I have to hand it to him. All these years, I thought Fife Symington was just another low-level hustler with an Ivy League veneer. I never figured him to possess either the gall or the imagination to become a real character. Now my hat’s off to him. J. Fife Symington…
How many millions of automobile travelers have wondered, while making their way through Arizona on Interstate 10: “What the heck is The Thing?” And how many of those travelers ask, after pulling over to see it: “Why the heck did I ever stop at The Thing?” The Thing experience, housed…
When the Nevada Highway Patrol stopped Sheryl for driving 95 mph two years ago, in her bright red Mitsubishi Eclipse, they found gambling chips, several hundred dollars in cash, two guns and a $10,000 cashier’s check. The car was a few months old, and it was paid off. Sheryl claimed…
Professor Leonardo Felix lets out a hoot. He shakes his head. He turns another page. “Es ridculo,” he says. He is reading the official Spanish version of the Arizona Driver’s License manual, which is supposed to inform monolingual Spanish speakers of state traffic laws so they can pass their driver’s…
John Stetler Brown escaped criminal prosecution for five years after he admitted in open court that he had molested a 7-year-old girl. But thanks to a 1991 New Times story that led to an investigation by Phoenix police, the real estate agent is spending a year in jail, followed by…
By now everyone in town has seen the television footage of Charles Barkley climbing over the scorer’s table in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The film shows the pride of the Phoenix Suns acting in what is clearly a state of the highest dudgeon. At the apex of his trek…
Each afternoon, just before the sun went down, Eva Byington, our neighbor, came out to water her lawn and flower beds. She had lived at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Latham for decades. “The weather is wonderful,” she would say. “It was never this good back in Ohio. I…
The whole lousy deal started for Milt Heinemann, as it does so often in Arizona, on a golf course. In 1990, a friend introduced the retired engineer to an affable fellow duffer from Minnesota named Bob Pomerenke. During their round, the name of Pomerenke’s son John came up. John Pomerenke…
The first appearance is startling: George A. Hormel II, whom everyone calls Geordie, has a shocking cascade of gray hair that fans across his shoulders, and a full, white beard that frames a bemused expression. Though he’s heir to millions of dollars, he favors slouchy suits that he buys at…
Is Calvin Goode making a mountain out of a molehill? Not according to the results of New Times’ Totem Poll (Squaw Pique,” December 30). Fired up by the Phoenix councilmember’s recent squawk that Squaw Peak’s name is offensive to Native Americans, scores of readers answered our plea for a politically…
Feeding data on carcinoma cases into a computer is a fairly ghoulish form of bean counting. But the way Georgia Armenta Yee sees things, it’s a good way to protect the public’s health. If only some cancer doctors would obey the law. Yee is manager of the Arizona Cancer Registry,…
1. There’s a clear signal President Bill Clinton might give during his inaugural address. It would diminish the fears of those who voted for him, because they believed him when he promised he was going to be the agent of change. First, Clinton could assure everyone that the bombing of…
In a city where gossip columns are as scintillating as Christmas newsletters, one column is a breath of pure nitrous oxide. It’s dishy. It’s swishy. And, to borrow one turn of phrase that recently brightened its pages, “it couldn’t be more fun than if it rained martoonies!” It’s also disturbing,…
Perhaps not since the Manson family crawled out of the desert has there been a crime scene as horrible and baffling as the one Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies were called to on the morning of August 10, 1991. Inside Wat Promkunaram, a Buddhist temple in the far west Valley, nine…
Emily Benedek, managing editor of New Times’ sister publication Dallas Observer, will read from her recently published book on the century-old Navajo-Hopi land feud, The Wind Won’t Know Me, at Houle Books, 36 East Camelback, on January 21 at 7 p.m. The Navajo-Hopi dispute has its roots in an 1882…
After Phoenix police arrested David McCord in January 1991, the parents of one of his molestation victims contacted attorneys about filing a lawsuit. “We were basically told we didn’t have much of a case and that we should move on in life,” says Phoenix resident Mary Deuel. The Deuels–Mary, her…
In America rugby is not yet soccer, which is gradually emerging as a favorite schoolyard game. Still, a sturdy few hardheads play it. Some of America’s best hardheads will converge in Tempe this weekend to try out for the U.S. Eagles, a national all-star team. By Sunday afternoon, the 25…
As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. –Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried Judge Gregory Martin leaned forward in his chair. Martin enunciated each word with great care. The young man standing before…
Cody Custer groaned and removed an ice pack from his aching back. Clad only in his underwear, he began the laborious process of taping a brace to his right knee. He had a trainer tape his right ankle, then wrap a huge Ace bandage around his thigh, waist and groin…
Two days before Christmas, Tom Martinez sat forlornly in his empty restaurant at the downtown Mercado shopping and office complex. Lights strung above the Cafe La Tasca’s bar twinkled for no one but the waiters, who set out silverware and napkins in false hope that someone would come to lunch…
Park Central, Phoenix’s original mall now suffering from declining-tenant flu, recently has added two new stores. What’s unusual about these two businesses, located just a few storefronts apart on the mall’s north leg, is their, um, orientation. Unaffiliated in any way besides thematically, both stores deal in “adult” products–condoms, flavored…
In our opinion, there are just two things Phoenix Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill must consider when he evaluates his team’s coaching situation: 1. Mike Ditka is God. 2. And He is available–if not immediately, then eventually. Joe Bugel is a nice guy. But you know what they say about nice…
