Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

We had never been on the famous Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, an engineering marvel from 1963 that takes one from the desert floor to 8,500 feet in the San Jacinto Mountains.



My mother (above), who we were hosting, insisted that the trip must be made...



...and since we had been driving each other insane most of the week, it seemed the path of least resistance.



I'm glad we went, however, and would gladly pay the $22 to go again...



...since the lodges at both bottom and top were mid-century modern architectural wonders...



...and the views in every direction were marvelous.



Plus, it was a serious relief to be in 75-degree weather when it was close to 110 degrees in the Coachella valley below.



Most of the other passengers took off on hikes around the mountains but after observing at least half of them looking as if they were about to have a heart attack as they climbed back up to the lodge...



...we spent most of the afternoon sitting on an observation deck drinking beers.



Though the trip is only 10 minutes long, it is definitely not for the fainthearted...



...as two sobbing-with-fear young girls in our downward car made clear.



Still, it's a tourist trip that is totally worth the effort.

Palm Trees Poodle Cut

The palm trees at our joint in Palm Springs needed an annual haircut because they were shedding fronds and seeds rather dramatically.



The tree trimmers were a couple of recent emigres from Oaxaca, Mexico.



They had never climbed a palm tree, in fact, until moving to the Coachella Valley.



They certainly learned quickly and have turned into serious daredevils, as you can see in the YouTube video clip of one of the guys rappeling down a rope from the tops of the trees (click here).



The trimming job was really extreme, which is supposedly good for the trees, but they ended up looking like poodles who had been shorn of everything but a few pouffes on their tail and ears.



This did allow for a sliver of moon to pass through the newly denuded palms.

Life is good. For illiterates.

The only bookstore in downtown Palm Springs closed their doors a couple of months ago...



...and in its place a retail outlet has opened selling "Life is good." merchandise.



The brand was started by a pair of Boston brothers, Bert and John Jacobs, in 1994 (click here for their company history)...



...and it's a weird melange of "The Power of Positive Thinking" and whimsical, graphical childishness...



...printed on cheap cotton clothing and just about anything else one can think of that usually features a logo, such as golf balls.



For this Palm Springs grand opening, the brothers had arrived with two whimsical race cars covered in positive slogans...



...and they were also signing copies of their $20 cutesy book with little drawings and positive sayings, which was sincerely depressing since they were doing so in front of a recently deceased bookstore.



The message and its presentation obviously appeals to people since the company is now a $100 million plus enterprise, though Bert (above left) still looks like a Southern California surfer.



My favorite moment was the next morning, when the woman who had opened the store (looking seriously at the camera above), was in front of me in a line at a coffee place across from her store. She was decked out in "Life is good." merchandise from head to toe and was obviously in an impatient mood because whatever she said to the young Goth baristo was so nasty that he reeled back as if struck. When it was my turn, I gave him an amused look and said, "Life is good. Not." and I think I may have a new friend for life.

Julius Shulman: Palm Springs

The Palm Springs Art Museum currently has a smashingly good exhibit of the Palm Springs architectural photography of Julius Shulman, who I had never heard of before, even though just about every iconic photograph of Southern California Modernism was taken by him.



In concert with the exhibit, a Rizzoli coffee-table art book has just been published that's the most beautiful book about Palm Springs I've ever seen, focusing on Shulman's collaborations with eight modernist architects, including Richard Neutra and Albert Frey, along with the work of a few significant others.



The book was written by Michael Stern and Alan Hess (above) and includes graceful essays on Palm Springs' architectural history and how it was conveyed to the world at large through Shulman's commercial lens, which include some of the most gorgeous black-and-white photographs I've seen in my life.



Since so much of the architectural work has either been torn down or rehabbed in disastrous ways, the book also has the feel of an artistic and political manifesto.

"There is still much of Palm Springs that is not well known. It should be, though. Shulman has been regularly adding to his exploration of Palm Springs for seventy years. The story of Palm Springs architecture has been sitting there that entire time, and yet it has been only in the past decade or so that the architectural community (let alone the wider world) has begun to glimpse the fullness of that story. The small desert resort town, we now discover, is a textbook of California Modern architecture...No other town of its size can boast such a range. It's as if Palm Springs was created as a summary, an exegesis of all that's important about California architecture in the twentieth century."

