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In Phoenix, an answer for chain stores and recessions

PHOENIX — A middle-aged man walked in just after Drip Coffee Lounge opened at 7:30 a.m. His drink, a small double-shot café americano latte with organic low-fat milk, was already being made for him by the owner herself, Gina Madrid. They chat briefly in a vernacular that exclusively exists between barista and regular before the local man pays in exact change and walks out.

It was just the beginning of another successful day for the Downtown Phoenix small business model.

“One of the reasons why I opened Drip was because […at chain eateries] you walk away and you feel… ill,” Madrid says as she adjusted the volume on the iPod speakers. Her independently owned cafe has a modern architectural design, and business cards of local artists and entrepreneurs line the front counter.

“When you are providing something good for yourself, that in turn spills over to the people next to you, and so on.”

Independently owned small businesses in the Downtown Phoenix historic districts have thrived in the face of an influx of corporate chains to the city because of their adaptability and willingness to work together.

“When you drive down the street, you’re gonna see the Applebee’s, but you’re not gonna see the Stinkweeds right across the street, or know what it is,” says Kimber Lanning, owner of both Stinkweeds Records on Camelback Road at Central Avenue and Modified Arts, a popular music venue and art gallery on Fifth and Roosevelt streets.

Lacking the financial clout of a large corporation, local entrepreneurs say they rely on adaptable business models to contend in the Phoenix economy.

For example, Lanning has kept her independent record store open for over two decades, battling the ability of national chains to heavily reduce music prices by catering to niche markets like vinyl, used CD’s and obscure musical genres. She even hosts “blues brunches” at the shop with live musical performance on the weekend.

“Every week we reevaluate our budget and say, ‘We need more imports. We need more used,’” Lanning says of Stinkweeds as she jovially rings up a customer and greets him by name. “Whatever it is that we need more of, and we’re able to do that on a week-to-week basis, and the big chains aren’t able to do that.”

Hayes McNeil, co-owner of Royal Coffee Bar on Jackson Street at Second Avenue in Downtown, agrees a limited supply and quick accommodation of regular customers are crucial tactics to a locally owned business’ survival.

“Because we’re small, we’re flexible, and can keep up on our product more,” McNeil says. “If you have multiple stores, especially hundreds of stores, you have one kind of product, one way of doing things. If we want to change the way we’re doing things, we can change in a matter of minutes, really.”

The true secret to survival for Downtown Phoenix small businesses, however, may be their mindset of mutual cooperation.

“All the Downtown businesses have this sort of camaraderie,” Lanning says. “They’re just, like, ‘Yes! We survived the light rail construction, we’re down here, we’re the pioneers, and we’re in it together.’ Everybody’s helping each other.

“So I thought it would be cool to start a website that was just these little businesses that have opened up,” she says. “I just wanted to build some civic pride, let people know that there is cool stuff [in Phoenix]; you just have to look a little bit harder for it.”

Lanning did just that, forming Local First Arizona in 2003, and eventually selling her other Stinkweeds location in Tempe in 2006 to devote more time to the nonprofit’s website. Localfirstaz.org features a database of 1,400 locally owned Arizona businesses and helps them promote themselves and form partnerships.

It is believed to be the largest such merchant coalition in the country.

“[Localfirstaz.com] is really helpful, for sure. It looks professional,” McNeil says. “And that’s why the local businesses work together, because you know, you have to have maybe 20 businesses doing the [advertising] work of one chain.”

Many local storefronts also combine enterprise, sharing space or exchanging products in order to attract customers. For example, Madrid lends her kitchen at Drip to Sam Filicetti, also known as “Sam the Chocolate Guy” and owner of ib2 Designer Chocolates. Filicetti creates his scrumptious confections from behind the café storefront, then distributes his products for sale at Drip and other Downtown Phoenix establishments.

“It’s really nice when local businesses use each others’ products,” Filicetti says, his amicable and goofy personality matching his light-hearted products. “It’s sort of the trend right now, you know, to utilize space more efficiently.

“It’s a great [business model]. It reduces competition: It’s more or less a synergy of people working together to bring together the best products, the best local products.”

McNeil and his partner Vincent Huizar say their similarly symbiotic relationship with adjacent Sweet Pea Bakery. The prospects of cooperation and mutual support were major incentives for Royal Coffee Bar’s current location.

