Mary Jo West kidnaped? . . . Yeah, right. After the first reports of the alleged abduction, the buzz on the street was that Mary Jo faked the crime. First of all, she was snatched after leaving a stress-reduction workshop. Didn’t that tell you everything you needed to know? Then…
It was the kind of press conference reporters show up for even when they’re not working. They put on their best suits and get their shoes shined. They make sure they have fresh batteries in their tape recorders. Senator John McCain had promised to give his version of Richard Nixon’s…
The long, lean black man takes a break from tinkering with a car beneath the South Phoenix sun. Drenched with sweat, he falls onto a tattered couch under a paloverde tree. “I remember sitting under a shade tree as a kid watching my dad fix a car,” the man says,…
There’s a story about the late Gilbert Cady, ASU’s long-time finance wizard, that helps explain why the campus looks the way it does today. Rudy Turk, director of the University Art Museum, tells it: “Gilbert was a delightful guy, but he was very tight with a dollar. We were in…
Motorola office worker Betty Piott figured that, at age 54, she had her life pretty well settled. She had a steady income. She had a house on South 16th Street near Broadway Road that was hers, free and clear. She lived there with her husband, Virgil. And in a separate…
Jude LaCava? He’s the new sports-talk host on KTAR. He moved here from Ohio. Jonathon Brandmeier? He’s the morning-drive jock on WLUP in Chicago, a former radio star in Phoenix and arguably the hottest radio personality in the country. “Karen”? She’s a mystery woman. She is either LaCava’s bisexual former…
Please, somebody, make our sportscasters stick to reading scores. Please. On Sunday night, CHANNEL 12 sportsmouth BILL DENNEY hosted a so-called “debate” on the PROP ONE stadium issue, and he couldn’t even get the intros right. He turned to stadium opponent EILEEN JEFFERY and said, “Are you just a housewife,…
There are two ways to search for a good, reliable baby sitter. One. You can run a help-wanted ad, interview dozens of prospects, and discover you wouldn’t trust any of ’em with your ant farm, let alone your kids. But you’ll hire the one you distrust the least because if…
The FBI has opened an investigation into the campaign of terror waged from the state police headquarters against Leon Woodward. Although a spokesman for the FBI refused to provide details, agent Gary Wildebrandt interviewed Woodward and his wife on the afternoon of September 26. At the same time the FBI…
August and most of September came and went, leaving the Cubs in first place for the homestretch. But following the games from my Phoenix base had become utterly unfulfilling, due partly to my self-disgust for being a mere cable Cub fan and due also to the fact that the radio…
Some people never abandon hope that Phoenix could truly be a wonderful city. Like us. We hang on, even faced with a Phoenix City Council election where a few pathetic candidates contemplate nothing more significant than their hangnails. Come on! You guys allergic to fun? We’re not. Even as we…
Look like cancer x-rays, don’t they? Look closer. They’re really pictures of how Phoenix has grown since 1940. But as Ed Abbey used to say, “Growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Phoenix now spreads out over 420 square miles–the seventh-largest land mass of any city in the nation–and…
YES on Prop 2, to authorize $15 million in bonds for historic preservation, including $5 million to buy the Tovrea Castle. Also, YES on the companion Prop 103 to give the city the authority to acquire and maintain historic and culturally significant properties. We’ve got so little to preserve, we…
Look no further than these photos for evidence of why the next city council should apply thumbscrews to anybody who opposes more protection for neighborhoods in the path of street-widening projects. Hardest hit are the central Phoenix neighborhoods, where city street engineers are cutting ever-wider swaths to accommodate people commuting…
Among the first things the new city council should do–right away–is decree the blue palo verde as Phoenix’s offical tree. And then, the council should require the big blue in all official city landscaping and should encourage citizens to plant the trees in their yards. The council should do these…
It’s cool here in Phoenix in the spring of 1999, and one of the coolest things of all is the city’s Maglev transit system. Unlike the old noisy, cumbersome, ValTrans proposal that savvy voters rejected with a laugh way back in the Eighties, the new Phoenix Area Maglev system has…
Bad schools are a sure way to drive families out of the city. And every available statistic says the city’s social problems–economic instability, drugs, unaffordable housing–are on a collision course with its educational system. Student turnover rates of 50 percent or more are no longer uncommon among Phoenix’s 28 elementary…
MDBOMAKE THE CANALS SOMETHING SPECIAL AGAIN Ask native Phoenicians over the age of thirty, and they’ll tell you the canals were really something once. The more gritty oldsters insist they used to water-ski the canals. My friend Steve recalls that he and another twelve-year-old once floated from east central Phoenix…
Imagine this classified ad: “Six hundred thousand bicycles desire mostly flat city. Year-round sunshine preferable. Safe and numerous bicycle routes required.” Face it, Phoenix. You can’t apply. You’ve made it unsafe to ride bicycles. State transportation officials estimate there are 600,000 bicycles in Maricopa County homes. We estimate that only…
There’s a standing joke among my friends that I know absolutely nothing about sports. And I’m proud of it. Our staff usually begins any discussion of baseball with “Jana, that’s the little ball.” I don’t know that I would ever go watch the little ball in a new downtown baseball…
Okay, City Council, listen up. I’ve got this idea that’s sure to keep you in office next election and the election after that. Just take a few little steps to cool down Phoenix, and you’ll win over a gigantic block of registered voters who’ve been too damn hot to make…
Conventional wisdom says it can’t be done. We say it can’t not be. The downtown baseball stadium, once it’s approved by voters next week, should become a world showcase of solar power technology. The Valley’s power companies–Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service–should pool their resources and make the ballpark…