What's even cooler is that Julius Shulman at age 97 is still alive and kicking (above left), and was atttending the Palm Springs Art Museum for a panel discussion and a Q&A after a showing of a documentary about his work.



His brain is mostly still there and his humor is sharp and delightful. He had retired after fifty years in the business back in the 1980s, but a young German named Jurgen Nogai approached Shulman and convinced him to get back to work with Jurgen as his partner.



"In truth, Jurgen is who's been keeping me alive, and I can't thank him enough," he graciously announced at one point, before going upstairs and signing copies of his new book.

Czech Art Glass

The Palm Springs Art Museum has a new director and a few newly spruced up galleries, including a small alcove devoted to "art glass."



The revelation in the group were a trio of pieces by the Czech husband-and-wife team of Jaroslava Brychtova and Stanislav Libensky, who just died in 2002.



Click here for a nice essay about Libensky and Brychtova (above) and and their professor in the 1940s and 1950s at the Prague Academy, Josef Kaplický.



Their modernist glass sculptures seemed to glow from the inside in the oddest ways imaginable...



...and made a lot of the other work look rather dull.



Also showing at the Palm Spring Arts Museum is a 34-piece exhibition, "Picasso to Moore: Modern Sculpture from the Weiner Collection" (click here for an interesting "Palm Springs Life" story about the exhibit and the Weiner family). The patriarch, Ted Weiner, was originally from Oakland who became a wildcatter in Texas and who grew into an extremely rich and powerful oilman (that's Ted below, fourth from the left, posing at the first Jewish country club in Fort Worth, flanked by Ben Hogan, Jack Benny, club pro Dick Metz, and producer Hal Wallis).



He started buying mostly modernist sculptures in the 1940s, and had promised his collection to Texas cultural institutions, but brought most of his art with him when he moved with his family to Palm Springs in the early 1960s, where he became one of the first trustees of the Palm Springs Art Museum. In any case, Ted's no longer around but his daughter Gwendolyn gives a major sculpture to the museum every year, which is nice since the collection is amazing, without a bad piece in the bunch. (The photo above, by the way, is from a recently published book from the Brandeis University Press entitled "Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas.")

Affluent Canyons 1

The condo my partner Tony bought in Palm Springs...



...is a modest little one-bedroom in a ten-unit complex with a swimming pool and 51 palm trees...



...but the neighborhood it is sitting in is quite a few scales up the economic ladder from our current and probable future estate.



Most of our neighbors own huge, detached homes...



...with small armies of Mexican gardeners taking care of their foliage and palm trees...



...for visits during Palm Spring's society "season," which starts about now and continues through April.



The neighborhood is bounded by Palm Canyon Drive (Palm Springs' main drag) to the east, the San Jacinto mountains to the west, and the famous Tahquitz canyon (below) to the south.



You'd think there would be nowhere left for real estate developers to try and create luxury developments in the neighborhood, but then underestimating the greed of real estate developers is usually a bad bet.

Affluent Canyons 2

On Christmas Eve, I decided to see if there was a shortcut of a hike to Tahquitz Canyon along the wash from Tahquitz Creek.



After startling hundreds of birds on various phone lines...



...and surprising a hobo couple who were having sex in the bushes...



...I came across a new, gated development called "The Canyons"



...complete with artful landscaping around its large walls.



The place gave me the creeps for some reason, and I continued toward Tahquitz Canyon...



...but after being frightened by what sounded like a rattlesnake along the pathway...



...I headed back towards the Indian Canyons and their affluent developments for safety.

Have Yourself a Gay Little Christmas

The incessant catchphrase among all things design and architectural in Palm Springs is "Mid-Century Modern," and the house above in the mostly gay Warm Sands neighborhood is a perfect example.



The Neptune statue in front with the skimpy Santa outfit, however, is what you'd call more Late-Century Gay. Have a merry christmas, everyone.

Looking for Drudgery

The winter light in Palm Springs can be downright psychedelic...



