Coffee heat rising

Urban life

The Californication of Urban Arizona

by

Wow! What an afternoon!

M’jito, my wonderful son, kindly took his whole day off work to schlep me out to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, there to enjoy a whole series of annoying, time-consuming tests. This journey seriously did consume the entire day!

No kidding. An hour to drive out there. The whole damn day sitting around there, waiting, talking to people, being subjected to tests, sitting around waiting some more…on and on. Then OVER an hour to drive back into town through the unholy rush-hour traffic.

My GAWD!!! You have never seen such ungodly traffic as the legions westbound out of Scottsdale! Just a fukkin’ horror show!

Workin’-class folks here in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean-Sun by and large live in the West Valley. Decently paying businesses hold forth in the easterly and north-easterly regions: Scottsdale and the East Valley. Result: as in hideous Southern California, thousands of commuters trudge across the city over packed, hot, ugly freeways. And what a horrible evening drive that makes, starting along about 4:00 p.m.

At least it wasn’t unduly hot this afternoon. Another two months, and the drive would have been splendidly hellish.

Ohhh well. Now I’m home, and (since I’ve heard nothing to the contrary) he presumably is home.

What.

A.

Place.

And this is why I daydream of moving to Prescott or the Oro Valley. He daydreams of moving to Grand Junction, Colorado, where his eccentric paternal grandmother lived, as did her extraordinarily obnoxious husband until he ran off with a woman who could put up with his toxic personality.  Moi…I have too many negative memories of DXH’s dear mother (whose personality was not lacking in a degree of toxicity) to go back to that place — ever again — and M’jito knows that.

And I suspect that like me, he may regard one of the midsize towns/cities in Arizona as an acceptable substitute.

I would move to Prescott in a minute.

Same for Sedona.

Same for Oro Valley.

Some friends took off for Payson to spend their retirement in an extraordinarily beautiful home in the forest.

So…Payson? Maybe, only because my friends are up there. But probably not: it’s too small, too remote. You have to drive all the way down into the Valley to go to a decent doctor. Or to go to a Costco. Or to enjoy any sort of cultural event this side of a rodeo.

Truth to tell, if I had my preference, I’d probably move to Carefree (north of town: $$$$), Cave Creek (on the road to Carefeee: almost affordable), or Wickenburg (out in the desert west of town).

Or…or…San Francisco, by damn!

It’s 18 minutes after 5:00 p.m. here in the Funny Farm’s back yard. Helicopter after helicopter has flown over. The roar of passenger jets emanates from Sky Harbor airport, miles from here.

Ohhhh well. I can’t complain: At least I don’t have to deal with that unholy traffic morning and evening, five unholy days a week.

But…if I still had to work, you can be sure I wouldn’t live in Phoenix.

Life in the Wild West…as it were…

by

Welp, here we are, rounding out the first quarter of the 21st century in the (un)lovely Valley of the Sun.

It’s a nice city, a relatively safe one compared to some of the sootier venues spreading eastward across the country. But it’s still…a city. And…well…plus ça change….

Back in the dark ages, I used to walk home from school. In San Francisco, I could make about two-thirds the trip on foot or in a bus and a third in a streetcar. Either way, walking was safe and clean and an easy way to get back and forth without having to wait on and pay for the public bus.

Ah, nostalgia…

Today, I wouldn’t let a kid of mine walk to school here, not on a bet. Not even if it was the school three blocks to the west of us, right down the street.

It’s…

Just…

Not…

Safe.

Honestly, the schools seem to be under siege. Every time you turn around, here’s some new wacksh!t predator trying to snare a kid. Schools hire armed guards to patrol the place. Demented kids bring firearms and shoot up the school. Classes take place behind locked doors. And last week kids on their way to our neighborhood school had to step over a corpse on the sidewalk.

Makes home-schooling look good!

****

Here we are, a few hours later, after a raid on Costco’s tire shop and a trip hither and a trip thither and a goddamn car breakdown and a car repair and….yeah.

Mighty glad to get home, tha’ss all i can say!

See this?

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/woman-returns-couch-to-costco-after-two-years-sparks-viral-reaction-to-stores-generous-return-policy

This is why I shop at Costco.

Despite all the BS the general public is capable of delivering, Costco never gives you any BS.

Got something to whine about? Costco employees will listen patiently to your whining. If at all possible they’ll try to make the problem right. If they can’t, they’ll try to return your money to you.

Next week I’ll launch into battle with the Costco tire shop…not over anything so egregious, but still…

The thing is, I know they’ll listen to me. And I know they’ll do the best they can to make it right. If that costs Costco money, y’know what? It will MAKE more money for Costco, because every time they treat me like the Queen of England is a guarantee that I will be back, that I’ll buy more stuff there, that I’ll tell my friends how wonderful they are…on and on.

And that, we must allow, is amazing.

***

And speaking of amazing: it was back to the ‘Hood via Unlovely Sunnyslope, an alarming slum a few blocks north of the ‘Hood.

How would I like not to drive through there?

Lemme count the ways. And yet…no.

