Culinary prince Michael O’Dowd – creator of the state’s most celebrated restaurant – leaves his castle for new digs Downtown.
“I need to keep creating, pushing,” Michael O’Dowd says. “If I can’t create anymore, then it’s time to roll.”
Attention, Arizona heritage-crop farmers: The world wants what you’re growing.
In the 1980s, Natalie McGee was a burned-out Los Angeles social worker who decided to pull a 180 on her career. Returning to her home state of Arizona, she started growing prickly pear cactuses, turning the nectar into a 100-percent pure concentrate she sold at a county fair. Unlike some nectar farmers, she added no sugar or water. “The only
In the spirit of our Wild West cover story, we offer this round-up of Western-themed amenities and services in the Valley.
COWBOYS
Forget every truth you hold to be self-evident: Arizona in the 1870s and 1880s was practically a Bizarro world version of our modern state.
From territorial shootouts to 21st-century gun clubs, Arizona’s love affair with firearms is still smoking.
Also See: Behind-the-scenes footage and images of classic guns.
The young man raises his handgun and takes aim, closing one eye and squinting at his target. When he pulls the trigger, the brass casing of his bullet – now speeding toward the cardboard face of what looks like a cross between Osama Bin Laden and a deranged camel – dings off the side of his noise-canceling headphones. A cloud of gun smoke drifts around the shooter’s head, leaving a slightly sulfuric smell lingering in the air.
In the event of a scorpion sting, Anascorp can save your child’s life. And bankrupt you.
Dr. Leslie V. Boyer isn’t afraid of scorpions – not even Arizona’s own bark scorpion, the most venomous variety in North America. Her ease with the arachnids is a byproduct of the 12-year study she conducted at the University of Arizona that helped perfect an intravenous scorpion “envenomation” cure called Anascorp.
“[The drug] is a slam dunk,” the Tucson native says. “It is 98-plus percent effective within four hours of being administered, and can turn what could otherwise be a nightmare in the intensive care unit into a drive home from the emergency department with a happy kid.”
Champion mounted markswoman Annie Bianco-Ellett knows her shoot.
It’s Sunday morning at the Arizona State Championships of the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association. One after another, the cowboys and cowgirls ride and shoot. While they wait for the signal, their restless mounts execute tight little circles, seeming almost to pirouette with eagerness. At last the buzzer sounds, and the contestants gallop into the covered arena at Horseshoe Park in Queen Creek, toward a diagonal row of 10 tall white pylons, each with a red or blue balloon on top.
Reptile-rescuing activists tend one of the Southwest’s most intriguing animal exhibits.
“It’s a learned fear,” Russ Johnson says. “Think about it: the first day of Sunday school. Who’s the heavy?” The longtime lizard lover is speaking of the anxiety or revulsion so many people feel with regard to reptiles. Johnson is clearly immune.
Will Phoenix and Las Vegas get their long-awaited federal interstate? Bet on it.
Biker and former trucker Kenny Ratliff is a regular on the road to Vegas. He’s driven from Phoenix more than 30 times, sometimes for work but always for pleasure – if only to cruise the Strip and observe
Meet Fozzie, the nation’s first full-time crisis response canine.
Their first call as partners was a fatal car crash on the Carefree Highway involving two 15-year-old girls. It was 2 a.m. The first officer on scene found one of the victims dead. Next to the deceased girl was her best friend, holding her hand, very much alive. But she was mute, in shock, unable to tell officers what had happened or if she was hurt.
Police Crisis Intervention Specialist Anthony Pagliuca approached the young girl sitting cross-legged in the middle of the closed-down highway amidst the wreckage and asked her if she was OK with dogs. She nodded. He gave his partner, Fozzie, the all-clear, and Fozzie did what dogs do best – he sat his furry behind down in the girl’s lap. She leaned over to hug him and started to cry. Ten minutes went by, and finally, the girl spoke. “What’s this dog’s name?”
The recent flurry of female-related legislation has lead many to declare – and deny – the existence of a War on Women. As usual, Arizona finds itself on the front lines.
Two thousand fifty. That’s approximately the number of legal provisions introduced nationally in 2011 and early 2012 related to women’s reproductive health and rights. Thought we were in the Year of an Election? The Year of Recession Recovery? The Year of the Dragon? Nope, it’s the Year of the Uterus. And Uterus Central is Arizona.
On May 24, 1917, the Prescott Journal Miner reported the arrest of Henry Schuerman, under the headline “Wine of Home Make Gets 3 in Bad,” as follows:
Arizona’s modern love affair with wine is barely 30 years old, but their courtship dates back to the 16th century.
Buenas Muchachas - A Ride of Their Own
Denied membership in the male-only Charros service club, a group of well-connected professional ladies go gaucho on their own.
On a Friday night in April, roughly two dozen of Scottsdale’s most accomplished women are sitting around a fire at the Circle Z Ranch near Patagonia.
Beware, Arizona wineries: Water-hogging farms are drinking your milkshake.
“I drink your milkshake!” oilman Daniel Plainview memorably exulted in the 2007 film There Will Be Blood. Played by Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis, Plainview was explaining – via dessert-fueled analogy – how he secretly cleaned out a neighboring oil well.
