Not another frothy rant about Phoenix? If he dislikes it that much why is he still even here?

Back in Phoenix again. Tay and I went out a few times, including a night on the town where we hit a few more bars to finish our research for the new book: Algiers to Zuma: drinking establishments of interest across the southern US. Here's a sample from downtown Phoenix, Arizona:

Hanny's- a surprisingly vibrant and popular place for downtown Phoenix at night. Established five or six years ago (I remember taking an architecture tour when it opened), in an old men's clothing store of the same name. Sleek, contemporary place with lots of gray leather, concrete, DJ, and some pretty good cocktails. They actually made me a pretty good Aviation. This is the first time in a long time where the color of the drink is blue.

Lustre- is the rooftop bar of the trendy Palomar hotel in the CityScape development at the center of downtown. It is actually, quite lackLustre. It would be more impressive if the rooftop was actually on the roof of the hotel and not just three stories up. And if the bar actually sold good cocktails. Also, I was not impressed after spending ten dollars on a shot of good mezcal to have it served in a plastic shot glass, as was Tay's abysmal cocktail. Really, the only two remarkable things about the bar were that it has such a high popularity and the mix of the people there. There was young and old, black, Latino, and white. Old white hotel guests lounging in sweats and young women in little black dresses.

We were too late to hit RumBar, which is a shame, so we walked over to the art colony houses to Lost Leaf, a house turned into a bar/dance venue, which was packed with very young hipsters. A fun scene, bohemian, with a few good beers on tap.

The Filmore Vig was nearly empty when we got there around 1am. Sidling up to the outdoor bar, we asked our bartender about it, who candidly told us that most people come to the Vig early and then move downtown to places like Crescent Ballroom and Hanny's. We really should have gone the reverse way, and really, I should have known better. Cabbed it home with a driver who told us about picking up race car drivers and taking them to Devil's Martini in Scottsdale.

Mom and Larry are in the process of buying a house, so I got to see it for the home inspection. I think everyone involved was kind of surprised that I liked it. It's not a bad house- the layout is pretty good, it's about the right size, and the yard has the views of the mountains that mom has mandated. Yes, it's a stick and stucco tract house in a manicured HOA subdivision, yes it's liberally coated with fake flagstone, yes, it's supposed to have a vaguely "Mediterranean-Tuscan" feel with the hip roof and clay tile, but hey, this is Phoenix.

Phoenix exists because the two most vibrant cities in the state, Tucson and Prescott with a long history and ties to the surrounding cultures, allied themselves with the losing side of the Civil War. A sleepy backwater hay farm with a few small settlements was selected to carry the capitol as a form of revenge. Nothing really happened until the fortune seekers trying to get to California got stuck here or realized they could keep more of the loot from the swindling here.

The city planners laid out Phoenix in the most rational way they could imagine- rational, of course, meaning "easiest to drive." So we ended up with mile-long superblocks and a rigid grid of  seven-lane streets which run for upward of 20 miles.

The fact that Phoenix boomed from nothing in a matter of a few decades meant that the city was wide open for rapid, large-scale development. The wide street grid provided a framework for developers to build residential blocks 200 single family houses at a time, neatly frosted with stucco and a small yard to fulfill the engineered suburban fantasy for the emerging middle class which settled here.

There are a lot, a lot of worse places to live than in Phoenix. It is a very "livable" city by comparison- there is a passable symphony here, sometimes the Opera is good, and it even gets touring shows now and then. When you drive to the grocery store a few miles down the road, it's not expensive. You can sleep and eat in a house which is less expensive than most of the average houses in other cities. There are a few good restaurants. You don't have to shovel snow and the air conditioning keeps your house cool in the summer. If your expectation for a city is the same as your expectations for a La Quinta, it's a perfectly serviceable city.

In my mind, the only two things Phoenix has going for it are the weather (and only a third of the time), and the close proximity of the mountains and desert parks, which is to admit, where the city is not. The best thing about mom's new house is that it is at the very edge of where the city has failed to conquer the mountains.