“Obviously baked goods go well with coffee, and they were already here, so it seemed like a pretty good setup,” McNeil says. “The main thing is we serve each others’ products. She (Danielle Librera of Sweet Pea) does all our baked goods for us […] We have people who bring our coffee over there, and then they bring her products over here. We do catering together, and really try to serve on each others’ products.”

“Essentially, we can be in three places at once” by working together and sharing space and products, Madrid says. Her Drip Coffee Lounge also works in heavy partnership with the row of local businesses on Seventh Street north of McDowell Road to “create a destination space” of their grassroots effort.

“My biggest wish is that people come here, to Sheridan Square, and they don’t even know where they’re gonna go,” Madrid says while serving a slowly rising stream of customers. “We all come with our own expertise and our own uniqueness to build something that’s even bigger than ourselves and even more unique.”

The relationship between these small and independently owned businesses and the Downtown Phoenix historic district community extends past detached service and into active membership.

“I think very much that [local businesses] should offer the best customer service, should reinvest in their community—naturally, inherently, do reinvest in their communities, because they hire local CPA’s, local sign makers, local attorneys,” Lanning says. “If I need a carpenter, I’m gonna hire a local guy, whereas all of that would get outsourced at a national chain.”

This reinvestment in the local economy may have resounding benefits for Downtown Phoenix. Shopping local ensures that 45 cents of every dollar spent stays in Arizona, as opposed to 13 cents spent at national chains, according to Local First Arizona’s website.

Many local businesses also take part in community events like First Friday art walks, acoustic concerts and charity auctions. These stores and their owners are fully integrated with Downtown Phoenix and each other, willing to adapt to the changing Phoenix marketplace, because such a business model is best suited for their survival.

Arizona entrepreneurs are not always just a community in the sense of economic cooperation, either; Madrid and McNeil are literally neighbors in the Coronado Historic District.

“Most people who own businesses down here actually do live here,” McNeil says. “I mean, it is our neighborhood.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Arizona growth poses religious challenge

PHOENIX — Arizona is set to experience religious growing pains after waves of new residents have made it more religiously diverse than ever.

But the subtle shift in demographics does not necessarily mean Arizonans will practice more religious tolerance, an expert says. If anything, they’ll have to work harder at building a consensus with these new worshipers.

“Religious diversity does not translate into religious tolerance,” says Reverend Jan Flaaten, executive director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council, which brings together Christian denominations and keeps dialogues going with Jewish, Muslim and other faith communities.

“I suspect that the first time a mosque erects a minaret, there will be a neighborhood cry to take it down,” he said. “The only way to work on these issues is to have constructive dialogue between the religious groups, including the young in our schools and all the members of our various congregations.”

The irony is that people who practice an organized religion are moving into a region where being a loyal religious follower appears to be frowned upon.

The percentage of Arizonans who identify themselves as being affiliated with a particular religious tradition held steady at about 40 percent to 45 percent for at least three decades – far lower than the United States as a whole.

About 63 percent of people in the U.S. identify themselves with a religious tradition, according to the Association of Religious Data Archives. That figure falls to about 50 percent in the West as a whole and 45 percent in Arizona. Arizona ranks 41st out of the 50 states in people who identify with a religious tradition, according to ARDA data.

Further evidence of less enthusiasm for religion in the West comes from a Gallup Poll released this past July. In the West, 59 percent of the respondents professed a belief in God, compared with 80 percent in the East, 83 percent in the Midwest and 86 percent in the South. Those who say they believe in a higher power of some sort equal 29 percent in the West, 14 percent in the East, 11 percent in the Midwest and 10 percent in the South. Those who reject belief in God altogether total 10 percent in the West, 6 percent in the East, 5 percent in the Midwest and 3 percent in the South.

“There are several possible reasons for reduced interest in religion in Arizona and the West,” says Stephen Merino, an ARDA research associate who grew up in Colorado. “As the West was being settled, there was no rich religious culture similar to the cultures that came from Europe to the American Northeast and South, so the tradition wasn’t in place. Second, originally the West was settled predominantly by men, who tend to be less concerned than women about establishing and keeping religious traditions. Also, there is that staunch individualism of the West. People often prefer to be left alone instead of affiliating.”

But loyal followers of several religions are moving into Arizona neighborhoods.

Major religious demographic data is collected every 10 years by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies and distributed by ARDA. In 2000, that data showed Arizona’s population was 5.1 million.

