Sheriff Joe Arpaio is so concerned about recent hate crimes in his hometown of Fountain Hills, he decided to cancel a trip to Tucson today for a planned speech.
The weird part is that he posted a message on his Twitter account at about 3 p.m. today that he was actually on his way to Tucson when the notion struck him to head back to the east Valley. As the tweet above shows, Arpaio claims he "turned my car around" to head back because the hate crimes case is "way more important to me." Guess it wasn't as important when he started the drive to Tucson...
Even weirder: Lindsey Smith, a spokeswoman for Arpaio, sent out a news release to the media this afternoon at about 2:30 p.m. -- apparently before Arpaio turned his car around -- that stated the sheriff would have an important announcement to make tonight at the meeting in Fountain Hills:
Macehualli Day Labor Center Director Salvador Reza is in a pinch: Despite valiant fund raising efforts, the 6-year-old day labor center is in imminent danger of closing due to financial woes.
The story could easily be the subject of local writer James Garcia's plays, so it's only appropriate that the world premiere of his newest work "Tears of Lives" should be a fundraiser to help keep the center open.
Debuting Friday, August 15th, at the Playhouse at the Park, there will be five performances total -- one on Friday, and a matinee and evening performance both Saturday and Sunday. All the proceeds will be donated to the Macehualli Day Laborer Center.
The subject of the play is on topic too: "Tears of Lives" follows the story of Regino Ortega, an undocumented immigrant who has been living in the United States for 21 years. Ortega is caught by ICE and deported, leaving behind three children who are forced fend for themselves.
Anybody willing to walk 97 miles through metro Phoenix in August has either a loose screw or a damn good reason.
The walkers are members of Right to Marry: Arizona, an organization that seeks equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. The plan is to walk about 15 miles a day for seven days, with stops along the way where they'll try to engage religious and political figures in conversations about the issue. Stops include the starting point at Scottsdale Bible Church, the Parish of the Diocese of Phoenix Saint Mary's, Glendale City Hall, and finally, Phoenix City Hall.
Staff members from Shangri La wear shirts proclaiming they were there for the record-setting skinny dip.
He assures us that his skin cancer is a result of youthful recklessness, not his current lifestyle. Now he's an old man who spends weekends hanging out by the pool and playing water volley ball. He's also stark naked, but that's cool because so is everyone else.
This guy, who asked not to be identified, is one of 232 nudists who helped set a Guinness World Record this weekend for skinny-dipping at Shangri La Ranch just north of Phoenix. Shangri La representatives took a head count once everyone was in the pool and documented the event with several roof-top shots, which were submitted to Guinness along with similar evidence from more than 120 other locations across the country.
For 115 days, journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have faced hard labor and all but silence from the outside world as detainees in a North Korean Prison Camp.
On March 17, while on assignment for Current TV, the two journalists broke North Korean law by entering the country from China. They have expressed regret for their actions in sporadic phone calls to loved ones back home in the United States. Ling and Lee want to be pardoned and allowed to return home.
In the Valley, Paula Rangel, with help from Asian American Journalists Association members Mindy Lee and Jeffrey Ong, gathered a few dozen people, including members of the Society of Professional Journalists, for a vigil for the two journalists at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe.
You might have missed this spring's "Lowrider 2009 Tour" in Phoenix, but you can check out pictures of some of the sweet rides that were showcased there in a just-published online story.
The March 1 event at the Arizona State Fairgrounds impressed Lowrider Magazine's Saul Vargas, who says its popularity proves that lowrider culture is experiencing a "resurgence." Vargas' article also praises Phoenix gushingly, as if he didn't get the memo that writers are supposed to scorn the place.
Vargas begins by telling us Phoenix is "considered by many to be the crown jewel of the southwest..."
After the surprising New Orleans Hornets elbowed their way into the conversation last season, it's like every NBA analyst starting taking lessons from Jan Brady of The Brady Bunch. Paul, Paul, Paul! That's pretty much all you ever hear about the Hornets -- praise for their jet-fueled point guard, Chris Paul.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Most people have the Wake Forest alum in their NBA Top 5. We'd place him Top 3 along with Kobe and LeBron, 'cause the point's mission-critical, and Paul's the best. Dude's so slick and clean, he makes our recent two-time MVP Steve Nash look like a character from The Matrix movies (you know, moving reeeeaaalll . . . sllllooooowwww . . .).
