History Adventuring

As of this writing, Fall of 2016, you can't take a "Bullet Train" from Phoenix to Los Angeles. But I know that it will happen, so I'm planning ahead. I live in Phoenix, and I love visiting LA, but it's miserable getting there. I've driven it (which is boring and awful), and nowadays I fly (and dealing with airports is miserable and awful). And while the future of high speed transportation when I was a kid was in the air, now it's on the ground. If you've ever flown on a commercial plane from Phoenix to Los Angeles, you know that you barely have time to eat those delicious honey-roasted peanuts before you hear the pilot saying "We're about to land..." So the time time in the air is short, but the time at the airport is ridiculously long. And that's because it's an old, antiquated, adapted system that took into account the convenience of airplanes, but forgot all about how people move. You have to arrive at an airport an hour...

I rode the Sky Train at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix yesterday. No, I didn't need to fly anywhere, I just wanted to ride on the Sky Train. It's free, it's fun, and it has the greatest views of my favorite city that I've ever seen. And if you want the sense that Phoenix has finally arrived in the 21st Century, go see the Sky Train. It's amazing. The Sky Train has been in operation since 2013, but everything is so new and squeaky-clean that it looks like something from a science fiction movie. The main station, which is just south of Washington on 42nd Street, is where cars and busses pick up and drop off people, and it connects with a "people mover" which is right on 44th Street and Washington, which is just a few steps from the Light Rail. And it's all about steps. If you're like me, and think mostly of cars, and parking, and stuff like that, it takes a completely different way of thinking. Walk with me. Interior space of the Sky Train ...

My memories of living in Los Angeles in the 1980s are hazy, especially going to the beach, but I must have visited Venice, because I remember the murals. Yeah, I know that Venice has a lot of murals, but the ones that I'm talking about were glimpses into the past. They were paintings of what the artist was looking at at the time, and all you had to do to time-travel was to look at the mural, and then turn around. I really have no idea if any of those old murals have survived, and my ten-minute research on Google images has proved inconclusive. I can't imagine that any of them are still there - they were decades old when I saw them, back in the 1980s. When the artists painted those murals, they were painting the most ordinary stuff they could see - literally what was right in front of them. And over the years those ordinary images became extraordinary. And I believe that the ordinary photos that people are taking right now, and posting on Instagram or Facebook, will bec...

When I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, there was the continuous sound of car alarms. Whether they were off in the distance, or nearby, it was 24/7. It never, ever, stopped. Never, ever. Day and night. When I tell people about the continuous sound of car alarms, they usually imagine that it's a disturbing sound, but it wasn't. It was like the sound of a river that's always flowing, or the sound of waves crashing, or the sound of traffic that stays steady. You hear it at first, you get used to it, then you don't hear it anymore. Of course, if a car alarm went off in the parking lot of my apartment complex, it would get your attention. Nowadays car alarms stop automatically after a few minutes, but that wasn't the case in the 1980s. I have a distinct memory of standing around with the crowd of people at about three am, looking at a van which had been blaring for hours. Even the police couldn't do anything. We all stood there staring at it. We couldn't...

Although I'm a stickler for facts, I'm inclined to often use the phrase "I know what you mean". That is, I'm not going to argue small details of syntax. So if you describe someone as being a Native American, I know what you mean - it's a person who is descended from the tribes of people who lived in America before the arrival of Columbus. But in reality, the definition of being a native just means that a person was born somewhere. I'm a native American, because I was born in America. In Minneapolis, to be precise. If I had been born in Italy, I'd be a native Italian. That's really what the word "native" means. And that's just one of the problems with the word "native". It also carries some historically-unflattering connotations, which as "going native" or "the natives are friendly". OK, I'll stop now, you see what I mean. So while Native American is OK, Indigenous Peoples is much more dignifi...

