Surveying the New Age happening unfolding on the grounds of her Hyder Valley ranch one recent Sunday afternoon, Kay Torrez makes the understatement of the millennium. “If you don’t know what’s happening out here, I guess all this does look kinda far-out,” concedes the 73-year-old grandmother. To say the least…
Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs walks along the driveway that loops around her city’s latest acquisition–a weather-beaten, 98-year-old Victorian Queen Anne Revival home. There’s actually enough foliage to lower the temperature here, in this little corner of the desert where the tall date palms turn the shaded grass a deep, lush…
When Sheriff Joe Arpaio sued the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 1994, challenging its authority to cut his budget, the action was widely viewed as a publicity stunt. Not so, argued the sheriff, assuring the public that he was entirely serious. Besides, Arpaio pointed out, taxpayers wouldn’t pay for…
Cuff Links or Handcuffs? Bankrupt Governor J. Fife Symington III has scraped up enough pocket change to buy back some of his most beloved belongings from the bankruptcy trustee who now controls his estate. The Fifester’s legal team has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to allow His Deadbeatness to purchase…
Although he swore in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to reveal personal financial records to creditors, Governor J. Fife Symington III is taking elaborate steps to avoid disclosing crucial information. Rather than open his records for review, Symington is trying to convince the court that a 1990 financial statement he used to…
In Larry Debus’ game, you have to play all the angles if you want to become one of the best. And he’s long been known as one of the best in town. The veteran defense attorney knows that a jury will take stock of how his clients behave, dress and…
By most accounts, the child-molestation case against Mesa appliance-store owner Arvine Hardwick was sound. At trial in early 1994, Hardwick’s three alleged victims–sisters then ranging in age from 12 to 16–held their own as they told horrific tales of misplaced trust and seduction. A Maricopa County jury then convicted Hardwick…
Content-ed The new format for New Times’ Table of Contents is a great improvement! It’s much easier to find the sections for which I read this newspaper, even if the advertisers may suffer from less rummaging. And it’s no harder to find my favorite staff writers’ work. But what happened…
So I’m sitting there in a bar, talking with a guy I know, and he’s complaining to me about his job. This guy works in a furniture warehouse and he says that one of his coworkers is a wrestler. A wrestler, huh? Yes, indeed. He is the Drifter. And the…
Doris Tryon keeps busy any way she can. In the evenings, she rips drywall from the kitchen of her mobile home, which is located on a half-acre desert lot 40 miles west of Phoenix. The plasterboard will soon be replaced by new cabinets. Doris doesn’t like to be idle–in mind,…
The Pink Cat slumps on a folding chair in a makeshift dressing room at Phoenix Civic Plaza. The small cuts beneath his eyes sting, his hands ache, his arms throb. But Scott Walker’s pride hurts worse than his body. He heard the boos and the derisive meows from the small…
Hungry for a career change? Perhaps you dream of trading in your nine-to-five for the excitement and glamour of selling pot? Or maybe you’d just like to keep a few well-cured grams of Maui Wowee around the house for those occasional Cartoon Network marathons, but don’t want to break the…
Fife Deep-Sixed by 60 Minutes? The long-awaited 60 Minutes segment on Governor J. Fife Symington III appears to be on the cutting-room floor at CBS News. It’s been more than four months since Morley Safer interviewed a reluctant Symington–and the piece still hasn’t been scheduled for broadcast. A CBS source…
Halvor Elvik wants balloons. The Norwegian foreign correspondent has jetted to Phoenix after covering President Clinton’s State of the Union address, and he’s been instructed to submit an article about the building excitement for the city’s first Super Bowl. It will be Elvik’s first Super Bowl, as well. And he…
It is a little after 7 a.m. on Friday, and, strangely, everyone in the Bikini Lounge is drinking beer. The strange part is not that the patrons are drinking at 7 a.m., but that they are drinking beer. Beer in this place? In Phoenix’s last remaining shrine of ripped-off, modified,…
Monday morning, 9:30. Robert Balling’s office phone rings. Again. “Hey,” he says into the receiver. “How’s it going? Yeah, I saw. Looks pretty bad. … I don’t know, maybe … I gotta go. Okay, bye.” Balling, 43 years old, solidly built with a healthy, Arizona golf tan, rolls his eyes…
The Salt River Project is mired in sludge, and, at the moment, so is Paul Cherrington, SRP’s engineer in charge of water distribution. He’s pulled on rubber boots and stepped gingerly out onto the cracked, miles-long cake of sludge that had been mucked out of the Arizona Canal and piled…
Charles F. Long II’s detractors say he has duped a lot of people, and apparently wants to pull another fast one–this time on the Super Bowl Host Committee. Long is stirring up racism charges on the eve of Super Bowl XXX by claiming that the National Football League has dealt…
Requiem for a Flawed Planet For months, Planet magazine employees labored under the shadow of a financial guillotine straining at the rope. So when money man (and Zia Record Exchange chain owner) Brad Singer came by the biweekly’s Tempe offices last Wednesday afternoon with a stack of pizzas (mostly broccoli…
Barry Aarons earned a tough-guy reputation when he served as Governor J. Fife Symington III’s director of legislative affairs. He even kept a bullwhip and handcuffs in his office. But now, Aarons’ aggressive nature has cost him his job as director of public policy at U S West Communications. Earlier…
Reeling Movie reviewer M. V. Moorhead was close, but not precisely correct, in describing LaJetee as a half-hour film “told entirely in still photographs” (“Uneven Dozen,” January 11). There is a scene in which a woman blinks. Thomas J. Baker Payson Fife Imitates Art I just finished reading “Young Fife:…
According to the Super Bowl XXX Host Committee Information Hot Line, “Share the Warmth” is the “official slogan” for Super Bowl XXX. Yet, perhaps, it is even more … It is the dead of winter. A small child wanders away from his family’s campsite, unnoticed as the adults sit around…
