When is a deal with the Phoenix City Council not a deal? Apparently when the public finds out about it. Bonnie Bartak, aide to Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard, is unhappy New Times reported earlier this month that the city council had approved a deal with the owners of business properties...
As the debate has raged over the latest beast on the ASU campus, the looming lavenderish hulk of the new Fine Arts Complex, it's become clear that Tempe might be a difficult spot for a normal person to find somebody to like--seeing as how the available cliques harbor only lugheads...
The insurance industry and its allies in the GOP leadership could have won, if they just hadn't been so greedy. They could have come up with a bill to revamp Arizona's automobile insurance laws that would have satisfied enough Republicans--and maybe even a handful of Democrats--to get the necessary votes...
Got a problem with the bank or company holding the mortgage on your house? Don't count on Arizona's Banking Department to help you out. Alan and Barbara Woodruff found that out the hard way. They bought an $89,000 home in Phoenix four years ago and assumed the mortgage, but soon...
There's a story about the late Gilbert Cady, ASU's long-time finance wizard, that helps explain why the campus looks the way it does today. Rudy Turk, director of the University Art Museum, tells it: "Gilbert was a delightful guy, but he was very tight with a dollar. We were in...
"We don't want any niggers and Mexicans out here." Duane Pell didn't think he shocked easily. But then, he didn't think that being a politician meant he had to listen to crap like that. He remembers thinking, so that's why I'm getting so much grief from this neighborhood. I'm just...
Bill Boyle and Jeff Miller wheeled into one of South Phoenix's meanest neighborhoods looking to score cocaine. The friends--both white men--had snorted coke earlier that night at the office. Now, they wanted more, and they knew where to get it. Lino Josytewa had been hanging out that evening, December 21,...
Meatloaf rolled his wheelchair to the very edge of the stage. "We've got to get out of this trap before this decadence saps our wills!" he moaned. Astonished, I watched in helpless silence as the beefy singer stopped just short of plunging over the multicolored footlights and into my lap...
Yes, that's right. I've kept an intimate diary of the entire deal. As I look back through this journal of the Eighties, I see that more often than not my intuition has been pretty amazing. Also, through the years I've had the opportunity to hobnob with most of the so-called...
Had Trevor Rabin been alone when he headed down to L.A.'s Roxy recently to catch Steve Stevens in concert, the latter-day Yes guitarist probably would've gone unnoticed for the night. While Rabin is well-respected among serious six-string students, his long rocker's hair and boy-next-door looks don't exactly make him stand...
Lute Olson's arrogant smirk told all you had to know. Last Sunday's game against UCLA was proceeding according to plan. The Pac-10 tournament final was a blowout for Arizona. And so Olson, the basketball coach with the largest ego west of Bloomington, Indiana, was on his way to a soft...
The 2 Live Crew has snatched many headlines thanks to the banning of the group's sexplicit album As Nasty as They Wanna Be. And no doubt the rappers will create even more controversy by performing the unedited versions of their songs at the Celebrity Theatre on Saturday. But there's someone...
To local historians and preservationists, it's a valuable piece of Tempe's past making a last stand. To city officials, it's a hulking mass of decaying concrete, the cork blocking the city's plans to pour $440 million worth of sparkling development into the dry Salt River bed. At issue is the...
Admit it. Are you one of those people who equates dining on McDowell with free lunch at the Show Club? Is your McDowell eating experience confined to hot dogs at the coliseum during Suns games? Do you suffer from Fear of McDowell? If you said "yes~" to any of these...
Dick Jonas is a guitar-pickin' Vietnam War hero who says he still gets a kick out of putting on his blue air force suit. "You can call me a true-blue kind of guy," he says. "You can call me an old pilot who likes to have some fun every now...
"Gimme a bray-ay-ay-ay-ake! Gimme a bray-ay-ay-ay-ake! No-oh-oh-oh!" Standing alone in a soundproof room, a grown man is imitating a sick car. Other adults watch through a small window, listening, coaching, judging. The five people assembled in the small recording studio and control room are making a sixty-second radio commercial for...
Roaming tourists with minicams. Well-preserved older women resembling TV psychiatrists. Tables of young, upwardly mobile people dressed in suits and ties, cocktail sheaths, gold jewelry and French braids. Out-of-town businessmen relaxing in plaid shirts and Levi's Dockers after a hard day of conferencing in Phoenix. As evening falls, these are...
In the Big Scheme, a poetry reading by an ASU professor normally wouldn't rank as a major event. But when the poet is Norman Dubie, and it's his first public reading in a decade, and he plans to read from his newest book, well . . . "This reading is...
In late May, only weeks after announcing record losses for a second straight quarter, America West Airlines chairman Ed Beauvais boasted to nationwide airport executives meeting at the Phoenician resort that the airline would soon expand service into Mexico. As one onlooker put it, "The most disturbing thing about Beauvais'...
I'll be honest with you. Normally, I don't eat breakfast. I get up, drink something hot, and when my stomach starts interfering with my work or fun, I give it something just large enough to keep it quiet until its next meal. Sometimes that's lunch. Sometimes that's dinner. This is...
When cowboy-movie star Tom Mix "bought the farm" in a fatal 1940 car accident, he also left a farm behind--thousands of acres of grazing land south of Phoenix and a white adobe house. A half-century later, the "old Tom Mix house," as it is still called, is the newest branch...
In one verse of his tune "Wild Rain," Tempe solo musician Joe Myers sings the line, "Tripped and fell, I do that well." Myers thinks that one small lyric sums up his whole life, or at least the part of it he calls "doing the art thing." On a smaller...