...but I probably won't be seeing much more of it for a while because I need to devote myself once again to hustling for paying work in San Francisco.



And if you're reading my freely offered fototales here while on your boss's dime, shame on you!

Resting with Agnes

While taking a short rest in the sweet desert air of Palm Springs this week, I put together a post about the late choreographer Agnes de Mille and her wonderful series of memoirs that start with "Dance to The Piper."



You can get to Agnes by clicking here.



The post was for a San Francisco group called 42nd Street Moon that has been mounting rare musicals for the last 15 years. They have just started a blog and it should be fascinating, because the Artistic Director of the group, Greg MacKellan, is an encyclopedic musical history freak who is also a graceful writer.



The show that just closed was Kurt Weill's 1943 Broadway musical, "One Touch of Venus," which made Mary Martin into a star playing the title role. The entire score, from what I could gather from the piano reduction, is amazing and it's sad there's no recording of the piece other than a few songs like "Speak Low" and "I'm a Stranger Here Myself."

Another show is opening up next week, the 1918 Jerome Kern/P.G. Wodehouse farce, "Oh, Lady! Lady!!" Click here for more info.

Buddha and Harry Potter Against The Day

At my partner's condo in Palm Springs, I've been trying not to worry about being broke while worshiping the 45 palm trees that grace the complex.



I've also been indulging in my version of the "slow food" movement with a personal "slow book" movement, taking on three huge fictional masterpieces and savoring them at the same time.



The "Harry Potter" series, all 4,000 pages of it, has been read in large, quick gulps over a number of years as the author has published them. I was apprehensive about diving into the last installment, fearing that the book wouldn't have a satisfying conclusion, but two trusted friends have pronounced it wonderful even though they both agree that a short epilogue is totally stupid.



With Thomas Pynchon's 1,085-page historical fantasia, I joined a number of strangers from around the world who created an informal online book blog called "The Chumps of Choice" (click here) where a dozen of us take turns playing moderator each week for a 15-40 page section. We started in November 2006 and have reached page 820, with the end in sight for sometime this winter. I don't think I've ever read a book so slowly and so closely and it's been a revelation.



This has led to the slow absorption of the 8-volume, 3,000-page philosophical fantasia by the late Japanese anime/manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka, following the life and times of Buddha. Though it would be easy to flip through the entire illustrated work in the space of a day or two, I find myself slowly digesting one chapter, putting it down for a couple of days, and then rereading before going on to the next section. It's too bad I'll have to get serious about work before reaching nirvana.

Patrick Dougherty's Secret Treehouses

The Palm Springs Art Museum recently commissioned a site-specific sculpture from Patrick Dougherty...



...who specializes in huge nest-like lairs...



...made out of saplings...



...that the viewer can walk inside...



...where they can feel like they are in the ultimate secret treehouse...



...for hidden games.



Dougherty has been creating these amazing pieces all over the country since 1982...



...and it's worth going to his website to see some of the other installations (click here).

Palm Springs Villagefest 1

Every Thursday evening of the year in Palm Springs from 6 to 10 PM...



...the main drag downtown, Palm Canyon Drive, is closed to vehicular traffic...



...for something called Villagefest for the last 16 years...



...where 200 booths sell "handcrafted" articles...



...including glass fireplace treatments that are "more exciting than a log"...



...along with handmade soaps...



...jewelry...



...and psychedelic bathing salts.



The best part of course, is the serious people watching.

Palm Springs Villagefest 2

There are a few booths offering local foods at Villagefest...



...and lots of outdoor dining offering everything from tamales to hot dogs...



...as you watch the local wildlife walking by.



If it all becomes too much, you can get a hippie massage...



...before looking at the bad art everywhere.



Laguna Beach has always been a soul sister city to Palm Springs...



...both in their "arty" reputations...



...and their large gay populations that seem to move back and forth between ocean and desert.

Palm Springs Villagefest 3

"New age" musical artists are peppered throughout the six-block fair...



...selling CDs of their swoony stylings...



...while using their pooch as a fabulous prop.



There are also various nonprofits represented, from cute Search and Rescue teams...



