Rogue Columnist

'Ich bin ein Kook'

One must wonder what Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's main constituency thinks about her junket to SOCIALIST Europe, to Germany and to France, whose new president is nominally a SOCIALIST. One must wonder what the Germans and French think of Brewer, the head of an American state that continues to up the bar not just on craziness (See Bennett, Ken) but violent craziness. Gun deaths in Arizona now exceed automobile fatalities. The extremism was loud enough to call for a New York Times essay from Timothy Egan: "We interrupt reality to bring you Arizona..."

According to the newspapers, Brewer's trade mission "includes leaders of the Arizona Commerce Authority and Arizona Office of Tourism." Just who these mammals are — as in, name names — is unclear. (The Republic's Yvonne Wingett Sanchez got at least a partial list of the entourage, but the governor's office declined to give the budget). The purpose of the trip is also murky. Stories mention that the EU imported $770 million in Arizona products in 2011. Germany is the state's sixth-largest trade partner, France No. 10. These are meaningless numbers because Arizona exports are distorted by the huge footprint of Intel semiconductors and, to a lesser degree, Boeing and Raytheon defense products. Arizona is not a conscious player in the export world.

As for tourism — forget it. Germans who want American sun go to Miami. Unless the state could lure or underwrite direct flights to Germany and France, it will never be a big player in this field.

Upping the crazy stakes

Your humble columnist at this "comparatively low-traffic site" is back from a week in Phoenix. I must admit 60 degrees in Seattle is more pleasant than the 108 degrees when I flew out of Sky Harbor — including that big, twisty scream-inducing bump on the 737 as we tried to climb out of the heat.

I spent most of my time in tolerant, diverse central Phoenix. But outside that bubble, the forces of Peak Crazy kept trying to extract ever more madness. Secretary of State Ken Bennett kept Arizona as a national laughing stock (at least among the "liberal elites," read sane people) by pledging to make Hawaii come clean about the president's birth certificate. The Washington Post, read by people who make decisions about deploying capital and quality assets, thought Arizona's witlessness worthy of an editorial. Hawaii, a state for those of you who were home-schooled in the East Valley, turned the tables and is forcing Bennett to prove his bona fides to even ask. The mockery of Arizona's No. 2 elected official continues. But this did not prevent Sheriff Arpaio — who should be in jail — from sending a "threats unit" deputy to investigate in the Aloha State — something to please the "Valley" blue-hairs who vote. Where is Steve McGarrett when we need him? Bennett's antics are more than an embarrassment, more than pandering. He is the official who will preside over the elections. The secretary of state should not be a partisan office (but Jan Brewer used it just that way in 2004, also chairing the Bush re-election campaign in Arizona).

The "information center" has run off the majority of its best, most experienced journalists. One still there is Dennis Wagner, who reported what should be a national blockbuster on Sunday about the Pinal County Sheriff's Office stockpiling surplus military equipment and selling it off to private parties. This is no Babeu boo-boo, but a story that raises troubling questions about how the Military Industrial Complex is infiltrating law enforcement, with the added and sadly typical Arizona corruption thrown in.

Climate, trains, downtown

Historically, May was when the temperature in Phoenix crept up to 100. Almost all week, it's been around 105 for the high. "Climate change is a hoax," as they say. The past 12 months were the warmest ever recorded, yet there is no debate, no discussion, least of all in a city likely to be heavily affected, Two days of hot wind cleared out the smoke from the wildfires, leaving only the usual smog. Better than nothing. At a book signing Tuesday night at the Arizona Biltmore, several people came up to say how much they depend on Rogue Columnist to speak truth to power, reality to the Kookocracy. It's something for me to keep in mind if some think I am just shouting the same old stuff with tiresome certitude.

Light rail seems to be doing well every time I ride it — and I depend on it (WBIYB). I can't speak for the line from Camelback to Chris Town, but otherwise it's packed-to-busy. It's curious at stations to see signs that identify trains going to Tempe and Mesa, or 19th and Montebello, but never downtown Phoenix. If you get on light rail at the Sky Harbor stop, you'd never know which way was the city center. Not smart. Tempe is trying to build a streetcar — a good sign. Otherwise, transit policy is a hash. Buses have been gutted (Your Tax Cuts at Work).

I'm not sure I understand the so-called West Link line. Is it really intended to go to Tolleson? If so, this shows how the region still doesn't get rail. Heavy commuter rail should be a priority to all the outlying suburbs, with a hub at Union Station, where passengers could connect with buses and eventually a light-rail spur as was done in San Jose. Commuter trains would provide fast service to Glendale, Peoria, Tolleson, Goodyear, Buckeye, Chandler, Gilbert, etc. The rail right-of-way is there and would require public money to expand capacity, as well as negotiations with the private railroads. But this has been done successfully around the country.

'Rebound'

A recent story in the Arizona Republic inspired a good deal of commentary on the thread of the last post. I'm going to hang it out there, make a few comments and let you go to town (or suburb). It starts, "The rebound of metro Phoenix's new-home market continues to build." Then:

New-home permits were up 61 percent in the region during March, according to the latest Phoenix Housing Market Letter. The increase is more staggering than the actual numbers, but still it signals "evidence of a new-housing rebound," according the report's publishers, RL Brown and Greg Burger. In March, there were 1,036 single-family permits issued. It was the first month in a while in which home-building permits topped 1,000.

Last year in March, there were 645 single-family permits issued across the Phoenix area. Overall, homebuilding -- one of the region's biggest economic drivers -- was up 74 percent during the first quarter of this year compared with 2011. Here's an even more positive number for the new-home market: Builders reported a spec inventory of only 383 houses during the first part of April.

Tucson drifts

What's the biggest danger facing Arizona's second city? According to Roger Yohem, writing in Inside Tucson Business, it is that the Old Pueblo will become Portland-ized:

Many of Portland’s traits infatuate Tucson’s bureaucrat copycats. To start with the obvious, Portland has a modern streetcar system that serves downtown. The real cost of Portland’s trolleys, infrastructure and tracks can be hard to gauge since much of it was taxpayer subsidized through government grants and tax gimmicks. But based on various public records, the consensus puts the initial cost at $25 million per mile. For $200 million, Tucson’s streetcar system will cost $50 million per mile. When subsidized by taxpayers, perhaps every city is entitled to pricey public transit.

I have no idea who this mammal is, but he perfectly encapsulates the retrograde ignorance that holds Arizona back. And he is an example of the endless streetcar hysteria that has enveloped the city since it began work on a (sit down, now) 3.9-mile line scheduled to open in 2013. Oh, the socialism! The Islamo-fascist-madness!

Phoenix 101: Ambulance days

The author, left, and partner Russ Covert with Medic 79 at the downtown Phoenix ambulance station in the "hellish" July of 1976

In 1974, at the age of seventeen-and-a-half, I became the youngest registered emergency medical technician in Arizona. I started as a dispatcher at Kord's Ambulance, which had the distinction of being owned by a relative of Linda Ronstadt. Soon, however, I was gravitating to the Kord's operation in Scottsdale, where my Coronado High friend Marc Terrill was working. There, under the leadership of the legendary Chuck West, the company had established the first advanced life support unit in the Southwest. It was a sea change from the throw-and-go days of ambulance drivers. This ambulance was equipped with IVs, EKG, telemetry, defibrillator, intubation gear, drugs — all the things seen on a modern rescue rig. An RN accompanied the two EMTs, who were trained as true paramedics in a program at the old Scottsdale Memorial Hospital under Dr. Bert McDowell.

From riding along and attending classes on my days off, I wrangled a transfer to Scottsdale in the fall. I was one of "Chuck's boys" (there were two female medics, too, a major breakthrough). The ambulance itself was revolutionary: Life-saving treatments could be begun at the scene. My early time was very difficult. The old guard was dominated by former combat medics who had served in Vietnam: Men who had performed surgery after rappelling into hot landing zones and no doubt they were PTSD'd to the moon. Unlike today, they had no use for the young person in their midst. They were tough, demanding, unmindful of, and quite contemptuous of, what is now called "my self-esteem." So I had to earn it. I learned more from them in a short period of time than I ever have in my life. From not even being sure of hearing a blood pressure while the siren was wailing, I learned to start IVs, intubate, triage, do CPR right, everything. I finally merited their respect. It remains one of the most thrilling accomplishments of my life, and makes me feel sad for young people today who are tossed into over-their-head jobs because they are cheap and never given proper seasoning or mentoring, whether rough or gentle.

They taught me a useful phrase and behavior from 'Nam that has served me well: Run frosty.

Stanton in the Valley

I want to expand on comments I made to Steve Goldstein's Here and Now on KJZZ Wednesday about Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton making a trip to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area to recruit businesses.