By 2006 – the last year for which an estimate was available on the U.S. Census Bureau Web site – the state’s population was estimated to have grown by 1 million people.

Flaaten says the state’s religious profile will have changed even more when the next set of data is presented in 2010 by ARDA. He says some of the new trends will include:

• A greater presence of both Jews and Muslims in the state. Both populations present challenges in developing solid demographic data, Flaaten says, and he believes official counts from 2000 of about 80,000 Jews in the state and 12,000 Muslims could have been low. He says that there has been a strong Jewish tradition in Arizona for decades, so don’t be surprised if there are more than 120,000 Jews and 75,000 Muslims in Arizona in 2010. Part of this growth, he said, is attributable to the general migration of people to the state. Also, he believes better methods will be in place for counting these populations in 2010, so the numbers will naturally increase.
• An expansion of Catholicism. Roman Catholics will continue to make up the largest religious population in the state. Arizona adherents grew from about 485,000 in 1980 to nearly 975,000 in 2000 and should easily exceed 1 million by 2010. The church, which also is the single largest religious body in the U.S., will benefit from the migration of Catholics from other states and particularly from Latin American countries south of the U.S. border, of which many are predominantly Catholic.
• Steady growth of the Mormon faith. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which grew in the state from about 140,000 in 1980 to more than 250,000 by 2000, also will show an increase. This should be attributable primarily to growth in individual LDS families, not by converts.
• A steady decline of Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention, whose Arizona members numbered nearly 140,000 in 2000 after reaching about 163,000 in 1990, will probably continue to decline in the state. Watch for the rift in social issues to grow, Flaaten says. “This church body is part of the larger group of evangelical Christians, and this group generally is divided on whether Christians should pursue a broader role in society that includes a social justice agenda. Evangelicals, for example, are firmly united in their anti-abortion convictions, but there is an increasing variety of opinions about how to address the whole of life for children once they’re born. Should the church be active in advocating mandatory health care benefits? Should it be fighting for better education systems? Or should it focus on its primary job of preaching the Gospel? As these and other issues develop, they sometimes split churches. This is happening in the SBC, and because it’s not a denomination but rather just an association of congregations, it’s easy for individual congregations to break off and become independent or affiliate with some other group. As a result, membership is declining.”
• A large expansion of Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal church body, nearly quadrupled from about 20,000 to about 80,000 between 1980 and 2000, and Flaaten expects growth to continue. “Many people don’t realize it, but after Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism is the second-largest expression of Christianity in the world,” he said. “It’s especially significant in Latin America. Arizona is attracting a number of people from that area, and the Assemblies of God should benefit from that. Many people want a religion that engages both their mind and their emotions, and this church body will see an increase because of that hunger within people.”
• A plateau and decline in the number of Protestants here. Flaaten expects most denominations within mainline Protestantism to show a decrease in 2010, with the exception of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “The ELCA has been growing, not because of conversions and outreach efforts, but simply because so many people are moving to Arizona from heavily Lutheran states like Minnesota,” said Flaaten, who is himself a member of the ELCA. “For most of the other mainline denominations, the figures probably will hold steady or decline.”

These trends will eventually force Arizonans to become more religiously aware.

“Unless we talk about and to people of other faiths, we will always be suspicious and perhaps fearful,” Flaaten says. “This isn’t difficult, but many of our faith community teachings have an ‘absolute truth’ quality about them, which limits the truth of other believers in God. So we have that obstacle to overcome, but it is possible to create curricula that help us all in the dialogue.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

61 years on, Pete’s serves fast food with flair

TOLLESON — Despite the sweltering heat of the late afternoon, a fine, cool mist drifts down on the crowd of diners at Pete’s Fish and Chips.

Pete’s is hardly ever empty, no matter the time, or heat of the day. With cheery red benches and friendly smiles from the staff, the fast food restaurant – with eight valley locations, including the one here in Tolleson – is a local favorite.

Tolleson resident Miriam Gutierrez, 21, likes the “outside atmosphere,” she says. “It’s close too, I live right behind it.”

Pete’s has not suffered with the recent economic downturn, says Pat Foster, company vice-president and daughter of Pete’s founder Pete Grant.

“With economic times and people being short on money, [people] still want to eat out,” says Foster. “They can afford to eat at Pete’s versus more expensive restaurants.”

The low prices – all items on the menu are under $10 – and great food keeps customers coming back for more.