...to Shriners...



...to a portable Rabbi...



...and "Stonewall Democrats for Edwards."



My favorite group was The Republican Women, whose usual terrifying members seemed to be on vacation while being spelled by a few gay male friends.



As my neighbor Richard said, the gay dudes posing as Republican women pretty much sums up Palm Springs.

A Coachella Magical Mystery Tour

Nobody rides the bus in Southern California unless they are desperately poor, out of luck, Mexican or merely eccentric non-drivers like myself and the gentleman pictured above.



There wasn't even a public bus system in the Coachella Valley other than Greyhound until 1977, when the SunLines first formed.



This momentous event was being celebrated with a day of free service to all destinations on Monday, July 30th, and I took advantage of the anniversary to catch a bus from Palm Springs as it made its way southeast through the various desert cities along Highway 111.



I waited for a bus with the wildly informative gentleman above, who when asked where one should go for a fancy golf resort ladies' lunch, immediately replied, "Miramonte in Indian Wells."



"And you can walk across the street where there's the Hyatt Championship Resort, though I hear the time to go there is Happy Hour on Friday evenings."



"Where should you eat in Indio? There's a great place next to the K-Mart in a strip mall next to a McDonald's. This guy has a Mexican meat market that's the best in the valley and then he opened up a bakery a couple of doors down and also put in a taqueria. It is The Greatest Taqueria in the world. Although if you want to get the greatest burrito in Southern California you should take the #90 line from Indio and go about five miles further to Coachella where the housing developments end and you're in the middle of a date orchard with agriculture stretching across the east. There's a grocery store there with the greatest burrito I've ever tasted, and I used to live in The Mission in San Francisco, so I know what I'm talking about, and it's only $3.00."



He also warned me not to sit in the back of the bus because he'd already been mugged a couple of times back there, and over the course of the next three hours there were quite a few scary looking people getting on and off, so I don't think he was exaggerating.



Still, I was never really frightened because the driver all the way to Indio and back was Andre, maybe the greatest bus driver I've ever experienced. At first, he struck me as a little scary looking himself, but as the afternoon wore on I watched him patiently maneuver an obese wheelchair couple on and off the bus, wait for passengers as they struggled to catch up to the vehicle, and engage in a friendly conversation about the 109 degree weather.



When a couple of violent 16-year-olds threatened to get into a fight, he merely stopped the bus and stared in the rear-view mirrors without saying a word. They shut up pretty quickly.



Most of the stops had shelters with a bit of much-needed shade, but the less affluent town of Indio didn't bother with them, which meant lots of very sweaty Mexican mothers and laborers gaspingly boarding the bus. One of those young laborers, in fact, had one of the sweetest natural smells I've ever encountered.



The itinerary was Palm Springs, followed by Cathedral City (mostly working-class Mexicans), Rancho Mirage (very rich and Republican whites), Palm Desert (the ultra-rich like Bill Gates on the western bluffs with the Mexican working class below), Indian Wells (very rich whites in gated developments where there are huge walls so you can't see in from the highway)...



...followed by La Quinta (very rich whites in a Western canyon with Mexican labor congregating around the highway), and finally Indio (a small Mexican city).



I never did go to Coachella for a burrito or Indian Wells for a fancy golf course lunch because there was an "Apocalypse Now" flavor to the afternoon and the line that kept running through my brain was, "Don't get off the boat. Don't get off the bus." Happy birthday, SunLines.

Rites of Spring

One of the final events of the Palm Springs White Party was the outdoor Sunday afternoon and evening T-Dance held in a downtown vacant lot.



The $100 admission price seemed a trifle steep for yet another disco event, but I suppose the ferris wheel was some compensation.



We returned instead to our swimming pool, complete with misters...



...and blooming cacti on the patio.



Even more satisfying was the nightly appearance of a tiny frog no bigger than a thumbnail with a huge voice that could be heard a block away, even over the distant thumping of the White Party sound system.



We dubbed him Freddy The Frog and had conversations with him after he'd take his ritual swim in the pool.

