There are construction cranes all over Palm Springs these days, and the most alarming is the new shopping mall development by John Wessman on Palm Canyon Drive which is looking nothing like the original plans submitted to the voters four years ago. The two-term Palm Springs mayor, a handsome gay realtor named Steve Pougnet, was an honest broker for years in balancing development and preservation in the small city of 40,000, but he got greedy and began accepting "consulting contracts" in the six figures for unspecified services with more than one developer.
This was exposed by an investigative journalism series in the local paper, The Desert Sun, and eventually the FBI arrived in September and hauled away files from City Hall. Unlike San Francisco, where that kind of behavior is considered business as usual and the San Francisco Chronicle ignores institutionalized municipal corruption, Palm Springs voters recently booted out the old slate and elected a new mayor, Rob Moon above right, posing with my friend Cory Dingle.
We walked down Palm Canyon to the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Francis Stevens Park last Thursday, passing under banners created by local schoolkids who have an annual competition for the honor of having their painted signage flying over the main drag all December.
We also saw evidence of other holiday traditions, as evidenced by the Menorah bolted to the roof of the car.
At the tree lighting, there was a Palm Springs High School madrigal group singing carols...
...delicious cookies, and not-so-hot chocolate.
There are usually a bizarre selection of local celebrities in attendance, and this year it was (left to right) Palm Springs Councilwoman Ginny Foat with poodle who lost the recent mayoral election even though she was the clear favorite in money and name recognition, supermodel/actress/businesswoman Beverly Johnson, TV's Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner, Mayor Moon, and Linda Gray from the old Dallas TV show edging out of the frame.
Unusual for Hollywood and Palm Springs, the 66-year-old Bionic Woman Wagner looked like she was aging fairly naturally and well.
At the Palm Springs City Council meeting the night before, disgraced outgoing Mayor Steve Pougnet made a few remarks and then it was time for public comment. The final speaker was Frank Tysen, a small hotelier who was a onetime ally of the mayor and then an adamant critic. "You threw it all away, Steve, a promising career, political allies, the trust of this town." Let's see if the new regime can alter some of the recent dumb development deals that are already in place.
At the corner of Palm Canyon Drive and Baristo in downtown Palm Springs, a Midcentury Modern classic by architect E. Stewart Williams was built in 1960 for Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan. By the 21st century, it was a decaying mess that housed the offices of local real estate developer John Wessman who is now defacing another section of Palm Canyon Drive with a taxpayer-funded hotel and shopping mall complex.
Wessman's original plans for the historic building was to surround it with multi-story condos, which the Planning Commission and preservationists managed to prevent. About four years ago, the Palm Springs Art Museum bought the building and raised close to $4 million for its restoration as an Architecture and Design Center annex to the larger museum three blocks away.
The Center opened last year, and the place looks tremendous.
Currently on view is an exhibit called Seeing the Light: Illuminating Objects featuring "reflective, translucent, or highly polished" art works.
You are greeted at the door by Hess Light Bulb, a large prop from theater-opera director Robert Wilson's 1979 stagework Death, Destruction, and Detroit I.
Inventor Buckminster Fuller, another multi-hyphenate lionized in the 1970s, was represented by and his 1976 metallic Complex of Jitterbugs.
There was a section of the exhibit dedicated to powerful women's work, including Angela Ellsworth's Seer Bonnet XVIII (Ruth) from 2011. Ellsworth is a Church of Latter Day Saints apostate who is a descendent of Lorenzo Snow, the fifth Prophet of the Mormon Church.
Lorenzo had nine wives, and Ellsworth has created a series of sunbonnets representing all of them. The materials for Ruth are fabric, steel, wood, and 31,863 pearl corsage pins. It's outrageously beautiful and horrifying simultaneously.
Hanging hearby is Pat Lasch's 2006 A Couple's Prayer (from the Prayer Cloth Series), a series of gold leaf squares on netting backed by heavy Arches paper with Buddhist prayers sealed inside, meditating on her recently deceased parents.
The only walls in the exhibit are two panels displaying Jim Isermann's metallic decals.
The Center just announced that admission will be free every day for the next two years thanks to an anonymous donor. So if you are in Palm Springs, check it out, and maybe you will be greeted by one of the sweet museum "ambassadors" like Betsy above, who looked smashing in front of the fabulous blinds.
After one of the smallest, most charming Thanksgivings ever at my friend Heidi's house in Santa Barbara, we went for a walk on Hendry's Beach.
It's a pretty little strand that extends below the bluffs of Hope Ranch, one of the wealthy enclaves in town.
Among other topics, Heidi and I talked about Hell, both Dante's version in The Divine Comedy, and the ten Hells of Tibetan Buddhist belief.
From her description of the Buddhist version, they sounded surprisingly similar.
There were plenty of other post-Thanksgiving walkers, and we found ourselves laughing at a group that looked so perfect and color coordinated that it was like a living Benetton ad.
The sunset had everyone whipping out their phones to take shots of the sky...
...like some Neo Sun Worship cult.
My sweet host for the weekend was 85-year-old, retired UC Santa Barbara professor Jack Murray, who gave me a personal graduate seminar on How to Age Perfectly.
The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner from Santa Barbara to Ventura, with the Channel Islands looming on the horizon...
...was California at its most picture postcard.
The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train has become an indispensable commuting and travel connection between California coastal communities from San Luis Obispo in the north to San Diego in the south.
One of the most spectacularly beautiful stretches hugs the coastline at Point Conception, the jutting western body of land that effectively divides the Central Coast and Southern California into separate climate zones.
Vandenberg Air Force Base also sits on the peninsula, complete with nuclear missiles looking like relics from Bridge of Spies littering the landscape.
The military presence may be an unintended blessing because without the base the land would probably have been developed long ago.
The same is true for the U.S. Marines Base in Oceanside, the last beach between Orange and San Diego Counties that hasn't been built on.
Just about the only way you can observe the Point Conception coastline is to ride the Pacific Surfliner, reason alone to buy a ticket.
The day before Thanksgiving happened to be especially gorgeous after a quick overnight rain offered a gulp to drought-thirsty landscapes.
There was also unintentional humor in a string of announcements over the loudspeaker by Jack, the Cafe host/bartender, who was hyperventilating because the train was going to be TOTALLY FULL soon when we arrived in Goleta and Santa Barbara, and we were not to sit too long at the cafe tables because there were going to be so many people, and how he needed to take a 15-minute break just to get ready for it all.
The ride was mostly populated with Cal Poly students returning home to families in Southern California from San Luis Obispo, and they were soon joined by what looked to be the entire student body of UC Santa Barbara at the tiny Goleta station. It was fun, but I am not sure Jack survived.