Betsy Schneider is back. This summer, Schneider (a photography professor
at Arizona State University) showed her work at The Kitchenette, a small
photo collective on Roosevelt Row. An entire wall of the gallery was
devoted to dozens of images of Schneider's daughter Madeleine, in
various states of undress over the course of her 10 years. The show and
the work -- which provoked controversy when it was shown several years
ago in London, and a few protestors in Phoenix this year -- were the
topic of a New Times cover story and online slideshow.
Al Jefferson (above dunking) is most decidedly better than nothing. A linchpin of the Minnesota Timberwolves' move-him-or-lose-him trade of All-World Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics in the summer of '07, Jefferson came into his own last season, his first as a T-Wolf.
The 6-10 center/forward played in all 82 games (unheard of), providing a wicked low-post presence and a night-in/night-out double-double threat (this year, he's averaging 22 points per game and a hair under 10 rebounds). With the exception of potential breakout star Randy Foye, the Wolves' fine (if injury-plagued) second-year guard, there ain't too much around Jefferson at this point, but Suns fans well remember the fits he gave Mike D'Antoni's liquid interior defense last year.
Recent headline: "Clippers Crush Thunder." Let's hope it's "Suns Burn Thunder" (don't think about that too literally) after tonight's game. But we digress: In what mad otherworld does the NBA's perennial doormat, the L.A. Clippers, crush anybody?
Well, on November 19, the mantle of NBA's worst was seemingly passed from the hapless Clips to the laughable Oklahoma City Thunder when the Clippers thrashed OKC at home, 108-88. That term "at home" is a sticking point for non-Okie NBA fans, 'cause it's hard to swallow the thought of Emerald City's once-proud Seattle Sonics toiling away in the dirt-brown serescape of Oklahoma City. Guess that's what we get for not drinking enough Joe, at least not enough to satisfy the bottom line of Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz.
It's about the fast-break points, stupid! The Phoenix Suns, though way off last year's pace, had six in their weekend game against the Portland Trail Blazers. We wouldn't say they dominated the Blazers, but they held on to win at home 102-92.
In other words, hope was reborn, after the Suns' embarrassing loss to the hated Kobe Bryant and his Los Angeles Lakers the other night. But let's not get too giddy. Coach Terry Porter was gleeful that the win against Portland meant his team hadn't lost three in a row. Come on, Terry, this isn't a milestone for a team that crows constantly about winning a championship.
It's also about the turnovers. Phoenix had 18, which is the only reason the Blazers (about 37 percent from the field to the Suns' 53) were able to stay close Saturday night in a game in which the Old Shaqtus had 19 points and 17 rebounds.
As we said on this blog the other day, O'Neal is doing all he can. We cautioned Coach Terry Porter that he can't run the team's offense through the 36-year-old, thourgh. The Suns -- Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, Raja Bell, Grant Hill -- are a team that needs to blast down the court to be effective.
It’s really bothersome to watch whiny little twerps succeed, and it’s been a bitter pill seeing New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning get mad props after bordering on bust for his first three seasons. Super Bowl XLII MVP? Ooh, that burned.
However well they might do this year, your Sunnies are a team on the decline; Nash and Shaq are AARP members by NBA standards. Portland's either the league's team of tomorrow, or its biggest bust. And which way the Blazers go depends on the bum foot of presumed superstar Greg Oden (pictured), the big-upside center who's played only a handful of games in the NBA over the course of two seasons because of injury woes. But if Oden ever gets that giant paw healthy, and guards Jerryd Bayless and Brandon Roy play up to their potential, look out.
Tip's at 7 p.m. Saturday at U.S. Airways Center. See Phoenix Suns. TV: FSN AZ. Radio: KTAR-AM 620. -- Clay McNear
Earth to Suns Coach Terry Porter: Shaq's an old man. You can't play down to his level.
After last night's drubbing by the Los Angeles Lakers, we almost missed departed (for the New York Knicks) Coach Mike D'Antoni. Hey, we said almost.
The jury's still out on whether Porter's a legitimate NBA coach, so we won't completely turn on him. Yet. But something's got to change.
It's not that O'Neal's playing badly — for a 36-year-old. You couldn't ask him to play better, given his advanced years (15 points and nine rebounds against his old team). But Suns point guard Steve Nash and power forward Amare Stoudemire need to run and gun. Playing the half-court game required with the presence of big hunk of aged beef in the middle is ruining their game.