“I grew up eating Pete’s,” says Phoenix resident Maria Molina. “You just crave that same flavor you can’t find anywhere else.”

Albert Hernandez, the assistant manager of the Tolleson location, says customer loyalty is what keeps Pete’s going. “I’ve worked here on and off for the past 18 years,” he says. “People who used to work at Pete’s in the 1960s still eat here, they love Pete’s so much.”

Traveling a distance for Pete’s does not seem to post a problem with loyal fans either.

“People from California come here before they head back,” says Hernandez. “They say ‘We have to stop at Pete’s.’”

Perhaps Pete’s special sauce has something to do with it. A deep red color with a tangy, spicy kick, customers sometimes line up just for a few containers to go.

“People cook at home, but they come here to get the sauce,” says Albert Hernandez. “I can it eat with everything.”

Pete’s has definitely come a long way since founder Pete Grant opened the very first shop, a small wood shack on 30th and Van Buren streets, 61 years ago. His $900 investment – his life savings at the time – has turned into a cherished company, now headed by two of his four daughters, Foster and her sister, Kathy Adams.

“We’re an Arizona tradition,” says Foster. “We serve 4th generation Pete’s customers.”

The community holds the location in Tolleson in high regard.

“It’s a historic restaurant, a part of Tolleson’s culture,” says Tolleson Mayor Adolfo Gamez.

Despite the slew of restaurants and fast food chains in nearby Avondale, competition doesn’t seem to phase the Tolleson Pete’s location either.

“We blow them away,” says Hernandez. “The foods better, the service is faster and friendlier.”

And the low prices don’t hurt either. You won’t see any credit/debit machines at Pete’s. It’s strictly cash only. “It keep things simple and keeps our prices down,” says Foster.

Fast, cheap and tasty has been Pete’s recipe for success for over 60 years.

Phoenix resident Steven Zavala, 10, hopes it stays that way.

“I’m addicted to Pete’s!” he says.

He’s probably not the only one.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Mexican food restaurant expands in the East Valley

MESA — Dennis Sirrine was fed up with the vagaries of the housing market. The homebuilder left California 16 years ago and returned to his hometown of Mesa, where the Sirrine family name is part of East Valley history.

Sirrine and his wife, Liz, wanted to open up their own restaurant. She wanted French cuisine; Dennis wanted Mexican. They decided on Mexican and traveled through Mexico, exploring for and experimenting with various recipes.

Today, the couple runs a highly successful operation in El Rancho de Tia Rosas, and East Valley expansion plans are on the way.

“Were branching out to let people have the luxury of having us close to their home,” says Dennis Sirrine’s son, Nick, who helps manage the restaurant. “We have been in the heart of Mesa, we are going to be in the heart of Gilbert and eventually we plan on expanding to Chandler/Tempe area.”

TACOS COME FIRST

It all began when Dennis Sirrine a construction worker building homes in California decided to leave the housing market because it was so “up” and “down.” It ended up leaving Dennis financially unstable; he returned to his hometown Mesa with Liz.

The Sirrines’ dream of a Mexican restaurant made its first mark as a taco shop on Mesa and University drives, where they sold tacos for 59 cents in 1991. They called it Rosas, after Dennis’s aunt.

“It wasn’t until they started serving their food on china and received a liquor license that their business took off,” says Clay Eagar, Tia Rosa’s manager.

The Sirrines eventually sold Rosas in 1999 in the hopes of building their own free-standing Mexican restaurant. They took a year off after selling Rosas and traveled through Mexico again, and purchasing decorations for their new restaurant along the way.

After taking a year off to plan the new venture, the Dennis and Liz Sirrine purchased 4.5 acres of land in Mesa. Dennis Sirrine used his construction background to form a crew and built The Taqueria adjacent take-out restaurant and El Rancho de Tia Rosas.

SIRRINES WANT THE WHOLE ENCHILADA

For the new restaurant, the Sirrines got more of their family members involved. Dennis’s father, Gal Sirrine, a landscape architect, developed and took care of the grounds while his mother, Nola Sirrine, an interior designer, laid out the inside of the restaurant.

Today, El Rancho de Tia Rosas offers an extensive menu – from cheese crisps to their chicken mole that contains 22 spices. Prices ranging from $5 to $14 per plate.

“I think our seafood tacos our one of our most popular items,” Eagar says. “We have four kinds: shrimp, salmon, halibut and crab. Our carne asada platter is also really popular, and our salmon enchiladas with avocado sauce set us apart from other places.”