I live in suburban Phoenix, in a neighborhood built in the 1980s designed around cars. Yes, there are sidewalks, but they're an afterthought. I've seen people try to walk on them, and they just look kinda sad. I see children walking, and riding bikes, even people in wheelchairs in my neighborhood but it just looks like they're hugging the edge of a freeway. This is a car neighborhood. But Phoenix is about to change - cars are on their way out, much to the dismay of the old-timers. Like a lot of men my age, I have a fascination with cars. I describe my life based on the cars I've owned. I've spent a lot of time driving them, a lot of money repairing them. I read Road & Track and Car & Driver. In fact, I bought the house that I'm in mostly because I wanted a garage for my car. Like most of the houses around here, the garage is the most prominent feature. There's a driveway, a garage door, and back there, somewhere, is a house. There's no f...

I don't have a photo of Ichabod. I don't suppose anyone thought that it was worthwhile to take a photo of an old tree in downtown Phoenix in 1929. And of course it had to go, as progress was marching forward, and Phoenix was booming. But people remember. Ichabad was an old eucalyptus tree behind the Occidental Boarding House. The Occidental was just across the alley from the Heard Building, which is still there, between Adams and Monroe on Central. In  Uncle Billy Reminisces: The Story Of A Newspaper by J. W. Spear, the alley is described as "Our Alley". It's also been called Melinda's Alley and Adams Alley. And although alleys nowadays are places for garbage bins, in old-time Phoenix, they were places where people lived, and walked. When the Craig Building, which is still there, was built in 1929, the old Occidental, and Ichabod, had to go. And the alley became what we think of as an alley nowadays, a place where people go only for maintenance of...

If you're a fan of Jan and Dean, you may remember their 1960s song called "Surf City". It's a catchy tune, and the refrain includes the phrase "two girls for every boy", which indicated how wonderful Surf City was to them. The song was written by Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys. Brian lived in the Los Angeles area, and aside from the cheerfulness of the song, there's a sinister note that for girls interested in romance, they were going to have a lot of competition. Good for the boys, not so good for the girls! I moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s, and it was still Surf City. You know, two girls for every boy, probably even more. And from what I understand, this imbalance remains to this day. For a young man in Los Angeles, of course, this was wonderful for me. Like the song says, "All you gotta do is wink your eye!" Of course, for the women who who looking to find a good man, the pickings were kinda slim. Before I met my girlfriend, I...

My interest in the history of Phoenix, Arizona has lately got me thinking about prostitutes. And since a city is made up of all of the people who live there, to fully understand Phoenix, you have to include these people. Recently, while out history adventuring with a friend of mine, as we drove along looking at historic buildings, I saw someone who looked like a prostitute. Now waitaminute, I'm not saying that she was, but her clothing wasn't exactly typical for a young woman walking around Phoenix. I'm no expert on women's fashions in the 21st Century, but everything from her vinyl-looking miniskirt to a tube top that probably should have been several sizes larger, seemed to express "prostitute". As respectable middle-aged guys, of course, we turned our eyes away. Then I looked again. I wondered how old she was? Maybe 20s, maybe 30s? And then I thought that she's someone's daughter, someone who lives in Phoenix, someone who works there. There...

Like most people, I have no idea what Daylight Saving Time is all about, and what it's for. But I have a special reason for my ignorance - I live in Arizona. Arizona doesn't do Daylight Saving Time. Well, it's used on the Navajo Res I just read, but otherwise here in Phoenix it's always Mountain Standard Time, spring, summer, winter, or fall. And I just take it for granted, among all of the other things I love about living in Arizona. I assumed that Arizona just never "got with the program", and was surprised to find that it actually tried it, back in the 1960s. I have a neighbor who remembers it. Apparently it was tried for a couple of years, and failed miserably. The reason has to do with the fact that it's very hot in Phoenix. There's no need to add additional hours of sunlight in order to conserve energy, which would just be lightbulbs, anyway. Sunlight in Phoenix means that air conditioners are working their hardest. And if you know the S...