Phoenix, Arizona
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
One time Northbound stopover for Mexican cattle and Westbound bed-down for gold prospectors and earthquake insurance salesmen, Phoenix has unaccountably grown into a destination in its own right. This some 600 years after the highly perceptive Hohokum Indians concluded that in the vast expanses of North America there must be thousands of places more climate-friendly than Southern Arizona, and left.
Lacking historical insight, but not an abundance of drive to do the impossible (or at least the extremely ill-advised), Jake Swelling and "Lord Darrell" Duppa re-established the city in 1867 on the old Hohokum irrigation canals. They named the city "Phoenix" after the mythical bird which rises from it's own ashes, and so ushered in an unbroken history of area dwellers disturbingly comfortable with the concept of self-immolation.
That is to say that Phoenix is hot. It is so mind-bubblingly, skin-charringly hot that the in the height of summer (and UV strength) the Arizona Republic warns against exposing skin for more than 10-12 minutes. With temperatures that occasionally reach the appalling level of 120 degrees, Sky Harbor International Airport has been known to shut down because the air density simply gives up and stops supporting the planes.
Nevertheless, armies of slush-weary senior citizens, known locally as "snow birds", continue to pile into RV trailers all over the snowy North and settle in The Valley of the Sun, where they share a deep and abiding belief in air-conditioning, early bird dinner specials and The Creator, although not necessarily in that order.
It is The Creator, in fact, whom they revere as the Developer of Phoenix as the bustling heart and state capitol of Arizona. His tireless love for His people, and their everlasting gratefulness for His wisdom and foresight permeates most Phoenix suburbs in one way or another. I am speaking, of course, of Del Webb - real estate developer of Sun City, Sun City West, and Various Communities dedicated to His Vision of Living, which was that homes should be comfortable and affordable and above all free from elderly, meddling parents. And so, to the great relief of harried middle-aged couples everywhere, he made a place for them all to go. Sun City, Arizona opened in 1960, attracting thousands of silver haired folk (thus honoring the Aztec word "Arizuma" from which "Arizona" came, meaning "silver-bearing") to tiny pastel ranch houses on streets which Webb designed in concentric circles to make damn sure that no one ever left.
Upon first arriving in Phoenix the snow birds astutely observed that they were in a desert, resplendant with all of the usual desert-like characteristics such as a natural inability of the landscape to retain water or support plant life. In the face of its understated, almost ascetic beauty and overall brittle ecology, the snow birds immediately set about their unique approach to desert management. They built golf courses. We can only imagine the tortuous turns that original conversation might have taken with the Powers That Be:
SBs: What this desert needs is dozens of golf courses.
PTB: Uh, but wouldn't that involve a lot of grass?
SBs: Yes, yes, so we'd better get busy.
PTB: But, I mean, look around. Do you see any grass anywhere?
SBs: No, that's just the problem. It all seems so bare and well, deserted, so could we please get planting? We'd like to be teeing off by next Thursday.
PTB: It's just that may be a bit of a problem, you see. Grass needs a lot of water to live.
SBs: Yes?
PTB: And, well, it's a desert.
SBs: Yes we know that, what's your point?
PTB: Our point is that there's barely enough water around here to keep people alive, much less sustain a golf course.
SBs: Oh well! Why didn't you say so? That certainly clears things up, doesn't it?
PTB: Yes, well we're awfully glad to have shed some light on this for you.
SBs: Absolutely! Here we were about to put the cart before the horse, for Webb's sake! But I daresay we've got it now. What we really need then is a multi-billion dollar public canal project to divert water from the Colorado River so that we can all golf down here. Will Tuesday the 28th be enough time?
The Powers That Be made a valiant effort to enlighten the Snow Birds, arguing that, among other things, other people needed the Colorado river water to live, but they finally caved when they realized that Snow Birds vote with dogged consistency, and so the Central Arizona Project was born. Today there are over 100 golf courses in the metro Phoenix area.
Along with the amazing and indefensible proliferation of golf courses has come the much more defensible but no less amazing proliferation of housing. Many Phoenix suburbs double in size every ten years, on average. At this rate the entire land mass of the Earth will be one gigantic neighborhood of tile-roofed stucco slab houses (locally known as 'Taco Bell Architecture') in just 120 years, a fact which should lend some urgency to this entry.
Today this growth is fueled by an influx of a new kind of reality-challenged entity, the high-tech firm. Spilling out of the Bay Area, where monthly office space rents for approximately what it would cost to ransom Uruguay, assuming the people of Uruguay wanted it back, these firms are finding their way to Phoenix in record numbers. Unable to deal with anything that doesn't process huge amounts of data, render in 65 million colors or at least beep with annoying regularity, these groups of roving engineers and marketers seem to be attracted by the scarcity of workers, high cooling costs, growing traffic problems and an infrastructure which is lagging behind the city's expansion. In short, many of the same problems they left behind. Assuming they bring the same blind zeal with which they pursued business in old San Fran, they should all do swimmingly, until costs again become astronomically high and like a swarm of locust they all move on to someplace even more difficult and uncomfortable to do business. In the meantime, the rest of us will have no choice but to hang on and ride it out.