El Rancho de Tia Rosas is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The Sirrines plan on opening their Gilbert location early next year. It will be located on the northeast corner of Higley and Guadalupe roads.

“It will be an identical replica of the current restaurant, but it has more patio seating then our location and we will possibly be open on Mondays,” Eagar says.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Confessions of an Arizona meth addict

[Editor's note: TZR correspondent Cyndy Hardy wanted to share her personal experiences in reporting this story to help put it into context. Some of the content includes foul language.]

VERDE VALLEY — Not content to write another standard piece on methamphetamine abuse, I walked into a Verde Valley bar and announced I wanted to dispel any meth myths propagated by users, law enforcement and the media.

I perched myself at an outdoor table and waited. I knew most of the faces that eyed me suspiciously but, I don’t know their private lives. They know I’m a journalist – and a fairly aggressive one, at that. I wasn’t sure what would happen.

Over the course of two weeks, I did this exercise several times. Each time, people sat to talk with varying degrees of honesty and credibility. All demanded anonymity – a death trap for journalistic credibility. But, this story can’t happen if sources think the law will trace it back to them.

One man – a quiet man who generally keeps to himself – sat next to me. “I’ll talk if you swear not to use my name,” he said.

Nick is a 43-year-old recovering meth addict who has used the drug for nearly 25 years. Nick’s teeth often clenched and his jaw ground from side to side as he spoke. His soft voice and chiseled features nearly escaped my observation because I was searching for dramatic signs of meth use, like open wounds on his face or arms.

Nick rolled a cigarette from a can of Bugler tobacco and allowed me to take several photographs – inexplicably unconcerned that his image would accompany the article in which he didn’t want his name exposed.

“You want the truth,” he said. “I’ll give it to you.” What follows is the truth as Nick sees it. His story, corroborated by others who spoke to me, seemed credible enough and representative of a side of meth the public rarely hears.

LIFE ON THE DARK SIDE

As a teen, cocaine was Nick’s drug of choice. He would sell anything to get it – CDs, cars, tools and stereos. “I once sold a $5,000 stereo for $1,000,” he said.

Like many in the drug culture, Nick used what he wanted and shared some with his friends and associates. Still, he had so much left over that he began selling the surplus. Dealing cocaine became Nick’s occupation.

But after literally blowing through $67,000 in six months, he switched from cocaine to methamphetamine. It was 1985 and Nick was 20 years old.

“Speed [a street name for meth] was cheaper than cocaine,” Nick said. He priced it at about $30 per gram 20 years ago compared to $80 to $100 per gram today.

Meth was a “cleaner” high, too. He could get by on four hours of sleep, wake up with no hangover and “be fine.” Meth gave him a productive high at first. “You can’t sit for a movie – you want to do things,” Nick says.

Meth can be ingested many ways including pills and injections. Nick preferred to smoke it.

A mechanic by trade, Nick first used about a quarter of a gram per day. “All I wanted was to tweak in the garage and play with nuts and bolts.” As he got older, he would use about nearly two grams per day, usually shared with one or two people.

The drug changed Nick. It changes the way the brain works, he said. “All I could think about was sex,” he says. By age 23, Nick’s mother forced him into rehab for the first time.

“I guess I wasn’t looking too good,” he says. Nick had entered the U.S. Army weighing 167 pounds. Within three years of using meth, he had dropped to 117 pounds.

Nick walked out of rehab after a few days and was soon using again. The California court system forced him into rehab again at age 27. He walked out again after a week.

Nick’s third and final stint in rehab to date was at age 30. Nick and his girlfriend, Beth, used meth together while living in California. Her father had committed suicide, and she drank large amounts of tequila to numb the pain. Nick said the alcohol contributed to frequent fights that ruined their relationship.

Nick was charged with internal possession of methamphetamine during one of the couple’s fights. The court sent him to rehab again. This time Nick stayed for the three-week duration.

“My lovely girlfriend met me at the door with a gram of meth,” Nick says. “There’s no saying no when somebody’s got it in their hand.”

Nick had had enough and tried to leave his past to start a new life. He took a $500 loan on a $10,000 tool box and bought a one-way train ticket to Flagstaff. He moved into a trailer park in the Verde Valley and went back to “wrenching.”

