'tis the season Arizona Snow Day: In conjunction with Tempe's Fantasy of Lights (see Events listing), the city hosts this free event from 11a.m. to 5p.m. Saturday at Hayden Square, Fourth Street and Mill. Highlights include a freak fall of 12tons of snow, a visit from Santa, arts and crafts,...
Pssst! Wanna buy some dirty pictures? About 1,400 of em? Actually, dirty pictures were the last things on the minds of George Hall and Bob Martinique as they browsed through a Prescott antique store one weekend last October. But upon learning that the two men were photography buffs interested in...
The Red River Opry bills itself as having the "most talented cast this side of Branson, Missouri." The reference is to the famous Ozarks resort town that pioneered family-owned-and-operated country-music theatres, and it's a loose comparison, at best. In earlier decades, 30-odd theatres across the country showcased the country talents...
Park Central, Phoenix's original mall now suffering from declining-tenant flu, recently has added two new stores. What's unusual about these two businesses, located just a few storefronts apart on the mall's north leg, is their, um, orientation. Unaffiliated in any way besides thematically, both stores deal in "adult" products--condoms, flavored...
By Arizona's geologic standards, the Salt River gorge in Tempe isn't much. In fact, few people even notice it is there. Flanked by the red-rock outcrops at Papago Park to the north and the twin buttes embracing Sun Devil Stadium to the south, the shallow gorge marks the narrowest point...
It's said that Sam Coppersmith surprised even himself the night he snatched Arizona's First Congressional District from an incumbent Republican who seemed much better suited to the conservative East Valley district. It was called the upset of 1992, a race so close that Coppersmith, a pro-choice Democrat making his first...
On a moonless, June night, a purple light bobs and hovers along the barbed-wire fence marking the northern boundary of the Gila River Indian Reservation on the far side of South Mountain Park. Joe Bigelow is hunting for scorpions, scanning his ultraviolet lamp across the desert gravel until a scorpion...
Postmodern paradise for yuppies and college kids, or the Valley's version of Hell's Kitchen? This is a question the residents and fashionable patrons of Tempe's spiffy Old Town were asking themselves after the area was hit by a scary blitz of teen hooliganism that left several Mill Avenue fun-seekers bruised...
Wendy Sheedy wanted a baby, not in that achingly desperate way of some childless women, but it was never far from her mind. Her friends all had children. She had a solid marriage, a successful business, a nice house in Paradise Valley. She was 31 years old and the time...
"One stray grain of rice on that slick stage floor, and bang!--you're on your ass," frets Bruce Miles. The producer of the Mill Avenue Theatre's impending live rendition of The Rocky Horror Show, speaking during a recent photo session, confesses he doesn't know what to expect of the audience when...
On the first Saturday in December, the hip-hop capital of Phoenix--if there is such a thing--turned out to be a hall on a side street near Seventh Avenue and Camelback called Rockin' Freddy's. Inside, a deejay spun funk and rap until Shatonya Davis took the stage for a performance that...
When the Piersons formed two years ago, its members had two major things in common: a distaste for the live music in Tempe bars and the inability to play their instruments. And the Piersons had a goal, too. To play a single night--any night--onstage at Long Wong's, the dark and...
Hillya Mooney's voice on the telephone, so chipper, so sweetly cadenced, gave no hint of the story she would finally tell. "You wrote about me in your column," said Hillya, pausing to allow words of acknowledgment to float back to her on the line. But I could not place her...
It's showtime, and the crowd is restless. Already on their feet, the fans wait impatiently for the band to begin, shifting and murmuring in the tightly packed aisles. The keyboard player belatedly steps to the microphone, squinting through the glare of the stage lights. "Are you ready to move?" he...
Writing this is not going to be easy. On the way down to the New Times command center this past, glorious Super Bowl Sunday, I drove through the drive-through at Omega Burger. Bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, soda; an American meal. Now here's the ugly part: As I made my way...
The politician doesn't grow more human with age. In the end, he becomes a wharf rat. --Henry David Thoreau The governor spoke at the Republican party's annual meeting the other day. "The trouble with our prisons in Arizona is that we don't have the concept of arduous labor," J. Fife...
@day:around @mon:the globe @body:"World Class" Adventures Resume: Kids loved "visiting" all seven of the Earth's continents during "World Class! A Geographic Adventure in Art," a themed installation and hands-on workshop series that recently concluded at Arizona Museum for Youth, 35 North Robson in Mesa. The series was so popular, in...
MDRVRXP: see note below at "Art Films"MDNM @day:wednesday @mon:january @date2:26Martha Graham Dance Company: The most celebrated of all American dance companies observes the 100th birthday of its founder, late dance doyenne Graham, with a performance at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Gammage Auditorium, Mill and Apache in Tempe. It's also the...
@day:around @mon:the globe @body:"World Class" Adventures Resume: Kids loved "visiting" all seven of the Earth's continents during "World Class! A Geographic Adventure in Art," a themed installation and hands-on workshop series that recently concluded at Arizona Museum for Youth, 35 North Robson in Mesa. The series was so popular, in...
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...
I have never seen John Tower drunk. Am I the only American who can say that? Hell, even Earl de Berge saw Tower bombed on three occasions. De Berge wrote to Arizona's senior U.S. senator and premier real estate speculator, Dennis DeConcini, to say that he, Earl, had seen the...
There's nothing disturbing about ASU's Lyric Opera Theatre production of The Turn of the Screw. The cast performs competently. The costumes and set work to good advantage. The orchestral score is wonderful to follow. Honest, it's nothing to get alarmed about. But that's the scariest part--because this is supposed to...
