Wearing matching his-and-hers nightwear from Rhodes in old-time Phoenix


When I stumbled on this billboard, which is on the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions), I immediately thought of my top history adventurer, who has a particular horror of matching his-and-hers outfits. I really have no idea what he wears on a daily basis, but my best guess is that it's very casual, the way that I used to see the millionaires at the classic cars shows would dress - no need to impress anyone, and they would write checks for a million bucks to buy a car.


Speaking for myself, while I've never had any objections to following the suggestions of the Women in My Life, I've been fortunate that I've never even been asked to wear matching his-and-hers outfits. The Women in my life have understood that I'm a Man, not a Ken Doll.

Anyway, my point here is that I emailed this to my friend as a joke, instead of asking him to help identify the exact location, which he does for me. And to my surprise, he did identify the exact location, which of course is Phoenix, and it's at 16th Street and Highland. I'll see if I can explain his methods. I've tried to apply what he does, but I'm a bumbling Watson to his Holmes, so the best I can do is to try to narrate.

The first thing that he does is go look at vintage maps, presumably with a hunch as to location. It looks like this:

1969 aerial of Phoenix, Arizona


And if you look very, very careful at the lower right edge of the photo, you can see this:


And then the final piece of the puzzle is the number one, which you can just barely see on the Highland sign. And here I quote: "The number 1 would be the first of four numbers - 1600.  If it was 7th Street that number would be a 7, if it was 24th St., that number would be a 2, etc.  It can only be 16th St." My friend has never said, "You know my methods, apply them!", because he seems to know that I can't even come close to thinking like that.

Anyway, I've saved the file with the description, location, and date (which I estimate to be early 1970s), and I'm left to ponder his-and-hers matching sleepwear from Rhodes, which was at 18th Street and Camelback, and also at Metrocenter (although I have no memory of it).

As far as I can tell, the owl is either impressed by the detective work, or displeased by the matching his-and-hers sleepwear. The world may never know!




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