The Rainbow Gestapo

The daily newspaper in the Coachella Valley, "The Desert Sun," (click here) published a fabulously paranoid and inflammatory letter to the editor on April 4th from Palm Springs resident Patrick Phelps.



Patrick writes, in part:

"It seems the only things that matter and get approved are gay and lesbian projects. How are they getting away with it? Now they want another gay/lesbian gala called the Diversity Festival. And the taxpayers will foot that bill, too...

Palm Springs used to be a nice place, but sadly with the Rainbow Gestapo trying to dictate protocol and resident procedures, they are chasing the hetero population away. But then, maybe that is their master plan...

I, for one, will not drown in this rising rainbow ocean. I have rights, too. Maybe I'll run for City Council. I couldn't be any worse than the current members."

There have been many outraged letters printed over the course of the week decrying the bigotry of Mr. Phelps and though I should be filled with indignation too, "The Rainbow Gestapo" phrase instead just gives me the giggles. In fact, I want to design the T-shirt.



This local controversy arrives just in time for Easter Weekend which marks the annual return of The Palm Springs White Party, where 20,000 guppies in the rainbow ocean wriggle in from all over the world to strut their gym bodies at a series of huge parties set to terrible disco music for 72 straight hours.



It was started in 1989 by a Los Angeles queen named Jeffrey Sanker (above), who has become the production-meister of gay circuit parties around the world from Provincetown to Rio de Janeiro (click here for his website, complete with frightening music).



The main headquarters for The White Party is a large, corporate Wyndham Hotel complex and the pool is quite a scene. In fact, I may return on Saturday afternoon to capture the full weirdness of The Rainbow Gestapo in action.

Palm Springs Trailer Trash

Fleeing the bicyclists versus suburban motorists war in San Francisco, we flew to Palm Springs for some peace and quiet.



There are ten units in The Four Seasons, a pretty little complex one block away from the San Jacinto Mountains, where my partner Tony (above) bought a one-bedroom condo last summer. The place is pretty evenly divided between those who rent out their places to visitors and those who live in their apartments year-round.



The vast majority of people living here and staying as guests are charming and the communal living arrangement seems to work well, except when it doesn't. This winter, a right-wing couple from Southern Oregon rented out one of the units for three months, and have been acting as if they own the entire place. It was when they invited another couple from Oregon to join them for the month of April that tensions finally boiled over, because their friends arrived in a monster honking recreational vehicle which they proceeded to park under the 51 palm trees in the front yard, blocking everyone's view.



"We pay a lot of money to live in a beautiful place with a beautiful view," the association President explained to them, "and we're proud of it. Now please move that hunk of metal somewhere else because we're sick of looking at it." Call me elitist, but it was a proud moment standing in solidarity with my fellow owner, and after threats that "there would be consequences," they moved the ugly heap to the street around the corner. Now, if we could just figure out how to keep self-righteous Redwood City mothers in their SUVs from ever leaving the suburbs, the world would be an even more beautiful place.

Palm Desert Street Fair

In the upscale desert town of Palm Desert, there is a "Street Fair" every weekend held in the parking lot of the College of the Desert that is simply huge.



You can buy just about anything from the many booths, including hippy-dippy batik images along with the Mexican flag, which is not a bad summary of the Coachella Valley, really.



Thousands of people ambled around the warren of booths...



...looking for everything from "Screaming Farm Animals" to Hebrew National Hot Dogs.



There was lots of bad art among the merchandise, including austere black-and-white photoscapes in which nobody seemed to be interested that were being sold by the grumpy young man above.



Most of the vendors seemed to be having a wonderful time, such as the kid in the sunglasses booth above.



One of the sweetest scenes was an elderly gentleman polishing the shoes of an elderly woman with his Amazing Shoe Cleaner.



People watching was high on the menu for everyone...



...especially with odd characters like the billy goat old man above wandering around.



Our driving hosts for the morning were Lesley, the Tour de Palm Springs lady, who insisted on bargaining for luggage at her favorite booth "run by An Arab"...



...while her husband Warren, the Canadian brake and muffler tycoon, was dragged along.



I only wish San Francisco hosted an event half as charming.