As far as we know, the panhandlers downtown are, in fact, not armed with Mac-10s. We’ll give that up now. Last week, though, anyone who called New Times to ask if our April 1 cover story was a hoax received this standard, if indirect, response: “Real homeless people, real guns.”…
If It Swims, We Can Kill It It’s like a classic good news/bad news joke. First, the good news. Governor Jane Dee Hull has finally replaced Russell Rhoades, that canker of a director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Rhoades was a laughable leader, an obstructionist who, had he…
John, We Hardly Knew Ye POW-wow! Your feature articles are reliably engrossing enough to grab your copy hot off the press. With about average-citizen knowledge of our reputed hero senator, I was captivated by the excellence of your expose, “Is John McCain a War Hero?” (Amy Silverman, March 25). I…
Spry raving echoes between smoked glass high-rises, liberating the cool night air of its usual calm. In it, a bullhorn assuredly shrieks, “They’re bombing hospitals! They’re bombing schools!” and, “Stop Clinton now!” All this is heard atop a trilling of whistles, yelps and cheers. The hubbub–a clear anomaly for a…
The tragic death of Phoenix Police Officer Marc Atkinson has our city leaders casting about for a way to better protect the men and women charged with protecting us. I’m not sure they’ve found the solution. But our leaders are. Phoenix police, police union officials and city politicians have decreed…
It was one night in Arizona’s rave scene. One night of glow sticks, blow pops and pacifiers. Of whispered lies, sabotage and cops with shotguns. One night of cuddle puddles and the best dance music on the planet. Of stink bombs, broken windows and gambles gone bad. One night of…
Mary and Jim Harvey looked forward to their trip to Arizona in September 1996. The Texas couple hoped to relax together at the elegant Phoenician resort for a rare few days away from their three children. Mary Harvey arrived at the Phoenician on the afternoon of September 26. Jim, an…
Manny Marco, unemployed vagabond, tenderly loaded the last of 30 9-millimeter bullets into the spring-action, extended clip for his new Mac-10–a semiautomatic assault weapon capable of throwing rounds as fast as Marco can blink. “That’s very good, Manny,” coaxed Arm the Homeless firearms instructor Pete Whippit. “Now, insert the clip…
How safe is it to take a balloon ride over the Valley? Commercial balloon pilots interviewed for this story say floating in a balloon is safer than driving a car or flying in an airplane. They estimate that about 50,000 people take peaceful, serene commercial balloon rides in the Valley…
Career con man Stephen Charles Peterson sat in a Maricopa County courtroom last Friday afternoon shackled to several other jail inmates. If he weren’t wearing a black-and-white striped jail suit, the physically imposing, bespectacled 57-year-old would have fit right in among the attorneys waiting to process their clients’ criminal cases…
In Arizona, every time you stick a shovel in the ground, you run the risk of being an accidental archaeologist. Long before the Spanish explored the Southwest, prehistoric Indian tribes flourished here, and the remains of those civilizations–including human remains–lie close to the surface. In order to protect that history,…
Language Lessons I liked Michael Kiefer’s lengthy article on the bilingual education issue in Arizona, which I found quite evenhanded, and much more in-depth than anything that had yet appeared in the dailies (“Bilingual Blues,” March 18). Much of the most detailed and thorough coverage of the California initiative occurred…
Jean, Jean, Critiquing Machine Far be it from the Flash to quibble about the blurred boundary between art and ore, especially in light of the Phoenix Art Museum’s recent and fabulous exhibition of old paintings on copper. But state Representative Jean McGrath’s view of the two doesn’t leave us much…
After 20 years as a social worker, Debby Elliott doesn’t usually weep over her clients. Louis was different. When Elliott met Louis last spring, he was the Arizona Legislature’s idea of a disposable human being. He was a homeless, mentally ill, HIV-positive heroin addict. In another lifetime, Louis had been…
The old cavalry signal of the charge. Shrill yelping and howls like canine genocide settle from behind the eight numbered gates, a blood-curdling sound that could haunt the uninitiated for hours. A mechanical lure–a diabolical, spurious rabbit–starts its loop around the oval track, sparks flying off the rail on which…
Rudy Mendoza says he believes in working through the system. So when he found a racially charged statement by a Phoenix cop in his neighborhood’s Block Watch newsletter, he went to his city councilman. Then he met with the head of the Block Watch, the police department, the mayor’s office…
Tile Counsel I just finished reading your article in the Phoenix newspaper (“Wordstock Nation,” Dewey Webb, March 11) and it was such a masterpiece I just had to write and tell you so. I always get irritated when reading such articles because they always make us Scrabble fanatics sound like…
Tonight, Interstate 17’s passenger destinations emerge as scattered and random as the star-crammed sky. At any moment, car license plates lit by tiny bulbs reveal such far off lands as Washington, British Columbia and Mexico. Melancholy drivers trying to escape the only life they are ever going to have sit…
There’s a quiet civil war brewing in Arizona’s pro-choice community, and I’d bet my own right to an abortion that the pro-lifers are dancing a happy jig. It’s the oldest trick in the political playbook–divide and conquer–and at the moment, the abortion-rights community is about as prone as a woman…
When the shooting erupted in the living room of the Pueblo Street crackhouse, Larry Jack had just stepped out of the apartment’s bathroom. His babies, a 4-year-old girl and a little boy, just 20-months-old, were splashing in the tub as their mother fussed nearby. At first, the fire from the…
Craig Willbanks wants you to know that John McCain–former prisoner of war, current senator, White House aspirant–is a traitor, a liar and a wimp. Willbanks and McCain have never met. The senator probably has never heard of this hunched-over, soft-spoken fellow who served two tours of duty in Vietnam as…
Closed Government The Arizona Legislature thinks you’re an idjet. Yeah, you. Specifically you, sitting there, sipping your (insert name of tasty beverage here) and leafing through these pages. Your legislators think you’re dumber than a bag of hammers, stupider than a dazed Dalmation, a rook short of a chess set,…
