The steer and the guy on horseback seem to burst from the gate at exactly the same time, but if you know charreria and have trained your eye on the action, you’ve seen the anxious horse fidgeting in place at the door, the spring of the wooden gate, the charro…
“Here we go!” exclaims Phoenix Mayor Thelda Williams, cutting a yellow ribbon and watching it flutter to her feet. Ribbon cuttings come with the mayoral turf, but Williams’ wielding of the ceremonial scissors last Saturday at a north Phoenix manufacturing plant was spiced with irony. For the past six months,…
These are troubled times for University of Arizona astronomers. Their 15-year effort to build a $200 million, seven-telescope observatory atop Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona is in jeopardy. Environmentalists hope to prevail soon in a long and bitter battle to keep the project out of 470 acres of old-growth spruce…
Dick Mahoney is relaxed. His left leg rests over the arm of a chair in the living room of his Encanto Park home. Mahoney seems at ease with himself. He has no regrets over his hard-fought campaign for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. Sam Coppersmith holds a margin…
Buddy Ryan is a better football coach and a better man than all his detractors rolled into one big, fat jellyroll. I predict Ryan will demonstrate his coaching mettle this Sunday when the Arizona Cardinals defeat the Minnesota Vikings at Sun Devil Stadium. The Cardinals will stomp the Vikings. With…
To many people, Dennis Lamothe would seem to pose an unacceptable risk. For starters, on this scorching Saturday morning, he is busy loading three solid-propellant motors inside his very large–two stories high, 350 pounds–homemade rocket. The motors are encased in shiny aluminum tubes. They weigh about 40 pounds each. Each…
In about one week, Kathy Smith will endure a bitter anniversary. Two years have passed since she was called before her bosses and fired from a lucrative job selling advertising for the Yellow Pages in Phoenix. Smith and another salesperson named Kimberly Seagraves were fired at about the same time…
The calls started rolling in early last Thursday morning. CIGNA employees were calling to say that someone had emptied the New Times rack outside their Seventh Street and McDowell office and tossed all the newspapers into a nearby Dumpster. The employees said they wanted to read New Times’ cover story,…
This Just In: Channel 3 News Spoils Emmys The production numbers! The acceptance speeches! The bad gowns and worse hairdos! With this kind of excitement in the air, it was easy to overlook a brief disclaimer at the beginning of ABC’s televised Emmy Awards ceremony explaining that Channel 3 viewers…
Upon her death in 1981, Academy Award-winning costume designer Edith Head left $4,000 for the care of her cats. In his will, W.C. Fields, the screen’s premier child-hater, expressed a desire to fund a nondenominational school for orphans. And in papers filed in probate court following the 1978 bludgeoning death…
When you walk through the front door of Buddy Ryan’s bar on Washington Street, the first thing that hits you is the huge trophy case on your right. There are no trophies. You have to win something to get a trophy. In case you haven’t noticed, Ryan’s team doesn’t do…
Rick DeGraw grins. He has good reason. “On election night at 11 o’clock,” Rick DeGraw says, “I got a call from Terry Goddard’s campaign. “Terry was then leading Eddie Basha by 1,600 votes. They ask me, ‘Do you guys want to concede?’ “`This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?’…
I had time to kill. So before last Saturday night’s Arizona State football game, I went to Fat Tuesday, one of those joints that have created a blight along Mill Avenue in Tempe. You know the kind of place. If you have a ticket stub, they will give you $1…
“I felt warmth when I first walked in here,” recalls Rose Ellen Rosier. “The house hugged me.” But nearly four years after she originally crossed the threshold of her spacious, $116,000 home in Glendale’s Independence Park subdivision, that embrace has turned into a stranglehold. Today the 59-year-old invalid feels she’s…
La Donna Sell was talking to her son when she set down the phone to answer the door. Suddenly, she fell to the floor, as one spasm after another surged through her body. Writhing in convulsions, she lost consciousness. She had been struck by a grand mal seizure. La Donna’s…
The Arizona Department of Weights and Measures is breaking the law and endangering the environment by refusing to test recycled oil that is burned as fuel by heavy industry, according to an official at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Service stations and other maintenance shops must pay disposal services…
“You’ve got a winner in town,” Buddy Ryan told us that fine day. This was a few minutes after Ryan signed that fat contract with Bill Bidwill, the Cardinals owner. Buddy Ryan reminds me of Jackie Gleason playing Ralph Kramden. All Ryan needs on the sidelines is one of Kramden’s…
TELLURIDE–John Simon, the New York magazine critic known for his spiteful reviews, is in top form. He has just finished an interview in which he said that the only thing that’s bearable for him on television these days are the O.J. Simpson hearings. “That’s because I can’t wait to see…
Those were simpler times. It’s difficult for us to conceive what life must have been like for even the most supremely talented professional baseball players before Marvin Miller formed the major league players’ union. Currently, we are weary of the Promethean arrogance and astronomical salaries of today’s striking players. There…
Attorney Michael S. Manning sounds downright chipper in his tape-recorded telephone message. “Please be advised,” he tells his clients, “that we have closed our offices permanently. . . . We can recommend an attorney that is familiar with your case but is not associated with me. Or you can hire…
You’re U.S. Senator John McCain, and you’ve got a big problem. Your wife, Cindy, was addicted to prescription painkillers. She stole pills from a medical-aid charity she heads and she used the names of unsuspecting employees to get prescriptions. The public is about to find out about it. Until now,…
Nestled near the southwestern corner of Tempe, just south of Baseline Road and east of the I-10 freeway, the three-square-mile town of Guadalupe is cursed with limited infrastructure but adorned with brightly colored buildings that make it look more like Mexico than Arizona. Guadalupe’s 5,600 residents are primarily Hispanic or…