No, I’m not gonna add another 15+ minutes to the trip to weasel my way around Dank Slum North.

So: lock the car doors. Choose the route that probably moves the fastest and the smoothest at this time of day. Pray for the best.

God’lmighty this place gets more and more like Southern California by the day. Lordie, how can I remember Watts? Lemme count the ways….

Is Phoenix as bad as that?

Well…ahem! Certain areas surely are. My neighborhood is OK…but…but…. We’re about a mile south of a strikingly Watts-ish district. Would I live here if I could afford better?

Not.

On.

Your.

Life.

But I can’t, very much as many Los Angelenos can’t. “Afford better,” that is. And so our taxes and our retail bills and the value of stuff people can steal from us sustains the dankness that is our neighborhood. Loverly.

So, so tired.

Beautiful evening…high cirrus clouds decorating the sky over North Mountain. Cool but not chilly. Birds cheeping. Wine pouring.

Soon I should get up  and take Ruby for a doggy walk.

At this rate, though, the walk is likely to be up the hall and onto the bed. 😀

          ***

Actually…we made it all the way around our usual route, about a mile.

Wouldn’tcha know it, on the homeward leg I tripped and fell. Bashed the sore left shoulder, bashed the previously OK hand.

Dayum!

ooooh well… C’est la vie.

Never an Effing Dull Moment

by

Lordie! I’m coming to hate this neighborhood.

Ten in the morning, give or take a bit. Cop copter has been circling over the ‘Hood for the better part of 45 minutes. He’s right over my old house: a block to the north and a block to the west of this one.

***

{Blogger wanders off}

{Blogger comes back}

***

ooooohhh…kayyyyy….

Cops finally flew away. Shortly after I started this post, they roared down this way and took up a position over Josie’s house — SDXB’s former abode, one block to the north of the Funny Farm. They lurked around and lurked around and LURKED around, evidently searching for some perp. Or something.

 

Tempus Continues to Fidget

by

Crimineee, here we are halfway through the first month of another year. Who’d’ve thunk it possible?

When you’re old, time shifts into the higher velocities. It passes with absurd speed.

Yesterday I had one of the strangest experiences I’ve enjoyed in quite some time. I happened to be driving around on the east side of the city’s venerable North Central district, and in a moment of idleness, I roamed into the neighborhood where one of my old friends grew up. He lives in Portland now, his parents are deceased, and I haven’t seen any of that crowd in years.

There’s a Weirdness to driving around places you haven’t visited in forever: It looks familiar, and yet it doesn’t look familiar. 😀  I recognized the neighborhood, but I didn’t recognize it. Exactly.

When that friendship was active, his parents lived there. It’s a pleasant little middle-class neighborhood of pleasant little middle-class homes. Dates back to the 1950s or 60s, I’d guess.

Surprisingly, it hasn’t run down. To the contrary! Apparently centrally located single-family homes are hot property! The place looked as good as or — IMHO — better than it did when Dear Friend lived there. The houses are maintained as well or better…actually, I’d say significantly better. That property, because of its central location, is now worth FAR more relative to the rest of the city’s going value. Yet amazingly, it was full of families with kids.

Presumably the kids of doctors and lawyers…there’s no way the average tract-house family could afford that location.

Hm.

If the houses were not significantly older than mine, I might consider moving into that area. But they ARE older…a LOT older. So they would require a lot more maintenance, much of it very expensive maintenance.

On the other hand…they’re a long way from the grim slum that borders my neighborhood to the north. And they’re nowhere near any piles of grim (indeed!), crime-infested apartments like the mess that borders us to the west.

But on the third hand…those older houses are not cheap to maintain. Plus because of its location, the taxes might be higher than mine or my son’s. They’re practically uninsulated, and so summer power bills are astronomical. How you would insulate such a place escapes me — we blew tons of insulation into M’hijito’s attic, and the AC bills on that place, which is similar to the houses I was admiring, simply defy belief. My house, which is larger but 30 years newer, has significantly lower power bills than his does…and his house is probably newer than the places I was coveting yesterday.

Heh! While all that tempus has been fidgeting, a whoooole lotta changes have happened.

My friends divorced. Both have remarried. One lives in Portland, Oregon. The other in Seattle. DXH and I also divorced, though we both still live in lovely Phoenix, where our son also lives. Said son is now a middle-aged man with a highly responsible job and a house rather like the place pictured above.

I’m now retired and, freed from the joys of teaching college students, spend a great deal of time loafing around a pretty little North Central shack. I love my house but could do without the pool — and the house full of juvenile delinquents my bosom enemy installed across the street.

The hassle and expense involved in moving, however, outweigh the potential benefits. So far, I have yet to find a place that looks like its benefits would trump the hassles. The other day I did see a very pretty house within walking distance of my son’s place. But it was in the upscale neighborhood that borders Central Avenue: the price defied belief. Not only that, but because of its age and construction, the cost of running it would have been phenomenal.

Today, it’s highly unlikely that I could afford a house in an area where I would want to live — between about 7th Street and maybe 15th Avenue, from about Missouri to about Northern. The prices are so Californicated now that the cost of buying is in the stratosphere…and that doesn’t even include the cost of packing up and moving.

