ValTrans opponents say we don’t need the mass transit system because–and here’s where everyone starts laughing–the air quality in Phoenix is improving. Laugh all you want, the opponents say, we’ve got the statistics to prove it. In fact, in one of the brochures they’re distributing around the Valley, opponents have…
He couldn’t seem to leave town. As Tucson grew larger and more grotesque, he kept talking about going to Moab or Ajo or somewhere. He told me once that Tucson was easy to leave–he’d done it six times. But he never seemed quite able to go through with it, any…
Add Klan-superstar-turned-Louisiana- GOP-legislator DAVID DUKE to the long list of people who’ve beaten BRUCE BABBITT at the polls.Reporter JAMES RIDGEWAY of the VILLAGE VOICE mined that nugget recently, to which a former campaign worker for Bruce snootily replied that Babbitt had already dropped out of the presidential race when Duke…
Flamboyant defense lawyers have always fascinated me. The first one I ever met was Ernie Navarre. I met him long ago in Lima, Ohio. Navarre wore a gold watch and a different suit every day. He drove a big car. But he also regularly undertook the defense of seemingly hopeless…
Dedicated to the memory of Ed Abbey, an Arizonan who understood that it is important to litter the asphalt paths of America with beer cans pitched from a fast-moving vehicle. Larry Miller, director of the Regional Public Transportation Authority (RPTA), sat in New Times’ conference room and lied to the…
It happens, occasionally, in the middle of the night. I wake up screaming in fear that someone might one day mistake this space for some kind of advice column. This has yet to occur, thank God. But it could. If anyone can mistake Alan Thicke for an entertainer or John…
I’m man enough to admit it: My swimsuit column idea has been a total flop, and I can’t say I blame anybody for not getting into it. The plan, originally, called for thousands of you readers to send me pictures of yourselves in skimpy aquatic outfits. Then I would run…
The Rooftops coming-attractions trailer certainly appears to be promoting a dance movie. And because the film is directed by Robert West Side Story Wise and executive-produced by Taylor White Nights Hackford, there seems no reason to believe otherwise. Heck, even the press materials say the thing “explodes with music and…
At least one person in Ann Arbor was unhappy when basketball coach Bill Frieder escaped to Tempe last week. He is Steve Blonder, associate sports editor at the Daily, the University of Michigan’s student newspaper. Not that Blonder loves Frieder. It’s just that the coach made such great copy. “The…
When a spate of screw-ups caused Arizona Public Service to switch off the Palo Verde nuclear plant last week, it was just another dizzy swirl in the giant utility’s tailspin. Bluntly put, APS is in a world of hurt. Its earnings in 1988 fell to only five cents a share…
Michael Swartz is one of those teens to whom parents of other kids point and bemoan, “Why can’t you be like him?” Swartz, vice president of the student body at Barry Goldwater High School, was having what he calls “a really great” senior year. Until, that is, he became known…
Mention any giant of the art world and one magnum opus immediately springs to mind. Whistler had his mother, Da Vinci had his Mona Lisa, and Warhol his Campbell’s Soup can. But Ettore “Ted” De Grazia? Just let the name of Arizona’s most beloved artist fall from your lips and…
Here’s a scoop for you: The most powerful people in Arizona are mostly fifty-year-old white men. And many of them are either politicians, developers or bankers. You’re not surprised? Then here’s some news: Charlie Keating isn’t one of them. And neither is Pat Murphy. These bits of tid come from…
n 1962, Jack and Leah Eurich came out from Michigan looking for a saloon of their own. They found a little place they liked, a piano bar in a two-story office complex on North 12th Street near Camelback. Jack tended bar, which had been his line since the end of…
Conflict-of-interest rules enacted by the Arizona State Legislature in 1984 were designed as window dressing to show that members really did care how things looked to the rest of the world. But even the rules’ sponsors admitted that, when scrutinized, the rules don’t mean squat. Despite that, members of the…
If the public’s first line of defense against lousy doctors weren’t sometimes a joke, there wouldn’t be surgeons in this state performing unnecessary operations on innocent people. But even doctors admit there are major flaws with that first line–a state law requiring hospital physicians to police each other in secret…
The nagging aches and pains from a minor traffic accident sent Eileen and Paul Moore to the doctor in 1982. They just wanted him to make their pain go away. But over the next 23 months, until their insurance ran out, Dr. Ranjit Bisla sliced into their bodies ten different…
ACT ONE. (It is 9 p.m. in a living room that would look like a toy store if toy stores had no shelves and the merchandise didn’t come in boxes. Visible in the clutter are a large, bearded man and a small, unbearded boy. The man looks at his watch…
File it under trickle-down benefit: Among the many aftereffects of the Encanto Park renovation is a cleaner lagoon. Observers say the fish who live there like it better. The recent renovation of the city’s most parklike park, which occurred over a period of almost two years and at a cost…
Nobody likes to admit it, but the much-ballyhooed zoning agreements intended to forestall battles between neighborhoods and developers are riddled with loopholes that can leave residents out of luck. And probably no one knows that better than Phoenix Councilwoman Linda Nadolski, who’s pushing a bill in the state legislature that…
he state Superfund was the undisputed crown jewel of the 1986 Arizona Environmental Quality Act (EQA), a visionary scheme to clean up polluted groundwater that won warm endorsement from legislators and lobbyists, environmentalists and industrialists alike. At last, it seemed, the state had a fast and effective way to attack…
While the state’s high-tech elite occupied center stage with their supercollider capers last year, there was not a word said about a luscious, and much more accessible, little toxic-waste research plum being dangled by federal officials. Arizona’s academic and political leaders spared no expense or publicity stunt in pursuit of…