Someone, friend or family, eventually gave Beth Nick’s telephone number. Nick refused her calls for a long time, but eventually gave in and told her where he was. Beth said she had gotten into legal trouble in California and was running to Texas. All she wanted was to stop by and see him on her way through.

Once again, Beth showed up with a bag of meth. Once again, they fought. This time Nick spent two years in an Arizona prison for aggravated assault.

Today, tired of feeling nervous, jittery and “not being able to talk,” Nick says he wants to be clean. “I’m tired of the bullshit,” he says.

And he was clean for about six months. A stranger approached Nick two days before the interview and offered to share a “teener,” which is one-sixteenth of a gram – a fraction of the amount that originally hooked Nick. He indulged.

“The addiction is still there. I don’t ask for it; I don’t look for it; but I can’t say I wouldn’t do it if it was in my face. I can’t say ‘no,” he says, a tinge of remorse peeking through many layers of denial and defiance.

METH MYTH NO. 1: TREATMENT

Nick will not seek professional help to overcome his addiction. “Twelve thousand dollars
for fucking help?” he asks, saying that is what treatment costs.

Nick says he feels caught in a paradox where the only way he could afford treatment is to get arrested again. “They make it easy if you get busted.”

Local authorities generally disagreed, but when questioned without reference to Nick’s claims, their responses painted a confusing picture.

MATForce leads the war against meth in the Verde Valley through advocacy and education. It is an organization comprised of representatives from regional civic and public agencies in Yavapai County, and in 2006, a MATForce subcommittee found that “a substantial and rapidly expanding network of programs and facilities” exists in the Verde Valley to adequately meet current demands for treatment.

That means there are enough private places to help users kick the habit. But there are more and more meth users in rural central Arizona, the committee found.

“Treatment availability, waiting lists and funding always have been issues in rural Yavapai County,” says Brian Gray, deputy chief of Yavapai County’s adult probation department. “There are less than 30 residential treatment bed spaces shared by Yavapai and Mohave Counties for publicly funded clients.”

The MATForce report also found that community-based outpatient services provide the best chance of success, especially when children are part of the user’s big picture

But, getting help often means a person must be wealthy enough to afford treatment or destitute enough to qualify for state financial aid. Sedona City Councilman Rob Adams, who is a MATForce committee member, agrees many addicts are probably caught in the gap.

METH MYTH NO. 2: ADDICTION

Nick criticized the way media and law enforcement focus on the most dramatic images of meth abuse without telling the public how prolific the use really is. Most users can function fine if they use the drug in moderation, he said.

“It’s like anything: You take a couple of bad seeds out of hundreds of thousands using meth and the media is all over it,” he says.

A person cannot overdose on meth, he said. Too much of the drug causes the body to reject it and “nullifies” the effects, he says.

“I’ve known lots of people who have died from cocaine, but never meth,” Nick says. “The medical profession would probably never tell you that.”

In the worst cases, Nick said too much meth causes a person to lose eyesight for a short time while they are high. “Their eyes roll rapidly in their head – it’s not a pretty sight – but I’ve never seen it kill anybody,” he says.

Still, meth is a bigger social problem than most people realize, Nick says. Most of the public is not aware that they may know many people who are users. But, in Nick’s opinion, they are not all bad people.

“I never ripped anyone off. Maybe I was just a good drug addict,” he says sarcastically.

Those who use meth frequently – about one in 10, according to Nick – spiral out of control quickly. “It catches up to you. You can use for six months and be OK. Then your tolerance goes up and you need three times as much to get high,” he said.

And even though he preferred high-end buyers, Nick’s drug clientele crossed every imaginable social demographic. “Everybody uses,” he generalized. “I sold to people who made $100,000 per year and to people who made $1,000 per month.”

METH MYTH NO. 3: “STREET VALUE”

Nick says law enforcement over-inflates the value of meth taken off the streets to make a better impression on the public. “They’ll say a pound is worth $500,000.”

TZR found published accounts of meth seizures with varying reported street values. In February 2007, the Arizona Department of Public Safety reported 16 pounds of meth was seized with a street value of $120,000 – or $7,500 per pound. A report in the July 2002 issue of U.S. Customs Today priced meth at about $11,200 per pound in Phoenix and about $16,000 in Nogales. In 2006, federal officials seized 187 pounds of meth near Atlanta, Ga., worth at least $133,690 per pound, according to an Associated Press report.

