Inflated ClaimsBag it: New Times’ April 12 article by Laura Laughlin (“Arizona’s Worst Neighbor”) does not offer one single shred of solid evidence that any of the alleged animal illnesses or examples of harm alleged by Bunny Bertleson are caused by TRW’s sodium azide-related operations on Germann Road. Not even…
But things don’t last forever and somehow baby, they never really do. — Joey Ramone in 1977, “I Remember You” I was in seventh grade when I purchased my first record. It was Leave Home, the second album by the Ramones. I got it the day after it was released…
New Times staff writer Laura Laughlin was named the state’s top journalist Saturday by the Arizona Press Club.The 44-year-old Laughlin was selected for the coveted Virg Hill Journalist of the Year award from a field of 14 reporters. It marks the seventh consecutive year that a New Times journalist has…
By day, O’Mally’s is a nondescript sports bar, nestled in a strip mall on the west side of Phoenix. By night, O’Mally’s transforms itself into a dance club, changing musical identities from evening to evening the way Cher trades Bob Mackie outfits in concert. Depending on which night you wander…
They said it would never happen.The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Arizona Diamondbacks managing general partner Jerry Colangelo have said for years that taxpayers’ share of construction of Bank One Ballpark would be capped at $238 million. All stadium-related costs over that, they said, would be the team’s responsibility…
Sympathetic onlookers squirmed in their seats and dabbed their eyes with tissues as they listened to stories of torture. Jim Herriman beat his wife Carol with a shotgun, choked her half to death, sexually abused his stepdaughter, even killed the family pet. By the end of Carol Herriman’s two-hour clemency…
A former vice president for Valley music promoter Safari Media has been arrested on fraud and racketeering charges.The Utah Attorney General’s Office charged Thuc Tri Nguyen, 36, with 11 second- and third-degree felonies. Prosecutors contend Nguyen sold more than $500,000 in unregistered Safari Media securities to deaf Utah investors in…
Lollapollution Emission statement: I am totally appalled at the evident pollution that TRW is spewing out (“Arizona’s Worst Neighbor,” Laura Laughlin, April 12). Operators of those kinds of plants are very smart in emitting pollution in the evenings when the human eye can barely see it.Mrs. Bertleson is doing the…
It’s the home movie from hell. Astrida “Bunny” Bertleson pushes the play button on her big-screen TV in the living room of her home near Queen Creek. As casually as one would say, “This is my Uncle John” or “That’s our kitty Whiskers” while screening such a video, she explains…
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…
How far can a school go in policing a student’s off-campus activities?Sitting at home when he ordinarily would have been at school, a 17-year-old honor student at Cesar Chavez High School recently had several long days to ponder that thorny question. Late last month, David Guzman, a junior, was suspended…
Federal authorities prosecuting the infamous “Internet Doctor,” Pietr Hitzig, visited the Valley late last month as their case against the West Virginia man nears trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Manuelian and two others conducted interviews and gathered evidence in preparation for their case against Hitzig, who is now scheduled to…
Whale Done Making waves: There you go again. You wrote a brilliant, interesting story about whale hunting, etc. (“Dying Breeds,” David Holthouse, March 29). I really enjoyed it. I was shocked about the stinking whale meat problem. I think the population is starving like you said. All the arguments fit…
Jeff Ofstedahl has followed the Sino-American “spy plane” crisis with fascination, anxiety and a tinge of nostalgia. The Phoenix man spent more than 1,000 hours on the very plane — a star-crossed EP-3 — that Chinese intelligence specialists scrutinize today on the island of Hainan.Ofstedahl, 37, is best known as…
Whither Chez NousThe Encanto Village Planning Committee has cast its vote for the preservation of Chez Nous, the retro nightclub at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Indian School Road.Sadly, the committee’s desires probably won’t save the 40-year-old lounge, which many consider to be a landmark — if not an…
The throaty voice is unsettling. He appears to be half sloshed. His words are choppy and loop around like a yo-yo trick gone awry. His sentences shoot up and down in spurts as if he had just hit puberty. The muddled PA is not helping matters. The comedian, it turns…
On a good day, David Hans Schmidt is a name-dropper, glad-hander and hobnobber extraordinaire. But this is not a good day. He sits in a visitation room at Maricopa County’s Towers Jail. He is wearing the striped uniform of an inmate, and he is choked up, weeping. It’s a pathetic…
Hitmen hurriedly stabbed Jaime Sanchez four times, then dashed for anonymity among the other inmates on the sixth floor of Madison Street Jail. Then Sanchez waited, and waited, and waited some more. Twelve minutes later, detention officers were finally able to secure the scene. As is increasingly common, the jail…
When Norman Baer arrived in New York City to carve out a career in the advertising field in the early ’50s, the art school grad’s head was filled with visions of Madison Avenue skyscrapers, high-level meetings with top clients and the opportunity to create ads that would convince consumers no…
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…
The owner says he’s lived in the desert all his life. He’s a seventh-generation Arizonan whose grandfather herded sheep across the Valley. His longtime residence is a few blocks from the Phoenix Mountains Preserve. For his retirement, the man decided to build a new home. He purchased two adjacent 1.5-acre…
The Phoenix Suns’ 2000-01 season will be remembered as a year of arrested development, in more ways than one. Not only did the team suffer from debilitating injuries and lapses in on-court intensity, but it also took a severe image hit with the rash of legal troubles faced by Jason…
