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Happy headlines are hard to come by these days. Coronavirus cases in the Valley and fear concerning the pandemic continue to rise, but there are silver linings – the community is coming together (virtually) in solidarity and local organizations, businesses and residents are doing the best they can to support each other. Our duty during these tough times is to keep you informed and updated, even if the news isn’t always uplifting. Here is a...

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Rosaura “Chawa” Magaña sits in a parked car, window down, smiling, hoisting books and a giant bottle of hand sanitizer. This image recently appeared on social media posts by Palabras Bilingual Bookstore, which Magaña has run for nearly five years. At her Spanish-and-English shop, you can find the work of contemporary Mexican novelists, indigenous poets, baby book authors who pen books like one on frybread, and other forward-thinking writers. These days, Magaña drives ordered books...

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Last week I wrote about creating your own happy hour spread at home with DIY snack plates and cocktails using the provisions you have on hand. This week, I’m highlighting where you can pick up cocktails – in their completed forms or in components to mix yourself at home – from local businesses to keep supporting them during this truly insane time. Plenty more places are offering these things, so find your favorite local restaurants and bars on social media to see their up-to-date...

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Our morning travel has been curtailed to rolling out of bed and booting up our laptops instead of hour-long car commutes and our weekly happy hour hangouts have turned into Skype soirees. For better or worse, we have a lot of extra time on our hands. Why not spend some of that time catching up on some reading? Here are a handful of long-form reads we’ve published in the last year to pore over while...

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Finally have a little time to read? We have some recommendations for that – and they’re all books by local authors, so you can #readlocal while you #supportlocal. Many of these can be ordered online from local bookshops like Changing Hands, as e-books or online from major retailers or their publishers, so you can order and read them in the safety of your own home.  If You Like: Heartwarming Stories for Little Ones Try: The Silly Adventures of Petunia & Herman the Worm An unexpected...

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Happy headlines are hard to come by these days. Coronavirus cases in the Valley and fear concerning the pandemic continue to rise, but there are silver linings – the community is coming together (virtually) in solidarity and local organizations, businesses and residents are doing the best they can to support each other. Our duty during these tough times is to keep you informed and updated, even if the news isn’t always uplifting. Here is a...

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Bob McClendon owns one of the state’s only USDA-certified small farms, McClendon’s Select, which grows 100 different varieties of organic fruits and vegetables across 93 acres of farmland in Peoria and Goodyear. McClendon’s main sources of revenue are supplying his bounty to restaurants and farmers markets across the Valley. Business is typically booming for specialty growers during the spring months, but sales have suddenly screeched to a halt due to the coronavirus outbreak in Arizona....

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Sports fans were looking forward to chowing down on peanuts and crackerjacks and cheering on the Diamondbacks at Chase Field on Opening Day, but because the spread of coronavirus has caused the suspension of large gatherings across the country, Major League Baseball has been put on hold. Those fans can still get their baseball fix, however, with Opening Day at Home, a full-day, cross-platform viewing event on Thursday, March 26. Opening Day at Home features...

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Happy headlines are hard to come by these days. Coronavirus cases in the Valley and fear concerning the pandemic continue to rise, but there are silver linings – the community is coming together (virtually) in solidarity and local organizations, businesses and residents are doing the best they can to support each other. Our duty during these tough times is to keep you informed and updated, even if the news isn’t always uplifting. Here is a...

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Tracy Perkins runs Strawberry Hedgehog, an ecologically conscious vegan boutique that carries its own soaps plus the wares of other vendors and artists. Need a body cream, beard oil or jar of healing spices? Until recently, Perkins’s brick-and-mortar shop had you covered. But now, the spread of the coronavirus has forced her to partially close. “The decision to close was not made lightly,” Perkins says. “We will not be able to maintain paying all of...

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“Fancy hot sauce.” That’s what Natalie Cutino calls the hot sauces she and her husband, Jacob Cutino, make in small batches. They blend miso hot sauce and strawberry hot sauce, deftly balanced and neatly packaged. Their rust-red and marigold-orange bottles have become a common sight at specialty shops and local eateries. Some, like The Larder + The Delta, even use Cutino Sauce Co. products to brighten select dishes.   These days, though, restaurants have fallen...

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Like many small businesses across the country, Blue Clover Distillery in Scottsdale is struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus crisis. “The past few days have been an interesting frenzy,” the distillery’s owner, Weston Holm, says. “We’ve gone from having to lay off restaurant employees to having to transition our focus to stay alive.” Known for its vodka and gin, Blue Clover had to get creative to keep up. Its solution? Start making hand sanitizer...

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A few days before the city of Phoenix shuttered bars and restaurants for everything but takeout and delivery, Drew Pool felt optimistic. The co-owner of Wren House Brewing Company noted, around when the number of recorded infections in Arizona reached a dozen, that business was “relatively unaffected.”   But that time, just before mid-March, feels like ancient history.   Since then, Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego limited bars and restaurants (to wide industry approval), hoping to...

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At this writing, movie theaters are closed across the Valley. Time for what may prove a long season of movie nights on the couch. I wanted to make some video suggestions, but my overarching suggestion: Watch your favorites. Watch movies that make you happy. For me, these include the original Psycho, Sunset Boulevard, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Them!, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (despite the “Bring out yer dead!”...