In mid-November, more than 200 FBI agents and insurance industry investigators packed into a banquet room at Tampa’s Marriott Waterside Hotel. They came to hear what an FBI supervisory agent and a prominent insurance investigator had to say about a stunningly successful health-insurance scam centered inside Southern California outpatient surgery…
Picture the Jerry Lewis telethon. See that guy in the wheelchair with the crooked arm? Now imagine him trying to juggle a dozen raw eggs. This conjures up a mixture of revulsion and fear, doesn’t it? Which is precisely what I feel when confronted by a microphone. Except the eggs…
The town of Gilbert is known nationwide as one of the fastest-growing communities. And locally, as one of the most homogenous. Recently, the town’s leaders solidified their white-bread image by eliminating Gilbert’s fledgling public arts program. Funding for public art in Gilbert has gone from $420,900 to zero. As a…
The Coolness Factor Chains of cool: When did chains become cool? I was shocked to see on the map in the article “What’s Cool” (Amy Silverman, December 4) you included IHOP as a “cool place” in downtown Phoenix. What exactly makes a restaurant that is part of a chain “cool”?…
As soon as the Suns game wraps up, they come busting out of the north doors of the America West Arena like a pack of hungry wolves. “The party’s in there,” declares a young black woman in micro-braids and a form-fitting blue dress, checking out the long line that has…
A Valley man has pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree murder and kidnapping in connection with the brutal murder of another man. On December 9, Jeremy Johnson, one of four Valley skinheads who was facing capital murder charges, agreed to pleas on the lesser crimes in exchange for his testimony…
Looks like another Tempe institution is a goner. A couple of months back, a pair of Arizona State University grads who own a couple of tony Scottsdale bars snagged Bandersnatch — a lowbrow mainstay of downtown Tempe’s quickly disappearing bar scene. At the time, longtime customers and employees of the…
Frank Nickman, formerly Farzin Nikmanesh, knew he would be your devil the moment he stepped back into the terminal in Farmington, New Mexico, the morning of September 11, 2001. He looked at the televisions; he looked at the drained white faces beneath them. Ah, this is why we were ordered…
All Around Downtown Chilly reception: I just got finished reading your “Cool Index” (“What’s Cool,” Amy Silverman, December 4) and I want to let you know how utterly disgusted I am by it. It is this sort of fawning, shoddy “journalism” that makes the downtown community look like a joke…
Sara Abbott Artist and co-owner, 3CarPileUp Bob Adams Artist Glen Allen Artist Christopher Alt Architect, Studio Ma Scott Andrews Director, Cakewalk Projects, and co-founder, Open Venue Griselda Avalos Fashion designer Janet Baker Curator of Asian Art, Phoenix Art Museum Joe Baker Curator of Fine Arts, Heard Museum, and co-founder, Open…
Craig and Kris DeMarco preside over one of the coolest corners in town. First they opened Postino, a beautifully appointed wine bar in an old post office. They took advantage of the cavernous space and put in an enormous sliding door that takes one side off the place in nice…
It’s a strange sort of subculture, this communion of men working the streets for money in an athletic endeavor they say is both exhausting and exhilarating. The money can be good, especially as it’s all tips, untouched by and invisible to government tax collectors, but it’s not all that brings…
Boxing His Ears The Spike was thrilled to run into none other than former heavyweight champion (and convicted rapist) Iron Mike Tyson last week at, of all places, the Circle K on Seventh Avenue and Bethany Home Road. The Spike was in need of a pack of smokes (hey, it…
Bloom Town The Bloom is off the rose: My show, The Rick Bloom Show, was reviewed by your journalist Robrt L. Pela, who invited me to his home for an interview in early September of this year. The article that resulted from that interview was published in late November, nearly…
A few years back, Sloane McFarland did something a lot of creative young people from Phoenix do. He left. And then he did something unusual. He came back. McFarland is an artist. You can see his video work on display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, in a one-man…
Say you want to break into the urban clothing market. It probably won’t occur to you to slap stickers on garbage cans, call it “Trashcan Advertising” and invent your very own marketing campaign. But that’s exactly how a 25-year-old from north Phoenix has taken his clothing label, Soldierleisure, from the…
Once again, Arizona taxpayers have been stung with a classic bait-and-switch. This time, the financial ruse comes under the guise of prison reform. Arizona’s prisons can handle 27,000 inmates. They currently house 31,000. So legislators went into special session with the goal of solving the overcrowding crisis. Prior to the…
JoJo Shedd will celebrate her first Thanksgiving on Thursday, and her adoptive mom couldn’t be happier. “She’s really had an amazing life so far,” says Louise Sumner, a Paradise Valley woman who adopted JoJo last spring. “She’s been here, there and everywhere, and we’re thrilled she’s finally back home.” By…
Union Pacific railroad engineer Michael Coleman has bad luck and worse timing. Last month, a Phoenix jury slammed the railroad with a multimillion-dollar verdict for a fatal accident in which Coleman, who has only one eye, failed to see a 30-ton asphalt roller on the crossing ahead of him. The…
Picture This Holding him in contempt: I read the article on Jerry Colangelo and his effort to build downtown (“Operation Mickey Mouse,” John Dougherty, November 20). One very disturbing element is the outright contempt for Mr. Colangelo. Please, people, for once set your bruised ego aside and realize that, while…
U.S. 101 just north of downtown Los Angeles clears finally. But the respite from 70 minutes of grinding traffic from Los Angeles International Airport to North Hollywood on an early Saturday evening doesn’t last long. Another jam appears just off the freeway along Buddy Holly Drive as hundreds of cars…
The message was as clear as the image indelible: The inhumanity of Officer Jason Schechterle’s tragically burned face was a product of the inhumane Ford Motor Company. Ford built the police cruiser that engulfed the Phoenix officer in flames when he was rear-ended during a routine traffic stop in 2001…