Lacking historical insight, but not an abundance of drive to do the impossible (or at least the extremely ill-advised), Jake Swelling and "Lord Darrell" Duppa re-established the city in 1867 on the old Hohokum irrigation canals. They named the city "Phoenix" after the mythical bird which rises from it's own ashes, and so ushered in an unbroken history of area dwellers disturbingly comfortable with the concept of self-immolation.
That is to say that Phoenix is hot. It is so mind-bubblingly, skin-charringly hot that the in the height of summer (and UV strength) the Arizona Republic warns against exposing skin for more than 10-12 minutes. With temperatures that occasionally reach the appalling level of 120 degrees, Sky Harbor International Airport has been known to shut down because the air density simply gives up and stops supporting the planes.
Nevertheless, armies of slush-weary senior citizens, known locally as "snow birds", continue to pile into RV trailers all over the snowy North and settle in The Valley of the Sun, where they share a deep and abiding belief in air-conditioning, early bird dinner specials and The Creator, although not necessarily in that order.
It is The Creator, in fact, whom they revere as the Developer of Phoenix as the bustling heart and state capitol of Arizona. His tireless love for His people, and their everlasting gratefulness for His wisdom and foresight permeates most Phoenix suburbs in one way or another. I am speaking, of course, of Del Webb - real estate developer of Sun City, Sun City West, and Various Communities dedicated to His Vision of Living, which was that homes should be comfortable and affordable and above all free from elderly, meddling parents. And so, to the great relief of harried middle-aged couples everywhere, he made a place for them all to go. Sun City, Arizona opened in 1960, attracting thousands of silver haired folk (thus honoring the Aztec word "Arizuma" from which "Arizona" came, meaning "silver-bearing") to tiny pastel ranch houses on streets which Webb designed in concentric circles to make damn sure that no one ever left.
Upon first arriving in Phoenix the snow birds astutely observed that they were in a desert, resplendant with all of the usual desert-like characteristics such as a natural inability of the landscape to retain water or support plant life. In the face of its understated, almost ascetic beauty and overall brittle ecology, the snow birds immediately set about their unique approach to desert management. They built golf courses. We can only imagine the tortuous turns that original conversation might have taken with the Powers That Be:
SBs: What this desert needs is dozens of golf courses.
PTB: Uh, but wouldn't that involve a lot of grass?
SBs: Yes, yes, so we'd better get busy.
PTB: But, I mean, look around. Do you see any grass anywhere?
SBs: No, that's just the problem. It all seems so bare and well, deserted, so could we please get planting? We'd like to be teeing off by next Thursday.
PTB: It's just that may be a bit of a problem, you see. Grass needs a lot of water to live.
SBs: Yes?
PTB: And, well, it's a desert.
SBs: Yes we know that, what's your point?
PTB: Our point is that there's barely enough water around here to keep people alive, much less sustain a golf course.
SBs: Oh well! Why didn't you say so? That certainly clears things up, doesn't it?
PTB: Yes, well we're awfully glad to have shed some light on this for you.
SBs: Absolutely! Here we were about to put the cart before the horse, for Webb's sake! But I daresay we've got it now. What we really need then is a multi-billion dollar public canal project to divert water from the Colorado River so that we can all golf down here. Will Tuesday the 28th be enough time?
The Powers That Be made a valiant effort to enlighten the Snow Birds, arguing that, among other things, other people needed the Colorado river water to live, but they finally caved when they realized that Snow Birds vote with dogged consistency, and so the Central Arizona Project was born. Today there are over 100 golf courses in the metro Phoenix area.
Along with the amazing and indefensible proliferation of golf courses has come the much more defensible but no less amazing proliferation of housing. Many Phoenix suburbs double in size every ten years, on average. At this rate the entire land mass of the Earth will be one gigantic neighborhood of tile-roofed stucco slab houses (locally known as 'Taco Bell Architecture') in just 120 years, a fact which should lend some urgency to this entry.
Today this growth is fueled by an influx of a new kind of reality-challenged entity, the high-tech firm. Spilling out of the Bay Area, where monthly office space rents for approximately what it would cost to ransom Uruguay, assuming the people of Uruguay wanted it back, these firms are finding their way to Phoenix in record numbers. Unable to deal with anything that doesn't process huge amounts of data, render in 65 million colors or at least beep with annoying regularity, these groups of roving engineers and marketers seem to be attracted by the scarcity of workers, high cooling costs, growing traffic problems and an infrastructure which is lagging behind the city's expansion. In short, many of the same problems they left behind. Assuming they bring the same blind zeal with which they pursued business in old San Fran, they should all do swimmingly, until costs again become astronomically high and like a swarm of locust they all move on to someplace even more difficult and uncomfortable to do business. In the meantime, the rest of us will have no choice but to hang on and ride it out.
