Nobody’s ever going to mistake a night’s stay at Bisbee’s Shady Dell for a room at the Ritz. There are no mints on the pillow, and forget about daily maid service. If you want to make a call, you’ve got to use a phone in the laundry room that serves…
Bev Tittle-Baker is not a born activist. A single mother most of her life, she owned a construction business in Phoenix, but gave it all up in the early ’90s after growing weary of cutthroat contracting competition. She found a “fixer-upper” home in an old Mesa neighborhood, saw its potential…
Bang, Bang, You’re a Fed Faced with the closure of a firing range on public land in Tucson, Representative Jim “I am not a member of ACT-UP” Kolbe has called out the militia–literally. The Tucson Rod and Gun Club’s shooting area was long a fixture near the scenic Sabino Canyon…
In 1996, the Maricopa County Environmental Services Division launched a bold, new program to computerize its health inspection process. The aim was to provide on-the-spot permits and evaluations to facilities. The division spent $384,745 on 60 handheld computers for use in the field. But then most of the computers sat…
It’s the kind of setting that makes you want to be cynical. I’m trying my hardest, but it’s not working. Friday night, and the Scottsdale Center for the Arts is almost full of people who’ve come to see a bunch of Tibetan monks perform sacred music and dance. Consider that…
Death Fret In Barry Graham’s article “Curtains for Ceja” (February 5), he stated that at the age of 18, he himself had the urge to go to a local bookstore and kill the owner and take the money. Graham wrote, “It wasn’t my conscience that saved him, though I’d like…
Palmetto is a film noir set in a torpid seaside Florida town. It’s based on the James Hadley Chase novel Just Another Sucker, and when we first see Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson), he fits that moniker exactly. He looks dazed and confused–a sucker incarnate. Suckers are, of course, integral to…
Johnny Lee Riley spent his 48th birthday in court, charged with a crime he thought he’d run away from 24 years earlier. Armed robbery. Burglary. And, a big surprise to Riley, first-degree murder. It wasn’t that he was trying to hide his past. A minister for the past 13 years,…
Senator John McCain likes to play on the national stage; that’s why many of his constituents were startled January 30 to find him taking off after a local entertainment event. An upcoming match in a blood sport called cage fighting, he declared in a letter to his pal Maricopa County…
Sweeping Indictment A week into the current sweeps period, local news is awash in sleaze. Monday night at 10 p.m., for example, KNXV-TV Channel 15’s Bill Spencer will–salaciously, no doubt–air a story titled “Sex Offender Zip Codes.” (They’re hell on real estate values. Or something.) How does the Flash know?…
“After you’ve been dead, everything else is just . . . something to do,” said Dannion Brinkley. Brinkley said that in September on the phone from his hospital bed in Charleston, South Carolina. He was explaining his nonchalance about the brain surgery he would undergo two days later that had…
Last month was the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the war over women’s right to abortion is no nearer to being over than it was in 1973. The discourse has been pretty static, barely moving on over 25 years. It’s an ideological war in which I walk through…
A View to a Kill The death penalty is revenge, pure and simple (“Curtains for Ceja,” Barry Graham, February 5). It is handed out inconsistently and is an ineffectual deterrent against crime. The blood lust displayed by the victims’ families is appalling. Such displays of hatred may be understandable, but…
This is what Jose Jesus Ceja did to Linda and Randy Leon. I wasn’t there. On June 30, 1974, 18-year-old Ceja went to the Leons’ home, planning to steal 70 pounds of pot. He didn’t think they’d be at home. When he got there, he found Linda, 22, alone. They…
Ever since the first Neanderthal scrawled on a cave wall and the second Neanderthal cribbed his style, artists have been “borrowing” from one another. But when it comes to literally lifting a fellow visionary’s work, Valley artist Erastes Cinaedi is the man to beat. For the past eight months, the…
In the center of attention, as he has been for years, Fife Symington takes stock of the situation. To his side stands his shell-shocked wife, Ann. Dressed in a red blazer and black skirt, she dutifully assumes her role as the loyal, supportive companion of the fallen leader. On the…
Say “Win” I find it curious how the lady who finally got her jackpot from Harrah’s thanked God for it (as quoted in the Arizona Republic) as opposed to thanking, oh, say . . . Paul Rubin and New Times for bringing the problem to public attention (“Winner Takes All,”…
Harold Thompson: Addressing a difficult subject Harold Thompson’s mind reeled on August 15, a hot Friday afternoon, as he sat on a bus, heading west on Interstate 10. For the previous three months, the bus ride to 79th Avenue, where his motor home was parked, had served as a decompression…
Former Arizona governor J. Fife Symington III has just escaped a crush of reporters at the federal courthouse and is moving toward his car when he spies three of the jurors who found him guilty. It is January 20, and Symington is leaving a daylong presentencing hearing. The jurors happen…
A robust, superannuated woman with the stern countenance of the righteous guides her electric tricycle to within hailing distance of two relaxed-looking men who have filled patio chairs for a leisurely smoke. The three exchange brief pleasantries. “Did you go to church today?” the sober matron asks the men. “Was…
Saving Arizona’s Unemployed During his final days in management at the Arizona Republic, Steve Knickmeyer confided that he had been ordered to improve abysmal newsroom morale. He finally accomplished that goal, by “resigning.” “Short of finding out he was torn apart by rabid jackals, this is about the best news…
When Bill Clinton first ran for president, I was still living in Scotland. When an American friend came to visit me, I asked her, “So what do you think of Clinton?” “Clinton’s probably okay,” my friend said. “It’s just too bad she’s married to Bill.” My friend still voted for…