Foremost, this is a great start, something I've been advocating for more than a decade. The future to diversifying the Phoenix economy lies in California and Asia, not in Dubai. That the trip is so public is a bit puzzling; real success will come from years of quietly cultivating contacts. Phoenix needs to open offices in Southern and Northern California to recruit companies. I was also disheartened that Barry Broome of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council invited himself along. GPEC must please the suburbs at least as much as the city, and given the preference of the leasing boyz for suburbia, the organization is incapable of addressing the city's needs, particularly for jobs and capital investment in the central city.

Now, a reality check. Phoenix is not going to attract headquarters from Silicon Valley. You can't touch a fixer-up cottage in Palo Alto for less than $1.5 million and it doesn't make the economy skip a step. Workers would rather commute from Modesto than move to Chandler. This is the world's foremost technology cluster, and it happened because of all the things Phoenix lacks: World-class universities, trillions of dollars in government investment, an exceptionally high number of college graduates, attracting vast amounts of capital and a large entrepreneurial class focused on anything but real estate. It has a real downtown, in San Francisco. It is diverse and tolerant. There is no Santa Clara County Sheriff Joe. A real cluster is not a couple of semiconductor fabs in the suburbs. Phoenix can no more be "a mini-Silicon Valley" than the downtown Phoenix Public Market, and I love it, can be a mini-Pike Place Market. Cisco is not going to move from the Valley to "the Valley."

Cruel and usual

We know Amnesty International as an organization known for spotlighting human rights abuses in Third World places. You know, places such as Sudan, Syria and Arizona. A new report criticizes the state's prison system for conditions that "fall below international standards for humane treatment." Among the findings:

More than 2,900 prisoners are held in Arizona’s highest security maximum custody facilities, the majority in the SMUs at ASPC-Eyman. Most are confined alone in windowless cells for 22 to 24 hours a day in conditions of reduced sensory stimulation, with little access to natural light and no work, educational or rehabilitation programs. Prisoners exercise alone in small, enclosed yards and, apart from a minority who have a cell-mate, have no association with other prisoners. Many prisoners spend years in such conditions; some serve out their sentences in solitary confinement before being released directly into the community.

Among those held in these conditions are the mentally ill and children as young as 14. State officials refused to meet with Amnesty International representatives. Although the Arizona Republic carried a story, it will soon be forgotten. Newspapers don't crusade any more, which would require day after day of stories that dig into the conditions, the human pain and who is responsible. Anyway, who really cares about these people? As my character Sheriff Peralta says to the bleeding heart Mapstone, "The thing about the criminal justice system is that it's full of criminals." Out at the mega-churches and the stakes of Arizona, one is taught that Baby Jesus is there for the prosperous and the members of your tribe. Not, say, thieves hanging on crosses.

Michael Crow

When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University in July 2002, the watch began almost immediately: How quickly would he use ASU as a springboard to a bigger and better job? It hasn't happened. Crow said he had a ten-year plan for "the new American university" and he has been as good as his word. Crow was one of the three people that progressive Arizonans vested their faith in during those hopeful years. Janet Napolitano played defense against the Kookocracy, but abandoned the governor's office to become President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security with little left behind as a legacy. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon suffered a lost weekend of a second term, badly downgrading any assessment of the man in full. I always thought it was a sign of Arizona's unhealthy lack of private-sector stewards that all three stars were on the public payroll, but such was the case. Only Crow, to many the least likely, stuck and kept faith.

Crow was dealt a bad hand, if a very good salary: The Legislature had been cutting general-fund appropriations to the universities since the 1980s and was virulently anti-education. The state constitution mandated that ASU, especially, take virtually every qualified in-state student without giving it the means to pay for this obligation. The university had grown into a gargantuan thing. It had few friends at the capitol as opposed to, say, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Yet even Crow's critics must admit he played this hand masterfully. It wasn't long after his arrival that the UofA, which always considered itself "the university," was enviously muttering, "We wish we had a Michael Crow."

The vision of a New American University was buttressed around finding new revenue. I learned this early, when Crow asked me how ASU could be of more help in illuminating the economy. I sent him a list of some 30 indicators that were not tracked in the echo chamber of population growth and construction permits. This ended up in the economics department where the mandate was to produce it, and find a way to sell it.

Ethnik studees

Jon Stewart did a priceless takedown Monday of the Kookocracy's war against the Mexican-American ethnic studies program in Tucson. Al Madrigal went to the Old Pueblo, where school board member Michael Hicks (happily? cluelessly?) sat down for an interview with the world's most famous parody/news show. He talked about his concern with "a lot of the radical ideas" of the program.

Had Hicks attended a class? "Why even go, why even go?" this GOPer from central casting said. "I base my thoughts on hearsay from others..." Yes, this is more of Arizona earning publicity one can't buy, further cementing the Crazy State's reputation. But it's also important to know that the Kooks succeeded. The ethnic studies program is gone — Tucson was under threat of a $15 million penalty from the state — although one for African-Americans continues.

The Kooks would have more standing if the Arizona they have now run for years didn't consistently rank at or near the bottom in per-student funding (and it's not Utah, with a homogeneous, heavily LDS population). That funding keeps declining. Education Week's Quality Counts survey ranked Arizona 8th from the worst nationwide in a variety of measures. All this has happened on their watch. Their solution is to get one of their many shills to explain it away. Nor has the state's "achievement" in being a leader in charter schools made things better. Quite the contrary, although public money has been used to privatize profits for the politically connected charter racket. The biggest victims: Hispanic students in ignored, under-funded districts.

State of extremism

Arizona may not be competitive in much — cheap housing and hot weather come to mind. But it seems determined to "out-crazy" other states in its rock-ribbed, doubled-down reactionary politics. Almost every day comes a story that speaks to the core concerns of today's right wing. For example, Joe Arpaio, High Sheriff for Life, is "investigating" the "fraud" of President Obama's birth certificate, claiming it is a cover-up "ten times worse than Watergate." Can Arizonans hear America laughing?

Other issues are not so funny. The assassination attempt on Rep, Gabrielle Giffords, inspired by the climate of hate, remains a huge stain. The Legislature long ago went from, let us say, liberalizing the laws affecting firearms to encouraging situations where firearm violence is inevitable. Salon, internationally read, has begun an entire archive devoted to Arizona and the entries are not sunny! Scottsdale! or championship golf! Among the headlines: "How Breitbart and Arizona seized on 'critical race theory' " and  "Arizona's vicious war on workers." The New York Times specifically established a Phoenix bureau to cover Arizona crazy when the anti-immigrant, Jim Crow, voter-suppression SB 1070 debate was emerging. From Daily Kos : "Arizona out-crazies other contraception bills. Use birth control, get fired." Talking Points Memo reports on the violent neo-Nazi groups congregating in the state.

This is not an image problem. It is a reality problem, no matter the many Arizonans who are not crazy or extreme. In a state that already ranks so low on virtually any measure of social or economic well-being, it is a bright red "DO NOT COME HERE" alert, whether to companies deciding where to make quality investments or talented, educated people choosing their home.

Green shoots in the desert?

Some old timers still blame a December 1988 Barron's article ("Phoenix Descending") for the collapse of the city's real-estate boom. This is fantasy, of course: The market caved in on its own, pulled down by too many hustles, too much overbuilding and the savings and loan scandal driven by local steward Charles H Keating and his pet senators. Now Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones has tried to make amends with a Wall Street Journal story about Phoenix's "nascent real-estate rebound." Indeed, it "holds lessons for the rest of the country." Another fantasy?

The Journal continues:

Phoenix has found a viable formula. Low prices are igniting demand from first-time buyers and investors who are converting the homes to rentals. The local economy is on the upswing with several big employers like Amazon.com Inc. and Intel Corp. hiring again, which is further increasing demand for housing. And the region is benefiting from a surge of buyers from Canada who are using their favorable exchange rate to scoop up bargains in the desert.

Could this be true? Has long-suffering Phoenix "found a bottom" and is beginning a rebound? As Zhou Enlai may have said when asked about the significance of the French Revolution: It is too soon to say. What it means about the metropolitan area's real competitiveness and future is murkier still.

Mesa rising?

Something is happening in Mesa. Light rail is being extended three miles along Main Street from Sycamore to Mesa Drive, reaching downtown and putting it within walking distance, on a decent day, of the Arizona Temple. A brewery is coming to Main Street. Pioneer Park might get a botanical garden, pushed by a citizens committee that also proposes extending light-rail to Gateway airport. (Building an inspiring city hall would be nice, too). Officials brought in 50 developers to show off potential downtown sites. Council members actually expressed hesitation about some senior housing projects, worried they would get in the way of efforts to attract market-rate, transit-oriented residential development downtown.

