Palm Springs is a town of low, flat roofs. It is a white and brown and green and orange town with washed watery sky. There are perfectly square neighborhood blocks where you can get lost on your bike. Palm Springs has entirely too many golf courses. It is a place to have drinks by the pool (try Scotty’s orange cream-sicle or a calimocho). It is a place to have a marshmallow feast late at night around the outdoor fire pit. It is a place to sit in the shade. Palm Springs is fantastically mid-century modern-ed, homosexual-ed, retiree-ed, and old Hollywood. In Palm Springs people eat extremely well. In Palm Springs the mountains have hard-to-pronounce names. There are no streetlights in Palm Springs and you wonder if there is a city ordinance against them so that community members may witness (and wish on) falling stars. In Palm Springs, you can kiss with tongue in public. You can wear a striped dress every day. You can fall asleep on the bathroom floor. In Palm Springs every meal comes with sliced avocado. You can spend hours immersed in water. You will avoid your homework. You can spend the night outside under beach towels on a lounge chair. In Palm Springs you need no permission. You are able to know that life is good.
photos and photo editing by josh targownik
Wow, great photos. Is the photographer a friend of yours? I’ve never been to Palm Springs, but it sounds like I’d get lost for months there.
Yes, Josh is a friend– who took even more photos of our weekend in Palm Springs. I think he’ll have some up on flickr or something soon if they’re not already. We (Westcoast Whatsiters/ Record Club) will be making a yearly pilgrimage to Palm Springs simply because this past weekend was so decadently enjoyable. Join us in 2008?
Dave, I cannot wait for you to get yo ass out to the Southland.
great pairing these words with these pictures. much like a great pairing of eight folks and one house in Palm Springs. such a very good life.
Looks like it was simply delightful! Sad we missed it, but there’s always next year, yes?
sigh.
can’t we go back again this weekend?
(thanks for the photos and words, josh and lisaT…)
Lovely photos Josh!
Speaking of street lights, it may in fact be a city ordinance. In Sunriver, OR (a small resort town in the center of the state), there are rules about outdoor lighting. Street lights are few and far between enhancing the notoriously difficult navigation of the windy Sunriver round-abouts. On buildings, outdoor lights must be small and pointed towards the ground. The star gazing is excellent.
Funny thing, last week while driving through some little town in southern Washington there was a sign hailing it as, “the Palm Springs of Washington”. That sign alone reinforced in my mind that Palm Springs was a place I would never care to visit.
Your post made me change my mind.
I love how your account is *not* insidery, Lisa — it’s not even clear from the piece that this emerged from your wkend away together, which I vaguely knew was happening but had forgotten about until I saw the pictures. The piece reminds me of flash fiction — I loved it.
Yakima, Washington is purported to be, “The Palm Springs of Washington.”
It is a lie.
Yakima is probably closer to Napa Valley (these days anyway), since it’s not a desert but is filled with vineyards and wineries.
Everyone knows Kennewick is the Palm Springs of Washington. Sheesh.
Wait, no one has said anything about the fact that that appears to be a Bare-Chested Zitter in one of the photos. To my recollection I’ve never seen one of those, in all my years of Zitter watching.
More important than the Palm Springs, what’s the San Bernardino (aka San Berdoo) of Washington. Walla Walla?
Kennewick! my vote is for Pasco.
I’m not familiar with San Bernardino but I did go to college in Walla Walla (a place so nice they named it twice). Does San Berdoo have both a state penitentiary and more than 60 wineries?
Not hardly. Walla Walla (kinda like New York, New York) sounds much nicer than San Berdoo.
Hah! My dad is from Pasco.
Wow – looks like we missed some fabulous mid-century r&r. Next year for sure!!
Yeah I think it was Yakima. And no, there is absolutely no comparing it to anything nice from what I saw, wineries be damned.
My ancestors founded San Bernardino. You can read about it here, in a book I edited as a freelancer when I was in grad school.
The writer of today’s post was born in San Bernardino Community Hospital. August 7, 1970. No wineries that I know of, but a county jail and mental asylum for sure.
Bryan, yours is the all-american, all-everything family of pioneering frontiersmen and women. Crazy.
This post is beautiful, just like the weekend. How come no mention in prose, photo, or comments of spinning records, though? the reason we went! 2 am hot tub record club definitely beats 8 pm in someone’s living room, just for the record, should the rest of you like to take notes . . .
Dammit! Why do you torture us so?
To torment you into not skipping out next time, of course. It’s purely selfish.
I believe Yakima is quite often referred to as the armpit of Washington.