After 20 years as a social worker, Debby Elliott doesn’t usually weep over her clients. Louis was different. When Elliott met Louis last spring, he was the Arizona Legislature’s idea of a disposable human being. He was a homeless, mentally ill, HIV-positive heroin addict. In another lifetime, Louis had been…
The old cavalry signal of the charge. Shrill yelping and howls like canine genocide settle from behind the eight numbered gates, a blood-curdling sound that could haunt the uninitiated for hours. A mechanical lure–a diabolical, spurious rabbit–starts its loop around the oval track, sparks flying off the rail on which…
Rudy Mendoza says he believes in working through the system. So when he found a racially charged statement by a Phoenix cop in his neighborhood’s Block Watch newsletter, he went to his city councilman. Then he met with the head of the Block Watch, the police department, the mayor’s office…
Tile Counsel I just finished reading your article in the Phoenix newspaper (“Wordstock Nation,” Dewey Webb, March 11) and it was such a masterpiece I just had to write and tell you so. I always get irritated when reading such articles because they always make us Scrabble fanatics sound like…
Tonight, Interstate 17’s passenger destinations emerge as scattered and random as the star-crammed sky. At any moment, car license plates lit by tiny bulbs reveal such far off lands as Washington, British Columbia and Mexico. Melancholy drivers trying to escape the only life they are ever going to have sit…
There’s a quiet civil war brewing in Arizona’s pro-choice community, and I’d bet my own right to an abortion that the pro-lifers are dancing a happy jig. It’s the oldest trick in the political playbook–divide and conquer–and at the moment, the abortion-rights community is about as prone as a woman…
When the shooting erupted in the living room of the Pueblo Street crackhouse, Larry Jack had just stepped out of the apartment’s bathroom. His babies, a 4-year-old girl and a little boy, just 20-months-old, were splashing in the tub as their mother fussed nearby. At first, the fire from the…
Craig Willbanks wants you to know that John McCain–former prisoner of war, current senator, White House aspirant–is a traitor, a liar and a wimp. Willbanks and McCain have never met. The senator probably has never heard of this hunched-over, soft-spoken fellow who served two tours of duty in Vietnam as…
Closed Government The Arizona Legislature thinks you’re an idjet. Yeah, you. Specifically you, sitting there, sipping your (insert name of tasty beverage here) and leafing through these pages. Your legislators think you’re dumber than a bag of hammers, stupider than a dazed Dalmation, a rook short of a chess set,…
For six months, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has ordered one of his employees to spy on a key member in the election campaign of Tom Bearup, the only announced candidate seeking to unseat Arpaio in 2000. The wife of a deputy who has performed that surveillance has come forward, and her…
Improper food storage! Clogged sinks! Insect residue! Tagging along with county restaurant health inspectors, KTVK-TV Channel 3’s crack news team regularly brings viewers horrifying footage of what’s really going on in Valley galleys. But right under its own nose, the station’s kitchen-cam crew has somehow missed what appears to be…
Kids in Maria Jimenez’s fourth grade class at Valley View School in South Phoenix sit at tables reading and discussing books in both Spanish and English, depending on which language their books are written in. It’s a bilingual class. Nearly all of the children are Hispanic, most of them from…
Ronald Roe is a wife-swapper. The 31-year-old psychiatric case worker for a Valley hospital enjoys, on frequent occasion, watching his wife copulate with other men. And Ronald’s wife, a software engineer, fondly encourages him to have sex with other men’s wives, usually while she’s in the same room, having sex…
It’s rare for an appellate judge to speak publicly about any pending case, much less one that may end up in his court someday. So it made for a good news story on February 26 when the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court invoked a high-profile South Phoenix gang-rape…
A Developing Theme Just when we think Arizona legislators have become the biggest sluts imaginable, along comes word of another corporate gang bang. Consequently, the Flash has learned never to underestimate our lawmakers’ capacity to give state tax dollars to private interests–funds that are replaced in the state budget by…
The main branch of the Phoenix Public Library was recently forced to rid its collection of more than 2,000 books–all of them dirty. But before hollering “censorship,” gentle reader, be advised that the villain of this particular piece isn’t a cultural bluenose. The real culprit? The unknown vandal who’s believed…
On Greenway near 19th Avenue, just north of the Chino Bandido’s Takee Outee Chinese and Mexican Food and across the street from Turf Mobile Manor trailer court, the Cadillac Cowboy Club free stands in a fading strip-mall lot. It is the sort of shopping center that serves as a traditional…
There isn’t but 120 pounds to Howard Youngblood, and every single ounce of the young black man is torqued with anxiety. He is one of four people who shared a home on East Chipman Street in South Phoenix. His roommates, Man-man, Dink and Mookie, as well as a visitor, Rolanda,…
Gummer of Love This letter is to thank New Times and Paul Rubin for finally printing the true story about my daughter, Lorraine De Jongh Gamble, and her husband, Edward Gamble (“Olden Opportunity,” March 4). Previously, much of what was mentioned concerning them was trash, based solely upon sensationalism. No…
Frank Leyvas had barely asked his passenger, “Where to?” when the cops, like a black cloud in their raid gear, stormed his cab. An officer aimed a rifle at his head. Leyvas ducked under the dash as bullets tore through the car’s rear windshield–and his passenger’s skull. Moments later, Leyvas’…
The inventor of the granddaddy of all word games was a man by the name of Butts. Maybe that’s why hard-core Scrabble aficionados have such a healthy respect for double entendres–and particularly those that cross triple-word squares. “Nice rack,” mutters one player as he looks over a fellow player’s shoulder…
Jan Solomon made two huge mistakes in early 1997. First, the Scottsdale man–then 57–resumed a romance with a woman he had dated when both were in their teens. Trouble was, both were married. Second, he attempted to hire someone to kill his paramour’s husband. Luckily, the would-be hit man contacted…