The "city with wide streets and narrow minds" is actually attracting higher education: the A.T. Still University branch offers osteopathic medicine, dentistry and health care; Benedictine University is expected to open a campus downtown. This is on top of the downtown branch of Mesa Community College and ASU Polytechnic. When metro Phoenix saw itself in the running for a new Apple campus, which not surprisingly went to Austin instead, it's no secret the company was looking most at Mesa. The Mesa Arts Center has stopped trying to compete with Phoenix and is doing well with, among other things, community festivals.

Could this be Mesa, Arizona? A city more populous than Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc. with nothing to show for it? Something seems to have changed.

Phoenix 101: Pinal County

Dorothea Lange captures Coolidge on cotton harvest day, during the Depression.

Pinal County is known for many things, mostly appalling. It's ground zero of the central Arizona real-estate debacle, a "bedroom community" to Phoenix with cheap, shoddy tract houses and miserable commutes, the place whose lack of planning or sense of decency allowed subdivisions to profane one of the most glorious mountains in the West. This lack of any respect extends to consenting to a Super Wal-Mart right next to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. Pinal boasts one of the ugliest drives in America, on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson.

And, of course, it is where Paul Babeu, for now, is sheriff. Babeu is disgraced, not because of his department's racial profiling, whoppers about beheadings, anti-immigrant hysteria or allegations that Babeu threatened to have his Mexican ex-lover deported. No, this once rising star in the Arizona Republican Party is a human political sinkhole because he was forced to admit he's gay. Bye-bye Congress hopes, Babeu. Your homies will tolerate any infringement of civil liberties, particularly of brown people, but they will not abide "the gay."

Yet these 5,365 square miles — five times the size of Rhode Island — contain so much Arizona history. Personal history, too: I attended kindergarten in Coolidge. We lived there for a year, for reasons too complicated to deserve a detour, but ultimately coming down to Arizona's fight against California for Colorado River water — what else?

The exit interview

The urbanist Yuri Artibise left Phoenix last year, returning to Vancouver. It's part of a continuing brain drain, although to be sure such assets as ASU continue to bring in new creatives. I don't know where the tally stands, but I fear Phoenix continues to lose more than it attracts. Architect Taz Loomans recently conducted an interesting "exit interview" with Artibise. It made me realize that it's been five years since I got the first inkling that the Arizona Republic would take away my column, which would eventuate in me leaving town. So I thought I'd use Loomans' questions as a test for myself.

What do you miss most about Phoenix? My good friends. (I tried to select one "most"; for more, see my additions in the comments section).

What did Phoenix have that Seattle doesn’t? It is the repository of so much of my history, so many of my hopes. My mother and grandmother, long dead, are so alive on the streets of Willo, Roosevelt and Storey. The church where I was baptised is still going, as is my grade school, still in its inspiring, grand building, and enchanting Encanto Park. Union Station, where I spent countless hours as a child watching trains and dreaming of far-away places. The streets I worked as a paramedic, learning too much too young. The different mountain vistas that always orient me. Phoenix is the home of my heart, a place so mangled, mismanaged, raped and pillaged, but still worth fighting for. No matter how long I am gone, when I return I can drive the streets and walk the neighborhoods as if I had never left. The ghosts of the Hohokam still speak to me on winter nights when the cold wind blows from the High Country and the peculiar acoustics of the valley mingle train whistles and voices of the beloved dead.

Phoenix update

Back from a week in Phoenix, some observations:

1. The place still gives off the quality of a fallen souffle. Sure, a few projects are getting press out in some of the more affluent suburbs, but the utter collapse of four years ago still lingers. It's not for lack of trying by the Usual Suspects: Bottom has been hit, a turnaround is only (xx) years away, cheap land and sunshine will continue to be the basis of the economy, blah, blah, blah. But the old growth machine will not sputter back to life for one more run (with championship golf!). Too many crapola tract houses, too much debt, too few well-paying jobs, no speculative bubble driven by liar loans and securitized mortgages sold on a historic scale. What's Plan B? There is none.

2. A lack of seriousness pervades the state. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton tweets, "In Phoenix, we have a full commitment to sustainability: Sky Harbor Airport Dedicates Solar Power System." Space does not allow us to fully deconstruct these 104 characters, but we can make a start. Sky Harbor is a red giant of concrete and air pollution, contributing mightily to the heat island and dirty, unhealthy sky, and this is somehow redeemed by a "solar power system" that will power...the airport? No, the linked news story says it generates "enough to handle half the power needs of the rental car center, east economy parking lots and toll booths." Oh. (A real reporter might want to know if this includes generating electricity for the rental car center air conditioning, too, which seems unlikely, and how long the solar operation will have to run before it "repays" the fossil-fuel inputs it required and may still require).

Phoenix 101: The capitol

Channel 12's Brahm Resnik asked me to nominate the three most significant Arizona political events since statehood. It's a bit like wanting a cinephile to name only three favorite movies. I settled for 1) statehood, which was not a given when it happened; 2) The congressional delegation's ultimately successful decades-long pursuit of Colorado River water, and 3) SB 1070, which is a bright red marker for the hotbed of intolerance, ignorance, extremism and backwardness into which the state has descended. Other events could contend, such as Barry Goldwater's 1952 defeat of Sen. Ernest McFarland, marking the birth of the Republican Party's ascendancy.

One of the most telling political stories, however, doesn't concern politicians or elections, at least not directly. It's about the old capitol building. The copper-domed structure was actually built as the territorial capitol and completed in 1901. The architect was James Riely Gordon, who designed many court houses in Texas, as well as a grand one for Bergen County, N.J. Gordon set aside his usual Romanesque Revival style to create a territorial capitol made from native materials. It was originally intended to be much grander, but the territory cut back funding. Additions made in 1918 and 1938 preserved the Gordon design.

President Kennedy (perhaps apocryphally) quipped that it was the ugliest state capitol in America. This was certainly not true: The Alaska capitol resembles an insurance company office; the Ohio statehouse with its forever-incomplete dome defines homeliness and lack of proportion, and North Carolina's looks like the court house for a small, poor county. The only saving grace for New Mexico's building is that it is in Santa Fe. To me, the old Arizona capitol always held a certain modest grace, particularly when I was growing up and it dominated the vista at the foot of Washington Street. But it's also true, odd and perhaps telling that Montana, which still doesn't have 1 million people, has a much bigger, grander capitol. And otherwise poor, conservative states such as West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi boast majestically beautiful statehouses.

Halftime in Arizona

Note to national and international Rogue readers: As Arizona marks 100 years of statehood this month, you'll have to put up with more than the usual number of AZ- and Phoenix-centric posts.

In 1962, Arizona marked its 50th year as a state. It's a vivid memory for me, although I was but a child. I loved the commemorative seal with the cactus wren, so much more appealing than today's gaudy centennial emblem. Fifty years of statehood was a remarkable event for those still living who had witnessed statehood and lived in Arizona Territory, my grandmother among them. The state in 1962 had barely more than 1 million people, with Phoenix not yet at the half-million mark. Phoenix was becoming a big city with comforts unimagined 50 years before, especially air conditioning. Still, the frontier was close enough to touch, living history was all around and much of the state was still wilderness. Vast empty distances separated the settled areas and those were compact and clear in their purpose.

Prescott, for example, the onetime territorial capital, was an enchanting little town with appealing rough edges. None of today's sprawl existed. It had only recently lost its status as a division point on the Santa Fe Railway between Phoenix and Williams Jct. Mining and ranching were the economy. The highway up Yarnell Hill was notoriously treacherous. Flagstaff was a major railroad town, also depending on sawmills for the logging industry and Arizona State College. The Mogollon Rim was virtually uninhabited, just one of many parts of the state as wild as ever. The state highways were two lanes, taking you to rich history that wasn't across the street from a Wal-Mart. Even in Phoenix, you could see old cowboys, the real thing, living out their last years in the elegantly-designed-but-neglected old apartments that graced the neighborhood between Seventh Avenue and the capitol.

Sunny delusions

I climbed out of my funk that was half cabin fever from the rare Seattle snow (thank God, I'm downtown and not out in the suburbs) and part brain damage from the GOP debates. So far my nomination for the most under-covered Arizona story of the year goes to the abrupt resignation of Don Cardon as head of the state Commerce Authority. The Phoenix Business Journal carried the story. Then Betty Beard of the Republic wrote something more in depth:

Cardon, 51, said he believes it is a good time to leave because the commerce authority gives the state a good foundation for job recruitment, the Legislature has enacted more laws to help lure businesses and because there is improved cooperation among business and political leaders.

Cardon said he is especially pleased that the state recently attracted Silicon Valley Bank, which plans to build an operations center in Tempe, because it is a major venture-capital firm. All in all, he said, economic development efforts have come together faster than he expected.

