Phoenix descending

Sunday 27 May 2018

     Sights and insights en route to Saturday night.

     1. Hoover Dam has been Hoovered away. The highway engineers did it. No longer does the main route from Vegas to Phoenix run us over the lip of this heroic marvel. To go visit, you need an exit.

     2. Saguaros! You know you’re in Arizona when the landscape softens and these giants bid you hello with upraised arms. Every arm has a little fluffy crest on top, like a high fade haircut. They’re in flower.

     3. Rough riders. The Nissan Rogue doesn’t like the road surface on the higher elevations of US 93 up around Kingman. Feels like mini-cobblestones. Brother Tom in Phoenix says the sun degrades the stuff between the gravelly bits in the blacktop.

     4. Home sweet airbnb. Arrive at our domicile for the next week – a two-bedroom, bath-and-a-half condo in a complex behind a wall on Baseline Road near Dobson Road in Mesa, five minutes from Brother Tom’s house. Dog poo on the sidewalk and a locked key box on the screen door handle that won’t respond to the four-digit combination. Text the owner. He texts back. Cleaner was supposed to change the code. The old one gets us in.

     5. Fat of the land. Our sometime host in Phoenix, Nyle Jenkins (longtime WBFO listeners will remember him as overnight jazz host Orlando Norman in late ‘80s, early ‘90s) steers us to the Cornish Pasty Company branch nearby. Tasty pasty (Pesto Chicken) washed down with a couple craft porters.

     6. Fat of the land II. Niece Traci, looking fabulous as usual, steers our party of 5 to the Parlor Pizzeria on Camelback Road, an artisan pizza place voted #1 in Arizona by the Food Network. Plus it’s 10 minutes from the theater downtown in the Phoenix Art Museum complex that’s our ultimate destination. Monica and I share a yellow beet salad and Puttanesca pizza with shrimp, calamari and capers, accompanied by a brown ale (me) and an especially luscious Riesling (her).
     7. Everybody knows Traci. An empty parking lot greets us as we eventually leave “Gunmetal Blues,” a musical by a Phoenix songwriter that’s played around the world since he wrote it 15 years ago. Traci not only knows the guy (we’re introduced on the way in), but the director and most of the backstage crew, all of whom get greeted and chatted after it’s over. She did “Rocky Horror Show” here a while back. The play? A whimsical take-off on film noir which left us confused about the plot. Best feature – Buddy Toupee, the cocktail lounge piano player.

     8. Gas pain. The Nissan Rogue tells us it’s finally getting thirsty en route to the theater, so parched that it won’t get us back to Mesa. After 300-plus miles, first fill-up takes 14 gallons. $2.99 at a Circle K downtown – 20 cents cheaper than Las Vegas.