Fast. Extremely fast. Wide lanes. Deep gutters. No waves. Perfect water temperature. And most important: clean air. These are the physical attributes that separate an average swimming pool from a great one. There are only a handful of elite competitive swimming facilities in the United States. One of the best…
Pistol-Packin’ Emma The front door at Phoenix City Hall proclaims: “No weapons of any kind allowed in building.” But one city employee is packing heat–City Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood. Although she usually leaves her handgun in the car, Dirty Emma, who has a concealed-weapon permit, admits that she sometimes carries…
The whining from the leftish side of American politics seems to grow less intelligent and more ineffectual by the day, even to a veteran Nixon-Reagan-Bush hater like me. It’s as if the Democrats want to prove that Rush Limbaugh is right–that they actually are the party of politically correct minutiae…
The Gaddie family has been in the education business for decades. In the 1970s, members operated the John Hancock Academy in Mesa, teaching children back-to-basics that included phonics, morality and other conservative values. Later, they moved to higher education, operating the Mountain States Technical Institute to teach vocations like mechanics…
Nothing that’s happened in Lake Havasu City since March 13–the official beginning of spring break, MTV-style–came as much of a surprise to anyone. That’s not to say things were uneventful, though. A miniriot took place on the beach after shots were fired in a confrontation between a pistol-packing spring-breaker and…
You’ve got your Old Hollywood. And then you’ve got your Incipient Forest Lawn. Somewhere in between, you’ve got the stellar feeding trough known as Chasen’s restaurant, the 58-year-old Tinseltown phenomenon that will slam its reservation book shut for the final time this Saturday night. For anyone even remotely acquainted with…
Although People for the West–the antienvironmental “grassroots” lobby of the mining, ranching and logging industries–boasts more than 3,000 Arizona members, fewer than 200 showed up in Mesa last Saturday for the organization’s state convention. Most of the conventioneers were over 60, the sort of right-wingers who drive slowly in the…
You may not know Stella Gaudreau, but state Senate President John Greene and the 13,500-member Arizona State Bar sure do. Thanks in great measure to Gaudreau, it’s still not a crime to practice law without a license in Arizona. Senate Bill 1055, which could have made it a felony for…
Does your parks department need money to keep a recreation center open? Are your schools having trouble getting dropouts back to class? Not enough police to protect your neighborhood? No sweat. Call out the National Guard. The Arizona National Guard is diversifying. Programs that educate troubled kids, take kids to…
For He’s a Jolly Delinquent Fellow For a contribution of at least $1,000 to the Arizona State Bar Foundation, attorneys get an asterisk next to their names in the Bar’s phone directory. They also get the title “Bar Fellow.” If you don’t make good on your pledge, you don’t get…
Santos Jaco, a small man barely five feet, four inches tall, stands on his toes and peeks over the shoulder of a bearded norteamericano wearing a Maya-style woven pullover. Jaco is trying to see a detailed charcoal drawing hanging on the gallery wall. The drawing depicts corpses, men and women,…
From a bare frame, he created this bike. In his mind, he saw it come together. He looked to others for the freshest ideas. Out of patience and skill came beauty. But what, he wondered, does it take to win? The boy from the projects is scoping out his competition…
James “Rocky” Tang grew up in a South Phoenix neighborhood where nearby dairies provided fodder for the games he and his childhood friends used to play with cardboard milk caps. But the retired restaurateur was just as surprised as anyone else when the game made a comeback in the form…
The state Attorney General’s Office is investigating the Maricopa Community College District’s purchasing department for possibly violating state procurement and antitrust laws. Rich Brydle told New Times that he was fired by the college last August after recommending that a computer buyer be terminated for manipulating the bidding process on…
In recent months, government officials have challenged Arizona prison inmates’ rights to receive magazines like Playboy in the mail. The courts have upheld the prisoners’ rights. But it’s apparently a hollow victory for inmates at one state prison. According to inmates who say they witnessed the crime, employees at the…
Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free After Posting Bond Oliver Miller had a dubious homecoming when the Detroit Pistons flew in recently to play the Suns. A court hearing in his divorce had been scheduled to coincide with the visit: During that hearing, somebody pointed out that Ollie had an outstanding warrant…
Months before a lucrative state contract was offered for public bid, Governor Fife Symington and former top aide George Leckie conspired with an official from the governor’s personal accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand, to steer millions of dollars of work to the firm, an internal Coopers & Lybrand memo obtained…
No one is likely to forget for a long time what happened that day. That it was a hot, miserable July seemed only appropriate. The eviction of Helen Whitney had taken months, and this, the final step, was beginning to seem like it might go on nearly as long. Helen…
It’s no journalistic earthshaker that “dog bites man”–unlike the flip side of that equation–is not considered news. But what about the intrinsic newsworthiness of “dog nips horse”? That’s bad news–just ask the Valley horseback rider who found himself in the saddle when a vicious dog attacked the horse he was…
Art Amarillas peered into the spectators’ gallery of a Cochise County courtroom earlier this month. “I’ve been very sad about this since it happened,” he said to three of Ismael “Miley” Teran’s surviving relatives. “He never did anything to me. I was a very weak-minded individual, and my paranoia caused…
How ‘Bout Dem DiamondBanks? This just in: The Flash has reason to believe that the new baseball stadium will be named Bank One Stadium or something similar. The Flash has reason to believe that Bank One will pay the team–not the county, mind you–$2 million the first year, with that…
Bill Dougan started off the broadcast by opining that state Senate President John Greene is a “tin-plated, swaggering, obnoxious, power-hungry thug.” Then Dougan got nasty. The usual targets of his bombast–other politicians, local power brokers, the Arizona Republic–took their share of abuse. In one particularly vitriolic five minutes, he called…