Yet the "why" of old-school journalism remains largely unanswered.

Phoenix loses spring training

The Oakland As have accelerated negotiations begun in November with Mesa to move spring training from Phoenix Municipal Stadium to Hohokam Stadium in 2015. The Chicago Cubs, the biggest draw in the Cactus League, are leaving Hohokam for the new Riverview development at Dobson and the Loop 202 in 2014. New Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton dryly told Channel 12's Brahm Resnik that he had "inherited" the situation — (and these are my words) one of many messes left behind by the lost weekend that was Phil Gordon's second term. Stanton promised to do "anything reasonable" to keep the As, but "we have to be fiscally responsible." Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Brewers' contract at the stadium in Maryvale (to me the most pleasant spring training venue, but one that lacks the splash and comfort of north Scottsdale) expires this year and it's unclear if they will renew.

Spring training in Arizona was once a sweet, simple thing. After World War II, the then New York Giants started play at the old Municipal Stadium, while the Cleveland Indians built Hi Corbett Field in Tucson. In 1951, the Cubs came to the old Rendezvous Park Stadium in Mesa. The teams traveled by train and their arrival at Union Station was always a big event. For years, the Cactus League had eight teams (although they came and went). When I was a child, tickets were cheap, even star players were close and the atmosphere was easy-going and small town. This persists today at some spring training facilities, but it's become big business, and like much else in our society, cities are played off against each other to surrender the most tax dollars to further enrich the already rich.

The question is whether Phoenix should do much, if anything, to keep spring training in the city?

Heywood and Giffords

The suicide death of Bill Heywood and his wife, Susan, hit many long-time Phoenicians hard. This is the hour of lead, remembered if outlived, as Emily Dickinson wrote. I heard from so many friends and acquaintances, some of whom hadn't been in touch for years. The Republic did a creditable job telling the story, although it's revealing that the article was closed to comments. Revealing about our age of thugs and haters, not about the Heywoods. I only ran into him twice, long after he had been a giant in radio. But he was a friend to thousands of us, "the bright good morning voice," as Harry Chapin sings in the poignant W.O.L.D.

Long before broadcasting was consolidated, roboticized and ruled by shock-jocks, talk-show screamers or anodyne one-size-fits-all national "easy listening" formulas, local radio was a very big deal in Phoenix. Radio antennas topped the skyline. Jack Williams, who served eight years as governor, started his career in radio. His trademark: "It's another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it." Barry Goldwater was another radio guy. Older readers can tell those stories, but by the time I came along nobody was bigger than Bill Heywood. He was the morning drive-time man on KOY, historically at 550 on the a.m. dial, the oldest station in Arizona. His voice, as others have said, was velvet. His humor was witty, subtle and gentle. And he spun the popular playlist of the day. His afternoon counterpart, Alan Chilcoat, "sang" the weather. Corporate monopolists such as Clear Channel would never allow such un-focus-group-tested fun today.

Phoenix radio in the 1970s featured "mainstream" rock on KRIZ, KRUX and KUPD. The upstart KDKB played entire albums, was fiercely independent, counter-culture and fighting every Top 40 convention. I recall an easy-listening station but not its letters (KBUZ?); it did have some fairly cool promos, keying off locations in the city and ending with "and you've got the mellow sound of...). Speaking of which, a "mellow rock" station broadcast from the old Ramada downtown, including one of the era's few female jocks. Of course, the stalwarts such as KTAR and KOOL were there, too, as well as a classical station.

Phoenix 101: Central Avenue II

Midtown, including the Viad Tower, left, after the big boom.

The first defining event of today's Central Avenue was the real-estate boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. With land from Fillmore Street to Camelback Road upzoned for skyscrapers and money flowing from the deregulated savings and loan industry, the city was remade by a huge real-estate boom. Stuck with the disjointed set of highrises outside the old central business district, the city tried to put planners lipstick on the pig in the 1970s by christening the area from the railroad tracks to Camelback and Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street as the Central Corridor. As I wrote in the previous post, the visionaries of the 1960s and 1970s imagined Central would become Phoenix's version of Wilshire Boulevard. That never happened. Phoenix lacked the economy, assets and ambition of Los Angeles. But it gave a big try in the '80s and '90s.

These were the years that saw the rise of the Dial Tower at Central and Palm Lane. It was the new headquarters of the old Greyhound Corp. and remains, with its distinct deodorant container shape and copper skin the only truly arresting skyscraper on Central. Two bank highrises were built just south of Osborn, along with a little World Trade Center-style tower at Virginia, displacing the Palms Theater, and a few midrises. USWest anchored one of two skyscrapers erected on the northeast corner of Central and Thomas, where the iconic Bob's Big Boy, beloved of cruisers, stood. But this was nothing compared with what was planned. Back in the 1960s, the idea of a monorail running down Central was floated. It was revived in the '80s as part of a developer's plan to build, north of Indian School, the tallest building in the country with the monorail connecting the mammoth skyscraper to Sky Harbor.

Phoenix 101: Central Avenue I

Central and Monroe, around the year I was born (1956)

 

"The trouble with Central is that it isn't central to anything any more." So spoke a major leasing executive in 2000, over a breakfast I had been dragooned into to get my mind right about what had happened to my hometown. He was a fool, of course, and not merely because he helped drive the local economy into its present depression. Central Avenue does much more than demarcate street numbers from east to west. It lies at the heart of a far-flung Valley metroplex. Central is the touchstone of Phoenix's history, with more stories than a hundred blog posts could tell. It remains the most interesting street in the city. And it will be the critical marker for a quality future, if the metropolitan area stands a chance of attaining one.

In the old city, Central connected the discrete parts that made Phoenix whole. Starting at South Mountain Park, the largest municipal park in the world, it crossed two-lane Baseline Road. In both directions spread out the enchanting Japanese Flower Gardens. Ahead were bands of farmland, pastures and citrus groves as it descended to the Salt River, with the skyline and far mountains arms-length clear in the distance. After going through the tiny south Phoenix business district, you crossed one of two bridges over the river (Mill Avenue being the other), then entered the city proper. In the early days, both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads sited their depots on Central, before moving to the new Union Station at Fourth Avenue in the 1920s. Soon, Depression public works built an underpass that for decades held four very tight lanes. Before the overpasses at Seventh avenue and street, this was the only sure way under what were then busy rail lines. Everybody honked when they drove through the concrete tunnel.

Coming out at Jefferson, Central was in the heart of a vibrant downtown. The Hotel Adams, Luhrs building and hotel, Heard Building, Security Building, Hotel San Carlos and art deco Valley National Bank tower (nee Professional Building) with its iconic revolving roof sign all faced Central. Other neon faced the street, including from the radio tower on the Greater Arizona Savings building. The avenue was packed with locally owned small businesses, especially retailers. People crowded the sidewalks, where news vendors hawked the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette. During the holidays, Christmas decorations spanned the street. For years, a low-rise coffee shop sat on the southeast (corrected) corner of Central and Van Buren, topped by billboards.

Phoenix rising?

By Emil Pulsifer, Guest Rogue

Rogue Columnist readers may be surprised to learn than reading Robert Robb, editorial columnist of the Arizona Republic, is a guilty pleasure of mine. As often as I disagree with him, his arguments have a specious plausibility and level of detail that makes them worth refuting. I always learn a lot about a subject in deconstructing one of his columns — though not usually from Robb himself.

His column of December 7th, "Phoenix-area Recovery Better Than You Think" is a case in point. Not only does it elaborate Robb's longstanding thesis that "Phoenix doesn't have an economy dependent on real estate," it also argues that Phoenix's post-recession economy is doing better than that of most big cities.

This is astonishing. Even local-booster superstars like developer/economist Elliott Pollack, whose firm "currently serves as the economic department for Maricopa County" according to his company bio, and who also wrote the "Blue Chip Economic Forecast" for Phoenix appearing at ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business website, admits that "...the local economy cannot have much of a recovery without a significant increase in construction activity." Either Robb is a genius or else he's standing on his head.

America's racist sheriff

The big news is the release of a report, three years coming, about the racial profiling in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. You can download the entire report at AzCentral, Talking Points Memo and many other sites. It confirms what we already know: "America's toughest sheriff" is also America's most racist sheriff. The department has engaged in systemic racial profiling against Hispanics and "brown skinned people." This should be another nail in Joe Arpaio's coffin, but I suspect many of his constituents will merely go "Yaaaay!!"

This is only the tip of a very big iceberg. There's the hundreds of botched sex-crimes investigations, along with the many instances of abuse in the jail system. Honest police officers talk about fumbled investigations by the MCSO, including probable homicides that were tossed off as suicides. Much of the command staff has already been forced out in scandals. Does anyone doubt that the tone for this behavior was set from the top, in other words Arpaio himself? This is a department that runs by a cult of personality. As I asked in a previous post, Why isn't Joe Arpaio in jail? Yet he survives.