We were listening to a sports-radio roundtable recently, and the panelists were picking their faves to win the NBA title. Boston again. Good bet. San Antonio. Yeah, but only if Manu Ginobli gets healthy and back to full speed. New Orleans. With Chris Paul in charge, check. Here’s where it gets weird. Two pundits picked Cleveland -- Cleveland! Even with King James at the helm, ain't gonna happen. But not one picked the Los Angeles Lakers. To us, they're the ultimate slam dunk.
Bobcat Phoenix was revving with activity on Thursday, July 24 as the Bobcat: 50 Years Unleashed North American Road Tour got underway. No, not the mammalian quadruped variety, the tiny bulldozer kind.
The event featured classic Bobcat models on display including the original 3-wheeled model that put the Bobcat company on the map in 1958. Newer models including a remote control Bobcat were on display as well, but the main draw for the event was the team of square dancing bobcats.
Bobcat of Phoenix Store Manager David Lambert says the square dance is a Bobcat company traditional heralding back to the 1960's.
"They [drivers] practiced two weeks for an hour or so a day to get that down," Lambert said.
Can’t Stop the Serenity: 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 28, at Chandler Cinemas; Can't Stop the Serenity.
By Clay McNear
The TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons and totaled 144 episodes. I double-sourced and tripled-checked, ’cause we’re dealing with the Buffyverse, a subset of the Whedonverse, hallowed home to Joss Whedon fanatics, who have lives outside of their obsession, but not really. I know a Buffy freak who can rattle off the names of the episodes and their numbers.
I said, “Yeah, right. Season five, episode 21.”
“The Weight of the World. The one where Buffy’s in a coma.”
Gak.
Okay, they’re zealots, but they’re pretty benign as zealots go. Just don’t try to argue doctrine or semantics with ’em. They’ll get in your grill. It can get ugly.
And that’s just the Buffy crowd. The real space cases reside in the region of the Whedonverse where Firefly burns bright six years after it was canceled. Firefly is a type of fictional space freighter and the title of the TV show on which it’s based. Joss Whedon’s galactic oater managed just 14 episodes, of which only 11 aired. It was Whedon’s third TV series (the Buffy spinoff Angel was second), and by far his least successful. After it was butchered by Fox (the network ran the episodes out of sequence) and unceremoniously axed, it looked like the end of the line for the folksy quasi-outlaws of Serenity, the crew’s Firefly-class ship (and thus the name of the show).
You won't get let out of school for it and you can forget buying Hallmark cards to mark the occasion, but that didn't stop hundreds of skate boarders from celebrating Go Skateboarding Day on Saturday June 21.
Events were planned all over the country, but in Phoenix, local skate shop Cowtown Skateboards was ground zero for celebrating Go Skateboarding Day. Cowtown's North Phoenix warehouse was jam-packed with skaters rolling down half pipes and ramping over fire hydrants.
"It's our chance to give back," said Cowtown representative Trent Martin. Aside from the event being completely free, Cowtown threw out a ton of free schwag from the warehouse roof at 7:30 including shoes, t-shirts and skate board parts.
Initially, Cowtown dispensed free gear in an Easter egg-inspired event they called The Golden Egg Quest. Over the years it got harder to find good places to hide the eggs so they skipped that aspect this year.
Gamers seeking digital camaraderie and elbow-rubbing competition have a place to call their own. Located at the historical McCullough-Price House opposite the southwest corner of Chandler Fashion Mall, the "ZAP! Vintage Video Games" exhibition welcomes gamers of all ages to come in and pick up the joysticks of challenge and test their skills on some of the oldest and most beguiling games ever created.
Atari 2600: The archaic Atari 2600 entombed in glass as a reminder of gaming’s humble beginnings.
Guests can try out games from the archaic Atari 2600 game console on a vintage 1980s TV or practice their rapid-fire fingers on arcade classics such as Centipede. If classic games aren’t your thing, current generation home consoles such as the X-Box 360 are also available to play — all for free from June 14 to September 6.
Best of all, players with more ambition may also compete head-to-head at the ZAP! Vintage Game Tournament, which will be held on June 19 from 2 to 5 p.m. for youths; then on June 20 from 1 to 4 p.m. for teens; and finally on June 21 from 3 to 6 p.m. for adults.
Tatiana Sorokko, model and contributing editor to Harper’s Bazaar, opened her closet and history to audiences on Tuesday, June 10 during her lecture entitled “Collecting Haute Couture” part of an on-going exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum featuring works by American designer Ralph Rucci.
