If anyone should have an easy time opening a business in a cool old building downtown, it's Matt Pool. After all, Pool got his start managing Bar Bianco for his sister, Susan, and her partner, Chris Bianco, in an old house (the neoclassical Thomas House, built in 1909, to be...
Why do Mexicans forget about great beers like Tecate, Negra Modelo, and Bohemia and start drinking swill like Bud Light when they come to the United States? I always remember John Steinbeck's immortal line — "Ah, Bohemia beer and the Pyramid of the Sun; entire civilizations have created less" —...
Listen up, P-Town peeps. When it comes to holidays, Halloween is the shizzle. What other day on the calendar allows you to transform yourself into a pimp, priest, or politician without getting glares from onlookers? Back during your juvie delinquent days, you spent most of the year agonizing over which...
Art Detour is an annual event sponsored by artlink inc. The following venues are not all "official" participants in the event, so they may not be included in artlink's promotional materials. The purpose of this guide is to list as many of the art, music, shopping and dining opportunities downtown...
Pink Taco is to Mexican grub what the House of Blues is to soul food, or P.F. Chang's is to Chinese. Each of these spots doles out eats for yupper middle-class, gringo palates. So if you're expecting either a gourmet meal or an authentic ethnic dining experience when you go...
¡Odelay! Cinco de Mayo is right around the corner, so you'd better dust off your sombrero and bust out your rusty knowledge of Spanglish, because there are plenty of phat fetes going down in P-town from Thursday, May 4, through Sunday, May 7. Wanna celebrate Latino culture? You're in the...
¡Odelay! Cinco de Mayo is right around the corner, so you'd better dust off your sombrero and bust out your rusty knowledge of Spanglish, because there are plenty of phat fetes going down in P-town from Wednesday, May 3, through Sunday, May 7. Wanna celebrate Latino culture? You're in the...
It's safe to say that St. Patrick's Day is a big-time bash in the Valley. For those of Irish descent, it's a time for taking pride in your heritage and honoring the patron saint of the Emerald Isle. For everyone else, though, it's yet another day for getting soused and...
It's safe to say that St. Patrick's Day is a big-time bash in the Valley. For those of Irish descent, it's a time for taking pride in your heritage and honoring the patron saint of the Emerald Isle. For everyone else, though, it's yet another day for getting soused and...
The classic rock jams filtering through the stereo system at the Yard House in Desert Ridge are hand-picked at the corp's Irvine HQ by none other than The Founder himself, Steele Platt, whom I imagine as a dead ringer for The Architect in The Matrix Reloaded. Dressed in white, with...
Would it trouble you terribly if I told you that I'm guilty of murder? The murder of a strapping, dark-haired chap, whom I'd only just met in Chandler? The homicide would cause me more grief had it not been so much bloody fun. Oh, I know I'll suffer in the...
12/11-3/12If the photographers whose work will be displayed at Phoenix Art Museum's new exhibition "Keeping Shadows" were a baseball team, they'd be the 1927 Yankees. The all-star lineup includes Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Imogen Cunningham, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Timothy O'Sullivan, Lewis Carroll, Henri Le Secq, Julia Margaret...
The ghost of Bob Crane led me to Bobby-Q, though the star of the '60s sitcom Hogan's Heroes didn't stick around to help me eat my ribs. I should explain that Crane's brutal, 1978 homicide in a Scottsdale apartment complex has always been a subject of fascination for me, long...
You feel the chill in the air, that spooky tingle at the base of your spine, the growing sense of dread in the pit of your stomach. You know it's coming, and your ass had better be prepared. We're not talking about yet another numbskull Adam Sandler flick, pal. Nope,...
When I migrated here from New York, I hadn't counted on how near impossible it would be to put a band together and keep it focused during the hot summer months. Even the lamest justifications for missing rehearsals, from the persistent "Uhh, I spaced it, man" to the truly wretched...
For this food critic, there's nothing quite as satisfying as gnawing on a hunk of butt while perusing the Scottsdale-based Serbian Times and occasionally wondering how many pierogi a grown man can ingest before he explodes. The butt in question? Smoked pork butt, silly! From Stanley's Home Made Sausage Co...
The Groden family lives out in the middle of the New Mexico desert, far from main roads. They grow, harvest and/or kill all their own food, own their own home, and make what little money they need from crafts. They've got no phone or indoor plumbing, and they haven't paid...
Want to know what's spicing up the night on Cinco de Mayo? Put away the blender and the salt and head to one of the more than 100 celebrations and activities taking place all over the Valley. We have everything from parties south of the border to kid-friendly fiestas. But...
SAT 2/26 It seems that KTAR personality Gayle Bass really knows how to shake it. And by "it," we mean a martini -- which also, it just so happens, serves as her moneymaker, when Bass and more than a dozen other local luminaries serve as wanna-be mixologists during the Celebrity...
God, I could go for a pint of Stella Artois, or "wife-beater," as it's sometimes referred to in merry ol' England. I'm in a black-and-white box of an eatery, surrounded by photos of Cornish tin miners, reading a biography of Hermann Goering. Halfway through my midday meal, it hits me...
2/11-3/11 Get your drink on, get your freak on, and get your strap-on, because the 22nd annual Exotic Art Show is back again. "People who like to dress crazy and sexy can come here, and nobody gives them a problem," says Baron Dixon, one of 60-plus artists exhibiting work in...
Here's a band that's a cluster of contradictions. It's called Bowling for Soup, but the members are admittedly terrible bowlers and not big fans of soup. It's a punk band, but it was nominated for the "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group" Grammy in 2003. It's made up...