To be sure, departments nationwide face such probes. The Seattle Police are the target of a Justice Department investigation into excessive-force complaints. But the MCSO is different, with a longstanding pattern of bad behavior.

On the ground

I came into the new wing of terminal four at Sky Harbor. It's fancy and the terminal is still being improved. Still, it's difficult not to notice how American airports resemble malls, as if this is the defining and highest aspiration possible for an empire facing decadence and many breaking points. And on the outside, Sky Harbor is brutally ugly. I think of Cincinnati Union Terminal, one of America's most glorious art deco treasures, built to inspire, built for the ages. It's not only in Phoenix. We can't do these things any more.

It was a late flight, so it took a mad scramble to get the last light-rail train headed west at 11:25 (this is the sixth largest city in America?). Once on board, everything is delightful (we built it, you bastards). I am struck again by all the empty and underutilized land along much of the route. Oh, for some urbanism in fillers with capital, as is happening at a frenzied pace in Seattle. Still, it's wonderful to see the convention center, CityScape and downtown ASU campus. Then enfolded in the comforting spaces of my old haunts in Midtown. Central between McDowell and Osborn is the only really filled-in part of the core, with the ghastly exception of the northwest corner of Central and McDowell. Up to Thomas, it is surrounded by the real, walkable neighborhoods of the historic districts.

Here, it's impossible for me not to grow romantic, listening to the train whistles that I heard from my earliest childhood, feeling the cool wind sweep down from the High Country. And Phoenix is never sweeter than on a rainy night. More to come.

Phoenix 101: Wallace and Ladmo

I went to the Muppets movie over the weekend. It was all right. I never watched Sesame Street and the heyday of the Muppets television show was when I didn't even own a TV. In any event, I am a lost demographic to such benign stuff. I grew up in Phoenix, where we had Wallace and Ladmo.

Most children watched a clown show in their cities and towns. Not us. We were brought up on the very adult humor of the Wallace show, which ran from 1954 to 1989 on KPHO. The names changed, from It's Wallace? to Wallace & Company to the Wallace and Ladmo Show. What didn't change was the show's biting humor, satire and irony, along with classic slapstick and cartoons. For the rest of our lives all we could do was feel sorry for the children who were stunted by clown shows.

The regular cast featured Bill Thompson as Wallace, Lad Kwiatkowski as Ladmo and my friend Pat McMahon. Wallace, or Wall-Boy as Ladmo called him, was the host and butt of much humor. Ladmo was the everyman or everykid, full of fun and mischief. McMahon played a host of characters, many of which gave the show its bite. Among them was Gerald the brat, the nephew of the TV station's general manager; Aunt Maud, the doddering, bad driver old coot from Sun City; biker Bobby Joe Trouble; Captain Super, a parody of assorted super heroes, and Boffo the Clown, who hated children.

Love hurts

A friend passed along a blog essay entitled "Has the Arizona Republic gone rogue?" It goes on to catalogue a variety of "negative" news stories, concluding: "It is time for a leadership change at the Republic; Publisher John Zidich of Fiesta Bowl board fame and his executive editor Randy Lovely need to go.  Let’s get someone in over there who knows and loves Arizona and wants us to become the state we are destined to become. We don’t need a daily rag of negativism and half assed reporting; I can get that from any blog out there.  We deserve better.  The Republic has gone rogue and it needs correcting."

The writer is one Charles Coughlin, who, in addition to sharing the name of the infamous demagogue "radio priest" of the Depression era, is a flack for the Real Estate Industrial Complex, the right and all-things status quo. See, reporting on such as Gov. Jan Brewer's shameful attempt to sack the head of the independent redistricting commission because it didn't skew politics even further to the right is "not loving Arizona." Payback is indeed a bitch. I was run out of the Republic by Zidich and Lovely because the paper could no longer stand the seven years of heat it had taken because my column didn't "love" Arizona enough. (When someone else talked about offering me a job, another big intervened: "Talton hates Arizona.") Now the same thugs are after Lovely and Zidich. (Funny, Father Coughlin doesn't offer his appreciation to the newspaper for unearthing the Fiesta Board scandal, which didn't really involve Zidich aside from his sitting on boards, which publishers should not do.)

Let it be said that the state's largest newspaper soft-pedals most of the pressing issues, from water resources to the economic calamity, climate change, white-right extremism, the depredations of the Badged Ego and thoroughgoing political corruption, much of which traces back to the Real Estate Industrial Complex. It pulls its punches and seeks out "positive news about the community." The editorial page is reliably right wing, with the only columnist being the "Goldwater" Institute's boy, Robert Robb (or William Bill, as he is known here). But even committing real journalism part-time, accidentally or when, well, news happens is enough that heads must roll. Imagine the fantods he would get if the state had some real kick-ass newspapers. Here is Phoenix and Arizona's pathology in a nutshell.

Mayor Stanton

I'll admit to being an optimist who worries. Surely Wes Gullett, tool of the right wing extremists, couldn't win the Phoenix mayor's race... Yet, Phoenix and Arizona have fallen into too many tragic improbabilities for me to count and things had been taking a severe downbound course lately. In the end, a record turnout put Greg Stanton emphatically in office. Thank God. This is unalloyed "positive news," for those of you who think I have no bright side. Stanton could be a transformative mayor at a time when the city most needs one.

Now, to the serious stuff. Most of the issues that dominated the campaign and the media's attention are small ball. Phoenix is a well-run big city, with a few exceptions such as the Jack Harris-type backscratching. All of these can be addressed with a functioning  City Council. The one that requires reflection is water rates. The older parts of Phoenix need no further push to let shade trees die and throw down gravel. Indeed, they need an incentive to keep the oases that are critical protection against the heat island. In addition, city staff should roll back their demand for gravel and palo verdes on nearly every city property. This is only adding to the unlivability of Phoenix. A discussion on the investment of water for shade oases is critical.

Stanton's biggest challenge, as he well knows from his days on City Council, will be building majorities for the critical policies he wants enacted. Phoenix's mayor is more powerful than any of his peers in the state, but the city remains (foolishly, to my mind) a council-manager form of government. The mayor is "just one vote," as an intelligent, ambitious councilman told me years ago. Stanton is well-suited to the task: Amiable, emotionally intelligent, willing to listen, politically street smart and wearing hig policy wonkishness lightly. But without a majority, he'll get nowhere. It may shift from issue to issue, but it is the mayor's majority that Skip Rimsza wielded with such effectiveness. It will be interesting to see if Mayor Stanton has a "Councilman Stanton," an effective do-the-right-thing ally on big stuff. This was a role that Stanton played on the biosciences campus and ASU downtown to Mayor Phil Gordon, even though their overall relationship was always a wary one.

A new day in AZ?

The evil that men do lives after them. — Shakespeare

I don't mean to sun on the parade. I really don't. Nobody is happier to be wrong about Russell Pearce's recall election than me. He becomes the first legislator in Arizona history to be successfully recalled. But what does it mean? In the flush of victory Tuesday night, state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was my legislator when I lived in Willo and is the smartest person at the capitol, tweeted, "Voters sent a message tonight: focus on practical, common sense solutions to our state's challenges. Stop the ultra-partisan nonsense." What does that mean? My common-sense solutions include commuter rail, passenger rail between Phoenix and Tucson (and LA), land-use reform to focus on the existing urban footprints, a serious economic-development strategy, raising the revenue needed to support a populous, urbanized state, funding universities and K-12 education, etc. To much of Arizona, common-sense solutions mean more guns and less taxes.

When I asked Sinema if the election of Jerry Lewis would mean he might be more moderate and work across the aisle, her response was more pragmatic: "We're not sure yet. One must be judged by performance not campaign speeches. Here's hoping Rs moderate instead of 'double down'! ". Indeed.

Pearce may be gone, but the edifice he created lives on: SB 1070, Jan Brewer as governor who's formed a political action committee to "fight against illegal immigration and the new federal health care law nationwide," an extreme state Legislature owned by the NRA and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, and copycat laws nationwide, including the most extreme on in Alabama. Will any of that change with Pearce's recall? Or will he just be back again, running for another office, whether it's the state Senate or Maricopa County Sheriff when the Badged Ego decides to step down. Oh, yeah, in the "new Arizona" on the morning after, Joe Arpaio remains more popular than ever. Jon Kyl is blocking any progress in the "super Congress." Wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III keeps his incoherent/bought-and-paid for blather. Terry Goddard is still defeated in the governor's race, an election season of madness that turned on the fulcrum of hatred built by Russell Pearce.