Tatiana Sorokko poses with one of Ralph Rucci's pieces.
Through a slideshow of photographs, Tatiana shared her memories of the runway, designers, and the beginning of her close and private relationship with Ralph Rucci.
Audiences laughed to Tatiana’s anecdotes as a model stressed about pieces falling off during a runway show, hid chocolates from Gian Franco Ferre and sneaking photos of artwork while Ralph Rucci distracted a museum guard.
Sorokko met Ralph Rucci for the first time in the early 90s and deciding she would only wear three dresses of his collection for an upcoming show. But then she saw something about his work and decided, “this man has taste, I can do four.” Her instinct proved true. Ralph Rucci was the second American invited to show haute couture in Paris.
“Haute Couture” refers to the creation of excessively high quality, custom-fitted fashions. In France Haute Couture serves as a quality seal that can be claimed only be the finest fashion designers.
It sounded like a crowded Irish pub at the Irish Cultural Center in downtown Phoenix; a sound that would make James Joyce, or at least his fans, quite proud. The Great Hall was packed with brewers and beer enthusiasts for the 2nd Annual Bloomin’ Beerfest on Saturday June 7. This marriage of Bloomsday and beer tasting was put on by the Irish Cultural and Learning Foundation along with the Arizona Brewers Guild.
The event’s organizer, Betty Brackenridge, explained that Bloomsday is a very traditional Irish holiday that sprung from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, in which the entire narrative occurs in one day: July 16, 1904. There are Bloomsday celebrations in cities throughout the world, with activities usually including pub-crawls, Irish breakfasts and dramatic readings from the novel.
“It [the Bloomin' Beerfest] seemed like a good way to add a little Irish fun to Bloomsday readings,” said Brackenridge.
Ulysses readings began with Lynn Mascarelli breaking down all 18 episodes of Joyce’s sometimes confounding novel, followed up with a spirited reading directly from the narrative by Julia Devous.
“You know it’s actually more fun to read aloud than it is to read it,” Devous said with a laugh.
Kevin Patterson is a drunken, lying, tiny balls having, STD-carrying, half naked, sad excuse for a poet good only for sleeping with illiterate whores in foreign countries.
At least that’s what his friends said.
Kevin Patterson (left) will be passing the Grand Avenue Live torch to new host David Taber (right).
Former host Kevin Patterson stepped into the limelight for the last time to be roasted on Grand Avenue Live, a monthly talk show performed at Trunk Space. Patterson is giving up Live for a get rich quick scheme that convinces retirees to live in squalor. Or was it that he’s leaving to support his underage wife and child in Brazil? It sort of depends on whom you ask.
Brand X Custom T-shirts on Mill Avenue opened its doors to local artists Disposable Hero, Kent Baltutat and Ulises Lara for its "Academics Party" on May 30. 2008.
Visitors got to check out some wacky art while chomping on free cup cakes, listening to a couple of spinning DJs and, of course, designing their own custom shirts.
Will there be a wedding at the end of Sex and the City: The Movie? That seemed to be the question floating around Biltmore Fashion Park on May 29, 2008 as hundreds of Sex and the City fans dined on catered food and sipped hot pink cosmopolitans.
The Sex and the City Girl's Night Out event featured Biltmore merchants at their best, with an area for trying on shoes, several makeover stations and a Fashion show featuring the likes of Banana Republic and Saks Fifth Avenue.
After two hours of food and fashion, the party moved across the street to AMC Theaters where attendees got to see Sex and the City: The Movie in a pre-release showing.
Proceeds from the event and from raffle tickets bought during the festivities benefitted the American Cancer Society.
A high school aptitude test told him to be social worker or a doctor, suggesting that Lance Fung's belief in collaboration and social equality made him an ideal fit for a job helping people. Who knew it would lead him to build a museum out of ice?
Lance Fung. Photo by Doug Cody at Bay Area Event Photography
Fung followed his passion for contemporary art and found a career as a celebrated curator. Still driven by social equality, he strives to break down the wall between the art industry and people on the street. He’s overseen a number of grandious exhibitions, including his celebrated Snow Show, which organized teams of artists crafting ice architecture in Finland.
