Non-Vanishing Phoenix


I finally got to meet with the author of the book "Vanishing Phoenix", Rob Melikian, yesterday, and I have to admit that it was kind of a relief to find that since he wrote that book, years ago, he's changing his point of view a bit.

I'm not writing a book, I'm just collecting photos and information, and I guess the title of what I'm doing would be something like "Yeah, it's still there". Because I'm discovering a lot of "Non-Vanished Phoenix" - you just have to look for it. And more and more people are doing that, which makes me happy.

For years and years I've heard people say, "too bad it's gone" to which I say, "No, it's not, it's still there." There are thousands of historic buildings in Phoenix. Take a look at this list of the Phoenix Historic Property Register, and those are the buildings that are just on this list. You can see a LOT more, just by looking.

I'm not selling anything, I just love Phoenix. And when I hear people say that "it's all gone", I cringe. Because it sounds to me as if they were giving up, that they might as well accept the fact that historic Phoenix has vanished. But it hasn't.

Rob's new book, which he wrote along with Paul Scharbach, is exactly the kind of stuff I like to see. I call it "Then and now", they call it "Past and Present". Personally, I'm not a coffee-table book person, I prefer to see stuff IRL (In Real Life) or on my computer. I have a huge collection of old photos of Phoenix, which I post on a Facebook page called Phoenix, Arizona Historical Images, and whenever I get the chance to go roam around Phoenix I look for "now" stuff to go with my "then" photos. If you see someone standing on a street corner squinting at their phone, and taking a bunch of pictures and hoping that traffic will get out of the way, it's me.

Rob and Paul's book "Phoenix Past and Present" is available on Amazon, and here's the link https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Past-Present-Paul-Scharbach/dp/0692796436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492784071&sr=8-1&keywords=phoenix+past+and+present No, I'm not being paid to say this, and I'm not getting a kickback. What I am getting is the good feeling that more and more people haven't given up on historical Phoenix, because, really, it hasn't vanished.

Thank you to my patrons on Patreon who help support History Adventuring! If you like these blog posts, and would like to make suggestions for future ones, please go to patreon.com/Phoenix HistoryAdventuring where you can show your support for as little as $1 a month. Thank you!

What Patreon is http://bradhallart.blogspot.com/2016/03/supporting-creators-on-web-with-patreon.html

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