chicken sandwich at a Mill Avenue eatery staffed with nervous waiters and waitresses who look like next year's crop of...
When you enter the nondescript, two-story complex in the industrial hinterlands near 27th Avenue and Osborn, you're assaulted by a fierce squall of amplified noise. It's impossible to tell if it's one band or 30 responsible for the offending skronk; there are close to 100 practice spaces located in this...
This year marks the 10th anniversary of what some regard as the finest, and others the only, major accomplishment of the Bush administration: the day -- June 26, 1990 -- when ol' George Senior signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law. Various events are being held around the country...
He may not know a Coquille St. Jacques from a Jumbo Jack, but self-styled "Mill Avenue Food Critic" Dennnis (that's how he spells it) Skolnick knows what he likes: a free lunch. But four years after he first began dispensing dining tips to tourists walking along Tempe's main drag, the...
The day Laura Bernstein was stabbed, kicked and left to die on a Mill Avenue sidewalk, the Tempe Daily News ran a front-page photo of a new police car. In a staged shot typical of small-town newspapers more than 30 years ago, two officers were shown "inspecting" the spanking new...
Knurly, ass-length dreads, cleverly dowdy attire and a faint, oil-scented aura of some Rastafarian priest say the man could be some roots-revivalist south London hipster. In a Phoenix environ, he could be mistaken for an old-school weed connect, the one guy in tie-dye still clinging with bongloading fingers to a...
Anarchism Schism Freeform meddlers: The term "anarchist" has become an oxymoron on the order of "military intelligence" ("Anarchy How?" James Hibberd, May 11). Most dictionaries define the term as somebody who advocates little or no government, but all the "anarchists" I read about lately want to impose their vision of...
Two things on Tempe Butte are irritating corporate lawyer turned anti-corporate activist Randall Amster.The first is a City of Tempe sign that says "Enjoy your parks." It's a message on the westward side of the Butte, the section long owned by Bay State Milling that the city council quietly approved...
Tara Hitchcock, host of Channel 3's Good Morning Arizona, probably had no idea what she was getting into. It was just supposed to be another band doing another in-studio promotion. But the group in question was the Zen Lunatics. Members of the always eccentric power-pop quartet decided to turn their...
The Mad Hatter must have organized the menu and set the table for the First International Edible Book High Tea. The "tea" -- and I use the term quite loosely -- was held during one of Tempe's patience-trying street fairs on Changing Hands Bookstore's back patio during intermittent rain showers...
Quarter to five on Sunday afternoon and still in bed. Torn between a desire to catch up on my REM sleep and flicking back and forth from the Lakers' playoff game and a presentation of The Shining -- a Nicholson double bill. So profound was my lethargy that I actually...
Kiss Your Butte Goodbye The next target on the downtown Tempe development agenda: "A" Mountain, a.k.a. Tempe Butte. The construction, proposed by MCW Holdings and embraced by city officials, involves dynamiting a sizable chunk of ASU's beloved hillock to accommodate more retail stores, living space and movie theaters at the...
For local-music aficionados, there always seem to be a few trends without explanation, questions that go inexplicably unanswered. One that's vexed most observers in recent years is the lack of capable (or even willing) exponents of the much-maligned alt-country genre. For a city with a rich history of country and...
There's a full slate of news and shows worth mentioning this week, and it starts with word of the impending release of No Sense in Runnin', the debut from local postpunk twangers Truckers on Speed. The group, which recently changed its named from Shoeless Joe, spent the better part of...
Nestled comfortably in the dining room-cum-mixing studio of his south Scottsdale house, surrounded by walls upon walls of empirically filed (by beats per minute) records, local über-DJ Z-Trip is suddenly agitated. Midway through an interview set to coincide with the introduction of his new "Z-Trip Presents Funky Cornbread" night at...
Some pretty funky history is happening in downtown Scottsdale these days. Since the opening of The Velvet Room in late March, the Old Town neighborhood has been jettisoned back to the 1940s and the "Golden Age of Jazz." The supper-club concept has been reincarnated here, pairing the evening meal with...