The Phoenix Art Museum welcomed Fung for a lecture Tuesday evening, during which he talked about his career as a groundbreaking curator, a well as his current project; a revolutionary temporary exhibition hitting Santa Fe-based contemporary art space Site Santa Fe on June 22. In contrast to typical fundraising events, Lucky Number Seven, will focus on experiencing art that is transient rather than the commercial construction of permanent art. The show features only emerging artists from around the globe, a rarity in itself, who will work to create site-specific pieces that are created especially for the show, and will be disassembled following the exhibition.
Protesters gathered at the Cesar Chavez Memorial Plaza Tuesday clutching signs that asked for peace, demanding that troops be brought home and labeling President Bush and John McCain fascists to demonstrate against Bush's McCain fundraising visit here.
The sound of drums and bagpipes ricocheted across downtown as the protesters marched to the Phoenix Convention Center and finally to directly outside Herberger Theater, where they found Bush and McCain (actually protesters wearing crude masks) in bed and on their "honeymoon."
Check out his Myspace page and you'll see that John Huntington describes himself modestly as a promoter, DJ, producer, consultant and restauranteur. Knowing that Huntington is one half of the very same Hart & Huntington tattoo shop featured on A&E's
"Inked," most of his hats are self explanatory. Yet you may wonder what type of consulting a tattoo shop owner/sushi restaurant owner/DJ/TV producer might offer.
If his event at club E4 on May 23 is indication, the man is a wicked party consultant.
Dancers and heavy beats that filled the four elemental chambers of E4 made "John Huntington's One Night Stand" an event to remember (if you didn't pound to many Redbull Vodkas that is). See for yourself in our slide show: John Huntington's One Night Stand at E4.
If the streets of Downtown Scottsdale are suddenly overrun by men in fishnet shirts and tattooed girls wearing red platforms and vinyl corsets, it must be time for the annual Fetish Prom at the Venue of Scottsdale. Every year, hundreds of leather-clad fetish enthusiasts deck out in their best S&M costumes for a night among like-minded companions.
“It’s such a wonderful environment,” says Jessica “Bunny” Thomas, a cross-dressing graphic designer who hopes to become a fetish model. “One of the hardest things about being into a fetish of some kind is that it’s very hard to know where to go to meet other people and be yourself.”
But people seemed to have no problem finding the place Saturday night, as the New Orleans-themed venue quickly filled with people dressed in everything from latex bodysuits to almost nothing at all.
Okay, maybe not everyone came to the Kokopelli Winery and Bistro’s “Rock the Vine” 1970s festival Saturday night with their afro puffs puffed and their bell bottoms bottomed out, but late night bistro’s atmosphere did provide a jam-happy Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan cover band, plus food and drink good enough to let the funk out.
From left to right: Steven Yarborough of Chandler, Michelle Blasnig of Glendale, Chris Ivory of Tempe and Kim Macke of Ahwatukee bring their disco fever to the Kokopelli Winery and Bistro’s “Rock the Vine” '70s festival in downtown Chandler on May 24, 2008.
Flashback menu items such as the “Blue Oyster Cult Po Boy” and the “St. Peppers Pasta Primavera” packed a full house by 7 p.m., but it was the live music of the Token Jam Band’s ‘70s (and ‘60s) guitar rock classics of the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan that made the event buzz worthy.
When filmmaker Nicholas “Nico” Holthaus started filming local bands playing on Mill Ave. in the mid-1990, it’s unlikely that he realized he was capturing a dying era. But where flannel-clad music fans once crowded outside seedy haunts like Long Wong’s listening to alternative rock, there now stands a street home to little more than chain restaurants and a few cheesy bars. As music venues and local stores started closing their doors and corporate America moved on in, Holthaus decided to keep recording and tell the story of this infamous Arizona street.
Mill Ave. Inc., the result of Holthaus’ endeavors, debuted last night at Harkin's Valley Arts on Mill Ave. and included performances by local bands.
The film primarily documents the death of the Tempe music sense, which enjoyed its heyday in 1990’s and gave rise to national acts like the Gin Blossoms, The Refreshments, Jimmy Eat World and The Meat Puppets. In addition, the film discusses the closure of a wide array of independent stores that once lined the brick-paved street.
Interviews from a slew of local musicians, artists and business owners spent a long time waxing nostalgic for the days long gone, while railing against corporate infringement into the area by evil empires such as Starbucks, Borders and Abercrombie & Fitch. While these are sentiments echoed by a great number of people in the Tempe community, the movie didn’t offer much history or critical information, never rising above the level of disgruntled people reminiscing about the way it used to be.
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I said, “Yeah, right. Season five, episode 21.” 