Election Day

UPDATE: Pearce becomes the first legislator in Arizona history recalled and Stanton is elected Phoenix mayor. Read on if you wish. Definitely join the comment thread.

I've been predicting that Russell Pearce will survive his recall election, but what will it really mean if he's defeated by Jerry Lewis? The district still ends up with a know-nothing lightweight. Yes, it will be a nice screw you to Pearce, the father of SB 1070. But it won't change either the pathology in the Legislature or in the East Valley. It was telling that Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a conservative and Mormon but not a nut, chose not to run (he may have bigger ambitions, but could no better opposition to Pearce be found?). Whatever the outcome, the house (and Senate) that Pearce built will remain. The NRA will remain as powerful as ever. Ditto the Real Estate Industrial Complex and the private prison con. Jan Brewer will still be governor. Tell me what I'm missing. One observer predicted Pearce would run for sheriff when Joe finally retires.

The Phoenix mayoral election, on the other hand, is of major importance. Greg Stanton's internal polls, I am told, show him comfortably ahead of Wes Gullett. The danger here is that potential Stanton voters will stay home, so I am hesitant to even report this. That Gullett ever got this far is a sign that anyone with common sense had better get to the polls.

This contest has been narrowed down to the national meme of "public-sector workers bad." That's most unfortunate. There is indeed an ole-boys system in Phoenix government, but it involves the highly placed, most notoriously the double-dipping of former Police Chief Jack Harris. What's really wrong inside City Hall may be outside the ability of any mayor to fix because it's rooted in the council-manager form of government. Whoever is city manager, the Titanic keeps sailing along. One small example: Spending large sums for consultants to generate reports that could have been done better and cheaper by the city staff. That might have been different had David Krietor or Ed Zuercher (or Sheryl Sculley) been selected city manager. That they weren't tells you everything you need to know. The many interests that feed off the City Hall status quo want things to continue as before.

The shameless state

Corrected version

I keep waiting for Arizonans to experience their Joseph Welch moment. For those of you too young to remember, Welch was the man who finally, publicly stood up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It was another time of national madness, when the alcoholic senator from Wisconsin  was accusing everybody and his brother of being a communist. Finally, in a 1954 hearing, Welch, the chief counsel for the Army, which was being investigated for alleged red penetration, listened to McCarthy smear one of his law partners. Welch said:

Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

When McCarthy tried to interrupt, Welch made his famous statement: "Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Along with Dwight Eisenhower's quiet but lethal behind the scenes moves in a sane Republican Party, this destroyed Tailgunner Joe. The moment of national insanity snapped like the breaking of an evil spell.

Graveyard of sprawl dreams

Just in time for Halloween, the Arizona Republic published a story headlined, "Massive West Valley development to launch." It reads in part: "Two Phoenix-area developers, John F. Long Properties and the Alter Group, are planning a massive mixed-use commercial development in the West Valley that will span Phoenix, Avondale and Glendale. The project is made up of three separate parcels totaling 1,500 acres and likely will take decades to complete, the developers said." It went on to promise 3 million square feet of "employment space," 10,000 jobs and represent an investment of half-a-billion dollars.

The immediate "deliverable" is much more modest: A 60,000-square-foot medical office building at Thomas and the 101, for an unnamed client (guesses whether it is one stolen from elsewhere in the region?). Long and partners have been assembling and hanging onto this land for decades — that's part of the back story not mentioned in this article. Another is that many of these plans were rolled out in the mid-2000s before the roof fell in. Unanswered is who would finance such a massive project in one of the worst real-estate markets in the country, or how it could be filled with so much unoccupied space already sitting on the market where such deals as exist are filching clients from existing buildings rather than growing the economic pie.

The reality confronting the Phoenix real-estate economy is far different from the closed loop of local-yokel zombie boosterism.

Here and Now and gone

As I reported exclusively last week, KJZZ will soon be ending its weekly local Here and Now with Steve Goldstein. With it goes the only locally produced public affairs radio program in the nation's sixth most populous city. With this move the incredibly narrow media spectrum in Phoenix becomes even more narrow. It's a terrible loss to discourse, journalism and democracy.

Goldstein had me on over the years, even after I was shown the door by the Republic for having the temerity to warn of the housing depression that now lays heavy on the land. He was unfailingly gracious, a class act. But more than that, his program was wide-ranging and fair to a fault, a forum for the Krackpots as well as for the sane elements in the state. He's a talented, intelligent broadcaster who could be a star in any major market. My sources say he'll stay on as a news announcer. One said plans call for "nine-minute daily segments," whatever that means. It can't replace an hour of thoughtful information, give-and-take and smart conversation about Arizona's most pressing issues.

My warning signals went up. Here was a program that couldn't fail to irritate the Real Estate Industrial Complex and the Kookocracy. But one source says its demise is more prosaic: internal politics.

How the West was...

Phoenix once boasted two Cinerama movie houses: the Cine Capri and the Kachina in Scottsdale. Both were bulldozed. In Seattle, thanks to the stewardship of Paul Allen, the Cinerama theater downtown was saved and renovated. It just completed a three-week festival of movies originally filmed in 70 millimeter, which even with all the technology available to Hollywood today is something worth experiencing. Despite facing the terrible commute and traffic of going one block, I went anyway yesterday to see How the West Was Won, the 1962 epic.

At the risk of provoking readers, I must confess that I was deeply moved. Yes. The film has more than one historical inaccuracy. The cognoscenti will always condemn it as a celebration of genocidal Manifest Destiny, although for the era it shows a much more nuanced portrait of Western expansion. Still, with a grand old-time movie score, a battalion of big stars, surprisingly good dialogue and the scenery on that wide, curved screen, it was hard to resist. (An added treat: One of the card sharks was a dead ringer for JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon). At the end, the packed house of Seattle lefties gave long applause.

I was moved partly because the story, which follows four generations of a family from 1839 to 1889, could have been about my family, too. The migration routes were somewhat different and my kin fought on both sides of the Civil War, literally brother against brother, but in both cases the family ended up in Arizona. Yes, in hindsight we were part of the problem, but I can't imagine any nation just walling off settlement beyond the Alleghenies. It wasn't going to happen. But this personal connection wasn't all that provoked strong emotions.

What, us worry?

I had dinner last night with a friend from Phoenix. It was a beautiful night in downtown Seattle and our table had a great view of Elliott Bay with the ferries coming and going. But the news from home was uniformly bleak, from the ongoing housing depression to the normality of crazy politics. Neither of us think there's a chance that the odious Russell Pearce will be recalled. It makes me wonder for the thousandth time: Why did the East Valley get stuck with the nihilist Mormons? By contrast, Salt Lake just opened yet another light-rail line, along with its commuter rail service. None of that would have happened without support from the church.

A story in the paper about the real-estate situation quoted Elliott Pollack as an authoritative "Arizona economist." Pollack is a developer and a relentless shill for the Real Estate Industrial Complex. He's a pleasant guy and our relations were cordial. But why does he have any cred left, having completely missed or dismissed the state and metro's dangerous dependency on housing and usually sugar-coating the reality after things blew up. Must be a nice gig. As is the case in so much of America, there's no price to be paid, no accountability, as long as you hang with the right crowd and stay on message. And to be fair, this blindness/denial was true of all the "experts" as Arizona ran up to the edge and jumped off.

But everything's really fine, right? We just need more optimism. The boosters are still promoting the so-called Sun Corridor, a "megapolitan" area stretching from Tucson to Prescott and containing 10 million people, or 9 million, or 8 million by 2030 or 2040. Whatever. It's going to be big, and essentially the model that propelled Phoenix during the age of cheap gas and abundant water can go on for ever. The only concession by the boosters now seems to be that this thing will bring in a few less people.

The periphery

When you're talking Europe, the periphery (Greece, etc.) is ailing, while the core, especially Germany and Scandinavia, is doing well. In Phoenix, the situation is reversed. To be sure, the depression has clobbered huge swaths of Phoenix suburbia, left Pinal County circling the drain and driven a stake into the dreams of Superstition Vistas and Buckeye with 400,000 poor boobs from the Midwest. Glendale is underwater on its super mortgage to hucksters and Westgate is in foreclosure. And the compromised, local-yokel professional seers have once again pushed out their prediction of "recovery," this time to 2015. Still, what little economic activity that's happening is occurring in places such as Scottsdale and Chandler.

The news for the city of Phoenix is gloomy. What few companies are coming to the metro area are setting up shop on the periphery. Banner Health, which killed a hospital on the Phoenix Biosciences Campus that would have led to a quantum leap in its synergies, has teamed up with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to establish a "world class" treatment facility in Gilbert. (The irony here is that Anderson is part of the Texas Medical Center in central Houston that should be the model for the Phoenix campus). ASU and the Mayo Clinic are setting up a medical school in north Scottsdale. Even as central Phoenix is clearcut with huge swaths of empty land, a big data center chose Chandler for a new operation, among the other new projects and expansions that the suburbs can boast. Even within the city, venerable law firm Fennemore Craig stabbed downtown (well, Midtown) in the back, relocating to 24th and Camelback.

