Phoenix

US Airways Center is a sports and entertainment arena located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. It opened in 1992, and is the home of the Phoenix Suns... of the National Basketball Association, the Phoenix Mercury of the Women's National Basketball Association, and the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League. The arena, which is situated near Chase Field, is named after its sponsor, US Airways. After America West's merger with US Airways, it was announced that America West Arena would be renamed to US Airways Center on November 14, 2005 with the name change taking place in January 2006. The arena finished renovations in 2003, which added an air-conditioned glassed pavilion to keep people cool while waiting in line for tickets or before events. These renovations were part of the Phoenix Suns plan to keep the arena viable when Jobing.com Arena would open and take event dates from America West Arena. The idea to remake the arena came to Jerry Colangelo when he visited Staples Center, and envisioned a similar entertainment district in Phoenix.
more

The Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix, Arizona, is a landmark residence built between 1929 and 1931 by chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr. It is also... known as William Wrigley, Jr., Winter Cottage and as La Colina Solana. Located at 2501 East Telewa Trail, it sits atop a 100-foot knoll with views of greater Phoenix to the south, close to the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, which Wrigley owned. Architect Earl Heitschmidt of Los Angeles designed the home at a cost of $1.2 million, in a combination of styles including Spanish Colonial. It has 24 rooms, 12 bathrooms, and over 16,000 square feet . Much of the extensive tilework was shipped to Phoenix from Wrigley's own factory in Catalina, hauled by mule to the site. The Wrigleys maintained other residences in Chicago; Philadelphia; Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; Catalina Island; and Pasadena, and used this, the smallest of their houses, for only a few weeks a year. William Wrigley died in 1932, shortly after its completion. The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. In July 1992, Geordie Hormel bought the mansion and made it available for meetings, conventions and similar functions.
more

Union Station in Phoenix, Arizona, is located at 401 South 4th Avenue in downtown Phoenix. Phoenix Union Station was constructed in 1923 by the Santa... Fe and the Arizona Eastern Railroads. The Station is one of the best examples of Mission Revival architecture in Phoenix. The Mission Revival style, a popular building style between 1890 and the 1920s, was typified by such Union Station features as stucco wall finishes, arcades, red tiled roofs, curvilinear gables, massive piers, and impost moldings. According to the "Phoenix Historic Building Survey" by the Phoenix City Council, September 1979: Phoenix Union Station was commissioned on September 16, 1922, by the Arizona Eastern Railroad Company, a Southern Pacific affiliate, and by the California, Arizona and Santa Fe Railroad, then part of the Santa Fe Railway system and was built by the Robert E. McKee Construction Company.
more

Symphony Hall is a multi-purpose performing arts venue, located in Downtown Phoenix, Arizona, United States. It was completed in 1972, as part of the... Phoenix Civic Plaza. It is home to the Phoenix Symphony, Arizona Opera and Ballet Arizona. It is also the site for Broadway touring companies, a variety of dance productions, and appearances by popular entertainers, as well as the location for business seminars, and convention general sessions. In June 2004, a $18.5 million renovation took place, in conjunction with the construction of the neighboring Phoenix Convention Center West Building. Symphony Hall now features 2,387 chairs, with wood bases for better acoustics. Reconfigured main-floor cross aisles, additional elevators and a new wheelchair seating section, greatly improve accessibility for patrons with disabilities and updates compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There is a 60 foot x 100 foot stage area, high technology acoustical, lighting, rigging and sound systems, a Green Room, rehearsal hall and star, chorus and musicians dressing rooms. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride.
more

The Phoenix Art Museum is the Southwest United States' largest art museum for visual art. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is... 285,000-square-foot . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. A community center since 1959, it hosts year-round programs of festivals, live performances, independent art films and educational programs. It also features PhxArtKids, an interactive space for children; photography exhibitions through the museum’s partnership with the Center for Creative Photography; the landscaped Sculpture Garden; dining and shopping. It has been designated a Phoenix Point of Pride. Opened in 1959, the Phoenix Art Museum is located on the historic Central Avenue Corridor. It is now the largest visual arts institution in the Southwest with over 285,000 square feet of exhibition space. Shortly after Arizona became the 48th state in 1912, the Phoenix Women’s Club was formed and worked with the Arizona State Fair Committee to develop a fine arts program.
more

Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Fleetwood Mac and an extensive solo career, which... collectively have produced over forty Top 50 hits and sold over 140 million albums. She has been noted for her ethereal visual style and symbolic lyrics. Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac on December 31, 1974, along with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac's second album after the incorporation of Nicks and Buckingham, 1977's Rumours, produced four US Top 10 singles and remained at No.1 on the American albums chart for 31 weeks, as well as reaching the top spot in various countries around the world. To date the album has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the eighth highest selling album of all time. Nicks began her solo career in 1981 with the 8 million selling album Bella Donna, and she has produced six more solo studio albums to date.
more

Leslie William Nielsen, OC was a Canadian and naturalized American actor and comedian. Nielsen appeared in more than one hundred films and 1,500... television programs over the span of his career, portraying more than 220 characters. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Nielsen enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and worked as a disc jockey before receiving a scholarship to Neighborhood Playhouse. Making his television debut in 1948, he quickly expanded to over 50 television appearances two years later. Nielsen made his film debut in 1956, and began collecting roles in dramas, westerns, and romance films from the 1950s to the 1970s. Nielsen's performance in the films Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure received positive reviews as a serious actor, although he is primarily known for his comedic roles. Although Nielsen's acting career crossed a variety of genres in both television and films, his deadpan delivery in Airplane! marked a turning point in his career, one that would make him, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, "the Olivier of spoofs.
more

Nicholas King "Nick" Nolte is an American actor. His career has spanned over five decades, peaking in the 1990s, when his commercial success made... him one of the better known stars of that decade. His films include 48 Hrs. , Cape Fear , Affliction , The Good Thief , and Warrior . He has been nominated for three Academy Awards, twice for Best Actor and once for Best Supporting Actor. Nolte was born Nicholas King Nolte in Omaha, Nebraska on February 8, 1941. His mother, Helen , was a department store buyer, and his father, Franklin Arthur Nolte, was a farmer's son who worked in irrigation pump sales, and who was an All-American football player at Iowa State University in 1934. Nolte's paternal grandfather was of German descent. Nolte's maternal grandfather, Matthew Leander King, invented the hollow-tile silo and was prominent in early aviation. His maternal grandmother ran the student union at Iowa State University. He has an older sister, Nancy, who was an executive for the Red Cross. Nolte went to Westside High School in Omaha, where he was the kicker on the football team.
more

Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades. With a stage show that features... guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors and baby dolls, Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and violent brand of heavy metal designed to shock. Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar and drummer Neal Smith. The original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album Love It to Death, which was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972. The band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies. Furnier's solo career as Alice Cooper, adopting the band's name as his own name, began with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare; in 2011 he released Welcome 2 My Nightmare, his 19th album as a solo artist, and his 26th album in total.
more

Chester Charles Bennington is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. He is best known as the lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock... band Linkin Park. Bennington has a tenor vocal range. Bennington became known as a vocalist with Linkin Park's debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000, which was a massive commercial success. The album was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005, making it the best-selling debut album of the decade, as well as one of the few albums to ever hit that many sales. Linkin Park's following studio albums, Meteora, Minutes to Midnight, and A Thousand Suns, released in 2003, 2007, and 2010 respectively, continued the band's success. Bennington formed his own band, Dead by Sunrise as a side-project in 2005. The band's debut album, Out of Ashes was released on October 13, 2009. In 2007, Bennington was placed at #46 on Hit Parader's list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists". Bennington was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He took interest in music at a young age, citing Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots as early inspirations. Bennington's parents separated in the late 1980s.
more

Martin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. One of the most popular... and successful country and Western singers of his era, for most of his nearly four-decade career, Robbins was rarely far from the country music charts, and several of his songs also became pop hits. Robbins was born in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Arizona. He was reared in a difficult family situation. His father took odd jobs to support the family of ten children. His father's drinking led to divorce in 1937. Among his warmer memories of his childhood, Robbins recalled having listened to stories of the American West told by his maternal grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle. Robbins left the troubled home at the age of 17 to serve in the United States Navy as an LCT coxswain during World War II. He was stationed in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. To pass the time during the war, he learned to play the guitar, started writing songs, and came to love Hawaiian music.
more

Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Fleetwood Mac and an extensive solo career, which... collectively have produced over forty Top 50 hits and sold over 140 million albums. She has been noted for her ethereal visual style and symbolic lyrics. Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac on December 31, 1974, along with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac's second album after the incorporation of Nicks and Buckingham, 1977's Rumours, produced four US Top 10 singles and remained at No.1 on the American albums chart for 31 weeks, as well as reaching the top spot in various countries around the world. To date the album has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the eighth highest selling album of all time. Nicks began her solo career in 1981 with the 8 million selling album Bella Donna, and she has produced six more solo studio albums to date.
more

Chester Charles Bennington is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. He is best known as the lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock... band Linkin Park. Bennington has a tenor vocal range. Bennington became known as a vocalist with Linkin Park's debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000, which was a massive commercial success. The album was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005, making it the best-selling debut album of the decade, as well as one of the few albums to ever hit that many sales. Linkin Park's following studio albums, Meteora, Minutes to Midnight, and A Thousand Suns, released in 2003, 2007, and 2010 respectively, continued the band's success. Bennington formed his own band, Dead by Sunrise as a side-project in 2005. The band's debut album, Out of Ashes was released on October 13, 2009. In 2007, Bennington was placed at #46 on Hit Parader's list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists". Bennington was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He took interest in music at a young age, citing Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots as early inspirations. Bennington's parents separated in the late 1980s.
more

Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a... consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972. He was also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute , an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He wrote numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. Johnson was born in 1931 in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics in 1953 and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science in 1957 and 1961 respectively. Both of his advanced degrees were from the University of California, Berkeley. Johnson met his wife Sheila, a junior at Berkeley, in 1956, and they were married in Reno, Nevada in May, 1957. During the Korean War, Johnson served as a naval officer in Japan.
more

Lynda Jean Carter is an American actress and singer, best known for being Miss World USA and as the star of the 1970s television series The New... Original Wonder Woman and The New Adventures of Wonder Woman . Carter was born Lynda Jean Carter in Phoenix, Arizona. Her father, Colby Carter, is an art dealer of English descent and her mother, Juana Córdova, is of Mexican descent with roots in Chihuahua, Mexico and previously worked in the telephone industry. Lynda speaks fluent Spanish. Carter grew up an avid reader of the Wonder Woman comic books. She went to Arcadia High School in Phoenix and Kachina Elementary School. During high school, Carter performed in a band called Just Us, consisting of a marimba, a conga drum, an acoustic guitar, and a stand-up bass played by another girl. When she was 17, Lynda joined two of her cousins in another band called The Relatives. Actor Gary Burghoff was the drummer. The group opened at the Sahara Hotel and Casino lounge in Las Vegas, Nevada, for three months; and, because Lynda was under 21, she had to enter through the kitchen. She attended Arizona State University and was a member of Alpha Xi Delta.
more

Joan Ganz Cooney is an American television producer. She is one of the founders of the Children's Television Workshop , the organization famous for... the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street. Cooney received her B.A. degree in education from the University of Arizona in 1951. Cooney was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Television Hall of Fame. She has been married to Peter G. Peterson, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, since April 1980. Unable to have children of her own, she became a stepmother to Peterson's five children. She lives in New York City. Cooney was born Joan Ganz in Phoenix, Arizona, and adopted the name Joan Redden Ganz, using her mother's maiden name. Cooney's mother was Irish-Catholic, and born in Jackson, Michigan. After her maternal grandfather died, her mother's family came west when she was 18 or 19. Her father was Jewish and was born in Phoenix, but his mother went to California to get better medical care when giving birth to him.
more

Gregory Everett "Greg" Proops is an American actor, stand-up comedian and television host. He is widely known for his work as an improvisational... comedian on the UK and U.S. versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He also performed on Drew Carey's Green Screen Show and played Max Madigan on the Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP. Proops was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in San Carlos, California, a suburb south of San Francisco, attending San Carlos High School. He attended the College of San Mateo and spearheaded the comedy duo "Proops & Brakeman". Later, he took courses in improvisation and acting at San Francisco State University though he never finished college. After college, he joined an improv group with Mike McShane. Both Proops and McShane impressed producers Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson, who put them on their show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He frequently instigated jokes and running gags concerning various idiosyncrasies and differences between British English and American English , and would frequently banter with Clive Anderson on these matters .
more