Look past the sad stucco homes and the nondescript strip malls and you’ll see that Phoenix is actually home to some top-notch architecture. From Midcentury Modern to downtown Art Deco and early 20th century Queen Anne cottages, here are our 10 favorite structures in metro Phoenix…
Fewer baby humans means more baby animals. Stay with us; it’s going somewhere. On Tuesday, April 22 (yes, Earth Day), recycled clothing retailers Well Suited will team up with the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based nonprofit that advocates for endangered animals, to hand out free Endangered Species Condoms to…
Third Friday’s here, Phoenix. Here are three shows not to miss tonight. “Sugar Cookies” When one artistic medium overlaps another, the result can be pretty sweet. Such is the case for the spring exhibition “Sugar Cookies.” This mixed-media collaboration combines words with images from Florida-based artist Jenny Odom, who used…
The setup: Before sometime in the 1940s, American musical theater consisted of just a buttload of singing and dancing, reasons to look at women’s exposed legs, and no particular attempt at character or storytelling. During the Great Depression, movies were an affordable, diverting novelty, and the more implausibly cheerful and…
Didja ever wonder where the whole “420” thing with marijuana culture came about? You know, that particularly significant number that’s celebrated and cherished by pot fans around the world on and around April 20th every year. Is it the amount of chemicals active in ganja or possibly the police code…
Jackalope Ranch’s top picks for ways to spend your weekend are here. Dov Davidoff When you (allegedly) lose your virginity to a prostitute at the age of 12, there are two roads to take: hit rock bottom or turn to stand-up comedy…
Arizona’s street cred in the national arts and culture scene has been seriously on the rise this month — what with downtown’s Lost Leaf being named one of the best art bars in America, Phoenix being named one of the best Midcentury Modern metros, and Sedona getting featured in Smithsonian…
Longtime Phoenix Art Museum director James Ballinger has announced plans to retire, according to a museum press release issued Thursday, April 17. He has requested that the museum’s board of trustees begin searching for his replacement. Once that replacement has been selected, Ballinger will retire…
We’re about halfway through the two-week run of Jodorowsky’s Dune at Harkins Camelview 5 in Scottsdale, so time is running out for you to go check out the funny, thought-provoking, and painfully frustrating documentary about experimental filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ill-fated attempt to make the book Dune into a movie. Obviously,…
The setup: Many of the best off-Broadway theaters are clubs of a kind: like-minded artists who’ve come together to form a company that produces the kind of work they value, to joyfully challenge their skills, to share the results with audiences in a meaningful way. If you’ve spent years doing…
Courting Disaster is Jackalope Ranch’s weekly column of dating horror stories, observations, how-tos, and more by Katie Johnson. Names of ex-boyfriends, past hookups, and bad blind dates have been changed to protect the guilty. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Nerd Wallet’s recent conclusion that Phoenix is a great…
The Big Brains are here. We’ve profiled the 15 up-and-coming creatives who are finalists in the categories of performing art, culinary art, visual art, design, and urban vision. We’ll announce the five winners (one in each category) at Artopia, an evening of food, drink, and art, at Bentley Projects on…
Between the upcoming launch of the Grid Bike Share program and the arrival of the IV vitamin bar trend, it seems like life in the Valley couldn’t get much more convenient. Cue Handybook. The new on-demand cleaning service, which launched in Phoenix on Monday, April 14, is setting out to…
Sometimes it’s helpful to know certain details about how a film has come together. And sometimes it’s just so much information. Transcendence, the directorial debut of Christopher Nolan’s go-to cinematographer, Wally Pfister, was shot on film rather than digitally, as most big Hollywood movies (and nearly all small ones) are…
When Wally Pfister won an Oscar for Inception, his sixth film with Christopher Nolan, he went home and put the statuette on his mantel. “And then it moved to the corner, and then my office, and then the closet because you go away for a few months, and then it…
It’s been 5 million years since humanity hauled itself from the swamp, and according to Joe director David Gordon Green, we’re devolving back into muck. While the stoners of Green’s Pineapple Express regressed from men to boys after a few puffs of weed, this grimly beautiful drama starring Nicholas Cage…
His name may not be familiar, but his ideas should be.Austin-based (and named) Austin Kleon, author and forward-thinking creative, comes to Changing Hands Bookstore this week to discuss his newest book, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. Kleon, a self-described “writer who draws” has…
Bless this mess all you want, but it’s going to take a little more than that to find your lost car keys and daily productivity. That’s where professional organizer and home stylist Kelsey Groetken comes in. The CEO and founder of Breathe. Organize. Repeat. (B.O.R.) is stopping by locally owned…
Geoffrey Chaucer was England’s greatest poet, a celebrated author best known for The Canterbury Tales, but also for promoting the English language at a time Latin and French predominated the British Isles. That said, joy to the man who gave us speech at the fourth biennial Chaucer Celebration. The event…
“Bizarre, sometimes nonsensical, whimsical, and a little dark” is how artist Cindy Schnackel describes her sense of humor as well as her work, which is primarily silly and surreal portraits of birds. While some of her paintings show birds watching TV and others show birds at an art gallery, all…
When you (allegedly) lose your virginity to a prostitute at the age of 12, there are two roads to take: hit rock bottom or turn to stand-up comedy.Dov Davidoff chose the latter, and audiences seem glad he did. Tackling well-versed topics like relationships and love, the Jersey-born comic goes beyond…
In preparation for Wingstock, Mesa’s yearly celebration of the noble and delicious chicken, we’ve gathered some fun facts about chicken wings from our friends at the National Chicken Council (a real thing!). Here’s one: 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the first “Buffalo Wing” being served at the Anchor Bar…