As far as I can tell, this isn't even being discussed in the Phoenix mayoral race. Yet it's one of the biggest problems facing the city and metro area.

Phoenix 101: Sky Harbor

I was always a child of the railroads, so Union Station held much more magnetism for me than the airport. Still, in the 1960s, Sky Harbor was a sweet little airport. It had a romantic name. The old blond-brick West Terminal and tiny control tower hearkened back to aviation's infancy — it had only been six decades since the Wright Brothers' first powered flight. You boarded by stairs — jetways were several years off. The new East Terminal was graced by a dramatic mural of Phoenix's founding myth and flight science above the airy modern waiting room. It also had a second-story observation deck, where one could watch the airplanes, complete with telescopes. Our Cub Scout den was given a tour of the control tower. All this was before hijackings and the rise of the present Security State.

It was a beautiful airport with a certain '50s charm. One reached it from 24th Street along grassy parkways with trees. And back then, the route into downtown was still lined with pleasant motels and "auto courts," all human scale. It had two runways, which were plenty back then. On the south edge was the Air National Guard midair refueling tanker wing (Richard Nixon gave a campaign speech in the big hangar during the 1972 campaign). On the north side, beyond the general aviation hangars, were the Southern Pacific tracks, which carried three passenger trains a day in each direction. The best airplane watching was on 40th Street, which was a two-lane affair that dipped into the riverbed and marked the east boundary of the airport. The 727s and 707s came in right overhead.

Airlines were highly regulated. Hubs were far in the future. So regional players such as Bonanza, Hughes AirWest and Western were as important as United, American and Continental. I made my first airplane flight from LA to Phoenix when I was ten (we had gone on the Sunset Limited, by far the more enchanting journey for me). Flying was special then. People dressed up. Airlines treated you very well. There were no cattle calls or lines from LockUp.

Phoenix elections open thread

As the polls prepare to close in the mayoral and council elections, I'll open up for comments.

 

What they want

The trajectory of the Phoenix mayor's race is perhaps already locked in. But a few other considerations should be added to my previous two posts on the issue (here and here). Some signs are telling. For example, in a television interview, Michael Bidwill, president of the Arizona Cardinals, was wearing a prominent Wes Gullett button. Gullett's old boss, John McCain, attended a reception for the candidate earlier this summer. And Peggy Neely was endorsed by Gov. Jan Brewer.

This is all you need to know about these two candidates. Bidwill refused to allow the taxpayer-funded stadium to be built in downtown Phoenix, choosing Glendale instead because of the copious opportunities for no-strings-attached adjacent development that could further benefit his family. Why does he care about the city of Phoenix, especially the central city upon which the entire city will rise or fall? As for Brewer, it's highly inappropriate for a governor to take sides in a municipal election. And Brewer is a creature of the suburbs, Phoenix's competitors and, in many cases, saboteurs. What's Neely to her or she to Neely?

Let us count the hidden agendas.

The mayor of hell

Whomever wins the Phoenix mayoral election will get a paycheck, face time on the media, a police detail to drive him or her around and not much else. Facts are stubborn things: Phoenix is the most economically wounded among America's largest cities. The "business model" that built Phoenix for decades is irrevocably broken. When even the developer-economist Elliott Pollack, favorite of the booster rubber chicken circuit, is saying the metro-wide housing market won't come back until at least 2015, things are bad.

Reprising a little history won't hurt. The political leadership of modern Phoenix was created by the Charter Government Movement, which claimed, and largely delivered, a non-partisan, clean, business-backed, professionally run City Hall. With a relatively diverse economy, the age of inexpensive energy, a majority middle class city and major business titans setting the table, little was asked of elected leaders except to continue this status quo. It somewhat fell apart with districting and Terry Goddard's velvet revolution in the 1980s, but the spirit of Charter lived on well into the 21st century.

This is not to say mayors were irrelevant as just one vote on council in a council-manager form of government. Milt Graham, John Driggs, Margaret Hance, Goddard and Skip Rimsza were all leaders of consequence. Sometimes this was for ill: the popular Graham's antipathy to transit set Phoenix back by decades; Hance did many things to hurt the central core. Goddard, by contrast, was an inspiring and transformational mayor. But through all this two things were constant: The economy levitated on "growth" and the old consensus prevailed.

The new neighborhood

It's been four years this month since we sold our 1914 house in Willo and moved to Seattle. It was not a voluntary move, but one necessitated by the Republic ending my column after years of pressure to silence me, and then my inability to find work in Phoenix. We had hoped to live in this house, located a block from where I grew up, for the rest of our lives. Things didn't work out. The new neighborhood is very different. Here's the front-porch view from the condo downtown (in Belltown) looking east to Capitol Hill:

A pocket park is right below the balcony.

The last titan

It was probably fitting that John Teets died amid the worst economic depression modern Phoenix has ever experienced. The retired head of Greyhound/Dial was the last of a breed that every competitive and livable city must have: A dynamic chief executive of a major local headquarters, passionately committed to the city, able to knock heads and write checks. I'll let Soleri take it from here:

As CEO of Dial, he was one of the last corporate titans who figured prominently in local affairs. He was a headknocker and socialite who helped make Phoenix more than just a branch-office backwater. I was living near Central & Palm Lane when the Dial building was built in 1990. It was part of Teets' stewardship ethic to make a big corporate statement close to but not in downtown. The original plan was to construct two towers, with one perpendicular to the other. As with so many real-estate dreams, this one was only partly realized. The result is a free-standing mountain of a building completely out of scale to its surroundings.

Teets spent lavishly on it but the tapestries he hung in the lobby, or the exquisite garden outside couldn't quite make up for the fact that it was another ostentatious project that seemed so much like the city it was built in: Isolated and strange.

Did Phoenix light rail fail?

My first experience with light rail came living in San Diego in the early 1980s. One segment linked downtown with the border crossing at San Ysidro. It was popular and uncontroversial. "I didn't think one of these could run without graffiti all over it," I heard a visitor from then dysfunctional New York exclaim of the new, bright red trainsets. As a reporter, I wrote about the Trolley, especially the ambitious expansion plans. San Diego is the most Republican of California's big cities, but the light-rail system was begun under Pete Wilson, a mediocre U.S. senator, bad California governor, but stellar San Diego mayor (he was also, along with developer Ernest Hahn, the father of the spectacularly revived downtown). Today, the San Diego Trolley extends 53 miles on three routes.

Then I lived in Denver, where the city started a segment downtown. It too, was popular and widely embraced. Now it comprises 39 miles with another 12 due in two years. I was in Charlotte for the planning of the now-operating Lynx light-rail, a relatively modest 10 miles, but more is in the works. It was the first modern light-rail system in the Old South and, again, widely supported, especially by the business leadership and developers who built hundreds of millions of dollars of projects near the line. Similar success happened in other cities, especially Dallas (!), with its 72-mile system and clammoring of suburbs to get the next line.

The story didn't play out that way in Phoenix. Yes, we built it, you bastards. But it's also time to take stock.

Phoenix 101: South Phoenix

South Phoenix encompasses so much history, so many cultures and distinct districts, it deserves more than one post. Every square mile is special. Still, a start. It's not a separate city such as South Tucson, so I'll go with the style "south Phoenix." When I hear the words "urban village," I reach for my Colt Python plus Speedloaders, so forget about the city's developer-speak term "South Mountain Village." Then there's the matter of geography. For many Anglo Phoenicians, when the city still had some cohesion, "south Phoenix" began at the Southern Pacific tracks. This was, and latently remains, a place where "the other side of the tracks" is a powerful totem (it helped do in the unfortunately named Bentley Projects, the galleries, bookstore and cafe). A subset of "south Phoenix" emerged in the 1960s, to define everything below the somber wall of the Maricopa Freeway. And true south Phoenix is south of the Salt River. All must be dealt with.*

Phoenix's relatively small Mexican-American and African-American populations were historically located south of the tracks. Well into the 1970s, the commonplace offensive term for the latter was used by whites. Schools were segregated and inferior. Poverty and injustice were severe. Corruption by city officials legendary, at least through the 1940s. Most property ownership was controlled by deed covenants that largely excluded minorities (I told you this was a Southern town). Ownership was more possible south of the river, and minorities gathered there. (Most of the city's legendary and now largely lost barrios were north of the Salt, but a few, such as the River Bottom, were in south Phoenix proper). Minorities were also heavily employed as agricultural labor. This was farm country, especially after the completion of the Highline and Western canals by 1913.

