Monday, April 27, 2009

Love Phoenix

I hung out with a girlfriend this weekend and we managed to pack in bunch of local Phoenix stuff. We attended an art benefit at local art space MonOrchid. We ate dinner at Bario Cafe and brunched at both Chelsea's Kitchen and Coronado Cafe (where we had our first Pomosa, yum). We sipped wine at the original Postino, hands down one of my favorite wine bars anywhere. I finally made it into Frances Vintage, a great downtown boutique where I got my retail fix and picked up a cool gift for my sister in law's birthday. While there, I noticed these cute T's imprinted with the phrase "Love Phoenix or Leave Phoenix".

Phoenix is a newish city relative to it's size. It is an oasis of sorts in the desert, a bizarre vacation hot spot (literally) flanked by trendy Scottsdale where everything is new and oversized and Tempe where everything is old and undersized. Since Scottsdale is for the beautiful people and Tempe is for the smart people, Phoenix suffers a slight identity crisis.

Despite all of that I happen to love it. Sure it's horrendously hot for a few months out of the year. The sun is unrelenting and comes up at 4:30 AM by the middle of the summer. Still, it has so much to offer, great hiking, quirky culture, and it feels like a giant small town where a local with some pluck can still make a mark. The landscape is gorgeous in it's sparseness and the moon rises over the city in some of the clearest night skies I have ever seen. I have pool to dip my toes in and parks at every turn. Overall, it is a fairly relaxing place to live and the transplanted palm trees that spring up everywhere make me feel like I am on a permanent vacation.

Yesterday, we ventured over to Scottsdale to wander through the Anthropologie and check out to the new West Elm store and found out that an H & M is (finally) opening this fall. Really, once that happens, I may never leave.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

what a nice tribute to the city i love to hate and hate to love. it always makes me feel better to see it through the eyes of an admirer -- just today, a co-worker and i were celebrating the virtues of postino and frances and commenting that our little metropolis is coming into its own. have you been to quiessence at the farm at south mountain?! a must.

Lisa said...

Yay! Another new hip chick in town that gets it!