And so…time passes.

We thought it was entertaining at 9 p.m.?

by

Now it’s 12:30 in the morning. THE most unholy racket has been going on out there since shortly before midnight: a long, loud rolling tattoo of BAM BANG BLAST BANG WHISTLE BLAST BANG BAM.

Yeah. Some fun, eh Fun? What the Hell gets into people? Is every moron in the neighborhood (and in all the surrounding neighborhoods) drunk, high, or stoned stupid?

Ruby the Corgi, who apparently is not enraged by Stupid, is conkered out on the bed. Wish I was, too. But even after the morons get finished “celebrating,” the arm will still hurt so much it will obviate sleeping.

May every idiot who can’t force him- or herself to think about other people enjoy the same. Lots of the same, in upcoming nights.

A Miracle!!!!

by

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! WordPress let me into the Funny about Money site!

Who’d’ve thunk it? Especially given that this is a Whatever Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong day. Ugh!

After slamming around and bamming around and hurting like Hell and trying to figure out how to talk my son into driving me to stores (since he insists he doesn’t want me to drive) and realizing that ain’t a-gonna work and crashing the computer and re-crashing the computer and spavining the sore shoulder even more with the damn laundry and…gawdlmighty…here I am with the computer unplugged and for reasons incomprehensible the extension cord not reaching to where it usually goes (did Wonder-Cleaning-Lady move the cords? WHY?????).

Bang around and slam around and bang around some more. Figure out what W-C-L did to suit her taste in extension cords. Undo that tidy mess and reconstitute my own untidy mess.

Think maybe I can slither down to the Sprouts on the corner, where His Lordliness is unlikely to catch me, and get most of the things I need. If they don’t carry toilet paper (for unholy and unknowable reasons, the Funny Farm’s supply of TP is bare!), then I can sneak across the road to the Albertson’s, put my life on the line dodging panhandlers, and pick up the paper goods there. Whee. What fun.

So whenever the dryer buzzes again and the stuff in there is (painfully!) unloaded, it’s off to the store. Ohhhhhh goodie…I can hardly wait.

Y’know, I rather hate grocery shopping under the best of circumstances. But here in this state of Invalidism, the last goddamn thing I wanna do is take on the traffic, dodge the bums, find something (anything) that resembles a decent roll of TP in the Land of Politically Correct groceries, dodge some more bums to slither back to the car, trudge back up to the ‘Hood through annoying traffic and around stoners stumbling into the roadway,… AAAARRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH!

***

Grrrr grrrr grrrrrrr….. This is just ducky. See that pile of cheap apartments? You can walk there from my son’s house. It’s right around the corner from his place.

Translation: Neither of our neighborhoods is safe. This whole damn city is L.A. Redux, a hole in the desert into which to house trash.

And mayhem has become pretty much SOP: business as usual for lovely North Central Phoenix.

This morning the neighbors here in the ‘Hood awakened at dawn to a serenade of gunshots. Nobody on the neighborhood Facebook page is fessing up, but apparently either a couple of sh!theads had at each other as they cruised the public streets, or one of the householders took off after yet another home invader.

{sigh} What a garden spot!

If my son were not living in the central district — by way of being close to both his father and to me — I would be soooooo GONE from this place. Really, it’s very dangerous. Centrally located and convenient: just dandy. But it’s also centrally located and convenient for every sh!thead in the Valley.

Truth to tell, the only Maricopa County districts I would choose to live in are Cave Creek/Carefree and Fountain Hills. Either is a good hour’s drive from here, through homicidal traffic. And that factoid makes Sedona and waypoints outside of Tucson look good. For that matter, Santa Fe looks mighty good by comparison, too.

But meanwhile…the centrally located districts where we live are OUTTA SIGHT when it comes to prices: as we see when surfing the million-dollar range for rather ordinary, aging upper-middle-class shacks. It really is L.A. redux. How are they getting people to pay these insane prices?

M’jito is now working 100% out of his home. This saves his employer vast quantities of money on office space — meaning the good ole’ days are unlikely to return. Meaning, further, that going forward, most white-collar folk may be working from homes, meaning…they can live anywhere they choose. And so…WHY would anyone choose to live here, when one could live in…

* Sedona
* Prescott
* The suburbs of Tucson
* Fountain Hills
* Flagstaff
*Anywhere but here?????????

Man! If I were a young person and in that fine position, you may be sure I would NOT be camped in mid-town Phoenix. Even if you wanted to hang out in this general area to be close to relatives, there are many better places to set down.

In fact, I would be trying to persuade the honored parents to move out of the central districts, since neither of them has a commute to worry about anymore. Get them to move where you want to live, and follow them there.

***

Egad! One of the neighbors has posted, on the local Facebook page, that their dog spooked, ran off, got hit by a car, kept running, and is now lost.

Ruby and I are on our way out, to search for the wayward pooch. Hope it has survived and is still in the ‘Hood somewhere.

Outta here!