There are about 453.6 grams in a pound. Using Nick’s highest estimate, a pound of meth would hypothetically retail for about $45,000. But the calculation omits basic drug dealer economics, Nick says.
“A pound is really worth about $16,000 to a dealer,” he says.

Meth is rarely sold by the gram; most people buy an ounce or half ounce, Nick says. The price a dealer gets depends on the transaction. Even the drug-dealer world has frequent-flyer miles.

A first-time meth buyer pays street value, he said, but regular clients can get a better deal. A significant amount of ‘product’ is given away – some to attract new clients, most to keep low-end users from snitching the dealer out to police.

Less affluent users may buy every week or every day – increasing the risk to both the buyer and the dealer, Nick says. It might seem a dealer could get a better price for the higher risk, but frequent buyers are usually the ones who get arrested, he says. “They know how to work it. You end up giving a lot of meth away just to stay out of trouble,” Nick says.

The law gets informants from the pool of low-end users, Nick says. Agencies put public funds in their hands to buy drugs. “About 90 percent of the drug busts come from these snitches,” he says. Informants often blackmail dealers for free drugs and the ones who cross the informants get busted.

Rich users buy larger quantities for personal consumption to reduce their risk of being caught. Those buyers can get a wholesale price because they are buying in bulk, which cuts the dealer’s profit margin.

Nick said he stuck to these “high class” clients and was never arrested for selling drugs. “First of all, the cops don’t look at them (rich clients). Second, they buy in bulk; and a guy who shows up every night is seven times the risk,” he says.

METH MYTH NO. 4: “WINNING THE WAR”

Whether local data contradicts Nick’s beliefs is hard to establish. Authorities did not provide, and TZR could not find, a common thread in the data to accurately portray meth trends in Arizona’s Verde Valley.

Essentially, there are three main fronts by which communities fight meth: education, enforcement and treatment. Agencies collect data with various criteria that can’t easily be compared side-by-side.

Clinic officials count the number of patient contacts and categorize substance abuse, but they do not specifically track methamphetamine.

At a Verde Valley Guidance Clinic, for example, patients treated for all drug addictions increased from 120 in 2000 to 320 in 2005. About 107 patients were treated for amphetamine abuse, which includes meth. Although data for 2006 and 2007 was not immediately available, a snap shot of clinic activity in February 2008 showed 288 of 1,106 patient contacts were meth-related.

TASC is an agency that monitors and drug-tests offenders in Yavapai County for several agencies, including Yavapai Drug Treatment Diversion Program, Yavapai County Adult Drug Court and Yavapai County Adult Probation.

In 2006, a leading screening center for Verde Valley clinics collected 7,071 samples from new clients, of which 381 tested positive for drugs or alcohol. In that group, 165 tested positive for amphetamines.

In 2007, the same sampling showed a higher ratio of meth use. About 301 samples tested positive for drugs, of which 160 samples contained amphetamines, according to the Treatment Assessment Screening Center.

Three years ago, meth was a serious problem in the Verde Valley, but it is improving, says Cottonwood City manager Doug Bartosh, a MATForce committee member and former Scottsdale police chief.

“We are seeing a decrease in the number of [meth-related] contacts. Some of that is due to diligent enforcement. Some is because of tighter borders,” Bartosh says.

Verde Valley communities passed psuedoephedrine ordinances after the state lawmakers failed to enact similar legislation. Bartosh says controlling psuedoephedrine at the drugstores works because most of it was being stolen from the shelves – not purchased.

“Since our communities enacted ordinances, we hardly ever see a lab anymore,” he says.

Sedona police Chief Joe Vernier says meth-related incidents in Sedona declined after the city enacted its psuedoephedrine ordinance in 2005. Since then, the state and the federal government have enacted stricter laws to curb meth production.

But Nick, who says he once cooked meth for a Mexican cartel, disputes their rosy outlook. He says putting psuedoephedrine behind the counter did little to curb meth production in Arizona.

“You can’t cook meth and expect to get it over the border,” Nick says. But its main ingredient is coming across the border abundantly in 50-gallon drums because drug-sniffing dogs can’t detect it, he says.

Bartosh disagrees. He says police dogs can be trained to detect nearly anything.

Even though authorities say they are winning the war on meth, several pointed out a disturbing fact: Meth, and other homemade drugs, aren’t going away soon. According to client surveys and other data from Verde Valley clinics, drug users are shifting to other drugs more readily available.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com .

