“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…
Twice in his life, Eric Adam has fallen in love at first sight with women who launched him on crusades that other men would have known were impossible. His first love was a Montana country girl he met at the Veterans Administration hospital in Prescott, where he was drying out…
As Maricopa County’s leaders indulged themselves in a four-year debt binge that has left the county deep in the hole, the financial consulting firm of Rauscher Pierce Refsnes, Inc., may have joined the county in running afoul of federal securities laws. Two weeks ago, New Times reported that the county,…
Wink Dickey walks across a patch of dirt in South Phoenix, giving a tour of an imaginary community on a street that, at the moment, leads nowhere. He points to houses that don’t exist yet–the Target house,” “the SRP house” and “the PNI house.” Across the street is a park…
Miss Karan’s Frozen Out Why didn’t Arizona WINS–a political organization devoted to electing female candidates–endorse the reelection campaign of the state’s highest-elected woman, U.S. Representative Karan English? “I just can’t stand her. I think she’s an embarrassment and a failure, and probably gonna set women back God only knows how…
Guided by moonlight, we easily slide through a seam in the chain-link fence surrounding the property and head for the back door of the grand old house. Built by Tempe’s only mayor of Hispanic descent in 1883, the now-battered brick-and-adobe home has become a tombstone marking the death of Tempe’s…
Just after the clock strikes 12 on Wednesday nights at the El Capri, the crowded dance floor of the East Van Buren nightclub opens up like a parted sea. People gather three and four deep around the brightly lighted impromptu stage as sleepy-eyed club owner Pedro Marquez steps out with…
Terry Goddard is playing his same old dodge. The perennial candidate for office is attempting to slouch his way to victory in the Democratic primary for governor. Desperately, Goddard hopes voters won’t recognize him as the same candidate who ran such a miserable campaign in the last election, the one…
The panic is on. They see his chances slipping away. This time, Terry Goddard may not even make it through the Democratic primary. Less than a week before Democrats go to the polls to pick their candidate for governor, Goddard is limping badly. There is no excitement. He has no…
Whizzing past the intersection of 24th Street and Camelback at rush hour, the muscular skater in pink short-shorts cuts a jolting figure. If the stocky, tattooed torso and chiseled facial features are almost certainly male, the perky little breasts peeking over the slashed undershirt are just as certainly female. Adding…
Late in July of last year, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting. It was time to churn some debt. Periodically during the previous two years, the county had developed an unfortunate habit of running out of cash to pay its bills. When that happened, the supervisors…
Is There an Echo? What do former Phoenix mayor Paul Johnson and Michigan state senator Debbie Stabenow have in common? Plenty. Both are Democrats. Both paint themselves as outsiders bucking special interests. Both–until August 2–hoped to nab their party’s gubernatorial nomination and face, in all likelihood, the state’s incumbent Republican…
Drivers leaving the Squaw Peak Parkway to head west on Bethany Home Road quickly find themselves running a gauntlet of graphic signs. The signs will never be featured in a City of Phoenix public relations brochure. “You Are Now Entering the Worst Run City in the Galaxy.” “Vote ‘NO’ on…
When I read Bishop Thomas O’Brien’s challenge in the Arizona Republic recently, I decided this would be a trial worth watching. The message, read from the pulpit in all Catholic parishes, announced that the church was being forced to go to trial because of the excessive demands of the suit…
I must now find a new way to amuse myself. Baseball is gone, never to return–in this season, at least. What is left? There are so many experts spouting off about the ramifications of the baseball strike, they have worn me to a frazzle. They come boring in from all…
I could never get the killing out of my mind. For one thing, I never could make any sense of it. Besides, I never could learn enough from contemporary newspaper accounts to put all the pieces together. On August 16, 1986, Eric Kane, 16, was found murdered in a room…
John Thul walks to the back of his nearly completed $8 million sheet-metal-stamping plant and gazes at the undeveloped rangeland stretching for miles to the north. His face fills with the distressed look of a man who’s been had. Thul points to a lone creosote bush, about 150 feet away…
