Echo Coffee isn’t that different from most other coffee shops. The interior décor is like a mom-and-pop Starbucks, decorated with plush chairs and spacious tables, over which hang red ceiling lamps. Hipster jazz usually plays softly through the speakers, and the scent of coffee grounds fills the air. The coffee…
The Arizona Pop Culture Museum is unlike anything else in the CityNorth shopping district. While the surrounding businesses offer gourmet yogurt, upscale dining, and brand name clothing, the APCM offers the largest collection of colorful plastic action figures we’ve ever seen. There are more than 10,000 of them, spanning more…
Finally, a hookah lounge that gets the “lounge” part just right. Urban Café hookah lounge in Tempe may not have the largest selection of hookah tobacco in the city, or the fanciest furniture, but when it comes to comfort, they’ve got everything a hookah smoker needs. The hookah lounge is…
Cheetahs has been hosting “Stripper Fight League” every Tuesday for the past eight months. A few other strip clubs have recently started hosting weekly cage fights, but Cheetahs was the first, and it’s still the most popular. The fight cage is about the size of an above-ground swimming pool. The…
Ten years ago, Mandall’s Shooting Supplies was an unusual hub in Old Town Scottsdale. Back then, it was the place to go if you were looking to shoot some high-powered, fully automatic guns or buy an expensive, vintage rifle from Spain. Now, all that’s left of Mandall’s Shooting Supplies is…
For the past several weeks, we’ve been blogging about synthetic cannabinoids in herbal incense products known as “spice” (check out the Buzz Buzz archives for our previous blogs on this subject).This week, we’ll be reviewing Pep Pourri (also known as “Pep Spice”), one of the more popular “herbal incense blends”…
Turns out that someone didn’t pay a hitman to kill us — after all. This morning, we received an e-mail at work titled, “Do or Die, Urgent Reply” from one “Hitman Sapp.” Sapp wrote that he’d been following us for some time, and that he’d been paid by someone we…
When I was in sixth grade, I used to stuff my bra. I did a horrible job — the toilet paper was always uneven, so I perpetually looked like I had one exceedingly droopy breast. I wish I’d had the guidance of someone like local drag queen and performer extraordinaire…
Indie coffee shop/hipster gathering place Conspire (also known as The Coffee Conspiracy) is one of those places you go when you’re not in a big hurry to get your coffee. Conspire tends to be frequented by regulars and people from the neighborhood, and its not unusual for the baristas here…
Film fan and Madcap Theaters director Andrea Beesley-Brown, aka the Midnite Movie Mamacita, has a well-known appreciation for cult films and grindhouse cinema, but it turns out, she’s also a fan of funny movies about marijuana.This weekend, Madcap Theaters will show one of the first films ever made about marijuana,…
I never thought I’d say this, but I had a really great time at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill in Mesa last night. And I lasted eleven seconds on one mean mechanical bull.Every Wednesday night, Barrel Boy from local country station 102.5 KNIX hosts a “Queen of…
The Hall of Flame Fire Museum in Phoenix is the largest firefighting museum in the world, but it’s easy to pass while driving east on Van Buren Street toward Mill Avenue. But take a right around 61st Street, and you’ll find a fascinating collection of fire engines, firefighting equipment, and…
Anyone who’s ever been to a head shop knows that you have to watch your language. You don’t ask about “bongs,” but “water pipes.” You don’t ask for “something to clean out my system for a drug test,” but “something for detox.” And when purchasing glass crack pipes, a customer…
It was an evening of cat calls, curtain calls, and glittery dresses as seven Valley bartenders competed for the third annual “Dancing with the Bars” championship at the Wyndham Phoenix Hotel on Sunday, July 25. The Dancing with the Stars-inspired competition, sponsored by Sway Events and benefiting the One Voice…
Giant Coffee recently opened next to Bunky Boutique off 1st Street and McDowell Road, and the menu at the coffee shop is as quaint and cute as the merchandise next door. But in addition to scones made in-house, desserts from Tammie Coe Cakes, and tasty drinks like Honey Vanilla Lattes…
Summer in Phoenix often feels like one long, hot screw in the desert sand and liquid asphalt. Everybody’s running around sweating, panting, and ready for naps. Heat may be literal torture in the Valley of the Sun, but metaphorically, it’s also very sensual.The down side of having nine months of…
Last month, we kicked off our semi-regular reviews (provided our lungs don’t give out) of local Hookah shops with Café Instanbul and Market in Tempe. The vibe was cool and environment was very Middle Eastern — save the hip-hop jams in the background. This week, we bring you to a…
Vibrators have come a long way since Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville patented the first one around 1880. Gone are the days when women had to plug their sex toys into the wall and hope the cord would reach the closet — these are the days of glow-in-the-dark, 27-setting, waterproof, music-playing…
Few signs around Phoenix are as eye-catching as Western Exterminator Company’s “Little Man.” The “Little Man” is really anything but — the fiberglass figure of a man in a top hat holding a hammer behind his back stands nearly 10 feet tall, and hovers over 24th Street from about 20…
A few months ago, word got out that synthetic cannabinoids that mimicked the effects of marijuana were being sprayed onto “herbal incense blends” and sold in head shops. Now that people are hearing they can legally get high by smoking these blends (at least for now in Arizona), a new…
Fans of Monster Energy drinks are in for both disappointment and surprise with the Monster Energy Shooters. We’re big fans of the 16-ounce regular Monsters, which taste like carbonated apple juice to us, but the Monster Hitman Energy Shooter was…well, a whole different monster. The shooter bottles are smaller (just…
There’s a big white pyramid in the heart of Papago Park. The shiny white tile structure is as flashy a standout as the man buried within it. This is the tomb of George W.P. Hunt, Arizona’s first governor, who served seven terms between February, 1912 and January, 1933. Hunt stood…