Payson man’s opus: Netflix in E minor

PAYSON — Kevin Bailey had an epiphany nine years ago while trying to play a new age tune on his piano.

The Payson music store owner tore pages of sheet music from a composition book because the book wouldn’t stay open on the music stand. But the pages kept falling off the instrument’s stand too, so he taped them together. Again, no luck.

That’s when it dawned on him: Digital sheet music.

Sounds simple, right? Bailey agrees. And now EMI Music Group and Sony are working with him to convert potentially thousands of tunes to his patented format whose roots were more garage band wonder than Silicon Valley startup.

The result is a musical version of Netflix, the popular online video rental service.

“I’m like the average next door neighbor who came up with this,” says Bailey, 45. “I just don’t want to see music die.”

Bailey’s background is steeped in music. He ran Schroeder’s piano and organ stores in Paradise Valley and MetroCenter malls while living in Phoenix. He moved to Payson, population 12,000, to escape the heat and co-found Payson Music Center in 1993.

He says he came up with paperless sheet music in 1998, but the tools to make it weren’t cheap enough at the time.

“No one’s gonna buy a music stand that costs a thousand dollars,” Bailey says. “And the proof is in the pudding because there are a couple of competitive models out there that do scoring and the page for you, but you still have to touch the screen or use a footpedal to change the page.

“But it’s still the motion,” Bailey adds, becoming annoyed at the thought. “It’s still taking your hand away from the instrument. You have to think of something other than just playing your instrument.”

So Bailey waited until gear prices dropped for DVD players, portable DVD viewers and laptops loaded with user-friendly software to create and present musical scores.

In 2005, he started scoring songs digitally for paperless sheet music. He began with songs in the “public domain” – tunes created before copyright laws were in place to protect them. Anyone can score these songs without paying the original artist a royalty. Classical music from composers like Mozart and Beethoven, for example, fall into this category.

Soon Bailey started reaching out to music industry shakers. He eventually found Milton Hopkins, of Hopkins Music Group in Austin, who agreed to work with record labels on Bailey’s behalf to secure rights to songs so that Bailey could score them digitally.

EMI Music Group, one of the world’s largest repositories for music, signed on and recently gave Bailey access to 2,700 songs. He scans them for tunes he think people will be interested in learning and playing. [Sony is also in talks with Bailey.]

Once Hopkins helps secure the rights, Bailey goes to work scoring each piece. He uses a network of six independent composers in Louisiana, Missouri and Arizona. One of them just graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in musical composition.

Each composer scores 10 songs and emails it to Bailey, who then adds the artwork using an Apple laptop. The assembly-line process takes about one month to create an album of digital sheet music.

Users can now go to the company’s website and individually select songs from Bailey’s growing library. They’ll get a CD in the mail within five days, Bailey says.

At press time, Bailey’s paperless sheet music catalog includes songs from country stars like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, the Charlie Daniels Band and more. He even has television and movie themes from the Facts of Life, Ghostbusters, Rocky and James Bond, among others. [Bailey was recently pouring over tunes from classic rock stars like Phil Collins and Genesis.]

Bailey, 45, estimates that he has sunk $50,000 into the business so far. If he strikes it rich, Bailey says, he’ll stay in Payson.

If not, no big deal, Bailey says. It’s about getting people plugged into music, driving customers to his store and other “brick and mortar” music shops, and filling a void left behind by a beloved Rim Country music teacher.

He cites a recent Gallup poll done for the music industry that suggests people are ready for this plug-and-play setup. About 82 percent of respondents said they were interested in learning and playing music but didn’t know how or where to start.

Bailey also says the paperless sheet music is something that has driven more traffic to his store at a time when the music industry is shaky. He thinks it could do the same for other shops.

“I have a television sittin’ on a piano in the front of my store,” he says. “I just put it on and loop it, and it repeats over and over and over. I have more people talk to me about it and start up a conversation, and they’ve never been in the store before.”

And maybe the new tool will offset the dearth of musical instruction in the Payson area. Bailey says local schools haven’t funded a real music program since Ileane Gonzales, whose enthusiasm for music fueled the Rim Country Orchestra and three grade-school programs, passed away in 2000 at age 79.

“It’s really not about money,” he says. “It’s more about people being able to play music and simplifying it to a point that, you know, people say, ‘I’ve got a choice. I could sit here and watch the television, or I could pop in my DVD and watch my televsion and play something.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.