Alcohol is the best Chamber of Commerce
I was recently in Tempe, AZ for a conference and also to visit my in-laws. I have never liked the Phoenix area, despite my fondness for Alice and Death Wish, and each time I visit it is a struggle to enjoy myself, beloved in-laws notwithstanding.Too hot outside, too air-conditioned inside, too many chain stores, and a sense of overwhelming complacence. I will make this sound better when I run for President, but until then, I sure don't like Arizona.
I explained this to my friend Troy while typing online in a coffee shop in the shadow of Arizona State University Mountain.
"Are you on Mill Ave?" he asked.
"I am," I said. "But how did you know that?"
"Because I used to go to ASU," he confided. "While Tempe is best seen through a rearview mirror, there is one place you can walk to..."
He directed me to a neighborhood a few blocks away, where I found Casey Moore's, an Irish bar and oyster house built by the parents of early Arizona governor Benjamin Mouer. Apparently it's haunted.
I haunted it myself for the course of three drinks. It was the first time I actually enjoyed being here; the neighborhood reminded me of Austin.After my Lenten teetotallitarianism I have not rebounded with a vengeance, but a few drinks at a bar in the middle of the afternoon on a work day was great. "I need to do this more," I said, and I don't care if it was out loud.
"Yes, you do," the ghost said.
On the way home (gas cost $168 this trip, or about $12 for each hour in the car), we stopped in the bucolic former mining town of Desert Center, CA.
"I could live here," I told my wife, as my daughter ran around an abandoned Kaiser Steel boxcar. "This is the kind of place where a man can breathe."
I wonder if my credit union would give me a loan for some jet skis and a meth lab?There are two things I look forward to seeing on the way home from Arizona. One is the Colorado River, which forms part of the California/Arizona border. It has always been a relief to cross the Colorado; the first time I did it was when I moved here. At that time I was on the 40, not the 10, and had passed through Flagstaff instead of Phoenix. I was driving a 40-foot Ryder truck with a car towed in back and was just happy to have made it to the final state in my trip.
The other is the miles-long windmill farm near Indio and Palm Springs. We drove into the sunset this time, so it looked a little like Mordor.
But, on the whole, if you think Mordor is bad, try Arizona.
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by Marty Barrett at Wednesday, April 02, 2008
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