The most successful farmers were the Japanese, who arrived early in the 20th century and were able to purchase farms in the 1930s, after Arizona's anti-"Yellow Peril" law was found unconstitutional. Arizonans my age remember them for the stunning Japanese Flower Gardens that ran for miles along Baseline Road. But the Japanese were among the most innovative growers, raising a variety of crops. This also raised much jealousy among Anglo farmers, who were happy to see them, including American citizens, interned during World War II. After this shameful episode, the Japanese, including many of their sons who had fought in the U.S. Army, returned to south Phoenix and farmed again.

The recovery con

When you wonder why this blog is such a downer to some readers, consider what I must read. For example, The Phoenix Business Journal last week published a story headlined, "Phoenix Cracks Forbes' Top 10 Potential Boom Cities." I am suspicious of these kind of lists, which can be shallow and misleading, although they are wildly popular. And Forbes is not exactly without an agenda. Still, I dutifully followed the link. Imagine my non-surprise when it turned out to be a post by Joel Kotkin, the four-square apologist for Sun Belt suburbia. He claimed to have crunched data to determine which "cities are best positioned to grow and prosper in the coming decade." Austin and Raleigh led the list. He goes on:

Our other two top ten, No. 9 Phoenix, Ariz., and No. 10 Orlando, Fla., have not done well in the recession, but both still have more jobs now than in 2000. Their demographics remain surprisingly robust. Despite some anti-immigrant agitation by local politicians, immigrants still seem to be flocking to both of these states. Known better as retirement havens, their ranks of children and families have surged over the past decade. Warm weather, pro-business environments and, most critically, a large supply of affordable housing should allow these regions to grow, if not in the overheated fashion of the past, at rates both steadier and more sustainable.

Thus enlightened, I set out on the due diligence and critical thinking that should be the basics of good journalism, but are seen as "negative" in booster culture.

All stars

Even the most skeptical auditor of Phoenix's challenges and follies must admit some pride in Major League Baseball's All-Star Game being held there. And in downtown Phoenix, not some "Valley," not in exurban "Glendale, Ariz." Considering how city leaders allowed the central city to circle the drain for decades, visitors will see some impressive efforts at revitalization: CityScape, the Phoenix Convention Center, Sheraton, biosciences campus, ASU downtown and light rail (we built it, you bastards). Oh, for big-city boutique hotels at the Westward Ho and Professional Building. The baseball stadium is ugly, a lost architectural opportunity, but at least it's downtown, an eventuality I highly doubt if it were being built today under present ownership. They can hop a train to Midtown to take in the spectacular Modern Mexican Painting exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, a pleasant contrast to the general, and generally deserved, reputation of intolerance and racism for the state at large. If you want to boycott, do so against the East Valley and Scottsdale (but not the Poisoned Pen bookstore), not tolerant central Phoenix.

Some quick advice to out-of-towners: It's a dry heat, but so is hell. So is a thermonuclear explosion. Stay hydrated (I freeze bottles of water to carry with me; they melt quickly but you're not left drinking hot water). Avoid much exposure to the sun. Wear light-colored clothes, especially white, and cover as much skin as possible. Keep some popsicles in the freezer at the hotel; have one to help cool down when you come in from outside. Don't do something stupid like climb Camelback Mountain or go "exploring" in the desert. God created air-conditioning for a reason — use it. A dark, cool Mexican restaurant is an especially satisfying hangout in the summer. If the media say the high will be 105, that's in the shade at Sky Harbor. The surface temp on the street is around 140. I hope to hell somebody will give them such advice, so there's not a great All-Star die-off. Too bad City Hall encouraged all that concrete, all that gravel and no shade trees.

Still, the big game is, at best, a temporary respite from the troubles of city and state.

The ambition deficit

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood... — Daniel Burnham

Hard as it is to believe for someone my age, it's been 50 years since construction began on the Space Needle, the iconic symbol of Seattle and the centerpiece of the 1962 World's Fair. Seattle leaders elbowed out much better-known cities, including New York, to gain international accreditation of the event, which was a coming out party to the world for the Emerald City. The site is now Seattle Center, a cultural mecca in the central core right down the monorail from downtown. It was actually Seattle's second world's fair and had initially been developed to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, whose grounds became the University of Washington campus. Another one of my adopted hometowns, San Diego, also held two world's fairs, in 1915 and 1935 — their legacy was magnificent Balboa Park.

My real hometown never did one world's fair, even though it passed the population mark to be a big city more than half a century ago. It may be just as well. Unlike Seattle or San Diego (or even Knoxville, Tenn.), Phoenix would have built something out in the middle of nowhere and, unlike Seattle lucking out with the timeless Space Needle, suffered the worst of modern architecture. Maybe the dusty streets for an empty subdivision would have been left behind. Indeed, I was approached by a group of well-meaning folks in the mid-2000s to promote a world's fair in the former gravel beds of the Salt River. That it was far from downtown never seemed to have occured to them.

Still, this is another sign of Phoenix's astounding lack of ambition. It plays in the majors. It just doesn't want to admit it. I recall hearing from someone who moved to Phoenix and tried, within his modest means, to push forward a project of civic betterment. He was taken aside and told, "People move to the Valley to be left alone. That's the way they like it. You either have to live with that or move." He moved.

Off the edge

Yet another pipe dream has exploded in the Phoenix Depression. This time Steve Ellman's Westgate "City Center," — the Republic story pimped the development as "the flashy dining and shopping complex that anchors Glendale's football stadium and hockey arena" — is facing foreclosure.

This is time to revisit my 2010 post on Glendale's folly. It's also relevant coming directly after the popular Phoenix 101: Malls. Yet more needs to be said; not to make thin-skinned Phoenicians feel depressed, as is the usual criticism, but to learn something from these costly debacles to move the metro area forward into some kind of broad, non-heat-island-scorched uplands.

The only ones that could be surprised by the Westgate mess are those millions who drank the developer-speak Kool-Aid ("flashy dining and shopping complex" blah blah blah). Every time I was forced to go there for an event, the place was dead. It was far from anything else besides a too-narrow freeway, unless you wanted to farm some cotton or throw up the frames of subdivisions on former farm land. Nor is it flashy, aside from the sun blinding you when it hits the bumper of some jacked-up truck in the parking lot. It is off-the-shelf suburban stuff found everywhere, with the unfortunate distinction that all the asphalt and concrete, besides being ugly, adds a special hellish ambiance even when the surface temp is not 140 degrees.

Phoenix 101: Malls

Sing a city of malls. Actually, I believe the first modern mall west of the Mississippi was built in Dallas and the first suburban mall was Northgate in Seattle, but you'd think Phoenix invented the infernal things. When I write "mall," I don't mean the beautiful and now dead 19th century Arcade in downtown Dayton. I mean a shopping center built around the automobile. Park Central was Phoenix's first, developed by the Burgbacher brothers on the site of a former dairy and opening in 1957. It was anchored by Diamonds, Newberry's and Goldwater's, the latter closing its downtown store two miles south and beginning the end of downtown retail. Even so, in the early- and mid-1960s, downtown held its own as the state's busiest shopping destination — but the die was cast. Most natives don't even remember when Phoenix was more than a city of malls.

I grew up within bicycle distance of Park Central (had my bike stolen there, too). It was open air (the city was not yet devastated by the heat island), convenient and wildly popular. It anchored Midtown, along with the twin towers across the street, the taller of which sported an outside glass elevator and the shorter being home to the Playboy Club. Old Park Central was semi-urban, contiguous to the city and human-scaled. It was followed by Biltmore Fashion Square, which until Westcor turned it into another lookalike suburban soul-killer, was also open air, with plenty of shade and in a pleasing scale. Across the street was the open-air Town and Country shopping center (which was not an empty name, for the city around it was still meshed with citrus groves and horse properties). Chris-Town became the first enclosed, air-conditioned mall in 1961.

By the 1960s and 1970s, Phoenix developers went on a mall binge. Among them: Thomas Mall, built in the classic enclosed configuration of a long rectangle of shops with an anchor department store at each end, and Los Arcos in Scottsdale, an L-shaped Spanish design with Sears and the Broadway. These competed with Tower Plaza, Papago Plaza and others, which were older shopping centers with the shops facing the parking lots. If you grew up in Phoenix, you didn't know any better. The mall was a magical thing: New, clean, easy, cool. In 1973, what seemed would be the granddaddy of them all was completed: Metrocenter. It broke the old two-anchor mold with five department stores, two levels and even held an ice rink. My buds and I would drive out there just to see it. But it was on the outer edge of the city. And while it was promoted as a super-regional mall that would be absorbed by future growth, it just didn't seem right. Downtown was dead. Park Central was struggling. My first stirrings of an urban sensibility were offended by Metrocenter.